Hello everyone, and for about a year I’ve been following our coach Jak’s and I’ve been pretty good but now I’d like to do some more specific strength training.
I took a look at the workouts proposed by jacks but I’m very confused, what do you recommend to increase the explosive and resistant strength? next year I would like to try the marathons in mtb
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Hi Trx,
Strength training is an essential part of getting better on the bike. The way to do strength training varies. You can do strength training on the bike, weight training or body weight training.
They all have their benefits and limitations.
I advise my clients to do basic bike time divided over at least three workouts. During the base period, I plan some strength training on the bike. The advantage is that the time spent on the bike is good. The disadvantage is that only a limited number of muscles will be developed and only to a certain strength.
Your core muscles, for instance, contribute to your performance but are not really getting any training when you’re on the bike, especially not on a road bike.
Taking your training to the gym to do some serious weight training is an excellent way to get stronger, provided that it doesn’t compromise your bike time and that you are motivated to do so.
I don’t like going to the gym, but I see the results on the bike, and that keeps me motivated. My advice: if you hate going to the gym, don’t do it. You won’t see the results, but you won’t be bored out, either.
A simple and very effective way is to do bodyweight training. Using Tabata-style training, you can easily add 2 or 3 extra workouts in your week, and it will only cost you minutes.
This might sound like it isn’t worth the effort, but believe me, it is the smallest investment with huge returns. Think about it.
You don’t waste any time going to the gym, no long training sessions, no equipment needed, litte recovery time.
I do this kind of training when I roll out of bed on the bedroom floor. Ten minutes later, I’m in the shower, ready to start my day.
Let me know what kind of training you’re looking for and I’ll give you some more advice.
Have lots of fun, Coach Robert
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Yes, I already do weight training at home. I wanted some advice on what specific workouts to do for strength among those offered by Coach Jack to do on the bike. Of course, I thank you for the info you gave me and I give you reason on the fact of the Tabata exercises.
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Great. I think there is not much strength training on the bike you can do. Studies show that this kind of training is very limited in effectiveness.
On the other side, most intervals will make sure you get stronger on the bike.
Here are some examples:
5 minute sweet spot intervals on a two hour training.
3 minute zone 4 intervals with 3 minutes rest.
every zone 5 and zone 6 training.
Every hill or mountain climb
My advice is to do these kind of trainings. Forget about strength training on the bike. These trainings will all make you stronger anyway.
My clients have three trainings:
1 zone 5 or 6 training
1 zone 4 training
1 zone 2 training
If they want to train more than three times a week I let them choose the third training. It can be sweet spot, zone 2 or a fartlek training. Meaning you don’t have a schedule but you train as the route gives you your obstacles.
Any mountain bike route is a fartlek-style training. You go up, down, over rocks, through a creek, etc.
The freedom of choice is important so you don’t get “cramped” by following a schedule all the time. There are only a few riders that follow a schedule to the end year in, year out.
Do you make your weight training seasonal? I mean do you adapt your weight training the different stages in your season and/ or schedule?
With weights, you can follow a base, build, and peak routine too.
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Our SFR and Dynamic force workouts are lower RPM, high force workouts which result in strength endurance not just strength. Strength is done with weight training as Robert suggested. Strength endurance is something that most people don’t training and SFR and Dynamic force are interesting if you have not done them. Let me know if you need more info.
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So thank you both. Unfortunately, with the translator, I cannot understand your speeches. I have already followed the SFRs and the dynamic strength exercises that Pripone Jacks. Every year from November until January I do both bodyweight and weight training and I always felt good. In fact, Robert is right, but this year I wanted to insist more on strength and since I use trainer day as my only source of training I wanted to like do a training of about 16 weeks with Jakcs something to put together with the weights in this period. Unfortunately also the fault of the English language of the descriptions I wanted a piece of advice on which blocks to use type Among those proposed on the site type the serius italian,crunched power ecc ecc .Or better still use the custom block and insert the most suitable exercises for strength during this period.
I repeat the translator is not on my side so excuse me for the mistakes.
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You should paste our responses into ChatGPT and ask it to translate, it is a much better translator. If you have done SFR then I don’t know of any other good bike strength work. Riding your MTB up steep hills… 
You should think in terms of what you are trying to do. On the bike you should be thinking power duration curve or mean max power (MMP). Each person will have a power signature, some will be sprinters and some will be TTers. When it comes to anaerobic work capacity it’s difficult to make a huge change in this other than 8-12 weeks of hard efforts and you reach your peak. The best thing you can do is raise your aerobic capacity so you don’t have to push so hard. Raise your base and then your anaerobic power above that is raised as well.
