Latest from Cycling Weekly in Training

'The magic starts after three years' - how a coach went about building Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard

cm.bell@hotmail.co.uk (Chris Marshall-Bell) — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 10:25:27 +0000

Ask Jonas Vingegaard the secret to his success, and he'll point to his eight years with Dutch coach Tim Heemskerk. “He's one of the best coaches out there,” the two-time Tour de France champion said in March, shortly after Heemskerk departed Visma-Lease a Bike. “He was more than just my coach – he is a good friend… I had complete trust in him. Tim is hard to replace.”

In early May, Heemskerk was announced as the latest person to join the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe staff as the German team continue their bid to challenge UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike at the Tour.

To launch Cycling Weekly's new Masterminds of Performance series exploring the philosophies of the world's best coaches, Heemskerk shares the wisdom gleaned from three decades in the sport. “I wouldn't say coaching is an experiment,” he says. “It's applied science and art, which you implement using your intuition.”

A former Dutch national mountain biker, Heemskerk's coaching journey began at just 20 while studying human movement sciences at Maastricht University. After stints running his own coaching business in Canada, managing the Dutch national MTB squad through the 2016 Rio Olympics, and working with USA Cycling. He joined Jumbo-Visma in late 2018.

He arrived at the exact same time as a young, unpolished diamond named Jonas Vingegaard. Though Heemskerk would also go on to coach Giro d'Italia winner Simon Yates and American Matteo Jorgenson, it is his history-making partnership with the Dane that ultimately cemented his reputation.

Q: How would you describe your coaching philosophy?

(Image credit: Visma Lease a Bike)

● Age: 50
● Nationality: Dutch
● Notable riders coached: Jonas Vingegaard, Simon Yates, Matteo Jorgenson
● Favourite motto: “The magic starts after three years.”
● Best achievements as coach: 2x 1st, GC – Tour de France overall (with Vingegaard, 2022, 2023); 1st – Paris-Nice (with Jorgenson, 2024)
● Best achievements as rider: 1st – TransRockies MTB race (2007)

A: My coaching belief is that yearly progression and variation are key. When I started to work with Jonas, some coaches laughed at [the volume I had set] and said they were training more than Jonas, but that's part of yearly progression.

You have to see where someone is coming from, and year by year you increase the load. Someone said to me when I started coaching that the magic starts after three years.

I was working with Jonas for three years before he got a big result. We had been preparing his body for riding GC – whether a week, 10 days or a Grand Tour – to make him strong enough to be able to recover properly and handle those loads.

That takes years, and you have to be patient to learn what does and doesn't work. Progress is not so loud, and it doesn't announce itself – it quietly stacks up day by day and then you see the results.

Vingegaard won two Tours with dominant climbing displays (Image credit: Getty Images)

Q: What was Jonas Vingegaard like to coach?

A: It was very nice to work with him. If we decided to go for something together – and we always decided together – he completely went for it. He was always giving feedback, such as saying he felt good and could cope with more – and then we discussed with the team what it meant.

After working with someone for eight years, you become friends and get to know each other very well, and you both pick up the phone to each other. I am not a waiter with a golden plate who will give you what you want; I will give you what you need. We will discuss it, we will agree or disagree, and then we'll find the right approach together. Jonas always understood that.

“I'm so proud of what we did together for eight years."

Q: Why did you decide to step away from Visma?

A: I don't need to discuss anymore why I made the decision I did. I said when I left that recently I had been struggling to apply my creativity and passion. People in the media and on podcasts said that I had an ego, and that hurt me because I'm a coach – I'm in the background. It's never been about me, but what we did as a team. I continued working with Jonas until right before Paris-Nice, and of course, I've stayed in touch with him. I'm so proud of what we did together as a team for eight years.

Q: As a coach, how do you prepare a rider for an exceptionally demanding race?

A: If a race is raced very aggressively, you need to prepare for that, but there is no guarantee it will suit the rider's physiology. For example, when working with climber-type GC riders who are very aerobically trained with a very high threshold power, getting into a very aggressive way of training and racing changes the rider's physiology within weeks. So you've really got to work together, discover what works physiologically for the riders, and then discuss what races suit them and how to adapt.

Tim Heemskerk (l) worked with Vingegaard for eight years (Image credit: Bram Berkien)

Q: How do you design the perfect training schedule?

A: I strive for maximum adaptation, which sounds easy but is actually complex. When I finish a weekly schedule, it's like a painting; it's personal. Maybe 80% is the same as another similar rider's schedule, but there are little adjustments here or there, small finesses, and that personalisation that makes it a painting.

Then the daily monitoring starts and you need flexibility to adjust it on a daily basis. Every rider has a unique physiology and you can't exactly predict the outcome of a training session. After training, the work starts to really monitor and reflect and talk to the athlete to see if what happened is what you expected. So you have the planning part, and then the monitoring and reflecting part which are just as important.

Q: How much do you involve your riders in the coaching plan?

A: You have to work together. You learn about each other over the years and learn how to get the best out of the athlete. To use Jonas as an example, after eight years working with me he can make his own training schedules, as he knows so much.

That's a different way of working together – he can tell me what he needs. Obviously, the coach makes the schedule, but what the athlete actually does is decided by talking and together deciding what is needed at that moment.

Heemskerk has also helped Jorgenson to shine (Image credit: Unknown)

Q: How often are you in contact with your riders?

A: Every day, because proper daily monitoring is essential. You can use all the metrics in the world, but the challenge and difficulty is to make it simple for yourself. That's something that only comes with experience.

A young coach will look at everything – mountains of data, spreadsheets and research papers – and over the years you, with intuition, learn how to judge everything properly, filter out the less important information, and discuss it with your colleagues. It's a matter of asking yourself: what did we learn today that will help us tomorrow?

Q: What's a good recovery day?

Pro philosophy, amateur reality

We asked Tim Heemskerk for his top three tips for amateur riders.

1. Respect the slow burn: “Weekend warriors tend to push too hard. In most of my coaching, I always tell the athlete to go a bit slower. Easy endurance rides in Zone 1 should make up most of the training. I believe in the classic approach where you steadily increase hours and intensity.”

2. Scale the load, not the lifestyle: “A WorldTour rider will train 20-30 hours a week, but a well-trained amateur won't do much more than 10-12 hours. They shouldn't stress and try to fit in longer hours just because Tadej Pogačar does. Rome wasn't built in a day.”

3. Build your own backroom staff: “If someone can do something better than you to help you, let them. In my case, I don't have all the knowledge myself: I need other coaches, nutritionists, aerodynamics experts and others around me to help me.”

A: This is something I've been thinking about more and more recently, as it's very common now for heat training and strength training to be added to a rider's schedule on their recovery day.

You need to ask yourself: is the rest day a proper recovery day? Or is this now a day that has increased in load over the years? I'm a strong believer that if you've done the work, you have to respect your recovery days and reduce the physical and cognitive load on a rider.

That also means not doing as many interviews on a rest day or reducing screentime, as that all increases the cognitive load. Athletes and coaches always want to become faster and want to do more and more, but it's better to plan to do heat training or the gym session on training days.

Some riders like to ride their bike on a rest day, and you can allow them to do so for a little while, but really you shouldn't be focusing on cycling when you're meant to be recovering.

Q: How do you improve your coaching skills?

A: My background is in research and I'm curious all of the time, so I'm always reading research papers on sports science. And not just about cycling; some new developments in football, for example, can be applied to cycling.

You want to be asking questions and you want to be critical and disruptive because only then do you and others start thinking. If people call me a pain in the arse, I say to them: thank you, because that's how you make progress. If I created a team, I wouldn't want people to say yes to me. I need people to throw ideas in, to question what we're doing.

“If people call me a pin in the arse, I say 'thank you'. Because that's how you make progress."
Tim Heemskerk

Q: How do you envisage training evolving in the coming years?

A: I think we'll see a reduction in hours, and instead more quality training. Maybe we'll laugh about seven-hour sessions. I know there are races like the Monuments that are that long, but maybe better adaptations will come from having multiple sessions [per day]. Two three-hour sessions in one day could be better than one seven-hour ride without a break.

Athletes can now take on board more carbohydrates, so with this added jet fuel it could be possible to add in more quality work. I think we'll also have better tools to monitor riders, such as wearables that allow you to see a rider's lactate or oxygen saturation values. We could learn a lot from that, but nothing will replace speaking with a rider, asking them at breakfast how they feel.

Q: How do you think artificial intelligence (AI) will change coaching?

A: It will never replace daily monitoring and the feeling of what's happening – the coach and athlete will always decide together what they're going to do. But it can be useful. You can ask AI to process data faster and the results can promote and accelerate thinking, as well as highlighting trends which you otherwise might not have seen. It might even come up with out-of-the-box ideas.

Yet we have to remember that AI always uses data from the past to make a prediction and it never has the full context. It might review a test from January and say it was a bad result, but AI doesn't know that the rider had a travel day or that when they woke up they were tired – other reasons why the test's outcome was affected. I think it will – and it is – helping us make sense of data, but I also think human excellence will only become more valued.

"Riding in the WorldTour is a big step up physically": Oliver Peace takes us through his training

cm.bell@hotmail.co.uk (Chris Marshall-Bell) — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:45:00 +0000

CW: How did you get into cycling?
OP: I started off running, doing local cross-country races. My uncle [Andy Peace] won the 3 Peaks Cyclo-cross race four times, so I got into cycling through cyclo-cross. I joined my local club [Bronte Tykes], raced on the local circuits, and gradually as I went through the age groups things got more serious. I raced internationally as a junior and was picked up by the Picnic development team.

CW: How were your two seasons as an U23?
OP: All of Picnic's development riders live on site in Sittard, in the Netherlands, where there are 12 houses with two riders in each. I shared a house with Jacob Bush, who is a really good mate. I really enjoyed my two years living there, and this team is great for developing riders, not just physically but mentally in lots of different situations.

CW: What sort of rider are you?
OP: I'm still exploring, but for sure I am more of a climber. I prefer the shorter stuff like in the Ardennes, but I've also really enjoyed the longer mountain stages that I've done so far.

CW: How are you adapting to life in the World Tour?
OP: It's clearly a big step up physically, and being in the bunch is obviously faster, as when the racing is on it's really on, but it also feels more comfortable. Because everyone's at such a high level and knows how to ride a bike, racing is more predictable. In the U23 scene, everyone's scrapping around, willing to risk it all to get to the bottom of the climb first. There's more trust in a World Tour bunch.

CW: How has your training evolved?
OP: I've changed coaches, and the main change has been the amount of intensity I've been doing, especially more VO2max stuff from December onwards. It works for me and has helped me to improve a lot.

Oliver Peace's training diary

Week's wisdom

The week highlights the power of polarisation: a stark alternating of pain and Peace! Note how he goes very hard when it matters, and truly easy the rest of the time. Just as important as VO2max efforts are complete rest days and gentle spins. Fully polarising training like this is easier for pros doing 20-plus-hour weeks, but it's a worthy aspiration of all of us. Make the hard efforts really hard, the rest really restful.

Monday: VO2max intervals This was the last day of a three-day block and there were four sets of intervals. I started with four times 90 seconds at Zone 5, so around 490 watts, with 45-second rest periods. Then it was five reps of 60 seconds at the same intensity, with 30 seconds off. The third block was six lots of 40 seconds with 20 seconds' rest. In the last hour I did 10 reps of 30 seconds at the same power, with 30 seconds' rest.
Total riding: 4hr 55m

Tuesday: Rest day Usually I like to ride to the cafe for an hour on a rest day and meet guys who are returning from their own training, but this time I took the day off.
Total riding: 0hr

Wednesday: Sprint intervals This was mostly a Zone 2 endurance ride but after 30 minutes I did three lots of one-minute max efforts with 10-15 minutes' recovery in between. I also did two five-second sprints, and two 10-seconds sprints. My maximum power was 1,190 watts.
Total riding: 4hr 10min

Thursday: Threshold session After a 45-minute warm-up, I did two intervals of 20 minutes in Zone 4, which is 365 watts, just below 5W/kg. I then did four two-minute Zone 5 efforts with three minutes recovery in between, followed by four lots of five minutes at 400 watts, with just four minutes between each effort. I used the same climb for all the efforts.
Total riding: 4hr 15min

Friday: Recovery ride This was a day off, and even though it was raining I still went out for an hour to spin the legs. Depending on my racing schedule, I usually go to the gym a couple of times a week, and at specific points of the year - such as before the Tour Down Under - I'll go to the sauna and have hot baths.
Total riding: 1hr 5min

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Saturday: EMOM spikes I fluctuated between Zone 1 and low Zone 3 for most of this ride, and in the third hour I did two 10-minute efforts at 300 watts with EMOM [every minute on the minute] spikes for 10 seconds at 420 watts. In the final hour, I had two eight-minute Zone 5 efforts, so around 425 watts. It's nice just to go out and just ride, but I prefer doing efforts and having a structured ride, so I enjoy days like this more.
Total riding: 4hr

Sunday: VO2max intervals This was the exact same session as Monday: five hours with four sets of VO2max blocks of between 30 and 90 seconds. I felt a lot better than I had on Monday, and was able to push a little bit more, especially in the last hour. My Training Stress Score for this day was 266-quite high. I didn't feel magic after coming back from the Tour Down Under, so this was a productive training week and it was nice to do some grippy efforts ahead of my next goals.
Total riding: 5hr 5min

Total riding: 23 hours, 30 mins

"Training adaptation thrives on challenge, but only when recovery keeps pace"; how everyday stressors can affect your riding

Rob Kemp — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:10:00 +0000

Whereas homeostasis is the body's attempt to keep vital signs within a very tight, static range, allostasis is the active process of adaptation. Allostatic load is the body's running total of stress. Every challenge - a hard training ride, poor sleep, work pressure, illness, travel, even emotional strain - triggers stress systems whose purpose is to adapt and reach a 'new normal'. Provided the stress doses are manageable, this is a healthy process.

It's how you adapt and get fitter. "While allostasis is the healthy process of the body changing its internal state to match external demands- such as your heart rate rising during a steep climb - allostatic load is the physiological price the body pays for that adaptation over time," says Professor Sebastian Sitko.

When stress is frequent, intense or long-lasting, and recovery is incomplete, the strain starts to build up. Over time, this cumulative "wear and tear" can affect mood, immunity, energy levels and long-term health.

(Image credit: Future)

What is allostatic load?

Allostatic load is the cumulative strain that builds when those demands keep stacking up without enough recovery. "Allostasis is how the body adapts to challenges," says Professor Mike Gleeson. "But every adaptation has an energy cost." In simple terms, your body doesn't try to stay at one fixed point - it constantly adjusts to meet demand. Training, racing, work stress, travel and lack of sleep all require adjustment.

"For a cyclist, this load is not just the sum of kilometres ridden or total kilojoules burned," says Sitko. "It is the integration of training stress, environmental factors like heat or altitude, and psychosocial stressors such as career pressures or lack of sleep." The body does not distinguish between the stress of a VO2max interval and the stress of a high-pressure deadline at work; they both draw on the same recovery resources.

How does allostatic load affect cyclists?

What does the evidence say?

