Does heavy lifting make cyclists faster?
Learn to train smart, run fast, and be strong with this endurance performance nerd alert from Thomas Solomon, PhD.
Heavy strength training effects on physiological determinants of endurance cyclist performance: a systematic review with meta-analysis
Llanos-Lagos et al. (2026) Eur J Appl Physiol (click here to open the original paper)
How can you apply this paper's findings to your training or coaching practice?
◦ If you coach (or are) an endurance cyclist, this paper suggests that adding heavy lower-body lifting is a performance “upgrade” that may boost efficiency and sprint punch. Will this help every rider, at every level? Probably not — and the analysis didn’t find clear moderators like sex, baseline fitness, or program length that reliably changed the outcome. But if you want a practical take-home, the authors’ own synthesis points toward something like 2 strength sessions per week for around 8 weeks as a plausible starting point. Does this extrapolate to runners? Maybe. Particularly because there are some meta-analyses that have answered that very question.
What is my Rating of Perceived scientific Enjoyment (RPsE)?
8 out of 10 → I experienced high scientific enjoyment because the authors assessed risk of biasRisk of bias in a meta-analysis refers to the potential for systematic errors in the studies included in the analysis. Such errors can lead to misleading/invalid results and unreliable conclusions. This can arise because of issues with the way participants are selected (randomisation), how data is collected and analysed, and how the results are reported., checked publication biasPublication bias in meta-analysis occurs when studies with significant results are more likely to be published than those with non-significant findings, leading to distorted conclusions. This bias can inflate effect sizes and misrepresent the true effectiveness of interventions, making it crucial to identify and correct for it in research., used GRADEGRADE, which stands for Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation, is a standardised and structured approach used to assess the certainty of evidence in meta-analyses. It evaluates how “confident” researchers are in the results of studies and the recommendations that follow from them. GRADE rates a body of evidence as “high”, “moderate”, “low”, or “very low” certainty using a set of standardised criteria. to assess the certainty of evidenceCertainty of evidence tells us how confident we are that the published results accurately reflect the true effect. It’s based on factors like study design, risk of bias, consistency, directness, precision, and publication bias. High certainty means that the current evidence is so strong and consistent that future studies are unlikely to change conclusions. Whereas, low certainty means more doubt and less confidence, and that future studies could easily change current conclusions., and pre-registered a protocolPreregistration is when a detailed description of a study plan is deposited in an open-access repository before collecting the study data. It promotes transparency and accountability, and boosts research integrity. Without preregistration, it is easier for scientists to change outcomes after seeing the data, selectively report “exciting” results, or run many analyses and only show the ones that work, which can introduce bias and weaken the trustworthiness of the findings.. For a training meta-analysis, that’s a pretty clean sweep of thumbs up for meta-analysis quality. I hope the next generation of trials finally nails proper randomisation and includes larger numbers of female participants. When that happens, will the same “performance boost” effects be seen or will the effect shrink into the noise? We don’t know, and that uncertainty is the tiny itch that’ll keep a lot of athletes pumping iron in the gym while quietly wondering if they’re chasing a ghost.
Remember: Don’t make any major changes to your daily habits based on the findings of one study, especially if the study is small (e.g., less than 30 participants in a randomised controlled trial or less than 5 studies in a meta-analysis) or if the study is poor quality (e.g., has a high risk of biasRisk of bias in meta-analysis refers to the potential for systematic errors in the studies included in the analysis, which can lead to misleading or invalid results. Assessing this risk is crucial to ensure the conclusions drawn from the combined data are reliable. or a low quality of evidenceA low quality of evidence means that, in general, studies in this field have several limitations. This could be due to inconsistency in effects between studies, a large range of effect sizes between studies, and/or a high risk of bias (caused by inappropriate controls, a small number of studies, small numbers of participants, poor/absent randomization processes, missing data, inappropriate methods/statistics). When the quality of evidence is low, there is more doubt and less confidence in the overall effect of an intervention, and future studies could easily change overall conclusions. The best way to improve the quality of evidence is for scientists to conduct large, well-controlled, high-quality randomized controlled trials.). Always check what other trials in this field (link opens a new tab) have shown. Do they confirm the findings of this study? If there is a high-quality meta-analysis (link opens a new tab) evaluating the entirety of the evidence in this field, what does it say about the effect sizeA standardised measure of the magnitude of an effect of an intervention. Unlike p-values, effect sizes show the size of the effect and how meaningful it might be. Common effect size measures include standardised mean difference (SMD), Cohen’s d, Hedges’ g, eta-squared, and correlation coefficients., the risk of biasRisk of bias in a meta-analysis refers to the potential for systematic errors in the studies included in the analysis. Such errors can lead to misleading/invalid results and unreliable conclusions. This can arise because of issues with the way participants are selected (randomisation), how data is collected and analysed, and how the results are reported., and the quality/certainty of evidenceCertainty of evidence tells us how confident we are that the results reflect the true effect. It’s based on factors like study design, risk of bias, consistency, directness, and precision. Low certainty means more doubt and less confidence, and that future studies could easily change the conclusions. High certainty means that the current evidence is so strong and consistent that future studies are unlikely to change conclusions.?
