What are your goals for the weight training? Many traditional strength programs aren't terribly useful if you're aiming for sports specific gains and benefit. If you're just looking for overall strength though they're great as cycling tends to lead people to a semi-unhealthy body shape and movement patterns.
Well, I'm a 46 year old female. My overarching goal is to keep fit and active for as long as possible, but there are some cycling specific things I think I could improve. During long rides on the road bike I tend to get upper body fatigue - shoulders, elbows, and upper back especially. I would also like to combat the imbalances caused by the forward-leaning posture from riding a road bike and working at a computer.
OK, I think I get you.
Areas to focus for strengthening then:
- Core (A lot of shoulder, elbow, and back pain is directly related to how your core fatigues over a long ride. When this happens, all the listed muscle groups start to take extra load.)
- Glutes (Cycling uses the legs, but tends to be very quad dominant)
- Shoulders/arms/back (underutilized while cycling, particularly pulling motions which leads to imbalances)
I've found that barbell exercises tend to give the most bang for the buck as far as strength gained vs time it takes to gain it, but usually people interested in barbell stuff are more focused on generating maximum power for short periods of time. To even out cycling imbalances I've found that higher reps and lower weight seems to work best - we're talking about stuff in the 12-25 rep range. For this type of exercise bodyweight exercises can also be surprisingly effective. So on to exercises:
Core:
- Hanging L-sit - 3 sets of 20 (rather than weights, just increase the time that you hang with your feet pointed forwards from being almost momentary to around 10 seconds)
- Planks - 3 sets of 2 minutes (use weighted backpack once these are too easy)
- Russian twists (you can work up to doing these with heavier plates, but start without weight) - 3 sets of 30
- Hollow holds (again, you can work up to holding weights in your hands but start without anything) - 3 sets of 10 to 15
Glutes:
- Barbell deadlift - 5 sets 20
- Barbell back squat - 3 sets 20
Shoulders/arms/back:
- Dumbbell or barbell military press - 3 sets 15-20
- Pushups (can add weight in a backpack or switch to barbell/dumbbell bench press once you find them too easy) - 3 sets 15-20
- 1 arm row - 5 sets 20-25
- Pullups (can add weight with a backpack or dip belt once you master body weight) - 3 sets 20
Basically I'd do two to three sessions a week. Pick two core exercises, both glutes exercises, and two shoulders/arms/back exercises for session A. Then use the other two core, both glute, and the other two shoulders/arms/back exercises for session B. Alternate between session A and B each workout. Your first couple weeks will mostly be getting used to doing them with body weight, once that's comfy you want to start
slowly increasing weight. You should be able to do 5 lbs increases on the deadlifts and squats each week for quite a while. Most women I've worked with will be able to hit those reps for bodyweight at least after a year or so, and squats up to 3/4 body weight. If you plateau before that, deload 15% and work back up. The other exercises are more judgement calls. You will plateau eventually on everything following a linear progression, but should be way stronger and much more balanced at that point. I've found that alternating between exercises will get you through the workout faster than trying to do all the sets of one exercise in a row before moving to the next one.
YMMV and all that.
(I'm also a huge fan of Turkish get-ups as a general strength exercise for cycling and other stuff, but didn't include them for a couple reasons - they're a complicated exercise so kinda easy to screw up and it's possible to hurt yourself screwing them up and while you can kinda do them with dumbbells they feel better with kettlebells and few people have enough different sized kettlebells to slowly increase weight with them. But if you like them, you can certainly add them into the shoulders/arms/back section. I'd do them every workout for 3 sets of 10-15).