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Research shows that chronic stress affects multiple systems at once: hormonal, immune, metabolic and psychological. In wider health research, scientists use clusters of biomarkers to measure cumulative strain. "In sport, we see the same multi-system pattern," says Gleeson. "Heavy training combined with poor sleep, low energy availability and psychological stress increases the risk of illness and underperformance." Studies on overreaching, immunity and mood disturbance consistently show that combinations of stressors predict problems better than any single factor.

Allostatic load doesn't mean training hard is harmful. "Stress is necessary for adaptation," explains Gleeson. "The problem is sustained overload without adequate restoration. An athlete doesn't experience stress in compartments." When the total load rises too high, early warning signs can include stalled progress, unusually high perceived effort, irritability, low motivation and more frequent colds.

"In my experience, one of the most telling signs is a 'muffled' heart rate response," says Sitko. "If during a high-intensity effort your power is failing, yet your heart rate refuses to rise to its typical training zones, this can indicate autonomic nervous system fatigue, where the body effectively applies a 'governor' to prevent further damage."

Other manifestations include a loss of explosive 'snap' in the legs, disrupted sleep patterns despite deep physical exhaustion, and an increase in perceived exertion during routine efforts. "The athlete is capable of riding, but the physiological ceiling has been significantly lowered," adds Sitko.

CONCLUSION

Allostatic load reminds cyclists that fitness gains come at a cost. As Gleeson puts it: "Adaptation thrives on challenge - but only when recovery keeps pace. Ultimately, the best way to manage allostatic load is autoregulation - having the flexibility to adjust the training prescription based on the total stress of the day." "By treating sleep, nutrition and psychological downtime with the same discipline as a structured interval session, a cyclist can ensure that their adaptations remain productive rather than destructive," concludes Sitko.

To mitigate the risk of progressing into overtraining or relative energy deficiency (REDs), cyclists must move beyond simply tracking external metrics such as power or training stress score (TSS), and begin monitoring internal response markers. "One of the most effective protocols is the use of heart rate variability (HRV) as a morning readiness check," suggests Sitko.

A consistent downward trend in HRV is a clear signal to prioritise recovery over intensity. "Addressing the energy availability component is also critical," he adds. "Many cyclists trigger REDs by trying to stay lean while increasing training volume. Ensuring that carbohydrate intake scales with training intensity is a non-negotiable requirement for hormonal health and bone density."

Recovery is key if you're going to let your body get over all the stress that it has to deal with. (Image credit: Future )

OVERLOAD ALERT: IDENTIFY, ADAPT, RECOVER

How to identify
- Hard sessions feel unusually difficult: Power drops while perceived effort rises.
- Muted heart-rate response: "Your heart rate may refuse to rise to typical zones," says Sitko.
- Loss of 'snap' in the legs: Explosive efforts feel flat or sluggish.
- Sleep disruption: Fatigue is high but sleep becomes restless.
- Mood changes: Irritability, low motivation or mental fog.
- More frequent illness: Repeated colds or lingering infections.

How to respond
- Prioritise sleep and recovery days.
- Match carbohydrate intake to training load.
- Track HRV or readiness markers.
- Adjust training when life stress is high.
- Maintain consistent fuelling to avoid cumulative strain.

Saunas, endurance blocks and racing track: How sprinter Ethan Vernon trains every week

cm.bell@hotmail.co.uk (Chris Marshall-Bell) — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:10:58 +0000

You started the season with a stage win in Australia. Was it a good winter's training?

Really good. I shut down last season in early October, as I knew I was doing the Tour Down Under. In November, those of us going to Australia had a two-week training camp, riding 30-hour weeks. I came off that big endurance block well, and then did some track races at Grenchen [in Switzerland] in December. The plan was to copy a similar build-up to what I did with Quick-Step a few years ago: a big overload training camp into an intense track block. It worked well again.

How is this team different from Quick-Step?

I was the third sprinter in my two years at Quick-Step and it was the perfect stepping stone to where I'm at now. At this team, I have been given the opportunity to become a leader and have a more tailored race programme.

The best thing about NSN is that some of my best mates are here and the culture is really similar to what it's like on the track squad.

Profile

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Age: 25
Raised: Bedford
Lives: Andorra
Height: 6ft 2in
Rides for: NSN Cycling Team
Best results: 2nd - Olympic Games team pursuit (2024); 1st - Tour Down Under, Stage 4 (2026); 1st - Tour de Romandie, Stage 1 (2023)

What are your aims for this season?

On my day, I can comfortably beat second-tier sprinters, but I want to be beating the very best. Finishing second twice in Vuelta a España stages last year really fired me up, and my goal before I retire is to win a stage in all three Grand Tours, alongside an Olympic gold medal. I'll ride the Giro d'Italia and maybe the Vuelta this year.

How will you fit track into your calendar in the coming years?

Claiming team pursuit silver in Paris and being so close to gold gave me a taste of what it could be like, so I want to be at Los Angeles 2028. But I won't ride too much track until 2028, as my focus is on the road and winning Grand Tour stages. That said, if it fits, I may ride track at the Commonwealth Games this summer.

(Image credit: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

ETHAN VERNON'S TRAINING DIARY

The week: 5-11 January
Training for: Tour Down Under
Location: Andorra

Monday
AM: Endurance ride; PM: Sauna

Today was a basic five-hour endurance ride on the flat roads in Spain, where it was 10 degrees warmer than in Andorra. In the afternoon, I spent 25 minutes in the gym's sauna to acclimatise for Australia.
Total riding time: 5hr

Tuesday
Rest day

I tend to alternate what I do on rest days: completely off the bike for one - like this one - then a small ride on the other. To prepare for the time difference in Australia, as a team we were using an app called Timeshifter, which calculates when you should start adapting to the time zone. It meant going to sleep and waking up 30 minutes earlier every day during this week. Did it work? A bit.
Total riding time: Ohr

Wednesday
AM: Tabata Intervals; PM: Sauna

My coach Liam Holohan calls this the Tabata Mix. It consists of three 10-minute blocks behind an e-bike to replicate race pace. In the first one, it's 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off; the second is 30-30s, and the third block is 20-40s. Later in the day, I went in the sauna again for 25 minutes.
Total riding time: 3hr 30 mins

Total riding time: 3hr 30min

Thursday
AM: Sprint session; PM: Heat training

Most weeks, I do a 10-minute ramp effort to threshold - my FTP is around 400 watts - up a climb, then watch my heart rate drift for 90 seconds. It's to check how I'm progressing. After doing that, I had a Zone 2 tempo session that included seven finishing sprints of 10 to 20 seconds, with a team-mate leading me out at peak speed for 20 seconds. Half of our team is based in Andorra, which allows us to practise our leadouts. In the afternoon, I rode really easy, sitting at 140 watts for 45 minutes on the turbo in the paint suit.
Total riding time: 3hr 30min

Friday
AM: Endurance ride; PM: Sauna

I did a basic ride sitting between Zones 1 and 2, with an average of 230 watts, followed by 25 minutes in the sauna. I'd like to do more heat training, but I do suffer quite a bit, so we have to manage how much. It clearly works, as I went on to win in Australia on the hottest day of the year.
Total riding time: 4hr

Saturday
Cafe ride

This was just a very easy spin to the cafe with some mates. In the winter, there's too much snow to do much else in Andorra, but on rest days in the summer I'll often go into the woods and tracks around La Massana and ride my e-mountain bike. I'll put it into turbo mode and barely turn the pedals - it's a lot of fun and doesn't tire me out. Total riding time: 1hr

Sunday
AM: Recovery ride and heat training; PM: Gym

I rode outside for an hour really easy, and then did 45 minutes in the paint suit. In the afternoon, I went to the gym for an hour and 15 minutes, doing all the usual stuff: squats, leg press, calf raises.
Total riding: 1hr 45min

TOTAL RIDING: 18HR 45MIN

(Image credit: Getty Images)

WEEK'S WISDOM

Heat adaptation doesn't require high-tech methods. Look at how Vernon prepared for Australia: simply by adding short sauna sessions and easy turbo rides in a paint suit. The principle is straightforward: expose your body to heat regularly so it learns to cope. It won't be long before the UK weather starts to warm up - why not get ready for it? Who knows, it might give you the edge on those first sunny club rides!

'The key to maximising performance is consistent, high-quality training' – how to train for cycling better, in a fraction of the time

Zach Nehr — Wed, 20 May 2026 10:29:10 +0000

When Brandon McNulty crossed the line alongside Tadej Pogačar at last year's Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, in Canada, it was another reminder of his place among cycling's very best riders. The American has long been one of Pogačar's most trusted lieutenants at UAE Team Emirates-XRG, helping shred the peloton on climbs such as the Col de Val Louron at the 2022 Tour de France.

Yet, McNulty stands apart from many of his peers in one surprising way: he trains far less than most pros, typically riding just 15 to 16 hours a week around his home in Arizona. The 27-year-old is part of a growing group of elite and professional cyclists who follow a low-volume training plan. "Low volume" is, in this context, a relative term: we're talking about less than 20 hours per week for professionals, and less than 10 hours per week for amateurs.

Since the pioneering work of athletics coach Arthur Lydiard in the 1950s, "more is better" has been the accepted wisdom in endurance sports. Olympic swimmers would rack up 35 hours per week, elite runners upwards of 100 miles a week, and professional triathletes trained hours equivalent to those of a full-time job.

"If you ask most people, 'How many hours do professionals do?', they'll give you a number like 30 hours a week," says McNulty's teammate Jay Vine. "But that's not even close. There are a lot more efforts involved, but a lot fewer hours at sub-endurance." The Australian explains that he is training considerably less now than he did as a neo-pro on Alpecin-Fenix.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

High-volume endurance training works, up to a certain point. For many athletes, that point is injury or burnout. For others, it's mental limitations that set in before physical ones. Boredom, anxiety, or disordered eating have ruined athletes who push themselves too far.

Ryan O'Boyle, an elite cyclist from the US, switched to low-volume for greater life balance. "I used to train 20 to 24 hours a week, but being married and working a full-time career takes its toll physically and mentally."

O'Boyle notes that training less was traditionally seen as lazy or weak, but has in recent years become acceptable. The shift came as the old-school 'hardmen' of cycling, those putting in 30-40 hour weeks, saw others getting faster on much lower volumes. The 'long, slow distance' model of endurance training wasn't necessarily the best approach.

Those riding less were winning more. They were fresher, faster and punchier. They seemed to have more energy, a spring in their step.

As cycling becomes faster and faster, races get shorter and shorter in duration. That makes mega-aerobic fitness less valuable than before. When the longest Grand Tour stages lasted seven or eight hours, it made sense to build your engine as big as possible. But now, the longest stages are four to five hours, with some stages lasting only two to three hours, at an average of 50kph (31mph).

In 2026, more races will be decided by speed and explosiveness than by ultra endurance. The slogging is over. Professional cycling is no longer about aerobic endurance; it's about race-winning speed.

Some professional cyclists train as little as 10-15 hours per week, even during the base season. They focus on structure, precision, intensity distribution, and recovery (see boxout sample week). Low-volume cyclists focus on quality over quantity. They have identified a tipping point of sorts, the point beyond which increased training volume leads to inferior performance.

For some, the limits are set by life circumstances: work, family, travel, and other adult responsibilities. For others, the limits are self-imposed, learned through experience and failure.

(Image credit: Andy Jones)

For many riders, a lingering doubt remains: isn't reducing volume taking a risk? Won't it mean that, in the long term, endurance will decline?

Jeroen Swart, head of performance at UAE Team Emirates-XRG, is a strong proponent of low-volume training. "Many professional athletes make the mistake of doing too much training or too little recovery," he says. "One of the biggest things that I introduced to UAE Team Emirates when I joined in late 2018 was increasing the load monitoring and backing off [the hours] of those riders who were doing far too much. And by doing less, performance increased."

The key to maximising performance is consistent, high-quality training. It doesn't matter if you are training five hours a week or 25, if your training quality is low, you will leave watts on the table. We've all heard of "junk miles", a term that applies to unfocused, purposeless pedalling. These rides can be a waste of time, especially for riders on a low-volume training plan. If you're only going to ride for an hour, you want to get the most out of it.

A high-quality session stimulates physiological adaptations similar to those gained from low-intensity, high-volume training - but in less time. Low-volume training doesn't necessarily mean doing a greater number of high-intensity sessions. Most pros still do just two to three high-intensity sessions per week, similar to amateurs; the difference is simply that they add many more endurance hours around them.

Few riders understand this better than Neal Fryett, the 46-year-old elite eSports racer. In between dad duties, the American knocks out savagely hard interval sessions in the lead-up to a goal race. "After 90 minutes of endurance riding, I'll do three sets of 12 times 30/15s with five minutes' rest between sets," he says. "I'll average 500 to 550 watts for the 30-second intervals while sprinting for the first five seconds of each."

Perhaps not surprisingly, Fryett keeps his easy days easy. "I'll target two hard sessions [per week] with the rest of the week being a mix of easy to moderate endurance riding. One day completely off the bike every week, sometimes two if needed. Being an older athlete, I likely need two more recovery days per week than an athlete half my age."

Switching to lower-volume training isn't risk-free. Suddenly doing VO2max intervals every day, with no easy riding, would quickly lead to burnout. Dropping volume too drastically would also backfire. The key is balancing training stimulus with recovery. Most coaches and physiologists agree that two to three high-intensity sessions per week (efforts at Zone 3 or above) is the sweet spot for long-term progress. Beginners should aim for one or two such sessions.

Here is the smart science part, the secret sauce. Interval training has increasingly focused on riding at the highest repeatable intensity within a given zone. In simple terms, that means structuring sessions so you spend more time at the top end of the target effort. Instead of a steady four-hour endurance ride at around 65% of FTP, many pros now break the work into intervals at 70-75%. For example, a session might consist of three 20-minute efforts at 75% FTP. Add in the warm-up, recovery and cool-down, and the ride lasts about two hours instead of four.

Is this time-saving training really superior to the old-school 'long, slow distance' model? It's difficult to say for sure. But we do know that both types of endurance training are effective, and if you only have two hours to train, you need to make that time count.

(Image credit: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

One of the biggest advantages of low-volume training is reducing fatigue, allowing you to start each session in a fresher state. When you're only training eight hours per week, it is fairly easy to build ample recovery hours between your two to three high-intensity sessions of the week.

Then again, training on tired legs is a key component in building fatigue resistance. Professional cyclists rarely arrive at an interval session completely fresh. Instead, they begin their VO2max intervals with significant fatigue in their legs. Hitting PB powers is rarely the aim; more important is adapting to the load to tolerate fatigue.

Of course, not every rider requires a high degree of fatigue resistance. For example, the amateur crit racer who rarely races for longer than 90 minutes at a time, relying on his sprint above his endurance, may get away with as little as five hours of training per week. For these riders, it's more important to focus on repeatable explosive power.