What type of study is this?
◦ This study is a systematic reviewA systematic review answers a specific research question by systematically collating all known experimental evidence, which is collected according to pre-specified eligibility criteria. A systematic review helps inform decisions, guidelines, and policy. with meta-analysisA meta-analysis quantifies the overall effect size of a treatment by compiling effect sizes from all studies of that treatment..
What was the authors’ hypothesis or research question?
◦ The authors aimed to test whether heavy strength training (at least 80 percent of 1 repetition maximum, added to cycling training) improves the physiological determinants of cycling performance and real performance outcomes in cyclists.
What did the authors do to test the hypothesis or answer the research question?
◦ The authors searched PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus for controlled studies in adult endurance cyclists, up to February 2025.
◦ The review included 17 studies with 262 participants (60 female), with programs lasting 5 to 25 weeks and typically 1 to 3 strength sessions per week. The authors compared heavy strength training plus cycling versus cycling without heavy strength training (or with very light-load lifting).
◦ The outcomes included VO2maxVO2max is the maximal rate of oxygen consumption your body can achieve during exercise. It is a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness and indicates the size of your engine, i.e., your maximal aerobic power, which contributes to endurance performance., maximal metabolic steady state, cycling efficiency (the cycling version of running economyThe rate of energy expenditure (measured in kiloJoules [KJ], kilocalories [kcal] or oxygen consumption [V̇O2]) per kilogram body mass (kg) per unit of distance, i.e. per 1 kilometre travelled. A runner with a lower energy cost per kilometre has a higher economy than a runner with a higher energy cost.), power at VO2max, plus anaerobic performance (short sprint power and capacity) and cycling performance (time trials and time-to-exhaustion tests).
◦ The authors ran a meta-analysisA meta-analysis quantifies the overall effect size of a treatment by compiling effect sizes from all known studies of that treatment. by extracting pre-to-post changes (means, SDs, and sample sizes) from each study and converting each outcome into an effect size using Hedges’ gA measure of effect size that quantifies the difference between two group means relative to their pooled standard deviation. It is similar to Cohen’s d, but includes a correction for small sample sizes to provide an unbiased estimate when there are small or unequal samples. Common benchmarks for interpretation are 0.2 (small effect), 0.5 (medium effect), and 0.8 (large effect).. They then pooled effects using random effectsA meta-analysis model that assumes the true effect can differ across studies, so it allows for real differences between them. models for VO2max, power at VO2max, maximal metabolic steady state, anaerobic capacity/power, and cycling performance, and used a three-level random-effects model for cycling efficiency to account for multiple efficiency estimates coming from the same study (so they didn’t have to cherry-pick one workload).
What did the authors find?
◦ Across 9 studies, heavy strength training + cycling produced a moderate improvement in cycling performance (time trials and time to exhaustion) versus cycling alone. However, the authors reported a low quality of evidenceA low quality of evidence means that, in general, studies in this field have several limitations. This could be due to inconsistency in effects between studies, a large range of effect sizes between studies, and/or a high risk of bias (caused by inappropriate controls, a small number of studies, small numbers of participants, poor/absent randomisation processes, missing data, inappropriate methods/statistics). When the quality of evidence is low, there is more doubt and less confidence in the overall effect of an intervention, and future studies could easily change overall conclusions. The best way to improve the quality of evidence is for scientists to conduct large, well-controlled, high-quality randomised controlled trials., mainly because the underlying trials were not consistently well-randomised and because the overall sample was small for a meta-analysis of performance outcomes. Practically, this suggests a real chance of a meaningful benefit, but better evidence is needed.
