DMGWeight Training
I'm a big believer in weight training. It is the single best way to build raw strength & power and prevent injury. Your routine can be customized for your needs, from pure strength to power to endurance to cardio training. Knowing what you're doing in the gym is the difference between spending 4½ hours each week for nothing, and getting all you need in two thirty-minute sessions.
The New York Times posted an article titled Does Weight Lifting Make a Better Athlete?
Hell yes it does.
The article implies that there's a lot of debate about whether weight training helps athletes, which is a little misleading. Part of the reason for the "debate" is that different coaches coach different sports, and even if they all agreed that weight training did help their athletes, they'd all have different weight routines to suit the needs of their particular athletes and sports. Another reason that coaches sometimes disagree on matters of weight training is because they're dealing with trained athletes that are already extremely well-suited to their respective sports.
Even if athletes already performing near their genetic potential do receive only limited benefit from weight training, you and I are weak and slow and need all the help we can get. For us, there's really no credible argument against hitting the weights.
Since I started doing my semi-weekly Rocky Peak mountain bike ride, I've taken 20 minutes off the time it takes me to get to the top. That's partly from riding more often, but I saw the biggest performance gains the week I skipped Krav and BJJ and did full-body weight workouts instead.
If you're interested in learning how to get more out of your weight training, I highly recommend Practical Programming for Strength Training. It's a first-rate primer on weight training with applications for everyone.