Cut the Volume, Keep the Fitness
	High-volume plan		Replace with
Monday	Rest day, completely off the bike	0hr	Rest day, completely off the bike	0hr
Tuesday	Endurance plus 6x15sec sprints	2hr	V02max intervals: three sets of 8x 40/20s	1hr
Wednesday	Endurance plus V02max intervals: three sets of 8x 40/20s	1.5hr	Recovery Zone 1	1hr
Thursday	Endurance Zone 2	2hr	Torque intervals: 4x 4min at 50rpm (85-95% FTP)	1hr
Friday	Recovery Zone 1	1.5hr	Recovery Zone 1	1hr
Saturday	Endurance with threshold intervals, fast group ride, or local race	2hr	Threshold intervals, fast group ride, or local race	1hr
Sunday	Endurance Zone 2	3hr	Endurance Zone 2	2hr
Total Time		12hr		7hr

The key point is this: the right volume for you depends on what type of races or events you are targeting. If fatigue resistance is going to be a major factor, you may need to keep your training volume as high as possible.

That said, there are some sneaky ways to improve fatigue resistance by other means. "Durability - that ability to maintain power later in a race- is very much affected by your functional strength on the bike," says Swart. "As you get tired, if you retain the ability to produce torque, you can continue to produce power."

The performance chief explains that in the winter, UAE riders hit the gym three times a week and do "very specific exercises focusing on functional strength". Torque training has been shown to improve fatigue resistance - without spending upwards of five hours on the bike. An hour per week of torque work can make a real difference.

If you're weighing up how much volume you should be doing, first take a long hard look at your current training and lifestyle. Are you optimising everything for performance? Take a close look at your fuelling strategy, recovery protocol, pre-workout routine, and stress levels. Only once you can honestly say that nothing else can be improved should you consider an increase in volume.

Strength work, running, torque training and heat training are great ways to improve performance without needing to find extra hours in your busy schedule.

And remember that recovery should be made time-efficient too. Eat well, relax with your feet up, switch off, have a massage, and ensure you're sleeping well. You won't maximise your performance gains unless the quality of your recovery matches the quality of your sessions.

And the next time you think about increasing your training volume, first ask yourself: Is there some other way I could spend that extra hour that would be even more effective?

FIVE TIPS FOR TIME-CRUNCHED AMATEURS

Focus on quality in every session
Stop chasing junk miles; when riding endurance, target 60-75% FTP
Maintain life balance; don't let cycling take away from family, friends, work, and 'me time'
Consistency beats hero weeks
Design your training around your goals

How do the pros train? Mattia Agostinacchio takes us through his pre-race week

cm.bell@hotmail.co.uk (Chris Marshall-Bell) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 14:34:51 +0000

This article was taken from the January 22 edition of Cycling Weekly. Chris Mashall-Bell sat down with Italian road and cyclo-cross rider, Mattia Agostinacchio (EF Education-EasyPost) ahead of the Namur World Cup. To subscribe to the magazine, click here.

What's your sporting background?

I did lots of sports as a kid: gymnastics until I was 11, ski racing until I was 13, and some tennis, football and swimming too. My first cycle sport was mountain biking, and then I took up cyclo-cross and road cycling.

Who coached you as a junior?

My whole family loves cycling, and my dad trained me until I was a junior, when my older brother Filippo took over. He's also a cyclist [with Continental team Biesse-Carrera Premac] and is studying sports science at university. With his help, at age 16, I started using a power meter and a heart rate monitor.

What kind of road rider are you?

I still don't know for sure, but I think I am best suited to the Classics. Mathieu van der Poel is my idol, and some people have compared me to him - but it will be impossible to be exactly like him!

Agostinacchio wants to step up his performance in the World Cup. (Image credit: Getty Images)

How do you feel being the World Tour's baby?

I really don't know what to expect from myself this season, but I will need to get some key races in my legs to find the rhythm and flow. My first ambition as a pro cyclist is to win one race.

How do you rate your cyclo-cross season so far?

I'd give it a 7/10. The World Cup hasn't gone so well for me for various reasons, and I've had quite a lot of downs. But to win the U23 European Championships was amazing and I hope to get a podium at the U23 race at the World Championships [on 11 January; he finished fourth].

Do you do specific CX training?

During the cross season I use my cyclo-cross bike on the road. I normally go into the forest once or twice a week to practise my technique, and I run for 30 minutes once a week.

Profile

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Age: 18
Raised: Aosta, Italy
Lives: Aosta, Italy
Height: 5ft 7in
Rides for: EF Education-Easy Post
Best results: 1st - U23 European CX Champs (2025); 1st - Trophée Centre Morbihan, stage 2b (2025); 13th - UCI World Cup, Namur (2025)

MATTIA'S TRAINING DIARY

The week: 8-14 December
Training for: Elite UCI World Cup, Namur, Belgium
Training in: Italy and Belgium

Monday: Recovery ride
This whole week was focused on preparing for Namur, which was to be my first World Cup race against the elites. I had an easier week's training after my last U23 race in Flamanville [in France, 30 November - he finished eighth] because I had a lot of races coming up in December. I started this week with a Zone 1 ride, sitting between 170 and 190 watts.
Total riding: 1hr 30min

Tuesday: Explosive efforts
Before this ride, I did a small core session with a few exercises. I've started doing these sessions twice a week. Afterwards I went out for three hours and did my favourite session: six reps of 30 seconds at Zone 5 and 50rpm, and then 15 seconds all-out. I feel like I'm working on and improving my explosiveness with this session.
Total riding: 3hr

Wednesday: AM: Endurance ride; PM: VO2max intervals
In the morning I did two hours steady at Zone 2, between 220 and 230 watts, and after lunch I did VO2max efforts: two times two minutes at just a bit harder than race pace, so between 450 and 500 watts, with one minute's recovery in between. These sessions help me in cyclo-cross races.
Total riding: 3hr 30min

Thursday: Endurance ride (abandoned)
The plan was to do three-and-a-half hours, but I didn't feel great when I woke up and as soon as I got out on the bike I realised I wouldn't be able to complete the session. In the end I only did half an hour. It's better to stop and recover rather than push on and make yourself worse.
Total riding: 30min

Friday: Recovery ride
I was feeling a bit better than the day before, so even though Friday was meant to be a rest day, I went out for a 90-minute Zone 1 recovery ride. In the evening, I travelled to Belgium for the race.
Total riding: 1hr 30min

The Italian prodigy took gold at the 2025 U23 European Cyclo-cross Championships. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Saturday: Race recon
Namur was a big race for me, so I prepared thoroughly, even though I'd ridden it before, as a junior. I completed a lot of laps, some a bit faster than others, always looking for the best lines.
Total riding: 1hr 30min

Sunday: Race: UCI CX World Cup, Namur
My race preparation includes one or two laps of the course, and a 20-minute warm-up, which begins with four minutes in Zone 2, two minutes in Zone 2b (almost Zone 3) two minutes at Zone 3, another two minutes at Zone 4, and then three minutes of recovery. After that, I do two lots of 30-second VO2max efforts, with 30 seconds easy. I started on the fifth row, so quite far back, but I found my rhythm and in the last few laps even went faster than some of the guys in the top-10. I was really happy with 13th.
Total riding: 1hr 40min

Week's Wisdom

Once you've processed the fact he was born in autumn 2007, make a note of this young man's restraint. Hard efforts are dosed with caution, balanced with recovery, and his body's early warning signs are heeded - cutting a ride short shows wisdom beyond his years. Trusting in consistency over heroics, he is rightly rewarded at his target race - and is a talent to watch over coming years.

Irresistible tech or meaningless data: are body sensors the next frontier in marginal gains?

Rob Kemp — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:15:00 +0000

At the 2025 Tour de France there was an open secret being whispered through the peloton: most stage winners were wearing a thumbnail-sized sensor clipped to their heart-rate strap.

The device, made by Swiss company Core, measures a rider's core body temperature in real time - a hidden layer of physiology that can tell whether a rider is thriving or overheating. According to Core, 17 of the 21 stages were won by riders using their sensor-prompting speculation that it offered a winning edge.

In the arms race for marginal gains, it's irresistible tech. Real-time data promises to let riders see inside themselves: how their lungs, hearts, muscles and even hydration levels are coping with the load. But are these new monitors genuine game-changers or merely expensive add-ons? Do they provide truly useful data or just distracting noise?

Temperature sensors

In the case of real-time core-temperature monitoring, it's something that has moved from Olympic labs to everyday cycling. The concept is simple: detect rising internal heat early enough to adjust pacing, cooling or hydration before performance drops. The aforementioned Core device combines skin temperature, heart rate and heat flux (the flow of heat from body to skin) to calculate core temperature and a heat-strain index.

Validation studies comparing Core with ingestible thermistors show a mean error of just 0.23°C- impressive for a non-invasive, 'stick-on' device. For an expert view on whether wearable thermometers can really make a winning difference, we turn to Professor Yannis Pitsiladis of Hong Kong Baptist University.

"Core temperature alone tells only part of the story," says Pitsiladis, explaining that the data has to be interpreted within a broader context. "Heat strain and performance decline stem from the interplay of temperature, cardiovascular load, and environmental stressors. Without that integration, the data can be misleading."

Pitsiladis is at pains to explain that real-time temperature monitoring is not, on its own, a game-changer. "Thermoregulation involves metabolic heat, cardiovascular redistribution and environmental exchange. Seeing that process unfold second-by-second can reveal how workload and environment interact."

Professor Mike Tipton, an expert in human thermoregulation at the University of Portsmouth, urges riders to start with a question: why measure temperature at all? "If you can't define what a meaningful change means for you, the number is just decoration," he cautions. "Most devices estimate core temperature from skin or heat-flux signals, which are distorted by wind, rain and sunlight. Even if the reading were perfect, you still need to know your personal critical limit before it becomes actionable."

Tipton warns that over-reliance on readouts can erode self-awareness. "Cyclists have evolved excellent internal sensors - perception of effort, breathing, sweat. Chasing digital precision can dull that intuition."

A 2023 Journal of Sports Sciences study backs his caution, reporting mean outdoor errors of 0.5-1.0°C in popular wearables - large enough to make "heat limit" thresholds unreliable. "Directional trends are useful," Tipton concedes, "but absolute numbers outside controlled conditions remain questionable."

Pitsiladis agrees that validation is the dividing line between science and sales. Ingestible thermistors-pill-sized sensors swallowed to measure core body temperature from within the gastrointestinal tract - remain the gold standard; most commercial devices still estimate rather than measure.

"The technology must evolve to meet biological complexity, not the other way round," says Pitsiladis. Until then, cyclists should treat temperature data as a compass, not a map: a helpful guide to how the body copes with heat, but far from an infallible performance predictor. In short, today's sensors can show when you're getting hot - but not always how or why it truly matters.

Body sensors can pump out raft of real time data - but is it useful? (Image credit: David Lyttleton)

Oxygen and ventilation monitoring

Where Core focuses on thermal load, other systems aim or claim to capture real-time oxygen use and ventilation - essentially the holy grail of endurance physiology: how efficiently you use oxygen to generate power. Garmin smartwatches, for instance, offer wrist-based Pulse Ox tracking alongside cycling metrics including heart rate and respiration. Similarly, the Oura Ring tracks overnight oxygen, temperature and recovery for daily readiness, while the Wellue O2Ring provides continuous oxygen and heart-rate monitoring with alerts.

Professor John Dickinson from the University of Kent has spent two decades studying respiratory performance in elite athletes. He says the data can be insightful, but the current crop of wearables still fall short of lab precision.

"In the lab, we can directly measure oxygen consumption and ventilation - that's gold-standard," he explains. "But most wearables estimate it through proxies like heart rate, wrist blood flow, or chest strap strain. They're decent for trends, but not precise enough for elite decision-making."

Recent research backs that up: smartwatch VO2 max estimates can be off by 15%, often overestimating unfit users and underestimating trained ones. Breathing frequency straps were found to perform slightly better within 10% of actual rate - but lack the ability to measure tidal volume (the amount of air per breath).

"Without tidal volume, it's difficult to interpret," says Dickinson. "Heart rate still tracks oxygen use well, so right now, a good heart-rate monitor and a proper lab test may tell you as much as these new devices."

Staying on top of your hydration

Hydration sensors are the next frontier - patches and wearables that claim to monitor body water or electrolyte loss in real time. Some of the best smartwatches allow users to manually log fluid intake and estimate hydration status based on activity and conditions. The idea is seductive: never guess your salt balance again.

But Professor Glen Davison, also of The University of Kent, urges caution. "The concept is sound - in theory, these devices could track fluid balance in real time," says Davison, "but accuracy depends entirely on the technology. Some measure sweat composition, others infer total body water through electrical or optical signals - and those don't always reflect whole-body hydration."

Even if these devices could perfectly measure dehydration, it might not, in Davison's view, be meaningful data for most cyclists. "You can tolerate around 4% body-mass loss from sweat - nearly three litres for a 70kg rider - before seeing major performance effects," he adds. "That's a lot of sweat. For most, regular drinking strategies already cover that."

Where these sensors might prove useful is in sweat composition - knowing how much sodium you lose can guide electrolyte intake during multi-day races or heat camps. Still, this concentration may vary from one ride to the next, and Davison stresses that data from a single patch site can't represent the whole body. "If the only evidence comes from internal company data, we should be sceptical," he adds.

(Image credit: David Lyttleton)

Real-time blood glucose

Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) went through a brief boom-and-bust in elite cycling, which may serve as a warning to those of us lured by the promise of next-level tech-led physiology. Marketed as revolutionary tools for fuelling and recovery, they were banned by the UCI in 2023 after studies found minimal benefit and growing concerns over data misuse.

The CGM is a small, coin-sized wearable sensor that sits just under the skin, usually on the upper arm or abdomen, using a tiny filament inserted with a spring-loaded applicator. Once in place, it tracks glucose levels in the interstitial fluid continuously, typically for 10-14 days before needing replacement. Originally developed for diabetics, CGMs were increasingly adopted by elite riders as a performance and fuelling tool.

"Continuous glucose data isn't a measure of performance. It's a health metric."
Dr Henry Chung

The sensor samples glucose levels every few minutes, building a 24/7 picture of glucose trends rather than single snapshots. Data is transmitted wirelessly to a smartphone app - and in some cases to a bike computer or training platform - where riders can see real-time graphs, alerts and trend arrows.

"It's important to be clear: even continuous glucose data isn't a measure of performance. It's a health metric," says Dr Henry Chung, lecturer in physiology and nutrition, University of Essex, "Cycling performance is driven by a mix of energy availability and physiological limits. Muscle glycogen is a major fuel source, alongside phosphocreatine, but performance is also shaped by factors including neuromuscular fatigue, time to exhaustion, cardiovascular strain, oxygen use and technical skill - none of which a CGM measures."

Chung points out another common misunderstanding. "People assume blood glucose reflects what's happening with muscle glycogen, but that isn't really the case. There's a time lag between glycogen being broken down, converted, and appearing as glucose in the blood. On top of that, muscle glycogen is regulated locally within the muscle."

So blood glucose and muscle fuel can behave quite independently. "In real-world conditions, it's extremely difficult to work out what's actually happening in the body from this single number alone. In people without diabetes, glucose readings mostly reflect what you've eaten, what your liver is releasing, and how your body is using sugar overall - not how much fuel your muscles actually have available or how well you can perform on the bike."

In other words, the relationship between real-time blood glucose and cycling performance is indirect, complicated and often not very useful in practice. For many riders, a CGM risks becoming a source of distraction and anxiety, providing a fluctuating number that is minimally useful in terms of guiding beneficial changes.