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Alex makes a good point: Look at what you need in your marathon and your strengths as a cyclist.
Mountainbike Marathons are the ultimate nightmare. They are long, so you need endurance, but they also have many steep, technical climbs that require skill and strength.
The rule of training is simple: use it or lose it. This means that a block of strength training from November until January will give you great power in February, but that power will fade away during the season.
Since you have time to do weight training, I would extend that period.
Start with 5-second reps. Do all your exercises after each other. Pik a weight you can use to do 8-10 reps. Do 5 seconds up, 5 seconds down. As may reps as you can, but no more than 10. If you can do more, pick a heavier weight. After one set, go to the next exercise. Do one round, maybe a second if you can. Do this for 6 weeks. Ideally, you would follow your Trainer Day schedule of 3 weeks of work and 1 week of rest. No weight training during rest week.
For the next 6 weeks, you make exploding reps up and three reps down. do 3 sets of each exercise and pick a weight you can do 12-15 reps with. Again, follow your rest routine from your Trainer Day schedule.
For the rest of the season, do 4 or 5 sets of 25 to 35 reps per exercise. Pick different exercise every 6 weeks. And don’t forget to take weeks of, as in your Trainer Day schedule.
Again, weight training gives you way better results for strength than bike training. You will develop all the muscles in your body, fatigue less, and develop stamina and power.
Don’t worry about your bike training. Do what you did last year. Do the intervals and a heap of zone 2, and you will have a great season.
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I’m sorry, but I can’t understand what you mean by five uphill and five downhill.
So I just have the doubt of which training to follow by bike with Trainar Day,…
So far I’ve entered a specific date with Jach and followed the workouts, but this year I wanted to do more specific things that are tailored to my goals.
I’m undecided whether to start now with a base block or directly go to the Italian serius or stronger ride blocks.
From November to January, along with my bike workouts, I wanted to do weights two times a week and then go to 1 time.
My biggest doubt is which of the training blocks that Jacks has proposed during this period.
Do you think that during this period I carry out 2 days of weights and 2 days of bikes is fine?
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The most traditional for max bike performance would be to do
- Base + Lots of Strength
- Build + maintenance strength
- Peak with reduced strength or none
So yes more strength from Nov - Early Jan during. Serious Italian Jan-March, then big climbs.
It’s best to do as much riding as you can during any of this period as intensity on the bike goes up, intensity and duration of strength training goes down.
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Okay, thank you very much for all the clarifications. Have a good day!
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Hi TRX,
I’m a big fan of year round strength training. It can bring your cycling performance to another level. It is wise to do strength training from an overall health perspetive too.
But, like with everything you do as an amature, you have to like it. If you don’t like it, it will be a burdon and it won’t last. You risk running out of motivation and that is nog what you want.
I always devide weight training into three stages, just like your cyling training.
- Base. You focus on 8 reps with heavy weights. One round 5 sec up and down per movement.
- Build. Focus on 3 sets of 10-12 reps.
- Peak. Focus on 4-5 sets of 25-35 reps.
It is less important how many times a week you go to the gym. Once is enough, twice would be great as long as your cycling doesn’t suffer from that. If you do more long gym sessions your cycling will suffer.
Have fun, Coach Robert
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That’s an interesting idea of heavy to light, base to peak. I did about 2 years of 10 reps, 4 seconds up / 4 down with a strength coach, and could only increase weight when rep #11 was 10 seconds up and 10 seconds down. I got strong well strong for me anyway.
Following up on the strength training topic. I’ve just subscribed to TD and set up a Coach Jack training plan for 4 days a week, starting at 5 hours a week. I have generally been working out 6 or even 7 days a week in the past, with a mix of cardio (majority bike, but some running and rucking mixed in at times) and strength training. I’d like to continue to do at least 2 strength training sessions a week with the Coach Jack plan. Should I drop those into 2 of the three rest days, or it better to take a true rest day and do the strength training on the same day I bike (before or after biking)? I am retired now so have plenty of time to double up on workouts, I just worry that I would overdo it by doubling up. I actually feel better when I work out, so that’s why I’ve been working out 6-7 days a week, so would go the approach of 4 days bike, 2 days resistance, and maybe the remaining day of some stretching/yoga unless I need multiple true rest days. Thanks!
Hi CDPHou,
That is a nice schedule you have there. I wouldn’t advise to do double days.
The first reason for this is that you make that day only about training. Your cardio and strenght training should be four hours apart from each other to get the benefit out of both. In between you want to rest and eat, so there is not muh left of your day.