◦ Across 10 studies, heavy strength training + cycling produced a small improvement in cycling efficiency (how much power you get for a given energy cost), but there was a low quality of evidenceA low quality of evidence means that, in general, studies in this field have several limitations. This could be due to inconsistency in effects between studies, a large range of effect sizes between studies, and/or a high risk of bias (caused by inappropriate controls, a small number of studies, small numbers of participants, poor/absent randomisation processes, missing data, inappropriate methods/statistics). When the quality of evidence is low, there is more doubt and less confidence in the overall effect of an intervention, and future studies could easily change overall conclusions. The best way to improve the quality of evidence is for scientists to conduct large, well-controlled, high-quality randomised controlled trials..
◦ Across 8 studies, heavy strength training + cycling produced a moderate improvement in anaerobic power (peak sprint power), again with a low quality of evidence.
◦ The meta-analyses found no clear effect of heavy strength training + cycling on VO2maxVO2max is the maximal rate of oxygen consumption your body can achieve during exercise. It is a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness and indicates the size of your engine, i.e., your maximal aerobic power, which contributes to endurance performance., power at VO2max, maximal metabolic steady state, or anaerobic capacity.
◦ The authors concluded that heavy strength training can improve cycling performance, likely because it improves cycling efficiency and anaerobic power, even when maximal oxygen uptake and maximal metabolic steady state do not change.
What were the strengths?
◦ The authors searched 3 major databases, followed standardised reporting, assessed publication biasPublication bias in meta-analysis occurs when studies with significant results are more likely to be published than those with non-significant findings, leading to distorted conclusions. This bias can inflate effect sizes and misrepresent the true effectiveness of interventions, making it crucial to identify and correct for it in research. with funnel plots and Egger-style tests, and graded the certainty of evidenceCertainty of evidence tells us how confident we are that the published results accurately reflect the true effect. It’s based on factors like study design, risk of bias, consistency, directness, precision, and publication bias. High certainty means that the current evidence is so strong and consistent that future studies are unlikely to change conclusions. Whereas, low certainty means more doubt and less confidence, and that future studies could easily change current conclusions. using GRADEGRADE, which stands for Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation, is a standardised and structured approach used to assess the certainty of evidence in meta-analyses.. They also used a 3-level model for cycling efficiency, which is a sensible way to handle studies that report efficiency at multiple workloads instead of pretending those data points don’t exist.
What were the limitations?
◦ The evidence base is still relatively small (17 studies, 262 total participants), and the average study had only moderate internal quality because group randomisationRandomization means assigning people to different parts of a study (e.g., groups in a randomised controlled trial) by chance, not by choice. This helps make the groups similar at the start and reduces bias, so any differences you see are more likely due to the treatment, not background differences. In a crossover study, randomization usually decides the order in which each person gets the treatments (for example, Treatment A first then B, or B first then A). This way, order effects—like learning, fatigue, or simple time passing—are less likely to skew the results. and allocation concealmentAllocation concealment is the step that hides the next treatment assignment before a patient enters a trial. It prevents staff from guessing or peeking, so they can’t steer patients to one group or another. It happens at enrollment, before blinding, and guards against selection bias. procedures were often weak or unclear. The authors explicitly rated the quality/certainty of evidence as lowA low quality of evidence means that, in general, studies in this field have several limitations. This could be due to inconsistency in effects between studies, a large range of effect sizes between studies, and/or a high risk of bias (caused by inappropriate controls, a small number of studies, small numbers of participants, poor/absent randomisation processes, missing data, inappropriate methods/statistics). When the quality of evidence is low, there is more doubt and less confidence in the overall effect of an intervention, and future studies could easily change overall conclusions. The best way to improve the quality of evidence is for scientists to conduct large, well-controlled, high-quality randomised controlled trials., which is them basically saying, “Yes, this looks useful, but the findings are unreliable because future better trials could change the headline”. Also, the protocol was registered after the analyses, which is better than nothing but not the same as true protocol pre-registrationPreregistration is when a detailed description of a study plan is deposited in an open-access repository before collecting the study data. It promotes transparency and accountability, and boosts research integrity. Without preregistration, it is easier for scientists to change outcomes after seeing the data, selectively report “exciting” results, or run many analyses and only show the ones that work, which can introduce bias and weaken the trustworthiness of the findings..
How was the study funded, and are there any conflicts of interest that may influence the findings?