(Image credit: David Lyttleton)

"Real-time monitoring is a fascinating science," concludes Professor Mike Tipton, "but for performance management in the field, it risks becoming data for data's sake." That's a recurring concern among physiologists: data without interpretation. Real-time readouts, delivered devoid of context, can easily overwhelm riders or coaches, and don't translate cleanly into actionable numbers.

Then there's the cost and complexity. A full suite of validated monitors - core temperature, respiratory strap, hydration patch, CGM-may exceed £1,000, with data streams requiring custom analysis software. For amateurs, that's a big outlay for insight that may still be at best 'directional' rather than precise.

That said, real-time gadgets are here to stay and, as Professor Pitsiladis points out, the technology is still in its early "brick-phone stage". "It works," he says, "but it's not yet miniaturised or fully integrated. The next step is ecosystem-level sensing - multiple validated inputs communicating in real time."

That vision - a fully synchronised network of sensors mapping metrics such as heat, oxygen, hydration and glucose simultaneously-sounds futuristic, but it's already being trialled, with AI advancements fuelling the surge. Real-time monitoring may be of limited value right now, but it's sure to get a whole lot better over coming years.

Would you like me to summarize the key expert opinions from Professor Pitsiladis and Professor Tipton regarding these sensors?

'Recreational cyclists risk becoming too reliant on AI' – How cycling coaching platforms are changing the way we train

India Paine — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:00:00 +0000

You wake up groggy after a late night, pick up your phone and check the day's training. Instead of hard threshold efforts, your app reveals the plan has changed to an easy spin. It knows your sleep was poor, your stress levels are high, and your recovery suboptimal. The decision seems logical but it wasn't made by a human being - it was made by Hugo, HumanGo's digital coach, powered by artificial intelligence.

AI is already big business in sport and is projected to be worth £27bn by 2030. At the elite level, it's fully embraced, used by WorldTour teams such as UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike to ride faster, recover better, and win the biggest races. But what about the everyday cyclist, the keen amateur juggling a busy schedule, family life and training - can AI help us all train better without the need for a costly coach? Or is it prone to giving misleading advice that could do more harm than good?

What is AI?

Put simply, AI refers to technology that can learn from data, spot patterns and make decisions - skills we usually associate with human intelligence. It’s already in your everyday life, from Google Maps rerouting your commute to Spotify suggesting the next song on your playlist.

In cycling, AI has the ability - ostensibly, at least - to analyse your training data, spot weaknesses, adjust plans and even suggest recovery, all in real time, without a human coach.

AI training apps, powered by large language models (LLMs) or machine learning algorithms, process data from your wearable devices - heart rate, sleep, power output, HRV - to generate personalised training plans. The theory is that these models, trained on vast datasets, can spot patterns and adjust your workouts accordingly. So, if your sleep is poor and your heart rate variability drops, the AI might downgrade your session to something easier.

It's this hyper-responsiveness that's part of the appeal of AI. Now, with some apps starting from as little as £3.99 a month, this coaching approach no longer seems like a luxury reserved for those with big budgets.

Digital Assistant

AI-powered tools are already built into dedicated apps, wearables like Garmin and Suunto, and indoor training platforms like Zwift, which use the technology to personalise workouts and simulate real riding conditions.

One of the latest AI platforms to enter the market is Vekta, which has partnered with World Tour teams Jayco-Alula, Arkéa-B&B Hotels, and FDJ-Suez. Founded by Paul-Antoine Girard, Vekta takes a different approach from fully automated coaching tools: rather than replacing a human coach, it positions itself as an AI-powered assistant with a "human-first" approach.

"Our goal is to help coaches and athletes save time and get more insights, rather than just build training plans," Girard says.

"When you have a coach, you think it's just a training plan and you have to do the sessions. But having a coach is also having support, motivation, or the push you need when you don't want to train. That's always going to be hard to replace with AI."

Instead, Vekta takes on the role of providing immediate feedback to athletes and their coaches. After each workout, the app tells the user whether they have improved and if they're progressing towards their goal. It also combines data from wearables - such as Garmin watches, Oura rings, or Whoop bands - to deliver real-time analysis and performance insights.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Apps like Vekta hope to offer something coaches can't: 24/7 availability. The platform will soon go a step further, introducing 'Vekta Agent' - an AI assistant to whom athletes can ask questions about their own data, such as those surrounding sleep quality or carbohydrate intake. The vision is a round-the-clock partnership, the human coach and the AI assistant working in tandem.

Bernd Eichinger, an amateur cyclist who has a coach, has been using Vekta to add a new dimension to his training. After 12 years using TrainingPeaks, he says the platform’s “AI possibilities” have brought clear, practical benefits for him and his coach. That said, his initial reaction was caution. “I was concerned that the [power] zones would not be accurate,” he admits. “I thought it might be a ‘best guess’ and that [manual] testing would be better. But I was surprised how accurate it was.”

Five AI Training Myths Busted

Myth: AI will replace human coaches. AI might be able to provide the training plan, but it won’t be able to provide the emotional support of a human coach.

Myth: AI knows everything. AI only knows the data it’s given. If that data is incomplete or inaccurate, then so is the plan.

Myth: AI creates perfect plans. The training plans are only as good as the tech behind them.

Myth: AI can predict and prevent injuries. AI cannot replace professional medical advice or the basics of self-care.

Myth: AI training is only for the pros. Many platforms are designed with all cyclists in mind, with lower price points and no need for high-tech set-ups.

Unlike standard coaching, Vekta doesn’t ask users to perform regular functional threshold power (FTP) tests to calculate heart rate or power zones. Its AI software analyses each workout, estimates the rider’s critical power, and adjusts training zones automatically. Training platforms like Zwift work in a similar way. This automation, Eichinger says, is a big advantage, effectively testing and adjusting continually: “It prevents you from spending months in the wrong zone and then regretting not having re-tested earlier.”

Alongside real-time zone adaptations, Eichinger has made use of other AI features such as side-by-side comparisons of similar sessions and data integration from other devices. He believes it’s helped him, a competitive rider, to train more intelligently.

“I’m the kind of guy who has a very strong head, so when I have a session and I feel tired, I will push through it, which is not good every day. There are days when I’d be better off stopping,” he says.

Now, if his Whoop recovery score is red or his plan suggests a lighter session, he’s more likely to listen. Thanks to AI, decisions once guided by instinct and occasional testing can be backed by continuous, data-driven insight, offering a new kind of intelligence that’s changing how athletes at every level understand performance.

Beware of over-reliance

David Bailey, head of sport science at NSN Cycling Team (previously Israel Premier Tech), believes AI is opening doors for amateur riders like Eichinger. For Bailey, the data-driven tools make training more personalised and effective, able to create quick, tailored plans for each individual. A key shift, he notes, is accessibility. “Ultimately, AI democratises sophisticated training insights, helping recreational cyclists achieve their goals more effectively and enjoyably.”

Though the technology is “still in its infancy”, Bailey sees huge potential in the years to come - from ultra-personalised training and enhanced biomechanical analysis to predictive injury prevention and even talent identification. That said, he is clear that individuals should use the technology “thoughtfully”.

(Image credit: Vetko)

“Recreational cyclists risk becoming too reliant on AI, potentially ignoring their body’s feelings,” he says. “Over-dependence on tech can overshadow internal cues, intuitive training, and body awareness. While AI offers valuable guidance, a balance is crucial.”

This caution is echoed by Sam Lloyd, a PhD researcher at the University of Strathclyde, whose work explores the use of AI in track cycling. Lloyd’s concern lies more with generative platforms like ChatGPT, an online chatbot, being used to create training plans.

“A bit of common sense should always be applied,” he says. “There’s been some evidence in the literature to say that there have been some almost impossibly hard sessions recommended by ChatGPT - so be aware of that. But the evidence isn’t there yet on how effective the training [it generates] really is.”

In contrast to his scepticism around ChatGPT written training plans, Lloyd has confidence in AI-powered platforms such as HumanGO, Garmin Coach, Whoop and Vekta. They give a clearer picture of health, he believes, and also improve how effective and confident people feel in their training.

“I recommend platforms that are based on a lot more qualitative data, rather than ChatGPT generalising from what’s found on the internet,” he says.

Coaches add value

For those new to cycling or structured training, it can be hard to know whether an AI-generated plan is too tough or too easy. Jake Hales, head coach at RideRevolution, has evaluated a range of AI tools and apps over the years, noting varying degrees of quality and accuracy.

“It could be hard for a rider to discern whether what they’re following is correct or suitable,” he says. “As the saying goes, you don’t know until you know, and a good coach can add a lot of value as a mentor and educator. It’s fair to say your average coach is more expensive than AI coaching apps, but what you’re paying for is someone’s time and years of experience."

Hales is less concerned about the presence of AI in training and more about how it’s used - or misused.

“There’s a skill and knowledge required from the user to truly get the most out of an AI programme, and I’d fear it could be quite easy to end up in a rabbit hole if the user starts steering things wrongly,” he says.

“There’s a certain level of assumption on the rider’s part that everything is always ‘correct’. A good coach is using the data but taking a much more holistic approach to things - looking at data, listening to the rider, and factoring everything else in. In theory, an AI app can also do this, but it relies on the quality of the feedback given by the rider.”

(Image credit: Future)

That’s where a human coach still has the upper hand. “One of the main reasons to get a coach is to take the thinking out of the rider’s hands and remove any emotional bias in decision-making,” Hales says.

“An athlete coaching themselves may think they are being objective about their performance, but are they really? It’s much easier for a coach to be truly objective.”

But it’s not just about objectivity - it’s about emotional intelligence. A good coach doesn’t just read your data; they read you. They’ll notice when you’re feeling flat, ask the right questions, and adjust your training not just based on numbers, but on how you’re coping mentally and emotionally.

AI can track trends in your metrics, but it can’t recognise when life stress is affecting your motivation, or when you simply need a confidence boost. That human nuance still matters - and right now, no algorithm can fully replicate it.

The Verdict

Can AI help you train better? In short: yes. Thanks to fast feedback on physical performance data, AI can make you less likely to overtrain or get injured. Still, the human side of training remains essential. Platforms that blend AI and human coaching deliver the best of both worlds.

Cycling’s Leading AI Apps
App	Description	Price
HumanGO	Hugo is a virtual coach able to revise plans in real-time.	From £14 a month
Spoked	Builds dynamic plans using ride data and subjective feedback; no power meter required	From £3.99 a month
Vekta	Offers automatic threshold analysis and dynamic training zones.	From £12 a month
Garmin Coach	Builds adaptive training plans for compatible smartwatches.	Free with smartwatch
Join	Analyses effort rating, workout data, and readiness to automatically adjust plans.	From £8.33 a month
Whoop	Whoop Coach lets users ask questions about recovery, sleep, and strain.	From £15 a month

How Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates train to be the #1 team In cycling

Zach Nehr — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:09:47 +0000

Throughout 2025, UAE Team Emirates-XRG won almost 100 races including the Tour de France, Tour de Suisse, multiple classics and three Monuments. While Tadej Pogačar was the most prolific winner on the squad, his teammates still won more than 60 races between them, more than any other team in professional cycling.

It was an incredible feat, one they may be bound to repeat in 2026 given the age of many on their roster. Pogačar is only 27, Isaac Del Toro 22, Joao Almeida 27, and Jan Christen 21.

Just a few weeks into the 2026 season and UAE Team Emirates already have six wins, the most of any professional team. When we analyze their success the first thing that comes to mind is money.

With a bigger budget than most if not all their rivals, they can buy in the best riders and offer the biggest contracts. But talent and budget don't always translate to race wins, which is why good coaching is so important.

When Tim Wellens joined UAE Team Emirates in 2023, he was a solid WorldTour rider with multiple Grand Tour stage victories. Now, he is one of the best Classics riders and domestiques in the world; reliable on all sorts of terrain, and still improving at 34 years old.

Jhonatan Narvaez was an above average rider with INEOS Grenadiers, but after one year on UAE Team Emirates, he has become one of the best puncheurs in the world and a key support rider for Pogačar in the biggest races.

So how do they do it? How does UAE Team Emirates transform these riders from above average racers to some of the strongest cyclists in the world? That's what brought me to Calpe, Spain and an analysis of their training data. While they don't post all of their rides on Strava, they share more than a few secrets. Let's take a closer look.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s December Training Camp

Gone are the days of strict Zone 2 training all winter. Now, pros are performing intervals multiple times per week at winter training camps, including VO2 Max and sprint intervals. Here is what an example week looks like at the UAE Team Emirates- December training camp.

Monday: 4hrs Zone 2
Tuesday: Gym in the morning + 2hrs Zone 2 in the afternoon
Wednesday: Aero testing at the velodrome + 4hrs Zone 2
Thursday: 4.5hrs with 3x10min torque intervals
Friday: 3hrs Zone 2
Saturday: 3.5hrs with 3x8min 40/20s Over Unders
Sunday: 1.5hrs Zone 1 coffee ride

There is a lot of information here, so let’s take it step-by-step. First, we can see that high-intensity intervals are done 2-3 times per week on top of lots of Zone two riding. The intervals are short and sharp, making up only 20-30 minutes out of a four-hour session. There is only one true rest day, with the other “recovery” days being three or four hour endurance rides. So why do they train this way?

While Zone two is a major part of the teams training schedule, it is not their only focus in winter. High intensity intervals help riders stay sharp for the long racing season ahed. Many of them race from February through to October, meaning they need to maintain race shape for almost nine months. Races are also faster, more aggressive, and more meaningful than ever. Riders cannot show up to races at 80% when they are expected to compete for the win in every race.

Maintaining race winning form all year is not just about having a big budget (Image credit: Getty Images)

Year-round intensity can make you fitter and faster purely from a physiological perspective. Of course, you must tread carefully, because high-intensity training can quickly turn into too much of a good thing. It's a lot like the high-carb revolution. Fuel with 40 grams of carbs per hour, and you won't get very far in professional cycling. Start fueling with 120g per hour, and you will be faster and stronger for longer. That means more is better, right?

Try fueling with 400g of carbs per hour and you'll probably end up like Tom Dumoulin pulling down your bibs on the side of the road, or curled up in the fetal position with stomach cramps. That is too much of a good thing, just like high intensity training. If you did 40/20s every day, it would only be a matter of time before you crashed and burned. So what is the perfect balance between high and low intensity training?

Pogačar and his team mates do a lot of zone two riding through winter (Image credit: Getty Images)

Two days of high-intensity interval training per week seems to be the best approach for most cyclists. Highly-trained and experienced riders may be able to handle 3-4 days of intensity per week, depending on the type of intervals and overall training load. But on a regular basis, two days of high-intensity is best.

We must also point out that pros can handle more than amateurs, so we don't recommend copying UAE Team Emirates-XRG workout-for-workout. Their whole lives revolve around cycling – training, nutrition, recovery, massage, physio, sleep, etc. – so they can handle more than us amateurs with jobs and family responsibilities. There is a lot of value in what Pogačar and his teammates do, so let's take a look at their workouts first, and then we can see how we can try it ourselves.

