Cross Training for Cyclists: The Best Off-Bike Workouts

Cross-training for cyclists is the introduction of off-bike activities with the goal of reducing injury risk, improving on-bike performance, and enhancing overall health. By foregoing strength training, for example, you're also leaving cycling performance gains on the table.

In this guide, we'll explain how cross-training can make you a better cyclist, how to fit it into your exercise routine, and highlight some of the best activities to consider.

Why Cross-Training Makes You a Better Cyclist

To be clear, there's no activity that improves cycling performance more than cycling and following a structured training plan, as this study shows. That said, complementary cross-training activities can enhance on-bike performance when introduced properly – mainly through three benefits: greater injury resilience, help breaking through plateaus, and a more balanced body.

Injury Resilience

Separate studies on both professional and recreational cyclists find high rates of injury, especially injuries to the back and knees.

Given that riding your bike is the best way to become a better cyclist, it's essential to be able to keep riding pain-free and avoid injury and lengthy periods off the bike.

Strength training has been shown to reduce the occurrence of injuries in athletes (and improve on-bike performance), so adding it to your routine is a smart choice.

Substituting rides with other activities to rest the muscles used in cycling while loading different muscle groups and joints may also reduce the risk of suffering one of the common cycling overuse injuries.

Breaking Plateaus

Aside from injury prevention, cross-training can be a helpful tool to overcome plateaus in training progress.

Again, strength training is a useful method to improve performance when your on-bike performance gains plateau, as it has been shown to improve time to exhaustion in time trial efforts.

Proper recovery is another key to continuing to improve performance. Plateaus are frequently due to overtraining, which is when your training load is higher than your recovery abilities. In general, the effects of overtraining come on over a period of multiple weeks or even months.

Replacing some rides with activities you enjoy, especially in a non-structured, lower-intensity way, will reduce the likelihood of overtraining and may increase your motivation when it's time to ride again.

*TIP: ROUVY Companion App tracks your Training and Recovery Scores using both cycling and off-bike activities, helping you balance your workload and understand when to push and when to recover.

Balance

If you're training as a competitive cyclist, it's hard to achieve true balance, even with cross-training, because the amount of time you need to spend riding can create imbalances and limitations, such as in upper body strength and mobility.

For the rest of us, the goal should be to enjoy riding and the health benefits it brings while also maintaining a functional body and balanced physique. As mentioned, riding your bike won't improve your bone health, muscular strength, or mobility, so to be able to function well in daily life, you need to engage in complementary activities that use your whole body.

The sections below look at the most effective options.

Strength Training

Strength training has the clearest evidence for producing consistent and repeatable performance benefits for cyclists beyond those that could be gained by increasing on-bike time. For this reason, top professional cyclists, such as Jack Haig and Jasper Philipsen, are promoting its importance.

One of the key benefits of strength training for cyclists and endurance sport enthusiasts is its effect on bone health. Studies have repeatedly shown that there is a “direct and positive relationship between the effects of resistance training and bone density”, and with cycling being a weight-supported activity, adult cyclists consistently show low bone mineral density (weak bones).

Studies also demonstrate that strength training improves on-bike performance in both males and females by increasing peak power output, time to exhaustion, and cycling efficiency.

Thankfully, the majority of the benefits of strength training can be gained from two 30–45-minute sessions per week, as scientist and elite performance coach Dr Andy Galpin outlines.

Running, Hiking, and Walking

One major benefit of running for cyclists is that, like indoor training with ROUVY, it is very time-efficient, so you can get a good workout in as little as 30 minutes. In contrast, walking and hiking are time-consuming, but they are low impact and easier to recover from, so they're great options if you're injury-prone.

There is some transfer of cardiovascular benefits from running to cycling, but it won't match time spent on the bike. Additionally, it may impact the quality of the next day's ride as running is a high-impact sport that puts increased demand on muscles and joints, requiring more recovery time.

Walking is an almost load-free activity that is vital to do regularly and should be a non-negotiable for anyone who wants to maintain a healthy body and avoid injury.

Research has shown that general inactivity throughout the day, such as by sitting at a desk for long periods while working, can actually blunt the performance gains of exercise, so setting a daily steps goal can help you avoid this detrimental effect.

Hiking and trail running are excellent ways to enjoy nature, mix up your exercise routine, and expose your body to stimuli that you don't get by walking or running in urban environments on flat concrete.

If you plan to introduce running into your exercise routine, be sure to start conservatively with around 15 to 20 minutes per session, progress slowly, prioritise recovery, and don't programme your runs the day before rides, at least in the beginning.

Yoga and Pilates

Yoga and Pilates are excellent complementary activities for cyclists that typically require very little recovery, and light yoga can comfortably be done the same day as a ride.

Both activities help improve mobility, core strength, posture, balance, and breathing control. That said, Pilates is more about core strength and movement control, whereas yoga is more about improving range of motion and controlling the breath.

Cycling is done more or less in the same fixed position for hours with a flexed spine, closed hips, and extended neck, which makes activities like yoga even more valuable.

Strong core muscles help to protect the spine and back muscles in daily life and maintain good form while cycling. In one study on competitive cyclists, “core fatigue resulted in altered cycling mechanics”, which they concluded could increase the risk of injury by increasing stress on the knee joint.

For the aerodynamic optimisers, core strength and hamstring and back flexibility are also necessary to maintain an aerodynamic body position for extended periods.

By doing a simple, short yoga routine of 10–15 minutes 3–5 times per week, you should be able to maintain or improve the range of movement in your muscles and joints, along with your core strength and breath control.

Swimming and Rowing

Swimming and rowing are two excellent, time-efficient, and low-impact endurance sports that can build aerobic fitness and train different primary muscle groups than cycling.

Both work well as cross-training options for cyclists as they use the muscles in the upper body. In particular, swimming opens the hips and shoulders and uses the muscles in the back, shoulders, and hamstrings, which helps to balance out the closed posture of a cyclist.

The downsides of swimming for cyclists are that it's non-weight-bearing, so it provides little stimulus for improving bone health, and it relies on learning good technique to utilise it effectively as a training method.

Indoor rowing is a full-body workout that trains all of the major muscle groups and the cardiovascular system. Like running, it's extremely time-efficient, making it an excellent choice when you only have 15-20 minutes for some cardio work, for example, at the end of a strength training session.

However, for riders with repetitive lower back pain, rowing may be a poor choice as it puts the lower back under significant load, especially when done with poor technique.

How Much and When

If you want to begin cross-training, it's important to consider that most of the activities we've covered will contribute to your training load and require recovery time.

The one caveat is that walking and light yoga or mobility work can be considered “free” in terms of training load.

Avoid programming demanding cross-training sessions before hard training rides, such as an interval session on ROUVY, as this may prevent you from meeting the goals of your sessions. Ideally, place your hard rides the day before cross-training.

For people with limited time for exercise, cross-training may reduce the total time spent on the bike. For athletes and those with lots of free time, it can be added on top of your cycling hours.

If you have to prioritise one cross-training activity, strength training will likely provide the biggest overall benefit to cycling performance and wellbeing, when done correctly. Regardless of whether you decide to cross-train or not, you should also aim to walk regularly throughout the day.