◦ The authors reported funding for open-access publishing from Universidad Pablo de Olavide and CBUA, and they reported no conflicts of interest relevant to the review.
Thanks for reading my “nerd alerts”. I’m passionate about equality in access to free education. Please leave me a 5-star review and follow @veohtu on Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram. Reviews and follows will train the magical algorithms to promote my content higher up the rankings so that more folks see high quality information.
Other papers I reviewed this month:
Does slow tempo strength training help runners race faster?
Does carbohydrate periodization boost running performance?
Does heavy lifting make cyclists faster?
Should athletes use antioxidant supplements for performance?
Niche Peach Connoisseur 5000 (from Sudden Death Brewing)
Additional papers I read that you might find interesting:
Whey protein intakes up to 0.4g/kg body mass are well tolerated before a 10km run at 85% of race pace: a clinical trial. Shaw et al. (2026) J Int Soc Sports Nutr.
Lower limb neuromotor control during perturbed and unperturbed gait conditions in male runners with Achilles tendinopathy: an exploratory analysis. Quarmby et al. (2026) Int Biomech.
National-Standard Middle-Distance Runners Maintain 1500 m Time Trial Running Performance on Successive Days. Birdsey et al. (2026) Eur J Sport Sci.
Dual-task effects on spatiotemporal, kinematic, and kinetic parameters and their variability during running. Teng et al. (2026) Gait Posture.
Morphological Changes and MRI Characteristics of the Achilles Tendon in Amateur Marathon Runners With Different Running Experience. Yao et al. (2026) J Foot Ankle Res.
Association between bone mineral density and ground reaction force in male and female runners. Smith et al. (2026) Gait Posture.
Effect of gait retraining in minimalist footwear or barefoot on running footstrike and cadence: a systematic review. DesRochers et al. (2026) Res Sports Med.
Does preferred technique influence how kinematics change during a run to exhaustion?-A cluster based approach. Rivadulla et al. (2026) PeerJ.
Biomechanical insights into Achilles tendinopathy risk and protection in runners: a large prospective study 4HAIE. Jandacka et al. (2026) Br J Sports Med.
Sprint running mechanics are associated with hamstring strain injury: a 6-month prospective cohort study of 126 elite male footballers. Bramah et al. (2026) Br J Sports Med.
Effect of high time under tension strength training on different muscular actions in the performance of runners: A randomized controlled trial. Martins et al. (2026) PLoS One.
The effect of a familiarization critical speed testing session on critical speed determination during treadmill running. Micheli et al. (2026) PLoS One.
Baseline Inflammatory Markers as Predictors of Running-Related Injuries: A One-Year Prospective 4HAIE Cohort Study. Cipryan et al. (2026) Scand J Med Sci Sports.
Stride-to-Stride Fluctuations and Temporal Patterns of Muscle Activity Exhibit a Stronger Relationship in Running-Induced Fatigue. Chalitsios et al. (2026) Scand J Med Sci Sports.
Examining attention- deficit/ hyperactivity disorder in endurance and ultra-endurance runners. Scheer et al. (2026) Acta Psychol (Amst).
"Running in circles": Breastfeeding experiences in women who have had bariatric surgery before pregnancy: A qualitative study. Mokhlesi et al. (2026) Women Birth.
Acute effects of dynamic stretching on knee joint position sense and dynamic balance in recreational runners: A randomized controlled trial. Simões et al. (2026) Gait Posture.
Carryover effects of treadmill-based footstrike modification gait retraining on overground running biomechanics. Chan et al. (2026) J Sports Sci.
Agreement and Reliability Between Urine Reagent Strips and Refractometry for Field Assessment of Hydration in Ultra-Trail Runners. Rojas-Valverde et al. (2026) Nutrients.
Effects of Marathon Running on Skin and Plasma Carotenoids in Endurance Runners. Joyner et al. (2026) Nutrients.
Share this nerd alert with your people:Access to education is a right, not a privilege
Equality in education, health, and sustainability matters deeply to me. I was fortunate to be born into a social welfare system in which higher education was free. Sadly, that's no longer true. That's why I created Veohtu: to make high-quality exercise science and sports nutrition education freely available to folks from all walks of life. All content is free and always will be. This nerd alert newsletter is part of that offering. Check out more free educational resources at veohtu.com.
Every day is a school day.
Empower yourself to train smart.
Be informed. Stay educated. Think critically.