Second is that double days are really good if you are already packed in your training schedule and you have a full team to support you in your recovery. This means you are a pro or try to live like one.
Finally the double days will take so much recovery time that the risk of overtraining is big and, it gets bigger the older you get.
So, just do it like you’ve done it before. Train six days a week and take one dedicated rest day with some yoga or stretching if you want to.
It a great way of getting old the healthy way and show that of to all the young dogs who think they can beat you easily. 
Have fun, Coach Robert
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Makes sense to me. Thanks Coach!
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Hope it is okay to jump on here with a different strength-training-related question;-)
I am new to TD (and above 50). I am coming back from a long break (Oct. 2022…July 2024) due to accident-related injury. For the second half of 2024 I did mostly free rides and SST-type training, some low-cadence “strength-endurance”, plus a little bit of VO2max. Now I want to use TD/Coach Jack to prepare myself for a set of (European/4+ h) Gravel races, with the first ones in May and early June.
However, I still do a significant amount of work in the gym, mostly strength training for legs and core (variants of squats, lunges, stepdowns, etc.). Currently I do three sessions a week and I foresee to keep this at 2/w for, at least, most part of the year. This strength training is planned and overlooked by the medical athletics center of the local hospital. Thus, I do not need actual input for the strength training.
What I am looking for is the appropriate way to have Coach Jack take this information into account. After all, these are sessions with quite high (muscular) intensity.
I would assume that in first instance I should be able to infuse the past sessions into the activity list – they are on Strava, but TD does not download them.
Most importantly, for now I simply told Coach Jack not to put (cycling) workouts on these days, but obviously I now have days that look like rest days but are in fact high-intensity days.
After all, it does make a difference to do HIIT following “long ride”, “high intesity (gym)” vs. “long ride”, “rest” …
Thus, I assume I should inform Coach Jack of the use of the locked days, wether it is a rest day or a high-intensity gym day… how to do this in the best possible way?
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Hi Yokuha,
Great work on your strength training. On the technical aspects of Trainer Day, AIex knows a lot more than I do.
However, you can adjust your schedule by just dragging your training to other days or changing your preferences in the setup of Coach Jack
You are right to “weigh” your strength training. Joe Friel has a method to calculate tss for strength training.
I’ll give you some practical tips.
When it comes to load every body works differently. Research shows that morning is the best time for weight training, but I hate weight training in the morning. I love doing it later in the day.
So, do what feels natural and practical with your agenda.
Monitor how that is working out for your body. You can do so by measuring morning HRV.
Make sure that the hrv you are measuring is a one-moment measurement and not an average over last night. The objective is to measure how well you have recovered at that moment.
Try any approach for at least 2 to 4 weeks, before you change anything.
You know you need to make a change if the impact of your last training still influences your next training. Unless it is intended to do so.
Have fun, Coach Robert
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HI Robert,
Thank you for the feedback!
I’ll have to check out the Joe-Friel-TSS for strength training, will clearly be useful for post-analysis. Currently, in i.icu, I use 25 % of the HR-based TRIMP load … whatever that’s worth;-)
While I used to do strength training in the morning at some point (decades ago), I do not manage this anymore for work-family-sports-balance reasons. It’s not so much worse for me regarding the actual strength training itself, the main real drawback is that it is pretty bad for double days when you do the strength training after the on-bike workout:-o
I do measure HRV (well, using the Apple Watch) already for years using a 5 min measurement in the morning. Unfortunately, it much more reflects my load/stress at work than exercise stress. Even after very hard workouts…
Yes, in principle I can drag workouts around manually, but as my schedule – also as given to Coach Jack – is such that the training blocks are very different, for me it is not a “move around” but a replan/find new workouts… Then, however, I could directly set up my training manually… which I am trying to avoid;-)
Right now, in fact, I have this:
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: strength work in gym
Coach Jack: Monday: 60 min; Wednesday 90 min; Friday 180 min; Sunday: automatic, long-ride day
Yes, I will have to introduce a rest day, which will be the Monday. At that time I will likely switch to only-2-times/week strength training.
Currently, in base training, the 60 min on Monday are effectively “recovery” even when it is formally 60 min Z2…
Will have to see how to set up strength training. If I have to do it manually, maybe Tuesday and Saturday strength, Wednesday 90 min cycling, Thursday & Friday longer cycling – here I see the potential problem – while the long ride on Sunday after the Saturday gym looks like it will produce decent good overload before the real rest day;-)
But this would really mean that the intensity-hard cycling workout should be on Thursday, not?
Or can Coach Jack tell me (better)?