Strength Training, Powered by Cave Motion™
Strength Training is here in Ride Cave, powered by Cave Motion™. Guided dumbbell and bodyweight sessions built for cyclists, runners and rowers: a 3D athlete demonstrates every rep, a coach calls your sets and rests, and your weights adapt as you get stronger.
Strength Training is here, powered by Cave Motion™. Pick Strength in the sport switcher and you get guided strength sessions built for endurance athletes: a 3D athlete shows you every rep, a coach voice calls your sets, reps and rests, and your weights adapt as you get stronger. A pair of dumbbells is plenty, and many sessions need nothing but the floor.
It is free for everyone, on every platform Ride Cave runs on. No machine to connect; a heart rate strap is optional.
Why strength, and why here
For riders, runners and rowers, strength work is one of the best-supported additions to endurance training. Heavy strength training improves cycling and running economy in controlled trials, and a well-built routine keeps you training through the season. It is also the session most of us skip. Strength in Ride Cave is built to make it the easy part of your week: open it, press start, and follow along.
Your sets, called out loud
Every session plays out on a 3D athlete powered by Cave Motion™, the technology behind every 3D experience in Ride Cave, wearing your own character's kit and performing each exercise in time with you, at a real place somewhere in the world or on the infield of a famous velodrome. A card beside the athlete shows the set, the rep count and the weight, and during rests it counts down and tells you what is next.
A coach voice calls it all out loud, with time to set up between exercises. Prefer tempo tones, or quiet? Choose in Workout Preferences. You can speed the reps up or slow them down mid-set, add weight or take it off, and choose how long you get between exercises. Every session starts with a warm-up picked for what it trains, adds ramp-up sets before your heavy lifts, and offers a cool-down stretch for the muscles you worked.
76 exercises, every one explained
The Exercises page holds the whole library: legs, push, pull, core, full body, jumps, warm-up and cool-down. Open any exercise to watch it on the athlete, turn and zoom to see it from any side, and read how to set up, the cues that matter, the common faults, and easier and harder versions.
Switch to Muscles and the groups an exercise trains light up on the athlete: the main ones solid, the supporting ones hatched. Each exercise also says why it helps your sport, with the research behind it, so you know what every minute is for.
Sessions built for your sport
Start with 28 curated sessions: a first gentle session, full body, legs, upper body, core, mobility and express circuits, and a collection for endurance athletes with heavy leg strength, an in-season maintenance session, and sessions for runners and rowers. Browse them here.
Before you start, Ride Cave asks how you want to train: your weights for each exercise, as Light, Medium or Heavy or in kilograms or pounds, and your rest. Or build your own session in the strength builder, write it line by line in Turbo Builder, or describe it to Atlas and let it write the session for you.
Weights that adapt
After the last set of each exercise, one tap says how it felt: Easy, About right, or Very hard. Ride Cave remembers your weights, and when a weight keeps feeling easy, or feels too hard, it suggests a change for next time. Skip the tap and the set counts as done as prescribed.
Safeguards built in
A quick readiness check before you start points you to a lighter session on a rough day, and lighter choices are always one tap away. Junior accounts are kept to moderate loads and leave out the most technical lifts automatically. The animations show the movement; they are a guide, not a replacement for a coach who can watch your form.
One training picture
Every strength session counts in your training load next to your rides, rows and runs: from your heart rate when you wear a strap, or estimated from the sets you completed and refined by the effort you rate at the end. Sessions upload to Strava as weight training, or download as a FIT file with every set. Strength has its own panels and data fields for your views and custom widgets.
Not yet for strength
| Feature | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| Auto Train and Training Plans | They do not plan strength sessions yet. Your strength sessions still count toward the fitness and fatigue they plan around, and you can schedule sessions on the calendar yourself. |
| Training together | Group strength sessions are still to come. |
| Garmin and Intervals.icu | Sending strength sessions to your Garmin or your Intervals.icu calendar is not ready yet. Export a FIT file and add it yourself. |
Get started
Open Ride Cave, switch to Strength, and pick a session, or start with First Strength Session if you are new to lifting. Read more on the Strength Training page, and tell us how your first session goes.
