Cycling, and leg muscle.

[Donaldd]

Well i am wondering is cycling will bulk up my leg muscle, if i put the gear at a setting which takes a lot of pressure to pedal. I have been trying to build up the muscles in my legs, and bottom for months mostly with weighted squat, and backward leg-lifts. I have a good diet lots of fruits,vegetables, seafood, etc.I only sometimes, do aerobic exercise since i do not want to become too slim.

[Andybg]

Cycling is not really the best excercise for bulking up your legs. The pedal force you would have to apply to use it as strength excercise rather than one of endurance is likely to damage your knees in the long run.

In respect to excercise I would say that cycling is best used as an aerobic excercise to keep you fit and trim.

For what you sound like you are tryng to achieve I would consider rowing being a more specific excercise to look into.

Cheers

Andy

[JimK]

For strength & big muscles, weight lifting is the way to go!

[JWestland]

Squats, deadlift, glute ham raises... weightlifting! 

But I do find going fixed wheel with SPDs feeds the hamstrings.

[jags]

why would you want to build up big legs muscles only slow you down  muscle is heavier than fat, 
so keep twiddling light gears for speed and keeping you in shape 90 reves is good 100 is savage.(Cadence)

[Andre Jute]

There was an American cyclist I liked reading on the net when I was a new cyclist, Ken Kifer. He was killed by a drunk driver. One of the things he said that struck me was that cyclists are men with finely muscled legs and pot bellies.

[Danneaux]

...cyclists are men with finely muscled legs and pot bellies.

Au contraire, mon amie, Andre!

Pot bellies, non!

It is the "belly breathing"...

...deep breathing...marked by expansion of the abdomen rather than the chest when breathing. It is considered by some to be a healthier and fuller way to ingest oxygen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaphragmatic_breathing

With regard to Donaldd's collective fitness and weight-loss questions, I can offer this hopefully helpful collection of links from the Livestrong site:
http://www.livestrong.com/lose-weight-from-your-stomach/
http://www.livestrong.com/exercises-for-the-stomach/
http://www.livestrong.com/targeted-weight-loss/
http://www.livestrong.com/stomach-exercises/
http://www.livestrong.com/fitness/
Here are some link from their site detailing various leg exercises:
http://www.livestrong.com/search/?mode=standard&search=leg+exercises

Best,

Dan. (who uh, frequently appears to be "belly-breathing" immediately after large meals...yes, that's it...)

[honesty]

I do weightlifting with a powerlifting bent. My leg muscles are pretty good. Cycling its a repetitive low (relatively low!) power movement. I had/have problems with muscle cramps when I cycle long distances without doing cycling for the weeks beforehand. This is because my muscles are strong but not used to the high repetition movement of cycling.

The best thing for strength is weightlifting though. Actually the best thing for fat loss is weightlifting (strong/large muscles burn more energy). In my view weightlifting should be done by everyone. I'm not talking about bodybuilding which is a different discipline but low repetition high weight full body exercises like proper back squats and deadlifts.

It comes down to hypertrophy in the end, low repetition high weight exercises cause myofibrillated hypertrophy (the muscle generally gets stronger not bigger, though there is some translation), high repetition low weight exercises cause sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (the muscle gets bigger but not stronger, again some bleed across though). Since you are getting a lot of low weight high rep exercise from cycling you need to do some high weight low rep stuff to balance.

Something like Starting Strength or Stronglifts 5x5 are good sources if you're interested.

As an aside the idea of targeted fat loss is a myth. You reduce your fat from the whole of your body, with specific areas losing fat last depending on gender. On a man, this is the gut.