UAE Team Emirates key Workouts

There are two workouts that nearly every UAE Team Emirages rider does on a regular basis: 40/20s and torque work. We’ll dive into the details of those sessions below, but we also have to mention a never-before-seen workout posted by none other than Tadej Pogačar. Here are the workouts:

1. Torque Bursts: 7x (4min @ 70% into 35sec at 130% and 50 rpm into 15sec high cadence sprint)

Tadej Pogačar makes some of his Strava data public, giving us a glimpse into his training (Image credit: Strava)

Pogačar posted this workout only a few weeks ago, and it is one of the toughest torque sessions we have seen. There are seven repeats of high-torque intervals at VO2 Max power immediately followed by a 15-second sprint. You can see Pogačar’s speed and cadence throughout each effort, fluctuating between 20-35 kph on a steep gradient. In between each interval, aim for high Zone 2 power rather than complete recovery.

2. 40/20s Over Unders: 3x8min 40/20s (40sec at 115% into 20sec at 85%) with 30-60min between sets

Over under sessions a popular with pros and amateur alike (Image credit: Strava)

Every cyclist knows 40/20s, but few do them like UAE Team Emirates. Instead of explosive intervals, the UAE Team riders typically do 40/20s at a hard recovery pace. The 20-second intervals are quite hard, usually around Tempo or Sweetspot pace as opposed to complete recovery. You can see this in Pavel Sivakov’s workout, in the way that his speed doesn’t vary drastically during 8min of 40/20s.

If you want to try this workout at home, aim for high Zone 3 during the 20sec intervals, and VO2 Max power during the 40sec intervals. While the pros have time for 30-60min of Zone 2 between each set, you can just take 5-8min of recovery in between each set of 40/20s.

3. 3x10min Steady Torque: 3x10min Tempo at 50 rpm at 90-95% FTP with 5min recovery

Torque sessions are a key part of training for all Team Emirates riders (Image credit: Strava)

UAE Team Emirates loves torque training, and you should too. In addition to Pogačar’s explosive torque session, the team also has their riders do blocks of steady torque intervals. That means 5-10min blocks at 50 rpm, at a power output just under FTP. Well-trained riders can perform these intervals at 95% FTP, while less experienced riders can aim for more of a Sweetspot pace around 90% FTP. This session includes shorter recoveries of just five minutes between each set.

'Never trust the forecast!' These are the tips and tricks that keep the pros riding through the worst of winter

cm.bell@hotmail.co.uk (Chris Marshall-Bell) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 05:10:00 +0000

The days are short, the temperatures low and the skies more often grey than blue - but winter riding doesn't have to be a grind. With the right approach, the coldest months can become some of the most rewarding, and the training you bank now will set up every mile of your spring and summer riding.

Cycling Weekly spoke to five current and former pros who have spent countless winters toughing it out on UK roads. Their tips, tricks and hard-earned habits will help you turn winter riding from something to suffer through into something you genuinely enjoy.

Pessimism pays off-layer up

We've all done it: stepped out on a chilly morning wearing less than we should because the forecast promised warmer hours ahead. More often than not, that warmth never comes, and you spend the entire ride, if not shivering, too cold for comfort. "Being too warm is better than being too cold," says Oliver Knight of Cofidis, who is based in the Bristol area.

You can always vent heat, he reminds us: "You might think leaving the house a bit overdressed isn't the best idea, but you can always unzip and tolerate a flappy jersey." And in winter, when no one's chasing speed records, a little extra drag is a price worth paying for comfort.

Keep your friends close, your rain jacket closer

Blue skies can be deceptive, and every pro agrees: the best waterproof cycling jacket you own should accompany you on every ride, no matter how promising the forecast. Whether it's on your back or tucked into a pocket, it's your insurance policy against a suddenly grim turn in the weather. "Even in summer in England I always carry a rain jacket with me - it's like an emergency go-to, as it's great for warming you up quickly," says Devon-based Harrison Wood, now of Portuguese team Feirense-Beeceler. "The forecast might say it won't rain, but then you get caught by a heavy shower." If you've ridden in Britain, you know exactly what he means.

(Image credit: Andy Jones)

Gilet or jacket? Go for both

The French might turn their noses up, but the best gilets that are usually reserved for spring and autumn have a hidden superpower in winter. Wood shares his go-to hack: "I put a gilet on underneath a good winter jacket, so it acts like a boil-in-the-bag. It keeps your core a lot warmer, and we know that if you can do that, the rest of your body stays warm." A simple extra layer, a big boost in comfort.

A quick heads-up...

Helmets offer some protection from the cold, and a bit from the rain, but when the mercury really drops, pros know to take extra measures. Former Ineos Grenadiers road captain Luke Rowe has a couple of tried-and-tested options. "You'll feel warmer overall if your head is warm," he says. "I'd always wear a skull cap in winter, or a cotton cap - though it's a dying art, as they're not aero - which also works."

Rowe still swears by a piece of kit from 2008, back when he was a junior on the Rapha Condor-Recycling.co.uk team. "We had this Rapha cap that covered your ears and had a peak - it was the best thing I ever had," he recalls. The modern version of Rapha's peaked merino hat, the one Rowe remembers so fondly, is still available today.

(Image credit: Emma Silversides)

Five-layer the feet

Few sensations ruin a winter ride faster than freezing feet. Current British champion Millie Couzens of Fenix-Deceuninck, who spends most of her winter training in Oxfordshire, knows this struggle all too well - and has developed a few creative solutions. "I wear ski socks in winter, as cold feet are something I really struggle with," she says.

"Last year, when it was really cold, I wore socks, put my feet inside plastic bags, and added toe covers and overshoes on top of my shoes which were quite loose." That's five layers of defence. Did it do the trick? "Kinda!" she laughs. "My feet were definitely warmer than before."

Foil the cold

The old-school tips are often the best, and 2016 British champion Adam Blythe sings the praises of a ubiquitous kitchen item. "I'd wrap tinfoil over my socks, and then again on the outside of the shoes with the overshoes on top. A double layer of it," he says. Were his feet kept warm? "We believed it worked anyway," he grins. Rowe used the same tactic, and even got creative on some occasions. "I'd sometimes get normal socks and put them over the shoes, as it was cheaper than buying overshoes," he says. "It became quite cool and common, if I remember correctly."

Pocket full of spares

Hands and fingers are just as exposed to the elements as feet - arguably even more so when the rain sets in, so picking the best winter gloves for the conditions is essential. That's why Harrison Wood plans ahead, dedicating a jersey pocket to spare kit. "If it's looking quite wet, I'll wear a pair of neoprene gloves, and have spare woollen neoprene gloves in my pocket, so if it gets wet and cold I can swap them," he says. "For me, having as many emergency garments as possible in your pocket is really crucial, especially gloves."

A good cup of coffee can make or break a long ride in bad weather (Image credit: Future / Richard Butcher)

Roast those beans

On rides longer than a couple of hours, the universal advice is: always make time for a coffee stop. "I'm a big, big fan of cafe stops," Rowe says. "It gives us a chance to warm up, and more importantly it's good for the social side of the sport. Sitting round the table shooting the breeze for half an hour with a hot drink and a bit of cake is the cafe culture that we grew up on and we shouldn't leave behind." Not only does a cafe stop allow us to socialise and get hot fluids into our system, having the double effect of rehydrating and warming up the body, but it's a chance to dry out. Wafting wet gloves under the air dryers in the toilets is a staple part of a winter cyclist's life.

A little of what you fancy...

Brownie, banana cake, Bakewell tart, apple pie... the list of sweet snacks available to feed hungry cyclists mid-ride goes on. But Knight has another winter preference. "In these months you're not doing too much intensity and you're riding quite easy so your stomach is less likely to suffer if you do allow yourself a heavier treat when you stop," he says.

And what's his treat? "A sausage sandwich with ketchup. It goes down so well." This recommendation probably isn't from the pages of Cofidis's team nutritionist's book, but it pays to slacken the rules in winter. If the food provides fuel, tastes good and lifts your mood, voilá!

You need to keep drinking, even when it's cold (Image credit: Future)

Watch out for winter thirst

Cold weather can trick you into thinking you're not thirsty, but dehydration is still possible in winter. With fewer on-the-bike sips and most refuelling happening at cafe stops, having a sweet, tasty solution in the bidon can make a real difference. "Sometimes in winter you don't drink as much, so I always make sure that my drinks are high in electrolytes and carbs," says Wood. The mix helps maintain fluid balance and keeps energy levels topped up - making every mouthful count when you're less inclined to drink.

Don't let your guards down

Mudguards will keep you and your ride buddies drier for longer (Image credit: Future)

There's nothing more infuriating in winter than riding behind someone who doesn't have a set of the best bike mudguards on their bike. The road muck flicks up off their wheel and covers your bike, your face and your clothing (as well as their own). Knight pleads for everyone to invest in mudguards. "It's my biggest piece of advice make sure you've got good ones," he says. "It not only protects you and others from road spray, it also makes kit last longer and everything on the bike work a bit better."

Keep on running

The benefits of running for cyclists are well-documented, with the likes of Tadej Pogacar, Remco Evenepoel, Primoz Roglic and Mathieu van der Poel all extolling the virtues of winter running. Recently, Van der Poel ran 10km in an impressive time of 33.41. When Knight is at home on a Saturday in winter, he'll often head down to his local Parkrun. "It's full-gas for 5km, good competitiveness and it's a good way of getting some intensity into me," he says. "It's also using all the key muscles around the knees and ankles."

Gyms are dry and warm, and they'll help your riding (Image credit: Future)

Hit the gym

Every cycling team urges its riders to get into the gym at least once a week through winter - and amateurs should follow suit. Functional strength work, mobility and targeted muscle-building pay off fast. "You see improvements quite quickly and that's really motivating," Wood says. "From one week to the next you might be able to tolerate an extra 5kg during squats. Before long, it's feeling easier and your legs are not as knackered afterwards. This sort of training improves my sprinting, too, so it has a benefit when racing starts."

Knight has had the same experience. "You hit all the key muscle groups and you feel really productive," he says. "As cyclists we're novices in the gym and we're not lifting heavy weights, so you see a massive progression quite quickly. That's beneficial mentally as you're telling yourself that you're getting stronger." And when the lifting is done, Knight makes sure to finish with heat exposure. "There are so many studies into the benefits of heat training, so I spend a bit of time in the sauna afterwards."

Let the weather set the schedule

Most of us can't cherry-pick ride times the way pros can - but we can borrow their mindset. Couzens adapts her plan rather than forcing sessions through foul conditions. "If the weather is bad, I move my training around, and bring my rest day forward rather than pushing through bad weather," she says.

"If it's forecast to stay fine for only a few hours, then I will do shorter intervals that day." The takeaway is simple: protect the workload, but stay flexible. Winter rarely plays nice, so reshuffling sessions is not failure - it's strategy. And when the forecast is grim for days on end, the turbo trainer (or a static bike in the gym) is always there to keep the momentum rolling.

Don't place too much faith in the forecast

We've all had a day from hell - a ride that turned into a nightmare and left you questioning why you even ride a bike. Fear not, the pros have them too. Millie Couzens remembers a winter ride a few years ago when the weather failed to follow the forecast. "It was meant to stay dry, but I went out and it rained the whole time. Everywhere was flooded, and we had to keep changing the route.

At one point we went off-road to avoid a flooded road, and we ended up cycling into an even bigger flood. The ride was meant to be three hours, but we finished five hours later and I couldn't feel any part of my body - everything was numb." What did Couzens learn? "That better route planning is essential. Avoid the places that are more susceptible to flooding, and always have an escape route home." Harrison Wood tells a similar tale of forecast failure:

"Last winter we went out on a club ride and it was meant to be an alright day, with no rain in the forecast. Fifteen minutes after starting, it was torrential rain. I only had a normal pair of gloves on - not waterproof - and by the time we got to the clubhouse my hands were completely frozen. I had to wear a spare pair of socks on my hands just to get home. It barely helped - my hands were white and in awful pain by the time we got back."

'You've heard of junk miles? Well I've invented junk intensity' – Dr Hutch on why you should ditch training and just go for a ride

Michael Hutchinson — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 08:00:00 +0000

I’ve decided to review my own 2025 season earlier than usual this year, mainly to put it out of its misery. It’s a B minus at best. A “Needs work”, or a “Michael is easily distracted and this year completely failed to make the most of his admittedly limited abilities.”

My target-setting was non-existent. The last few years have seen the careful selection of things like championship races which I obviously wasn’t going to win, but which at least provided a bit of structure for the mediocrity and, when the day arrived, a reminder not to be too ambitious. This year I set out to “enjoy a few local races”, and that’s not a target, it’s just an excuse for a few beers afterwards.

As if to prove the importance of target setting to a successful season, my training matched the targeting perfectly. Other than one or two social rides, I didn't ride for longer than 90 minutes between December and July. I managed better than that the year I broke my hip, and indeed better than that while I still had a broken hip and lived in fear of getting a puncture because while I could ride a bike I couldn’t stand up unsupported.

I keep setting out on what were intended to be two-hour rides, planned as a stepping stone to some three-hour rides, and coming home after an hour and a bit. I’m in a destructive cycle where I don’t feel like I’m doing enough riding, so to make up for it I ride harder. That means there’s less of a straightforward out-in-the-countryside pleasure in it, so I do less again.

I don’t do it hard enough to compensate, by the way, just hard enough to put myself off the whole idea and keep the rides short. You’ve heard of “junk miles?” as a description of distance covered to no great training purpose? Well, I’ve invented “junk intensity”.

I was actually at my fittest at the end of February, because I spent most of the winter just riding e-races against random fields of strangers from all over the world. The races were short, and, more often than not, very hard indeed. Then, when spring arrived, I started proper training, which ended up being half-hearted rides focussed mainly on swerving round potholes.

I’m still not nearly as bad as I deserve to be. This has been the story of my cycling life – I’ve complained for years that I never get as much benefit from training as I feel I should – long months of carefully structured work produce gains much smaller than I’ve seen in others, even others that I’ve coached.

But I’ve always been less grateful for the opposite effect, which is that when I don’t bother training I never fall as far as I should. Last year I did some real training, and I could manage a very credible 405 watts for twenty minutes. This year I’ve trained like a moron and I can still do 395.

You might feel like this is living the dream – and to some extent it is. But it’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to motivate myself. I don’t get much from training that I don’t already have. I imagine being incredibly rich has a similar effect on your work ethic, but I also reckon being a billionaire would have compensations that comfortably eclipse being able to beat a Belgian called something like ZZZTopMerckx to the top of an imaginary mountain on Zwift.

In a way the answer is obvious – give up on training and just go for a ride. In many ways that’s the purpose of my earlier than usual season review. It’s a respectable way to bin the whole thing and just have fun.

Of course, that is probably the moment that I’ll suddenly be inspired to do some long rides and finally get some form together. ZZZTopMerckx, you’ve been warned. I’m coming for you.

Great inventions of cycling: sweat

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Sweat is a liquid emitted from pores on the skin of humans (and a few other animals) in response to a number of stimuli, including high temperatures, physical exertion and fear. All of these are highly relevant to the sort of sportsperson who enjoys riding in the summer, riding hard in the summer, and just occasionally gets things horribly wrong. (Who among us has not squirted sweat from every pore instantaneously on realising they’ve committed themselves to a 30 kph corner at 50 kph?)

Humans developed the ability to sweat around 2 million years ago, around the same point we lost our fur. It provided a valuable means of thermoregulation in hot African environments.

