I’m currently a few races into a cyclocross season and although I’m doing reasonably well (top 10 finishes in class) one thing I have noticed is my lack of strength from my core and legs. Mostly shown up on a long uphill drag from my last race where I was weak and losing places every lap.

For those of you that race, how do you combine gym work and what do you do? Do you find it has made you faster?

I’m not a member of a gym yet and generally just do a few core exercises but I’m going to have a look around a gym tonight with the view to joining for 6 months to improve core strength and flexibility.

Any advice appreciated.

never raced CX, but have found gym work to be beneficial:

Squats
Bent over rows (barbell)
Core work

less fatigue, better sprinting, hurts less when you crash…

flexibility !

The time you spend in a gym could arguably be spent much better by doing specific cx training. I used to find a lap of about 6 minutes with a carry in it and go out and batter that for 30 minutes.

Looser hamstrings at least! They’re very tight.

Sorry, not specific in OP. It’s not specific for cx, just when racing, it has highlighted the problem.

Next season I will be racing Road, TT’s and possibly some xc’x too.

Road racing is all about the pain and the miles isn’t it? 😉

Can handle threshold pain, core pain is horrible though. 😕

Depends entirely what you plan on doing in the gym.

Ever considered the singlespeed plan?
Make you strong like bull – and it’s cycling specific 🙂