Getting Heavier Made Me Faster… and Healthier

Getting Heavier Made Me Faster… and Healthier

Most endurance athletes believe a quiet lie.

It’s rarely said out loud, but it shapes a lot of decisions. The belief that getting faster means getting smaller. That lifting weights is something you do carefully, or temporarily, or not at all if you care about performance. That strength, speed, and longevity pull against one another.

For a while, that belief can even seem true.

But over longer stretches of time, it usually isn’t.

A few days ago, I compared a new DEXA scan from my friends at VQLabs (check them out at VQLabs.com and tell them I said they rock!) to one I did back in 2023. I wasn’t looking for validation or aesthetics. I wanted an honest check-in. I wanted to know whether the way I’ve been training over the past few years was actually producing the outcomes I hoped for, not just on the bike, but in my body and long-term health.

Before going any further, it’s important to understand where this started.

In 2023, I wasn’t coming off the couch. That summer, I had just completed the Unbound 200, one of the most demanding gravel races in the world. My FTP at the time was 290 watts. I was pretty lean, aerobically fit, and doing what many endurance athletes would consider “everything right.” The baseline DEXA reflects that. This wasn’t a transformation from unfit to fit. It was a test of whether it’s possible to become more capable without giving something up.

Over the next two and a half years, my bodyweight increased by roughly eighteen pounds. On the surface, that might sound like a red flag to many cyclists. But when the DEXA results came back, the story underneath the scale told something very different. Lean mass increased by more than twenty-two pounds. Fat mass declined. Visceral fat, the kind most closely linked to long-term metabolic risk, fell by more than twenty percent. Bone density increased and now sits in the 90th percentile for my age.

At the same time, my cycling performance didn’t stagnate. It improved. FTP moved from 290 watts to 330 watts. Not through weight loss or restriction, but through sustained, well-fueled training layered on top of growing strength.

One of the clearest moments of realization came on a climb I know intimately. Mt. Lemmon is a long, steady, twenty-mile ascent in Tucson that averages around six percent. It’s honest in a way few climbs are. In February of 2024, shortly before I began taking strength training seriously, I rode it in just over two hours and six minutes. A year later, in February of 2025, I returned to the same climb about fifteen pounds heavier. The result wasn’t slower. It was twelve minutes faster.

That ride did more than any chart or spreadsheet to dismantle the idea that lighter is always faster. More muscle didn’t make me sluggish. It made me more durable, more powerful, and better able to sustain output over long efforts. Strength didn’t compete with cycling. It supported it.

What’s important here is not that I followed a perfect plan. There was no phase labeled “get lean” or “bulk” or “ignore the bike.” Instead, there was a long stretch of training built around a few simple ideas. Ride consistently, but don’t chase volume for its own sake. Lift with intent, not fear. Fuel the work so the body adapts instead of breaking down.

The DEXA results also tell a quieter story about aerobic training. Despite maintaining a high annual workload on the bike, muscle wasn’t sacrificed. Fat was. Central fat declined. Metabolic health improved. This is what happens when endurance training is supported rather than punished by nutrition. Aerobic work doesn’t have to be catabolic. When done well, it’s a powerful ally.

Bone density is another piece that’s easy to overlook until it’s gone. Cycling alone does little to protect it, and many endurance athletes slowly lose ground here without realizing it. Yet over this same period, my bone density increased. Not because of supplements or shortcuts, but because my body was regularly loaded and given time to adapt. Longevity, it turns out, responds to training just like performance does.

This is ultimately what we’re trying to show athletes at Rollfast. You don’t need to choose between being strong, being fast, and being healthy. But you do need to stop optimizing for the shortest time horizon. The benefits of this approach don’t always show up in a single season. They show up when you zoom out and let consistency compound.

The most meaningful gains don’t come from compromise.
They come from compounding.

Train in a way that lets strength build speed, speed support health, and health extend everything else.