Original episode & show notes | Raw transcript
The following is a comprehensive analysis of the key concepts presented in the Empirical Cycling Podcast episode “TMT30 Strength Training Mistakes.” This guide is designed for the educated student of cycling who seeks to integrate strength training effectively, avoiding the common pitfalls that can hinder progress, cause injury, and compromise on-bike performance. We will explore the nuanced perspectives of hosts Kolie Moore and Kyle Helson, delving into foundational errors, programming missteps, and the physiological misunderstandings that often lead cyclists astray.
Before even touching a weight, many athletes make critical errors in their approach that pre-determine a suboptimal outcome. The podcast identifies these foundational mistakes as the most crucial to correct.
The hosts unequivocally state that compromising sleep to fit in gym sessions is one of the most detrimental mistakes an athlete can make.
The Science: Sleep is described as “one of the most anabolic things on the planet.” It is during deep sleep that the body undergoes critical repair and adaptation. Hormones essential for muscle growth and recovery, such as growth hormone, are released. Cutting sleep short directly curtails these processes.
Consequences for the Athlete:
Impaired Recovery: You will not recover adequately from either your strength or endurance training, leading to systemic fatigue.
Increased Injury Risk: Fatigue diminishes “neural drive”—the brain’s ability to recruit and coordinate muscles. This is particularly dangerous during heavy compound lifts like squats, where core and stabilizer muscle activation is paramount. A tired nervous system cannot properly stabilize the torso, leading to poor form and potential back injury.
Diminished Gains: Without adequate sleep, the body cannot synthesize new proteins and repair muscle tissue effectively, meaning you get less benefit from the work you put in.
The Empirical Cycling Recommendation: Prioritize a consistent 7.5 to 9 hours of sleep. If you have a night of poor sleep, it is far better to reduce the intensity of your planned gym session or even postpone it entirely than to push through. The risk of injury and the lack of positive adaptation make the workout a net negative.
Lifting with improper technique is not just ineffective; it is a direct path to injury. The podcast stresses that for a cyclist, an injury in the gym can derail an entire season.
The Problem: Many cyclists enter the gym with pre-conceived, often incorrect, notions of proper form (e.g., “knees must never go past your toes,” a myth debunked by observing any Olympic weightlifter). This leads to dangerous movement patterns like the “Stripper Squat” (where the hips rise much faster than the shoulders, placing enormous strain on the lower back) and “Butt Wink” (a posterior pelvic tilt at the bottom of a squat, which flexes the lumbar spine under load).
The Consequences:
High Risk of Acute Injury: Lifting heavy weight with a compromised spinal position or unstable joints can lead to disc herniation, muscle tears, or ligament sprains.
Chronic Pain: Repetitively using poor form, even with lighter weights, can create chronic joint and back pain.
Ineffective Stimulus: Poor technique often means other muscle groups are compensating for the target muscles, reducing the effectiveness of the exercise.
The Empirical Cycling Recommendation:
Get a Professional Check: The single best investment is to hire a qualified personal trainer for a few sessions to teach you the correct form for key lifts like the squat and deadlift.
Record Yourself: Use your phone to record every working set. Watch the video during your rest periods to self-assess your form. This immediate feedback loop is invaluable for making corrections on the next set.
Prioritize Controlled Movements: A controlled, slower eccentric (lowering) phase is crucial. Do not “dive bomb” into the bottom of a squat, as this relies on a passive stretch-shortening cycle rather than active muscular control and dramatically increases injury risk. The mantra is: “If you didn’t lift it with good technique, you didn’t lift it at all.”
Once the foundations are in place, the structure of the training program itself becomes the next hurdle.
A common mistake is to create a “laundry list” of leg exercises for a single session (e.g., Squats, Leg Press, Deadlifts, Lunges, Hip Hinges).
The Problem: The body has a finite capacity to perform high-quality work. After a certain point, stabilizer muscles (like the core and lower back) become exhausted.
The Consequences: When stabilizing muscles fatigue, form on subsequent exercises deteriorates, drastically increasing injury risk. The quality and stimulus of later sets are also severely compromised, turning them into “junk volume.”
The Empirical Cycling Recommendation: Focus on quality over quantity. A productive leg session should consist of 4 to 8 total heavy, working sets, typically spread across 2 to 3 compound exercises. For example, 3-4 sets of squats followed by 3-4 sets of single-leg press. This is more than sufficient to provide a powerful stimulus without inducing excessive fatigue and risk.
Athletes often err at both ends of the spectrum.
Too High (e.g., 50-100 reps): This is often done under the guise of “muscular endurance” to mimic cycling. The podcast vehemently opposes this, stating, “If you want it to look like riding a bike, ride a fucking bike.” The mechanical tension is too low to build strength, and the specificity is irrelevant.
