The deadlift has a reputation problem in cycling circles. Coaches who came up through the sport spent decades telling riders to avoid anything that builds "unnecessary bulk", and the deadlift — a barbell exercise associated with powerlifting and bodybuilding — tended to sit near the top of that banned list. The result is a generation of cyclists with strong quads, weak glutes, and lower backs that give up somewhere around kilometre 100.
The evidence pushed back hard against that blanket ban. Posterior-chain strength matters for cyclists, and resistance training matters for cyclists — particularly after 40. But the question of how to deliver that stimulus is where Roadman's position has landed in a different place from the classical "lift heavy off the floor" answer. This post lays out both sides honestly.
Cyclists need posterior-chain work — that part isn't debatable
Cycling is a quad-dominant sport. The pedal stroke is primarily knee extension, which means the quads accumulate training stimulus across thousands of hours while the glutes and hamstrings are comparatively under-loaded. That imbalance matters because the glutes are the largest power-producing muscles in the body, and because the hamstrings act as knee stabilisers, hip extensors, and — relevant at the top of the pedal stroke — hip-flexion decelerators.
Prof. Stephen Seiler, whose research at the University of Agder has shaped how endurance coaches think about intensity distribution, has noted that strength work performed in the lower rep range drives neuromuscular adaptations — more motor-unit recruitment, improved firing rate — rather than hypertrophy. That distinction matters for cyclists who are correctly worried about gaining body mass. Resistance work makes you stronger without making you meaningfully heavier.
Stronger glutes produce more force per pedal stroke. A stiffer posterior chain transfers that force more efficiently to the drivetrain. And a stronger lower back and hip complex holds position on the bike longer before form breaks down under fatigue — particularly relevant in the final 30 minutes of a long ride or race.
For triathlon cyclists specifically, glute and hamstring weakness compounds over the run. If the posterior chain is already depleted coming off the bike, the run falls apart structurally. A serious S&C plan for endurance athletes addresses this from base phase onwards — the question is how.
The case for the heavy barbell deadlift
The argument that won out in the research literature for fifteen years runs roughly like this. Cyclists need posterior-chain stimulus. The most efficient way to deliver it is the conventional or trap-bar deadlift, performed in the 3-6 rep range at 80-85% of one-rep max. Two sessions a week, periodised across the season. Done correctly, it produces the largest posterior-chain neuromuscular gains for the lowest weekly time cost — and the Rønnestad-led literature on cycling-specific strength training keeps replicating the result.
That argument is technically correct. It also assumes a population that has the gym foundation, mobility, and supervision to make heavy deadlifts safe. For a 22-year-old U23 with five years of barbell coaching, that assumption is fine. For our actual audience — amateur cyclists 35-55, mostly self-coached in the gym, with the hip-flexor tightness, anterior pelvic tilt, and limited posterior pelvic-tilt range that years of cycling produce — the assumption gets shakier.
The case against heavy bilateral barbell work for our audience
The arguments against running heavy deadlifts for amateur masters cyclists are not theoretical. They show up in practice often enough to matter.
The first is recovery cost. A heavy conventional deadlift session creates significant systemic fatigue — more than a squat of equivalent load, because the range of motion and total muscle mass involved is larger. For a rider already doing 8-12 hours of riding per week with a job and a family, adding two sessions of heavy barbell work tips recovery into deficit if timing is off, and timing is often off.
The second is injury risk to the lower back. Cyclists arrive in the gym with shortened hip flexors and limited posterior pelvic-tilt range. Pull a heavy barbell off the floor with those movement deficits in place and lumbar rounding becomes likely. The injuries that result aren't theoretical — they're back tweaks that cost weeks of riding, occasional disc issues that cost months, and the kind of lower-back pain that makes the next gym session unappealing and the bike position uncomfortable.
The third is access to coaching. The protocols that produce the FTP gains in the literature were run with supervised technique work for the first several weeks. Most of our audience won't get that supervision. They'll watch a YouTube video, load a bar, and find out the hard way which positions their body can absorb under load.
None of this is a case against posterior-chain strength training. It's a case for delivering that stimulus through movement patterns that match the rider — not through the maximally efficient lift on paper.
What Roadman recommends instead
The Roadman position for our amateur 35-55 audience is to deliver posterior-chain stimulus through cycling-specific patterns at controlled, progressively loaded resistance. The patterns we lean on:
- Single-leg deadlifts (Romanian-style or kettlebell). Same hip-hinge stimulus as a bilateral RDL, much lower spinal load, and a built-in stability demand that exposes the side-to-side imbalances cycling hides.
- Kettlebell deadlifts at moderate load. The kettlebell sits between the legs at start, which keeps the load close to the centre of mass and reduces the lumbar moment arm — easier to keep a flat back, easier to learn.
- Hip thrusts. Direct glute loading without spinal compression. Useful as a primary glute exercise, particularly for riders whose glutes don't activate well during the pedal stroke.
- Bulgarian split squats and step-ups. Single-leg dominant lower-body patterns that combine quad and posterior-chain demand.
