Weight Lifting & Cycling??

[Carrera]

On the whole, some form of weight-training seems pretty essential to me, since cycling doesn't develop all of the body. By loading back muscles, tendons and muscles with weights, overall fitness will improve (durability). At the very least, this should aid any prevention of injury or protect your ability to bounce back from falls.
However, if you train as I do, with the objective of gaining a larger amount of muscle, this will probably be a hindrance to performance on a bike. Low-rep weight training works different twitch fibers in the muscle and such fibres are of little use to an endurance cyclist.
I have wondered whether in my own case that it might be better to practise high-intensity sprint cycling in explosive bursts up hills e.t.c. After all, sprinters can also be muscular and fit.
I've seen guys in the gym who are so big it seems to defeat the object since they are simply not fit. On the other hand, I notice that many cyclists seem disproportionately developed in the opposite sense (the upper body and arms being neglected in training).
I wonder, though, what advantages high-rep squats might have for a cyclist. I presently squat 15 rep sets to failure - a form of training that is pretty brutal. The only thing that compares is a very sttep hill climb on a bike. Both push the body to the max.

Originally posted by ffvelazquezh
It is true that the weight lifting gives us some improvement in cycling. I can find enough information about the best exercises regarding with the main involved muscles, but I would want to know a little bit more based in personal experiences on the exercises that have worked better, mainly the recommended frequency, because I train cycling at least 4-5 days per week and I ignore the best way to mix both exercise types, since I would have to decide among diminishing distance and intensity in order to practice both in the same day or, to maintain intensity and distances diminishing the days dedicated to the cycling and to dedicate them to the strength training, how many days are the minimal/maximal recommended.??

I know that the best thing is the personal experimentation in order to define how adapts our own body better, but I look for some kind of orientation based on past personal experiences that helps me to decide but quickly what would work better

 

[2LAP]

I've closed this thread as its so long that people don't read the whole thing and repeat topics that have been discussed earlier in the thread.

If people feel that they have questions that are still unanswered please post them in another thread.

For a good example of this please see the thread on sprinting and weight training.