Too Low (e.g., 1-3 reps): Starting a gym program with near-maximal, low-rep sets is extremely dangerous for anyone who hasn’t been lifting consistently. Your tendons and connective tissues are not prepared for such high forces, and your neural patterns for the movement are not yet ingrained.
The Empirical Cycling Recommendation:
Start with Higher Reps: Begin with sets in the 8 to 15-rep range. This approach has multiple benefits: it allows for more practice repetitions to solidify good technique, it builds a mind-muscle connection, and it prepares connective tissues for heavier loads later on.
Avoid 1-Rep Max (1RM) Testing: For a cyclist, knowing your 1RM is almost entirely irrelevant and carries an unacceptably high risk of injury. Progress can and should be measured by adding reps or weight in a moderate rep range. Use tools like Reps in Reserve (RIR) or Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) to guide intensity.
Enthusiasm can lead cyclists to lift 3, 4, or even 5 days a week.
The Problem: Strength training is a significant physiological stress. Each heavy session requires recovery. When combined with the demands of cycling, lifting too frequently creates a state of systemic under-recovery.
The Consequences: Both your on-bike performance and your gym performance will suffer. Injury risk skyrockets due to cumulative fatigue.
The Empirical Cycling Recommendation: For the vast majority of cyclists, 1 to 2 heavy strength sessions per week is the optimal frequency. Three days is an absolute maximum that should only be considered deep in the off-season when bike volume and intensity are very low.
Effective strength training does not exist in a vacuum. It must be integrated intelligently into the annual cycling plan.
This manifests as trying to do everything at once or staying heavy in the gym for too long into the competitive season.
The Problem: You cannot simultaneously maximize strength gains and peak for a cycling event. The physiological demands are competing.
The Consequences: Trying to maintain heavy, high-volume lifting during periods of intense interval training or racing leads to burnout, illness, or injury. Neither your strength nor your cycling fitness will progress optimally.
The Empirical Cycling Principle: “Pick your master.” Your training must have a clear priority based on the time of year.
Off-Season: Strength training can be a higher priority. This is the time to build strength with higher volume and intensity.
In-Season/Race Prep: The bike becomes the master. Strength training must transition to a “maintenance dose”—significantly lower volume and intensity (e.g., 1-2 sets of a couple of exercises once a week) sufficient only to retain the strength gained in the off-season.
Nutrition: Lifting heavy weights primarily burns muscle glycogen. Failing to replenish this and provide adequate protein for repair will cripple recovery.
Monitoring Recovery: Pay attention to black-and-white performance indicators. If you were able to do 3x8 last week and can only manage 8, 8, 6 this week, you are not recovering. Other signs include persistent soreness, brain fog, and a lack of motivation.
Scheduling: The most common question is “when should I lift relative to riding?” The answer is always “it depends.” You must experiment to find what works for your body and your schedule. If lifting in the morning consistently ruins your afternoon intervals, you must adjust. Try moving intervals to the next day or placing the lift after the ride. Do not blindly adhere to a dogmatic schedule; auto-regulate based on your body’s feedback.
The final category of mistakes involves getting lost in complex physiology at the expense of practical application.
The Fear of “Bulking Up”: Many cyclists fear gaining unwanted weight. The podcast clarifies that the initial, rapid increase in muscle size upon starting a program is primarily glycogen and associated water weight, not true muscle hypertrophy. Muscle cells are super-compensating their fuel stores. This effect plateaus after a few weeks. Gaining significant amounts of actual muscle tissue is a slow, difficult process that will not happen by accident.
The Fiber-Type Fallacy: Athletes worry that lifting will create too many “fast-twitch” Type II muscle fibers, harming their endurance. The podcast dismisses this concern, noting that fiber-type conversion is a very slow process, and the high volume of endurance riding is a powerful signal that will preserve or enhance aerobic characteristics.
The VLaMax Confusion: The hosts debunk the idea that strength training will increase your VLaMax (a model for maximal glycolytic rate) and thereby lower your FTP. They argue that any observed decrease in FTP is almost certainly due to fatigue from the gym work compromising the quality of on-bike training, not a fundamental shift in metabolic profile.
The Empirical Cycling Recommendation: “Don’t big brain it.” Focus on the practical, proven principles: lift with good technique, apply progressive overload, manage your total training stress, and listen to your body. Obsessing over complex and often misinterpreted physiological models is a distraction from the things that truly matter.
The podcast provides a clear, practical, and science-informed framework for cyclists. The core principles are to treat strength training as a potent supplement to your primary sport. Prioritize sleep and technique above all else. Structure your program with a focus on quality over quantity and periodize it intelligently within your annual plan. Finally, monitor your body’s response and be willing to adjust, understanding that the goal is to build a more resilient, powerful, and injury-proof athlete on the bike.