Cycling

Cycling can add strength to the legs especially if you don't use the lower gears, or like me have a bike that does not have gears, and live in a flat country where wind is always at hurricane level :|

 

I think he meant actual strength training, not that stuff.

 

Yes, there is actually some work you can do to increase leg strength without loading your spine, but the thing is, loading your spine tends to be good for you (doing squats) in that it stimulates the breakdown, regrowth of bone, as well as compressing the spine in order to help replace synovial fluid, as well as the sort of power and growth hormone release you get from the sort of stresses you get from doing things like weighted squats. If you do them correctly, squats are the biggest bang for the buck/energy as far as improving leg strength. But, cant stress how important form is with squats.

Another avenue is actually leg complexes, which would be plyo work focused on the legs. Here is a link and article.

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article_issue/issue_628#complex-approach-to-quads-hams

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RYhvNw7aiY&feature=player_embedded[/ame]

A varied workout is almost always going to be best. You want to focus on your legs, I'm assuming because you feel they are a weak point, and from what I take you like the results you are seeing from your leg work. It's good to mix things up, it keeps things interesting training wise, and will likely lead to less wear and tear on the joints than something like running 5-10 miles all the time would. I'm also almost certain you will get better overall results from varying your training.

For long cycling, I think it would be beneficial in terms of generating endurance muscles, like type 1. You don't want to be purely type 2a muscle type which is only for burst. The sort of, "road work." Is important, but I tend to wonder about it because of the wear and tear, being a running junkie myself, I have worn my knees out at age 32, partly from military training.. Eliptical work is pretty, "***gy" considering boxing, but I get the feelign cycling for road work is a better alternative.