Once cyclocross season starts, strength training is often one of the first things athletes drop.
It makes sense. You’re racing on the weekend, recovering early in the week, trying to fit in an interval session, practicing skills, and somehow still finding time for endurance riding.
Why add another workout that could make your legs tired?
Because the strength you spent months building is still useful during cyclocross season.
The better question isn’t whether you should strength train during cyclocross season. It’s how little strength training you need to maintain the benefits without interfering with racing.
And for most masters cyclocross racers, the answer is probably less than you think.
Why Keep Strength Training During Cyclocross Season?
Strength training isn’t just offseason work.
Research in cyclists has shown that heavy strength training can improve cycling efficiency, anaerobic power, and cycling performance. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis found benefits from heavy strength training even though it didn’t significantly change VO2max.
That’s important for cyclocross.
Cross repeatedly asks you to produce force: accelerating out of corners, sprinting up short climbs, powering through mud, getting back up to speed after barriers, and producing repeated surges for 30–60 minutes.
Strength also matters beyond race performance, particularly for masters athletes. Maintaining muscle mass, strength, function, and bone health becomes increasingly important as we get older.
The goal changes during race season, though.
You’re probably not trying to set a squat PR in October.
You’re trying to maintain the strength you’ve already built while keeping your legs fresh enough to race well.
How Often Should I Strength Train During Cyclocross Season?
For most athletes, one strength session per week is a good starting point.
There’s some direct evidence supporting this approach.
In one study, well-trained cyclists performed heavy strength training twice weekly during a 12-week preparation period, then reduced their strength training to once per week during the first 13 weeks of competition. The cyclists maintained the increases in muscle size and strength they’d developed during the preparation period.
Interestingly, a 2025 survey of professional road cyclists found a similar pattern: two weekly sessions were common during the offseason and preseason, while athletes who continued strength training during race season commonly reduced it to one maintenance session.
That’s a useful model for everyday athletes.
Build with two or three sessions per week during the offseason.
Then maintain with one good session during the racing season.
Some masters athletes may benefit from two shorter sessions, particularly if strength and muscle maintenance are priorities. Research examining minimum training doses suggests older adults may need somewhat more volume than younger athletes to optimally maintain muscle.
But don’t add a second session simply because two must be better than one.
If strength training is compromising your race preparation or recovery, reduce the volume.
How Much Strength Training Do I Need?
Not much.
This isn’t the time for a 75-minute gym workout with six different leg exercises performed to failure.
Think minimum effective dose.
A recent review of resistance training for cyclists recommends moderate-to-heavy loads, roughly 60–85% of one-repetition maximum, with compound lower-body exercises and relatively low fatigue within each set.
During cyclocross season, I would reduce the overall volume even further.
My maintenance workout takes 30 minutes.
You could perform two or three sets of several key exercises while keeping the weight relatively heavy.
Most importantly, don’t train to failure.
You want enough load to remind your muscles and nervous system that strength still matters without creating soreness that follows you around for three days.
What Exercises Should Cyclocross Racers Do?
Keep it simple.
You don’t need 12 exercises.
Build the workout around basic movement patterns:
- Squat or split squat
- Deadlift, Romanian deadlift, or another hip-hinge movement
- Step-up or lunge
- Row or pull
- Push-up or press
- Core stability or loaded carry
For cyclocross athletes, I particularly like unilateral movements such as split squats, step-ups, and lunges because cycling itself is repetitive and highly constrained.
But this isn’t the time to introduce complicated new exercises.
Race season strength training should mostly use movements you’ve already practiced.
Novel exercises create soreness.
October isn’t the time to discover Bulgarian split squats for the first time.
Do two sets of about eight reps to build some fatigue. That’s it.
Should Strength and Intervals Be on the Same Day?
In many cases, yes.
I often like putting strength training on the same day as a hard interval workout because it keeps the hard days hard and allows your easier days to remain genuinely easy.
For example:
Tuesday: Cyclocross intervals + strength
Wednesday: Easy endurance or recovery
Thursday: Skills, endurance, or a second intensity session depending on the athlete
Friday: Easy or rest
Saturday: Openers or easy riding
Sunday: Race
There is some nuance here.
Concurrent-training research doesn’t show that strength and endurance must always be performed together. In fact, if your primary goal were maximizing strength development, separating the sessions could be advantageous, particularly for highly trained athletes.
But that’s not our primary goal during cyclocross season.
We’re trying to maintain strength while managing fatigue and protecting recovery days.
For a busy masters athlete, combining intervals and strength can be an effective scheduling strategy.
If possible, separate the sessions by several hours. Do your key cycling workout while you’re fresh, recover and eat, and do the strength session later.
If that’s impossible, don’t overthink it.
Do the important cycling workout first and follow it with a short maintenance strength session.
What If I’m Racing Every Weekend?
Then recovery gets the deciding vote.
A cyclocross race is already a very hard workout.
If you race Sunday and your legs still feel terrible Tuesday, forcing yourself through heavy squats because they’re written on the schedule isn’t accomplishing much.
Move the workout.
Reduce the sets.
Reduce the load.
Or skip it that week.
One missed strength workout isn’t going to erase months of training.
Research has even shown that strength and cycling performance gains can persist for several weeks after resistance training stops. In one study of well-trained cyclists, maximal strength and five-minute cycling performance improvements remained after six weeks without resistance training following an eight-week strength-training block.
That doesn’t mean I recommend stopping strength training for six weeks.
It means you shouldn’t panic when racing and recovery occasionally take priority.
What Should I Do When I’m Tapering for My A Race?
This is where I’d make an important distinction.
I would remove or greatly reduce strength training before I remove intensity from the bike.
Your taper isn’t about becoming fitter.
It’s about removing fatigue so you can express the fitness you’ve already built.
So if your A race is a state championship or national championship, you probably don’t want to eliminate hard riding completely.
Instead, reduce the amount.
You might still perform some short race-intensity efforts or openers, but there are fewer repetitions and much less total workload.
Strength training is different.
For many masters athletes, I would perform the last meaningful strength workout about 7–10 days before the A race.
After that, the benefit of squeezing in another heavy lifting session is probably smaller than the risk of carrying unnecessary muscular fatigue into the race.
You aren’t going to lose meaningful strength in seven days.
You might, however, notice the difference between arriving at the start line with fresh legs and arriving with lingering soreness from Tuesday’s deadlifts.
Strength Training Should Support Your Racing
This is the key idea.
Strength training isn’t competing with cyclocross.
It’s supporting it.
During the offseason, we can emphasize building strength.
During the preseason, we can continue building while introducing more race-specific work.
During race season, we shift toward maintenance.
And before your biggest races, we reduce or temporarily remove strength training so fatigue disappears.
You don’t need to keep doing everything at full volume all year.
Training changes because your priorities change.
During cyclocross season, the race becomes the priority.
Strength training should help you get to the start line stronger, not make you too tired to race.
Three Things You Should Know About Strength Training During Cyclocross Season
1. One strength session per week is probably enough for most racers.
You’re maintaining strength now, not trying to build as much as possible. Keep the load relatively heavy, reduce the number of sets, and avoid training to failure.
2. Put strength on a hard day when it fits your schedule.
Combining your interval workout and strength training can preserve true recovery days. Ideally, separate the workouts by several hours, but for busy athletes, a short strength session after intervals can work well.
3. Drop strength before you drop intensity during your A-race taper.
Your final meaningful strength session can usually happen about 7–10 days before your goal race. Continue some short, race-specific intensity while reducing overall training volume so you arrive rested, sharp, and ready to race.
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Paul Warloski is a:
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