Cross Training for Cyclists: The Ultimate Guide to Better Performance
Jun 17, 2024
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Cyclists, like all athletes, have to deal with the limitations of their sport. While riding is a great form of physical activity with countless benefits, it’s not a one-size-fits-all prescription for health. Cross training for cyclists can help mitigate the imbalances, injuries, and pain points that come from just cycling alone; let’s learn what that is and how to do it.
“Can’t You Just Ride?”
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Cycling places a heavy emphasis on some muscles (most prominently, the quadriceps) to the gross neglect of others (pelvic stabilizers, core muscles, and upper body, to name a few). This imbalance has its consequences. The muscles that get used all the time will overdevelop, and the ones that don’t get used enough will atrophy.
Muscle imbalances could be defined as a disparity in size, strength, tone, and/or endurance between opposing muscle groups. Since our muscles attach to our skeleton to help it move, notable muscle imbalances will have a significant influence on our posture and overall performance as athletes.
Common problems such as the ones listed below are often a result of muscle imbalances in cyclists:
One muscle gets too tight, the other gets too weak, another is too big, its antagonist gets too small…it can become one very complicated and messy web of dysfunction in no time at all if preventative measures aren’t put in place to begin with.
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Introducing…Cross Training
Cross training involves incorporating a variety of exercises and training methods from different disciplines into your cycling regimen. Though it may seem a bit counterintuitive at first, it’s true that if you want to be on the bike long-term, you have to spend at least some of your time exercising off the bike as time goes by.
Benefits of Cross Training for Cyclists
Not only can cross training help prevent injury by exercising the muscles that don’t get used enough while cycling, it has several other benefits, too. Let’s take a look at them together and learn how to start incorporating it into your training schedule!
Balances Your Musculature
As we’ve already touched upon, by participating in other types of physical activity in the form of cross training for cyclists, you’ll be exercising your body in a way that’s different from time spent on the bike. This helps balance out your body to ensure a cohesive and symbiotic relationship between opposing muscles for better function and less injuries.
Improved Fitness
The body has a way of leveling out when it does one activity for too long. It’s an adaptation machine that needs new stimuli to continue improving in new directions. Cross training for cyclists allows them to break through cycling plateaus by giving their body a new challenge it’s not used to. Expect more powerful pedaling and faster times on your regular routes.
Injury Prevention
Cross training for cyclists helps to safeguard against injury in more ways than one. Yes, it helps correct muscle imbalances, but it also makes your muscles more resilient, in general. By challenging them with new loads, new rates of contraction, and new directional stresses, your muscles and joints become smarter, and better able to tolerate everything you throw at them.
Mental Variety
One of the most common detriments to regular exercise is a lack of mental variety. Cycling is great, but it can become monotonous, especially if done indoors and/or in the same manner time and time again. Cross training for cyclists opens up a world of exercise, health, and fitness that isn’t contained to one sport or activity. It gives them a playground with limitless options.
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Best Cross Training for Cyclists
Let’s now look into how you can start incorporating cross training into your schedule and when it’s best suited to do so! Winter cross training for cyclists is particularly popular, because it allows everyone from the cycling enthusiast to the tour-tested pro to avoid the monotony of stationary bikes! But whatever your level, start by giving these a try!
Cardiovascular Activity (Running + Swimming)
One of the main concerns with cyclists is that cross training will somehow lower their cardiorespiratory fitness. Well, there are other cardiovascular activities you can do! Running and swimming are the two most popular forms of cross training in the cycling community, as the crossover cardio-wise is huge, and it directly translates to other sports like triathlon!
When to Do It
Try replacing one of your rides with either a run or swim once a week to see if it provides a refreshing change to your training schedule. During the off-season, swimming can be a particularly useful form of winter cross training for cyclists, as it allows you to get out to the pool for a different type of workout that places much more emphasis on the upper body.
Strength Training
Strength training improves (literally) everything. The great thing about a strength training regimen is you can tailor it to make up for the shortfalls of your sport. To use it as cross training for cycling, you can do workouts that train your core, upper body, and hip muscles in ways that they don’t get adequately worked while riding your bike.
When to Do It
Strength training in the wintertime/off-season should be done 2-4x a week to help balance out the body and prepare for the heavy volume that will take place during the cycling season. This will help protect you from injury. In the cycling season, strength training should be performed at least once a week to help maintain any strength built in the off-season.
Stretching & Mobility
Sometimes it’s not so much about training a given muscle group as it is about helping another one to relax. The quadriceps and hip flexors, in particular, are troublesome muscle groups that get super tight and lead to postural problems like anterior pelvic tilt. Making time for regular stretching and mobility work can mitigate many cycling problems, and it also just feels good.
When to Do It
We recommend you do stretching and mobility work daily. You should do it post-ride, post-workout, and as its own session if you have nothing else going on that day. This helps keep your body loose, limber, well-circulated, and feeling good going into your next training days. Other benefits include improved sleep, lower stress levels, and improved posture, as well!
Get it All-In-One With Dynamic Cyclist!
Let us take the guesswork out of cross training. Dynamic Cyclist is the world’s leading app and online platform for stretching/mobility, strength training, and injury prevention programs for cyclists! Available 24/7 with world class instructors and programming. Sign up for a 7-day free trial by clicking here!
Written by Eric Lister – Certified Personal Trainer & Corrective Exercise Specialist
