Cyclists are told the weight room makes you slow. I’ve spent this whole project arguing the opposite — and this is the longest-running piece of evidence on my side.

In 2022, Bent Rønnestad published a case report following four elite Norwegian cross-country mountain bikers across three and a half years. Same coach, same endurance program. The only difference: two of them lifted heavy through their off-season preparatory periods. The other two just rode.

Here’s what happened:

• After one off-season of heavy lifting, the lifters were up 16% in leg-press force and 16% in cycling sprint power. The riders who only rode? Nothing changed.
• After the second off-season, the numbers climbed again — 22% and 19% above where they started.
• One rider kept lifting for two more years. After 3.5 years: leg-press force up 44%, sprint power up 25%.

And here’s the part that matters for your programming: the lifters kept their gains through the entire race season on roughly one strength session every 7–10 days. That’s it. About one short session a week, and the strength stuck around while they raced.

The endurance-only riders, training just as hard on the bike for the same 3.5 years, gained nothing in force or sprint power.

What I take from this

This is the minimum-effective-dose argument I’ve been making: go heavy in the off-season when riding volume is low, then maintain in-season with a fraction of the work. Strength isn’t something you build all year — it’s something you build once, then defend cheaply.

It also answers the fear I hear in the shop every spring: “won’t lifting blunt my engine?” These were elite XC racers — among the most aerobic athletes in cycling — and the barbell didn’t cost them a watt. It bought them force they couldn’t develop on the bike.

Three and a half years. Same coach, same riding. The only variable was the barbell.

Reference: Rønnestad, B. R. (2022). Case report: Effects of multiple seasons of heavy strength training on muscle strength and cycling sprint power in elite cyclists. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 4, 860685. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2022.860685

---

I build off-season strength programs for cyclists around exactly this approach. They’re free at tacticalcadence.com/training-plans.