- Romanian deadlifts at moderate load. Useful once movement quality is solid and bodyweight progressions have been earned. The aim is the 6-10 rep range with a load you could do another 2-3 reps with — not 1-rep-max-adjacent territory.
- Core integration throughout. Copenhagen planks, hanging core, dead bugs. The posterior chain doesn't function in isolation.
Dan Lorang, Head of Performance at Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe and long-time coach to Jan Frodeno and Lucy Charles-Barclay, has consistently prioritised movement quality over load in the gym work of his athletes. The same principle applies more strongly to amateur cyclists who don't have the supervision a World Tour athlete gets every session.
If you want a broader view of which exercises produce the most return for cyclists, the breakdown in our best exercises article runs alongside this one.
Programming around your riding
Timing is where most cyclists go wrong with strength work. The instinct is to train hard on the bike and then add the gym on top, treating them as separate categories of work. They are not separate. Heavy leg work is heavy leg work, and neuromuscular fatigue does not distinguish between a strength session and a VO2max interval session.
The most practical approach, used by coaches across multiple disciplines, is to schedule strength sessions on the same day as easy rides — either before an easy spin (allowing several hours between) or in the evening after a morning recovery ride. This consolidates fatigue into one day rather than spreading it into a hard ride the following morning.
Hard intervals and strength work need at least 48 hours of separation. If Tuesday is a threshold session and Wednesday is strength, Thursday intervals will be compromised. Move strength to Monday or Wednesday, with Thursday intervals as the next hard effort.
In terms of training blocks, the bulk of resistance work belongs in the base phase. As the racing season approaches and intensity on the bike rises, gym frequency drops from two sessions per week to one, load is held but volume is reduced, and closer to target events gym work tapers further. That periodised approach is what progressive overload looks like across a full season — building a strength foundation early, then reducing it to maintenance before it competes with race fitness.
How meaningful does the load need to be?
The general principle runs counter to what most cyclists do naturally. Cyclists who do go to the gym tend to gravitate towards moderate weights for high reps — 3 sets of 12-15 at light load. That's an endurance adaptation. It builds muscular endurance the legs already have, at the cost of glycogen depletion and prolonged DOMS that interferes with riding.
The research on strength training for endurance athletes points clearly in a different direction. The neuromuscular adaptations — motor-unit recruitment, rate coding, inter-muscular coordination — come from loaded resistance work in the lower rep range. Asker Jeukendrup's work on endurance performance and Joe Friel's long-standing guidance in The Cyclist's Training Bible both land in the same place: endurance athletes should lift with meaningful load and lift infrequently.
For our audience the practical translation is the 6-10 rep range with a load that challenges the muscle but leaves 2-3 reps in reserve. Two to three working sets per exercise is sufficient. Total weekly volume for the primary posterior-chain pattern doesn't need to exceed 6-9 working sets. More than that increases recovery cost without proportionate benefit.
If you're entirely new to resistance training, spend the first 4-6 weeks building movement quality on bodyweight and light-load variants before progressing the load. Form failure under heavier weight is how backs get hurt.
A simple Roadman-shape strength session
For a cyclist with limited gym time and no desire to become a strength athlete, the structure below works. Two sessions per week during the base phase. Each session covers a hip-hinge pattern, a squat-pattern movement, a glute-direct movement, and core.
Session A:
- Single-leg Romanian deadlift, 3 × 8 each leg
- Bulgarian split squat, 3 × 8 each leg
- Hip thrust, 3 × 10
- Copenhagen plank, 3 × 20s each side
Session B:
- Kettlebell deadlift, 3 × 10
- Goblet squat, 3 × 10
- Step-up, 3 × 10 each leg
- Hanging core, 3 × 10
If load feels easy across all reps with clean form, progress the load by a small amount the following week. That's progressive overload in practice — small, consistent load increases across a 6-8 week block.
Consistency over 16-20 weeks of base and build phase will produce more posterior-chain development than any complicated programme run for 4 weeks. If you want that structure built into a full coaching plan with accountability and periodisation, the Roadman strength training course covers it, and NDY coaching at Roadman integrates this kind of gym work with the riding load from the first week. The application is where the conversation starts.
Where this leaves the deadlift question
If you're already a competent gym-goer with years of barbell experience, supervised coaching, and the mobility to set up cleanly, heavy deadlifts can sit in your programme without issue. They're a tool that works. They're just not the tool we'd hand to an amateur cyclist 35-55 starting their first structured strength block.
For everyone else — and that's most of our audience — the cycling-specific posterior-chain patterns above deliver the stimulus, build the strength, and protect the back. The injury cost is a fraction of heavy bilateral barbell work. The performance return on the bike is, in our experience and the experience of the coaches we work with, indistinguishable.
Companion reads: strength training for cyclists guide, best gym exercises for cyclists, should cyclists do leg day, and the study on strength training and miles after 40.
Got a specific question — your own hinge form, when load is too heavy, what to do if your back complains? Ask Roadman for an answer drawn from the actual S&C and physio conversations on the podcast.