In general, the fitter you are, the more you can sweat, and the more dilute your sweat will be. A top sweater can lose up to four litres of sweat an hour. This doesn’t sound all that much, but when dripped onto the floor of a warm public gym, is sufficient to get you banned for life.

Sweating works simply by allowing evaporation off the skin, which cools the blood vessels which funnel cooler blood back into the core of the body. The average human has two-to-four million sweat glands. I often suspect that cyclists have many, many more.

The crown joules: Why 3,000kJ is the new magic number in cycling performance

James Witts — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What does it take to secure a contract with a WorldTour team? Single-digit body fat? Through-the-roof endurance? Muscles chiselled from granite? All these are useful, but what about something more specific and measurable? For that, we turn to an old metric, a new term and a recent revelation.

“Our experience suggests that the rider’s performance after 3,000kJ of work done is where we should be looking to identify quality juniors who could make it at WorldTour level,” says John Wakefield, director of development at the Red-Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe under-23 development team. “That’s a higher number than we expected when we started this project.” On a professional level, this development will help scouts refine data search. At recreational level, discovering the impact of kilojoules – that is, spent energy – on your performance will help you beat fatigue and race stronger. All in all, it’s time to talk workload, durability and why 3,000 is the magic number – for budding professionals, anyway.

Race-winning metric

Remco Evenepoel’s transfer from Soudal Quick-Step to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe for the 2026 season somewhat eclipsed the team’s signing of four other riders, including the Belgian’s Quick-Step team-mate Mattia Cattaneo, and Gianni Vermeersch from Alpecin-Deceuninck. The latter duo, at 34 and 32 years old respectively, are proven on the WorldTour, unlike young guns, Brit Callum Thornley and Aussie Luke Tuckwell, both stepping up from the German outfit’s under-23 development team, the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies, which launched at Continental level earlier this year. At time of writing, Thornley had won twice in 2025 – at the British National under-23 TT Championships and the time-trial stage at the Sibiu Cycling Tour in Romania. Tuckwell’s best result was second on GC at the Giro Next Gen. But beyond race results, what made these two riders such promising prospects in the eyes of the team’s selectors?

VO2max and power-profile data remain important, of course, but energy spent – measured in kilojoules – has become the magic number in talent-spotting. The epiphany came at the World Championships in Zurich last year, when Italian Lorenzo Finn of the Red Bull junior team, Grenke Auto Eder, won junior road race gold. The analytics team would later discover that when he rode away from Spain’s Héctor Álvarez with 20km to go, Finn had already burnt through 3,000kJ. “Until then, the research had suggested around 2,000kJ was the threshold for identifying good junior and under-23 talent,” says Wakefield. “But this performance told us 3,000kJ was the benchmark we should be looking at.”

Lorenzo Finn made a splash at last year's Worlds, winning junior race road gold (Image credit: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

Hours before the real race starts. Take Evenepoel’s 2023 Liège-Bastogne-Liège triumph. The Belgian completed the 257km parcours in 6:16.11, averaging 41.3kph (25.7mph) at a cadence of 93rpm, having burned 5,965kcal. How does this relate to kilojoules? One kilocalorie equals 4.184kJ, so Evenepoel’s 5,965kcal equates to 24,975kJ of total energy expended. But viewed through a cycling lens, that figure assumes 100% efficiency – as if every joule burned became forward motion. In reality, cyclists are only 20-25% efficient, with most energy lost as heat. Assuming midpoint efficiency of 22.5%, Evenepoel’s true mechanical output comes out at 5,615kJ. We don’t have access to his power file from LBL, but we do know that the Belgian’s race-winning move came with 33km to go on the Côte de la Retoute, meaning he delivered a peloton-breaking burst of power after he’d already done 5,000kJ of work. If you want to drop the world’s best, that’s what it takes.

Going hard, then harder

How does this knowledge of work done translate to training objectives? To find out, we turn to another Liège winner, Dan Martin. “At the start of my career, we’d separate long rides and shorter, interval-heavy rides,” he says. “But later that changed to long, hard rides with intense efforts at the end – to mimic the intensity patterns of races. My coach and I achieved that via training to kilojoules for goal races.” The focus switched to developing performance after a huge amount of work had already been done. “Liège in 2013, when I won, was the first year I’d really focused on matching kilojoule count in training to the race itself,” Martin adds. “While my competitors might have been doing six or seven hours easy, I’d ride pretty hard for four hours followed by two hours of motopacing with sprints at the end.” Martin’s benchmark as a top WorldTour pro was 5,000kJ, beyond which he’d repeat hard two- to three-minute efforts to match the demands of the Ardennes Classics. “I’d train harder than the profile demanded, in search of that bit extra.”

Callum Thornley is a young talent under development in the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies team (Image credit: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com)

Ambitious US riders would train harder than their local races demanded, explains Allen. “There was no choice,” he says. “Once they’d secured a contract in Europe, their races would be longer and more competitive… Our US riders are used to doing 2,500 to 3,000kJ of work [in a race], whereas the European events can be over 5,000kJ. That’s a huge gap, so we had to do a tremendous amount of additional work to prepare them for Europe.” Does this mean we should all be focusing on kilojoules? “The problem with kilojoules in isolation is that it doesn’t take into account intensity,” says Allen. He points out that doing 3,000kJ of work by pootling along at 10mph is very different from doing 3,000kJ-worth of tempo.

Being able to perform after having ripped through 3,000kJ represents excellent durability – the concept of maintaining power after prolonged physical exertion. At the highest level, this counts for more than a rider’s performance when fresh. “It’s a fancy name for the concept we’ve used for years: stamina,” says US coach Hunter Allen, co-author of the best-selling Training and Racing with a Power Meter, “but whether you call it stamina, fatigue resistance or durability, it’s all about matching the demands of a race. Certainly at the professional level, you’re often riding at tempo or sweetspot for three, four or even five hours before the real race starts.”

How amateurs can use kilojoule benchmarks

So what does this mean for amateur riders – how can you use kilojoules as a useful benchmark? To start with, you’ll need a power meter. Then perform two tests: one when fresh, and one when fatigued. For the fresh test, warm up for 20-30 minutes, then ride a 20-minute max effort, akin to a time trial. Record your average power output for this effort. On another day, ideally in similar conditions, ride steadily in zones two to three until your head unit shows 2,000kJ of work (or 2,500kJ if you’re very well trained). For most riders, that’s around two-and-a-half to three hours of riding. Spin easy for five to 10 minutes, then repeat the 20-minute effort, noting your average power for this 20 minutes. Now compare your fresh versus fatigued 20-minute power. A difference of 5% or less means you’re very durable; 5-10% is moderate durability; a drop of over 10% between the two shows your durability needs some work.

Bear in mind that weight is a major factor here. A lighter rider is likely to have to ride for longer to hit their kilojoules benchmark. A heavier rider might hit 2,000kJ in two hours at endurance pace, whereas a smaller rider might take three hours. A small female rider who weighs 50kg, for example, might be better off setting herself a 1,500kJ target. “Age is also a consideration,” adds Allen. “As you grow older, your VO2max drops, making it harder to sustain the higher watts needed to rack up a workload of 2,500kJ.”

Broadly speaking, recreational riders who do less than five hours of training a week are likely to find their durability challenged after 1,500kJ of work. An amateur racer who trains at least eight hours a week should be able to perform quite well beyond 2,000kJ. High-level amateurs and budding professionals should be targeting that magical 3,000kJ figure. At the top level, the best WorldTour pros are able to produce race-winning efforts even after 5,000-6,000kJ of work.

How to up your limit

How do you raise your kilojoules bar for greater durability? First, by understanding that kilojoules are basically a proxy for aerobic capacity. Tolerating heavy workloads requires you to do big volumes of Zone 2 work – as popularised by Tadej Pogačar. However, this advice comes with an important caveat from Allen. “Your training needs to take into consideration time restraints,” he says. “The professionals train 20-30 hours a week, which means they’re doing around six hours of intervals each week. That’s a lot.” He believes amateurs doing six to 10 hours a week should not aim to replicate the 80/20 split of high and low intensity. “Most amateurs simply don’t have the luxury of riding at Zone 2 for that much time. Instead, you need to spend more time at tempo and sweetspot pace, just beneath your threshold, as well as VO2max and FTP intervals. This will boost your ability to burn fat, sparing glycogen [stored glucose] for the harder parts of your race.”

Nutrition also comes into the kilojoules equation, namely on-the-bike feeding. A major limiter of performance beyond muscular fatigue is fuel availability from glucose and glycogen. If you’re not sufficiently fuelled, the body shifts more toward fat oxidation, which is great for endurance pace but not great when looking to hit threshold or sprint efforts. That’s why, on longer rides, you should consume 60-90g of carbohydrates per hour.

Evenepoel's race-winning move at 2023's Liège-Bastogne-Liège came after he'd already ripped through 5,000kJ (Image credit: Getty Images)

Being able to belt out high power after a hefty amount of work – whether it’s 2,000kJ, the magic 3,000kJ for aspiring pros, or 5,000kJ for superstars like Evenepoel – is the essence of race-winning performance. Understanding and tracking your kilojoule workload brings clarity to what used to be guesswork, revealing how long you can truly perform before fatigue sets in. Whether you’re chasing road race success or simply want to put your mates to the sword in the final miles of long rides, the principle is the same: build the engine, fuel it well, and teach it to keep firing when the tank feels empty. Get that balance right, and you’ll not only raise your kilojoule ceiling – you’ll redefine what you thought was possible on the bike.

Monster workloads, mega numbers

71,500kJ: Estimated total mechanical energy expenditure of a Tour de France rider across the 21 stages

76,000kcal: Estimated total metabolic energy expenditure of a Tour de France rider across the 21 stages

6,000kJ: Approximate amount of work done by a rider at the sharp end of a one-day Classic such as Paris-Roubaix

6.5%: Drop-off in 20-minute TT performance by well-trained amateurs after a defined prior workload, versus 12.5% for weaker riders – according to a 2025 study by Barsumyan et al.

60g: Amount of carbohydrates per hour needed to extend your durability

5,000KJ: Workload beyond which the world’s best riders are still able to launch and sustain efforts at close to their ‘fresh’ FTP

The full, original version of this feature was published in the 30 October 2025 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine's Direct.

What if everything we thought we knew about training intensities was wrong?

Rob Kemp — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 19:25:00 +0000

The mantra of polarised training is ‘go easy or go hard – never in between’. But what if that’s all wrong? Rob Kemp meets the coach who says the middle is where the magic happens

For more than two decades, polarised training has dominated endurance sports. The model – popularised by physiologist Stephen Seiler – demands that athletes spend about 80% of their training at low intensity, and 20% at very high intensity. Anything in the middle, the theory goes, is no man’s land: too hard to recover from, too easy to stimulate real adaptations.

It’s a simple, compelling message – especially in an era obsessed with data purity and perfect zone distribution. But what if everything we thought we knew about how to divvy up our effort across the week was wrong?

Tempo training is the key to real-world endurance (Image credit: Unknown)

Steve Neal, a Canadian coach with 37 years in endurance sport, doesn’t believe in a single “one-size-fits-all” model. Instead, he adapts training to the season and the athlete’s specific needs – sometimes pyramidal, sometimes polarised. The key, Neal says, is selecting the right method to move fitness in the desired direction.

While pyramidal training often emphasises tempo and so-called “middle” intensities, Neal doesn’t view this mid-level work zone as wasted effort. Used correctly, it can be the engine room of real-world performance.

“WHEN I LOOK AT RIDERS’ DATA, WHAT I OFTEN SEE IS PYRAMIDAL TRAINING I OFTEN SEE NOT POLARISED”
Steve Neal, Canadian coach

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and whenever I look at riders’ data – whether it’s in TrainingPeaks, INSCYD, or Xert – what I often see is pyramidal training, not polarised,” Neal says. “People talk about 80/20, but in reality, when you analyse it properly with power data, my athletes are often at more like 95/5. Even when they’re racing stage races, doing two-and-a-half to three hours a day for a week, they very rarely break 90/10.”

If Neal is right, the implications are huge. Most of us might be telling ourselves we’re doing polarised training while actually implementing a structure with a broader base, heftier middle and much sharper tip – better described as pyramidal. Even at pro level, the roots of the polarised model may be shakier than most realise.

(Image credit: Photos ANDY JONES & ANDREW SYDENHAM)

Neal’s approach blends old-school coaching wisdom with new-school ideas. His mentor Juerg Feldmann, a Swiss speed skater who later coached Canadian mountain bike world champions and Olympians, taught him to combine rigorous fundamentals with innovative methods. “Some of the methods I learned from Juerg years ago are only just being discussed widely today. For example, respiration [breath] training – he was using it over 30 years ago.”

Neal has built on these innovative foundations. Unlike many modern coaches, he doesn’t take training software outputs at face value. “I think software does a great job of the higher-intensity training zones, but I still prefer to use lactate testing to dial in the training below threshold.”

At the heart of Neal’s philosophy – and his success in raising the performance of elite riders across varied disciplines – is pyramidal training. He has found that this approach especially suits athletes aged over 40, who make up 95% of his coaching clients.

At its core, pyramidal training means plenty of easy endurance work, a solid dose of tempo or “middle” intensity, and just a small amount of hard effort at threshold or VO2max. Picture a pyramid: a wide aerobic base that narrows as intensity rises, with that middle zone getting real attention.

Unlike more strictly polarised models, pyramidal training doesn’t avoid the “grey zone” – it makes smart use of it.

Neal’s cyclists use pyramidal training to build aerobic durability and fatigue resistance, improving their ability to ride at or near race pace for extended periods. “The key,” Neal says, “is looking at the actual intensities that will drive performance. Many riders and coaches neglect to consider this, and instead train in zones that look right on paper but don’t match what racing actually demands.” He points out that in stage races and Gran Fondos, riders often spend hours at tempo, which for Neal sits within Zone 3.

(Image credit: Unknown)

He defines his zones by heart rate (see box), refined with lactate, metabolic, or muscle oxygen testing where possible. When he prescribes pyramidal training, the focus is on Zone 2a/2b endurance and Zone 3 tempo, with just enough high intensity to maintain race readiness. This differs sharply from polarised training, which avoids tempo almost entirely. “One of the biggest misconceptions is that Zones 2 and 3 are fundamentally different,” Neal explains. “They’re not – it depends on the person.

That’s why I measure LT1, LT2, and a point in between that I call the ‘balance point’.” That balance point, he says, can shift dramatically even when the thresholds themselves barely move. “Sometimes I only move an athlete’s LT1 or LT2 by five watts across a whole season, but that balance point can shift by 30 or 40 watts – and that’s what makes people faster.” In other words, the athlete’s usable range of performance expands, and they are able to ride at closer to threshold (LT2) for longer periods of time, even if the threshold itself doesn’t move.

Have we been getting it all wrong?

For Neal, the entire polarised model rests on a methodological error. “Polarised training was studied at the elite level in rowing, running and cycling – but only using heart rate,” he says. “The problem is, heart rate is usually a zone lower than power.” He alludes to the fact that heart rate doesn’t always match how hard the legs are pushing: it lags behind changes in effort, and drifts with fatigue or heat.

