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Is Bike Riding the most effective way to get HUGE legs?

candyflip

Fatty
Even those hippie bike couriers outside my work have wider spreads on their quads than me.
.. and as for their calves, don't start me....

Is bike riding the single fastest, most effective method for adding bulk to gams?

Personal experience reports from anyone that took up riding after age 30 perhaps, and now has excellent quad development because of it?
 
Had a flat mate back in the day that was a bike rider, he used to love cycling up mountains and god damn he had some impressive quads on him. Me id rather squat lol.
 
The sprint cyclists have good quads but the long distance riders I have seen tend to get the marathon runner look.
 
it would have to invovle sprints and intense fast sprints up hills. if u cycled 50km a day and it was easy you would get marathon runner look. go the hills!
ive been riding into work 25km a day 3 days a week for a couple weeks now and ive lsot size in quads.. i dotn really mind at the moment but ill be doing some hill sprints soon too.
 
1) it's a poor investment of your time - the number of hours required to get big quads is massive compared to ~15minutes of squatting 3x per week.

2) some cyclists just never get big quads even though they're spectacularly powerful - a lot of the juniors at the track i race at who are faster than me (generally speaking, they have a higher power to weight AND have better efficiency) are relatively tiny. It's hard to build muscle when you're training 10-15hours a week so i guess a lot of the strength they have comes from neuromuscular (CNS) rather than just sheer, inefficient cross sectional area (like me).

3) the real track sprinters with massive quads are all squatting anyway - it's pretty standard for an world level track sprinter to be able to squat out a few reps of 2 to 2.5x their body weight.

but, if you have time to kill, by all means give it a go. it will probably bear fruit, but i doubt it's the most efficient way to do it. i guess you've got to ask yourself if you have the time and energy to commit to riding a bike that you can't possibly use for squatting...
 
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1) it's a poor investment of your time - the number of hours required to get big quads is massive compared to ~15minutes of squatting 3x per week.

2) some cyclists just never get big quads even though they're spectacularly powerful - a lot of the juniors at the track i race at who are faster than me (generally speaking, they have a higher power to weight AND have better efficiency) are relatively tiny. It's hard to build muscle when you're training 10-15hours a week so i guess a lot of the strength they have comes from neuromuscular (CNS) rather than just sheer, inefficient cross sectional area (like me).

3) the track sprinters are all squatting anyway - it's pretty standard for an world level track sprinter to be able to squat out a few reps of 2 to 2.5x their body weight.

but, if you have time to kill, by all means give it a go. it will probably bear fruit, but i doubt it's the most efficient way to do it. i guess you've got to ask yourself if you have the time and energy to commit to riding a bike that you can't possibly use for squatting...

Great response
 
No.

That form of progressive resistance is limited compared to a barbell and plates.

Given the number of fat, balding, aged corporate men riding past my beachside home in lycra-clad groups, with quads the size of tree trunks, I'm guessing they are finding ways of making it damn effective.
 
I spent 2 years doing roughly 200km a week on the bike with a majority of that in the hills, and i still have chicken legs(pretty toned chicken legs;p), I guess its similar to doing weights, if you consumed the right amount off calories/protein while cycling you might get big legs, but Im sure you would get bigger legs in the gym, usually the guys with the big legs on the bikes have years and years behind them, just like the big guys at the gym have been doing weights for years
 
Great response

thanks. i wouldn't have answered like that 3 months ago. lots of reading of all the smart guys on here like yourself and fadi, etc, and from places like lean gains, etc. it's all making me think a bit more about how and why i do the things i do in training.

tbh, before i started lifting i really thought i knew a lot about what i ate and why, as well as why i trained the way i trained. eyes are definitely open now.
 
would you expect to get big legs doing 5000 one leg bw squats per hour? :p probably not quickly...
 
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