Tips for Improving Cycling Fitness

A few simple tips for more efficient cycle training.

Cycle More

If you want to do a 100 mile ride, you will need to find more time to cycle. You will want to be doing a few 2-3 hour rides at the very least. Preferably a few 4 or 5 hour rides to get used to long distances. When you have a low level of base fitness, the good news is that a little bit of training goes a long way. You will see a marked improvement in performance from an increase in training load.

The trick is often finding time to be able to cycle more. If you live a busy life, a good solution is commuting by bike. This may be the whole journey or even just part of it. Many cyclists are pressed for time, so finding extra ways to get time for cycling is important.

If you have many family commitments, why not cycle out to some venue and meet your family there on bike. If you have a roof rack, you can easily bring back the bike on the car.

Vary Training

One mistake, people often make is just to do the same kind of training every week. When commuting it’s easy just to get into a slow gentle rhythm. This is fine for base training, but, if commuting is your main form of training, you should try mix it up. On alternate days, try commuting home very fast. Try different routes, which are a bit longer but give an opportunity to do some speed work. This can be a time trial to see how quickly you can cover a distance or it can be a series of intervals, finding some local hills.

If you have limited time, you will see most improvement in your cycling fitness from training at a high intensity. If you want to improve your fitness for a quicker 10 mile time trial. You need to be training at this race intensity.

Different Types of Training

When training, I try to have a specific purpose to the training. It tends to be:

1. Recovery ride – take it easy and give chance to recover from previous ride. Don’t under-estimate importance of proper recovery. Your interval sessions and races will be much more effective if you can do them fully recovered. Remember the principle of stress and recovery.
2. Steady endurance ride. At around 70-80% of heart rate. This is a good effort level to improve aerobic fitness and improve endurance. In winter, I tend to many rides at this intensity
3. Threshold Training. Training at around 85% of heart rate. ‘Comfortably hard’ – the level just before the accumulation of lactic acid. See: Threshold training. This can see big improvements in fitness without being overly stressful.
4. High level intervals – training above threshold level 90-98% of heart rate. The aim is to increase tolerance to lactic acid, increase power and efficiency of VO2 max. See: Interval Training Tips

Race and Targets

Often people have one or two targets in a year. A big sportive in August, and they spend 10 months thinking about and training for it. It’s noble to train 10 months for a big ride. But, I can’t help but feel, it would be better to have a few races or events leading up to the big one. Races or sportives give you a focus. It is much easier to push yourself when you’re in that kind of environment. When you’re doing a private training session it’s much easier to turn home early. Races could be evening time trials, road races or just a competitive sportive. All give you chance to measure your progress. A sense of progress is quite important for maintaining motivation throughout the year.

Motivation

A big part of improving cycling fitness is having a good attitude to cycling and training. If you are in a positive frame of mind, training tends to be more effective. It will inspire you to go out even when the weather is not so good. You will get motivation by spending time with other keen cyclists. Training and racing with others naturally spreads a bit of motivation to yourself. It is important not to get phased by disappointing early season races or any thing like that. It can be difficult to judge your performance. If you enjoy your cycling, you will naturally want to go out and improve your fitness. Don’t let cycling become a drudge.

Nutrition / Hydration

I’m not a big fan of fancy diets. It is important to take a balanced diet, based on common sense. When you are stressing your body through training, it is more important to eat good foods.

• See: basic tips for cycle nutrition.
• In particular, I recommend looking at this article to make sure you maintain – constant energy levels.
• Avoid these common mistakes of cycle nutrition

Loose Weight

Losing a few lbs makes a big difference to climbing and the enjoyment of cycling. Cycling and weight loss. If you need motivation for losing weight, try this weight calculator which shows time saved for weight loss.

Discipline vs Flexibility

To improve fitness, it does require a certain discipline. We need to do different types of riding. We need to be able to push ourselves in order to stretch capacity. We also need the discipline to do recovery rides and take time for days off, when we need it. However, there is an important line between determination and obsession. Don’t panic, if you can’t meet one session. If you are tired, have the flexibility to take a day off.  For some people, overtraining can be as much as a problem as undertraining.

Buy A Better Bike

Actually, forget all these training tips, the real secret of cycling fitness is getting the latest state of the art carbon fibre road bike. This will make all the difference.

Related Articles

• Training for cyclo sportives
• Interval Training tips
• How Much Training should I do?
• Stress and recovery in cycle training