“So those studies probably just showed what we now call pyramidal training. That’s why I think comparing pyramidal and polarised is misleading – because most of what we think we know about polarised is wrong. What I really notice in my athletes isn’t a lack of low-intensity work, but that the supposed 15–20% above threshold just isn’t there.” That’s a bold claim, but Neal has evidence on his side. Analyse a year of training from almost any serious rider, he says, and you’ll find pyramidal, not polarised, distributions.

“Even elite athletes people assume are polarised are actually pyramidal if you track them properly.”

So what does pyramidal training actually achieve? Neal points to three key adaptations. First, aerobic development: by training near the balance point, where fat and carbohydrate contribute in roughly equal measure, riders can push their aerobic system to become more efficient. Second, durability:

“If I can get someone’s tempo power closer to 75% of their VO2max power, they will race better,” Neal says. “Even if their VO2max number drops slightly, their ability to sustain power over time improves dramatically.” Finally, metabolic efficiency: riding long at tempo teaches the body to manage fuel better, delaying fatigue.

TRAINING ZONES

As defined by Steve Neal

Zone 1: Recovery
Zone 2a: Endurance, 60–70% max HR
Zone 2b: Steady endurance, 65–75% max HR
Zone 3: Tempo, or “lactate balance point,” 78–83% max HR
Zone 4: Threshold, 85–90% max HR
Zone 5: VO2max, 90–95% max HR
Zone 6: Sprint/ torque efforts

The gains may not show up as flashy VO2max increases, but they win races. “If someone has a VO2max power of 350 watts, I don’t want only their five-minute power to go up,” Neal explains. “I want their tempo or balance point to be 75% of that, i.e. around 262 watts. If it was 220 watts to begin with, and I can move it up by 40 watts, they’ll race faster – even if their VO2max power drops.”

Who benefits most from pyramidal training? Neal says masters athletes with limited hours see huge gains. “One of my riders is 45, Canadian marathon MTB champion, always top three in cross-country,” he says. “Over a year, his threshold has gone from 300 watts to around 310–320. That might not seem huge, but year after year, at his age, still winning – it’s massive.”

Neal gives a UK example: Sam, a new dad, working full-time, training just eight to nine hours a week. For two years he stuck with endurance and tempo, and became rock-solid. “He could sit at 300 watts in Zone 3, breathing steady, heart rate under 83%, and call it easy. That’s durability. That’s why pyramidal training works.”

The risk, Neal cautions, isn’t just overtraining, it’s focusing too much on threshold work without balance. “Simply piling on threshold sessions doesn’t actually improve threshold,” he explains. Done to excess, or executed poorly, that kind of training can also push an athlete toward being overly glycolytic, eroding their ability to go long and ride strong in the tempo zone. Research has shown that excessive threshold work can blunt gains at that intensity. Instead, riders should build fitness at sub-threshold, says Neal, pushing the ceiling up from below.

Middle-intensity rides bring your threshold up from below (Image credit: Unknown)

Holding back requires patience and discipline. Some riders simply find pyramidal training boring, concedes Neal, recalling a talented UK rider who improved 8-10% in three months on his system – but quit because he didn’t want to skip smash-fest group rides.

Making middle-intensity training part of the weekly schedule is nonnegotiable for Neal – it’s where performance is built. The easy miles keep you steady; the all-out efforts sharpen you. But the work that makes you faster, stronger, and harder to crack? That happens in between.

After two decades of polarised orthodoxy, that idea may feel heretical. Yet the data – and the riders – keep proving him right. The truth is that real-world cycling isn’t tidy or binary; it’s a continuum of effort, fatigue and adaptation. Somewhere between too easy and too hard lies the zone that holds it all together – not a grey area, but gold.

More middle ground worked wonders for me

An early block of pyramidal training can build the base for later success (Image credit: Unknown)

Cameron Nicholls, 41, from the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia recounts how switching from polarised training to a more middle-heavy pyramidal model paid dividends.

“I used to turn my nose up at sweetspot training. I was strictly team Zone 2 and high-intensity, plus VO2max and big-gear efforts. Nothing in the middle. I spent most of my training at low intensity and the rest in the hurt locker.

“After deciding to try something new, I worked with coach Ryan Thomas and adopted a hybrid approach. The first six weeks were pyramidal, and the remaining six weeks were polarised. In the first six weeks, I was mainly doing Zone 2 rides and sweetspot efforts, sitting in the grey somewhere between Zones 3 and 4.

“Coming from a polarised model, it was not a training philosophy I had considered. But ‘no man’s land’ wasn’t as bad as I thought. In the remaining six weeks, we ramped up the intensity and added VO2max and anaerobic HIIT sessions. My bread-and-butter Zone 2 rides were always maintained.

“At 41, I achieved personal bests in three of four key power-to-weight segments, and I had great racing results. Whether the pyramidal approach or the hybrid model takes the credit, I can’t say for sure. But it’s the only thing I really changed in the last 10 years. It delivered some of the best results of my career.”

PYRAMID IN PRACTICE

So what does pyramidal training look like in practice?

● Base phase: Lots of Zone 2 endurance, with controlled amounts of Zone 3 tempo.

● Build phase: For a rider training around eight hours per week, aim to lift tempo volume to three to four hours weekly, while keeping maintenance doses of high intensity every week or two. Depending on the athlete and the demands of their target event, this phase may also involve backing off some tempo in favour of more endurance work, or shifting focus towards race-specific intensities.

● Race season: Hold the pyramidal distribution, layering in specific intensity for events.

● A typical week for an 8-10-hour amateur might include:

- 2-3 steady endurance rides (Zones 2a/2b)
- 2 tempo sessions (Zone 3, 45-90 minutes)
- 1 group ride or race-specific session (touching Zone 4/5)
- 1 easy spin or recovery ride

● Regular testing is crucial, Neal insists. “Many of my athletes own a lactate meter and/or a muscle oxygen sensor,” he says. “Home testing helps them track where they’re at while saving money on lab sessions.”

Marginal gains or major risks? Introducing and assessing cycling's latest training hacks

Rob Kemp — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 09:52:56 +0000

Cycling has, since the Team Sky era, been associated with so-called marginal gains, but the rise of ‘biohacking’ takes the envelope-pushing to new extremes. From glucose sensors to DNA tests, today’s riders are experimenting with science, tech and sometimes sheer gimmickry in pursuit of an edge. Some methods are grounded in physiology, others in hype – and separating the two isn’t always easy. We break down the most talked-about hacks, and ask if they’re best avoided or actually worth a try.

Blood flow restriction (BFR) training

What it is: If you’ve scrolled through Instagram reels of athletes training with thick straps wrapped tightly around their limbs, you’ve probably seen blood flow restriction (BFR) in action. It involves using specialised cuffs or bands to partially limit blood flow to working muscles during exercise.

How it works: “BFR works by creating a hypoxic environment – much like altitude or high-intensity training – which triggers hormonal responses, boosts capillary density, and sharpens neuromuscular signalling,” explains Andy Page, strength and conditioning coach with PureSportsMedicine. By restricting oxygen to type I fibres, a rider upregulates aerobic enzymes while also recruiting type II fibres earlier.

(Image credit: Hytro bands)

Why it’s trending: Among elite cyclists, BFR has evolved from a niche recovery tool to an established part of structured training. “I started using BFR for recovery – flushing out muscles and getting nutrients into cells,” explains Joe Truman, Team GB track sprinter who uses Hytro BFR equipment. “Over time, it developed into a hypertrophy [muscle growth] tool. As a sprinter, muscle mass is a big deal, so BFR became a huge part of my gym work. If I do a BFR primer in the morning, my lactic endurance in the evening session is noticeably better.”

Be aware of the risks: Done incorrectly, BFR can raise the risk of blood clots, nerve damage or even serious muscle injury. “BFR raises vascular resistance and afterload, which may drive heart adaptations that improve pumping capacity and oxygen delivery,” says Professor Jose Calbet, physical education specialist at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. “But the evidence is still limited. BFR may also trigger adaptations in electrolyte handling, which could help delay fatigue, though more research is needed, especially in elite athletes.”

Should you use it? “The benefit may be higher for lower-tier cyclists than in elite riders who have less room for improvement,” adds Calbet. “Nonetheless, VO2max may be improved in elite cyclists with BFR – but we lack information regarding the effects in the very best cyclists.”

BFR isn’t just for sprinters – it may boost endurance too. “Normally, you need really hard sessions to get big endurance gains,” says Page. “With BFR, you can get those same benefits at lower intensity and with less time on the bike. Studies show riders using BFR improved their VO2max by 6% and could ride 15% longer before fatigue compared to those training without it.”

Cold plunge therapy

(Image credit: UAE Team Emirates-XRG)

What it is: Cold therapy comes in two main forms: whole-body cryotherapy (WBC), which involves stepping into a subzero chamber for two to four minutes, and cold-water immersion (CWI), which means dipping into 10-15°C water for up to 15 minutes.

How it works: “Cryotherapy reduces post-exercise soreness and perceived effort in later sessions,” says Dr Laura Wilson, exercise scientist with the London Sport Institute. “It’s been shown to reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), lower perceived exertion in subsequent training, and may also dampen the inflammatory response linked to exercise-induced muscle damage.”

Why it’s trending: Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar uses ice pools after hot stages – more for the psychological boost than the physical benefit. “Cold plunges may also sharpen the mind,” suggests sports psychologist Tom Haines, pointing out that enduring something uncomfortable builds resilience that carries into training.

Be aware of the risks: Rapid immersion can cause shock, hypothermia, or even cardiac arrest, especially in those with underlying conditions. Timing is also key: overusing ice baths may blunt the inflammation needed for adaptation.

Should you use it? “The benefits may apply across levels, depending on the intensity of the workout,” says Wilson. “If a cyclist completed a session that was of a higher intensity or longer duration than normal, they would likely experience increased soreness. By utilising cryotherapy after the training session, these symptoms could be attenuated.”

DNA-based training and nutrition

(Image credit: Bahrain Victorious)

What it is: Fitness companies now offer genetic testing kits claiming to personalise workouts, recovery needs, and even carb tolerance.

How it works: “Genes are sections of your DNA that tell your body how to grow, repair, and adapt. Everyone has the same ‘exercise genes’,” explains Dr Henry Chung, lecturer in physiology and nutrition at the University of Essex. “But the specific version – or genotype – you inherit can affect how you respond to training.”

Take the ACTN3 gene, often called the ‘speed gene’. It helps produce a protein found in fast-twitch muscle fibres, key for power and sprinting. There are three versions: RR gives you the full benefits for speed and power; RX is a weaker version; XX doesn’t produce the protein, meaning less raw power – but more slow-twitch fibres, helping endurance instead.

“Everyone has a mix of different exercise genotypes, so your personal blend can influence your response to training,” says Chung. “Even if a group of cyclists follows the exact same training – same rides, same intensity, same conditions – people still improve and adapt at different rates.” This inter-individual response is partly explained by genetics.

Why it’s trending: Bahrain Victorious partnered with GenePlanet to integrate DNA analysis into their performance strategy. The collaboration reportedly helped riders understand factors like optimal nutrition, recovery patterns, and how they process carbs. In Dr Chung’s research on lower-limb strength, genetics explained up to 72% of variation in responses to a 10-week leg programme. “If the average gain was 20% in leg strength, some riders might only gain 10%, and much of that difference comes down to genetics,” he says. “For aerobic fitness, the effect is smaller: genetics explained around 44% of the variation, translating to only ~1.7% of total gains.”

Be aware of the risks: Focusing too much on a DNA report can hold you back. “Genetics is just one piece of the puzzle,” Chung warns.

Should you use it? “For everyday cyclists, the available gains would mean only a tiny difference, but for elite athletes, even a 1% edge can be the difference between winning a medal or not.” Chung adds another caveat: “Genetics only explains part of why some riders improve faster than others – having great genes won’t help if you skip training or recovery.”

Carbon monoxide rebreathing

What it is: This one sounds like science fiction – and with good reason. Carbon monoxide (CO) rebreathing involves inhaling controlled doses of a deadly gas to measure haemoglobin levels and, theoretically, to simulate the hypoxic effects of altitude.

How it works: “In a nutshell, it’s a substitute for altitude training,” says Dr Jeffrey Sankoff, a Colorado-based emergency room physician and triathlete (TriDoc podcast). “It augments the effects of training at altitudes.” Haemoglobin is crucial in transporting oxygen to muscles, delaying fatigue and helping performance. The test is usually done at the start and end of altitude training camps using a device connected to oxygen and carbon monoxide supplies.

Why it’s trending: WorldTour teams linked with this practice – prior to the UCI voting to ban the use of repeated carbon monoxide rebreathing equipment – called it safe when performed by experts.

Be aware of the risks: As Sankoff bluntly puts it: “The risk is death. I don’t think I can be any clearer than that.” Even small errors in dosing or monitoring can be fatal. The UCI banned repeated CO rebreathing in 2025, allowing it only in strict medical settings for diagnostic purposes.

Should you use it? “Its benefits have been exaggerated in the lay press,” says Sankoff. “In studies I’ve seen reported, very few differences were found between the altitude group and the group who trained at altitude and breathed CO. Differences that would be trivial for the average age-group cyclist.”

(Image credit: Future/Andy Jones)

Biohacking and ketones

What it is: Biohacking in sport covers a spectrum from the sensible (tracking sleep or HRV) to the extreme (gene editing or DIY biology). In cycling, one of the most debated biohacks of recent years has been exogenous ketones.

How it works: Ketones are compounds produced by the liver when carbohydrate availability is low, such as during fasting or prolonged endurance exercise. In this state, muscles, the heart, and the brain all switch to ketones as an alternative fuel source.

Why it’s trending: Visma-Lease a Bike, Soudal Quick-Step, and Alpecin-Deceuninck have incorporated ketone supplements into their nutrition strategies. Exogenous ketones – usually taken as a liquid ester ‘shot’ costing £30-40 – aim to shortcut the fat-to-fuel process by raising ketone levels in the blood without the need for carb restriction.

Be aware of the risks: The UCI has not banned ketone usage after recent studies allayed fears around safety and significant performance enhancement. But some scientists remain unsettled, dosing protocols are unclear, and side effects – especially with cheaper ketone salts – can include stomach issues and impaired performance.

Should you use it? Some research suggests ketones may speed up glycogen resynthesis, reduce inflammation and promote protein synthesis. Combined with the cost, though, ketones are a questionable investment for amateurs. Even Visma’s sports director Grischa Niermann has gone on record to say that ketones are “just a small part of the team’s complex performance puzzle” rather than a miracle fix.

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM)

(Image credit: Andy Turner )

What it is: Continuous glucose monitoring uses a small sensor inserted under the skin to track glucose levels in the interstitial fluid continuously. Originally developed for people with diabetes, it’s increasingly used by elite riders to monitor fuelling and recovery in real time, although they're not allowed in-race, yet.

How it works: The device measures glucose trends 24/7 and sends data to a phone or head unit. “Athletes can see how meals, ride intensity and even sleep affect glucose levels. Coaches and nutritionists then use these trends to fine-tune fuelling strategies before, during and after training,” explains Dr Laurent Bannock, founder and director of the Institute of Performance Nutrition.

Why it’s trending: Teams including Ineos Grenadiers have trialled CGMs as part of their nutrition science setups. “For professionals, a dip in blood glucose mid-race can be catastrophic. CGM helps avoid hypoglycaemia, optimise carbohydrate intake on the bike, and evaluate recovery overnight,” says Bannock.

Be aware of the risks: CGMs can lag behind blood glucose during rapid changes, leading to misleading readings. Overinterpretation of data can foster obsessive fuelling habits (so-called glucorexia). “For most riders, a solid nutrition strategy guided by hunger, recovery and structured carb timing may be more practical than constant glucose tracking,” insists Bannock.

Should you use it? Evidence for performance gains in non-diabetic athletes is mixed. “Some research shows CGM can help prevent energy crashes, but no study has proven it directly boosts metrics like power output,” says Dr Bannock. “For amateurs, the £80-120/month cost and the risk of over-analysing normal glucose fluctuations may outweigh the benefits.”

Max-volume Zone 2

What it is: Zone 2 refers to riding at low-to-moderate intensity – roughly 60–70% of maximum heart rate or 65–75% of FTP. It’s gained buzz recently, with some suggesting you should do as much of it as possible.

How it works: “At this intensity, muscles rely heavily on fat oxidation and mitochondrial activity,” explains Dr Iñigo San Millán, trainer at UAE Team Emirates. “Zone 2 improves metabolic flexibility, lactate clearance and aerobic efficiency – the foundations of endurance. It teaches the body to spare glycogen so athletes can go harder, for longer.”

Why it’s trending: Pogačar devotes hours to it: Zone 2 builds the “base engine” that lets them sustain repeated high-intensity efforts on climbs and in time trials.

Be aware of the risks: But more isn’t always better. Excessive Zone 2 can pile on fatigue, limit top-end development, and leave riders one-dimensional. “It’s one pillar of performance, not the whole house,” says San Millán.

So should you use it? For amateurs with 8–10 weekly hours, San Millán cautions against going all in. A smarter balance is two to three Zone 2 rides each week, combined with strength, sprint and interval work to keep your “turbo” alive.

I was broke, depressed and disillusioned – Here's how I cycled my way back to health and happiness

Andy Carr — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 09:05:50 +0000

The full, original version of this article was published in the 28th August 2025 print edition of Cycling Weekly. Subscribe online and get the magazine delivered direct to your door every week.

There are plenty of resources out there for people getting started in cycling, but if you’re coming back to it, the energy is both figuratively and physically far harder to come by. I went from the literal heights of living at altitude in the French-Italian Alps, riding six days a week as an Alpine tour guide, to losing most of my fitness in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Running a custom bike business took over my life to the extent that I had neither the time nor physical resources to look after myself.

Now, 10 years later and gainfully employed as Cycling Weekly’s tech editor, I’m back on the bike –appreciating the privilege of testing new models, but more importantly, getting back the love of keeping fit. My health is the prize I once took for granted, and every ride feels like a small victory. If you’re looking to rediscover your own cycling legs, maybe my example might help. Here’s how I regained fitness, rebuilt my confidence, and remembered why I fell in love with riding in the first place.

How did I get here?

Let me take you back to 2015: I’m sitting on a 1970s-style sofa in a once chic but now faded Alpine chalet, having quit the corporate world to make custom bicycles in the mountains. These humble digs are provided in exchange for driving a ski transfer bus.

It would become the best, most challenging, but ultimately the most disruptive decade of my life, culminating in near bankruptcy, liquidation and ultimately losing my home. These were the unexpected side effects of running a custom bike business: plummeting physical and mental fitness, killer migraines, crippling anxiety and even erectile dysfunction. Yes, really. Bicycles can do that. Who knew? I’d medicate with a near-daily bottle of wine to ease the anxiety.

An initially innocent quest to find purpose through building top-quality bikes had brought me opportunities and adventure I never believed possible. But in a baffling quid pro quo, keeping it alive had also brought me, my health, and the relationships that meant the most to me, to their knees. Fast-forward to less than a year ago, and I was empty, unfit and skint. This time, entirely on my own, the only answer I could think of was to get back on my bike.

Andy at the height of his powers in 2017 on the Col d’Izoard (Image credit: Andy Carr)

“LESS THAN A YEAR AGO I WAS EMPTY, UNFIT AND SKINT. THE ONLY ANSWER WAS TO GET BACK ON THE BIKE”

It’s been incredibly freeing. I have learned it is entirely valid to do a 10k lap from the village and stop at the pub. There’s nothing to share on Instagram, but you’ll likely go further next time. I’ve learned that I am not trying to qualify for the Tour de France, I’m trying to have fun.

Kill your cycling ego

In psychedelics, the death of ego is a phrase used to describe a permanent dissolution of the individual’s sense of self. Mine was still centred around the idea that I was still somehow a big deal on a bike, despite the overwhelming evidence that I was barely ticking the basic human, lover or friend boxes, let alone being a good cyclist. That was the last stubborn and outdated idea that needed to go if I was to make any meaningful progress in refinding form.

If you’re worried you might have a cycling ego that’s holding you back, there’s a few easy checks you can make. Have you, for example, ever skipped a ride because you didn’t think you’d be good enough? Or worse, because the ride wasn’t far enough for a serious rider like you? Or because your Garmin wasn’t charged? These were just some of the ways my cycling ego held me back. Over the last few months, I’ve had to unpick all that nonsense systematically, so I can go and ride my bike wherever and whenever I can.

(Image credit: Future)

Offer of company? Just say yes

Riddled with illogical doubts, like ‘is it worth riding if it’s less than three hours?’, I’d forgotten to just enjoy cycling. I’d had plenty of riding offers from customers over the preceding few months, but what if people realised I wasn’t super fit anymore?

The truth was, it was screamingly obvious I wasn’t fit. If your mates ask you to go out for a ride, I’d just advise you to go. They didn’t ask you because they care about your power output; they probably genuinely just want to hang out and know it will make you feel better. Riding is medicine, and time with friends is a tonic.

Get creative with limits

This advice ‘start small, build up’ might be obvious, but ignoring it is one of the most significant barriers to getting back to some form, bearing in mind middle-aged joints. I started riding in the mornings and found that the time limit inherent in the pre-work slot was a useful restriction.

This had a few benefits: I could ride out of my skin in a short while, but it meant I rarely rode to exhaustion, and I never had a mechanical problem that I couldn’t walk home from. It also meant I didn’t have to stress about the time I was spending on the bike, or the kit I was taking with me. I just needed to be up and out, and back in time for work.

This may sound limiting, on the face of it, but it gave me a guard rail that kept my ego protected, and gave me a sense of enormous satisfaction from a necessarily short ride. Over time, the morning rides helped build my confidence. Habits like this soon become disciplines, and help to build a sense of competence.

My first dozen rides were laughably brief. I told myself that the ride was the reward – all that mattered was getting out there. If I didn’t ‘feel it’ on any given day, I could return home. It wasn’t about distance, it was about building a habit. Soon I found myself riding harder or further than I’d planned, and this came with a sense of added achievement, which was motivating and – dare I say it – rewarding.

Nourish, sleep, recover

Fruit and veg, good protein, and good sleep cannot be overrated. I have a sleep monitor, which helps me identify late coffees, simple sugar hits, and screens that might be sabotaging my shut-eye. I now drink decaf coffee and am not missing the old stuff at all.

Alcohol messes with your sleep, too. Now that I’ve cut back on booze, I’m finding that even the odd glass upsets my sleep pattern. With empirical data on tap, it’s easier to justify skipping alcohol altogether.

I take a regular supplement stack – many related to absorption issues from celiac disease and IBS – but the chief and relatively new highlight is glucosamine sulphate. I find it helps significantly with recovery in my joints. Broadly speaking, Vitamin D and omega-3 are the only supplements with a very strong evidence base (as far as healthy people are concerned); just take care of the basics, get good sleep, veg, vitamins and plenty of water.

You don’t need to smash yourself on the bike to transform your attitude to yourself (Image credit: Future)

You can’t hide – so run

Your cardio system powers your cycling, and lacing up your trainers for a run is far less hassle than kitting up for a bike ride. I started with a run to the beach and back: just 2km, but I could barely manage it without stopping. I’m now running 5km several times a week, stretching it to 10km occasionally. Timing my runs while leaving my rides data-free means cycling remains fun.

The satisfaction I felt upon comfortably running to the beach for the first time wasn’t shareable on Strava, but it was immense for my motivation. By setting myself small, attainable goals, the rewards came quickly and fuelled the positivity to keep going. On a kilometre-for-kilometre basis, running is much harder on your cardiovascular system than cycling. This is important if you’re results-driven and time-poor, and want to see gains on the bike.

“I’M RUNNING AND RIDING ALMOST EVERY DAY... I’M FAR HAPPIER AND HEALTHIER AS A RESULT”

Motivation? It’s overrated

Becoming an adult is about developing the discipline needed to get out of bed and go to work – but it doesn’t mean we dash to our jobs with a spring in our step. It’s the repetition and responsibility that gets us out of the door – if we relied solely on motivation, nothing would ever get done. Be similarly realistic about your exercise: make it a habit and just do it.

It’s helped me to share my training plans with friends. Even if it’s just, “I’m going cycling tomorrow”, the statement carries its own power – to say it is to believe it. Now that I work at Cycling Weekly, it’s acceptable to share weekly goals with my boss, the editor; Simon is a runner, so he understands if I tell him that this week I’m aiming to get my 5km to under 25 minutes, it makes me accountable. Try it.

The road back to full fitness is as much about the journey as the destination (Image credit: Andy Carr)

When I moved to rural Norfolk at the start of this rebuilding process, I felt very alone – that deep sense of loneliness that creeps in when you feel low. A few months on, I can see now how many people have contributed to my progress; I feel supported and thankful. So if you’re starting from a lifetime low base as I was, trust that the connections you make will become more apparent and meaningful as the fitness builds back. I’m not qualified to comment on how to fix feelings of loneliness, but I found a different perspective after a few weeks of discipline with my training, and that is a welcome side effect.

As mentioned, colleagues have helped, as has an old schoolmate who lives nearby. There’s my new neighbour Su, and my parents – who probably wonder why I announce my weekly athletic achievements like a kid coming home from school from sports day. Hopefully they find it cute. The audience is less important than the sharing: let others into your project.

Small beginnings

Nowadays I’m riding or running almost every day and taking good care of myself. As a result, I’m far happier and healthier. I’m nowhere near old form, but I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation after nearly a decade of self-neglect. More than ever before, I am comfortable in the peace and quiet of Norfolk’s less-than-hilly lanes, with plenty of friendly or familiar stops along my regular routes.

If you’re struggling with any of the issues raised here, reach out to a professional and seek help today. Take some small steps towards building the life you deserve. The hardest bit is that first step. If you’re just struggling with getting back to training or finding previous form, start small, set achievable goals, and take the credit where it’s due. Small goals are easy to hit – let them grow naturally. It’s certainly worth the effort.

The kit that has sustained my mojo

Using products that work well, look nice and feel good will help maintain your enthusiasm. These are the stand-out items that have become trusted training partners as I’ve rebuilt fitness.

100% Speedcraft sunglasses (£118): I’ve tested stacks of sunglasses, but I bought these myself years ago and they’re still my faves. Great visual clarity, and the lenses have never picked up a scratch. The silicone gripper on one arm fell off recently, but they remain my go-to glasses.

Q36.5 Dottere bibshorts (£250): Hands-down the best pair of bibs I’ve ever worn. And that matters when you’re reacquainting your bottom with the saddle. Money matters too, of course, and Rapha’s Core bibs are less than half the price and hard to beat if you want something nearly as good, stylish and cut nicely.

Muov Road smart-bike (£4,995): If Zwift gamified indoor cycling, Muov completed it. This ‘real movement’ smart trainer could only be better at being a smart-bike if it had wheels and you could ride it outside. Eyewateringly expensive, though. The cheaper ‘real movement’ alternative is Wahoo’s Kickr Rollr.

Van Rysel RoadR 500 helmet (£30-50): I’ve used the best helmets in the world, and I still grab this one every time I go out for a ride. Great vents, good fit, looks good, and so unbelievably cheap – you hardly have to worry about it. I bought it myself, from Decathlon.

Riding a bike faster means turning the pedals harder, so is understanding of today's training techniques really helping people go faster?

James Shrubsall — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 00:14:00 +0000

It's been two decades since I last trained under a coach, and in that time, exercise science has moved on dramatically. Sweetspot training, now a staple of many riders' plans, was barely talked about back then. But it's not just training methods that have evolved - the science around how we measure training load, tailor our nutrition, and optimise recovery has exploded, offering riders more tools and data than ever before.

Over the years, I've experimented with plenty of approaches, but I keep coming back to what works best for me - and, as it turns out, it's not far off the routine my coach gave me two decades ago.

The big reveal? Two hard sessions during the week and a long ride at the weekend. Sound familiar? If so, refer back to the previous paragraph - or simply look at your own training, and that of countless riding mates. Has anything really changed? Let's take a closer look.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes - and just as many ways to build fitness on the bike. Ask any group of cyclists and you'll find no two training routines are exactly alike. Even Adam and Simon Yates, identical twins competing at the very top level of the sport, don't follow the same programme-not least because they ride for different teams with different approaches. This uniqueness is interesting but also perplexing: are we each doing our best guesswork?

"Ride your bike, ride your bike, ride your bike," was Fausto Coppi's simple advice (in fact, the motto has been attributed to any number of riders). And while that seems like something of a broad brush approach, you can't really fault the logic. At the other end of the spectrum, online training platforms prescribe training programmes that dictate everything from power to heart rate to cadence, pretty much down to every minute of every week.

Unnecessarily prescriptive? Maybe, although if your computer simply told you to 'saddle up, ride hard' it might leave you wondering what you were paying the subscription for.

(Image credit: Future)

So what has changed?

It might seem almost sacrilegious in today's era of sports science to suggest that training hasn't fundamentally changed-but set that aside for a moment and consider the facts. Cyclists have been tapping into every intensity level since the dawn of the sport. Victorian-era penny farthing riders were likely pushing VO2max up their local climbs; Tour de France breakaway specialists have long churned along at what we'd now call sweetspot or threshold; and for generations, Zone 2 and tempo have been the bread and butter of those simply out 'getting the miles in'. The labels may be modern, but the efforts are timeless.

What we have today that riders of the past didn't is a clearer language for training and the tools to measure it.

"To say training hasn't changed is a bit like saying bicycles haven't changed - they still have two wheels, a saddle and a pair of handlebars," says Michael Hutchinson, known to CW readers as Dr Hutch. "But I think you're half right," he adds. "In the end, there are only so many physical interventions you can make."

I press him for a fuller explanation. "Well, there's only so much that can be changed: ride long or short, hard or not hard - that's all there is."

"Structured interval sessions are now very easy and rewarding to do on the turbo trainer,"
Dr Hutch

Hutchinson argues that training has evolved, with changes often pioneered by professionals trickling down, slowly, to amateurs and club cyclists. One key change he identifies has been the advent of structured interval training on turbo trainers, which didn't really exist in the amateur realm until the late-Eighties.

Now, with online riding platforms, riding indoors can be - dare we say it? - satisfying fun. "Structured interval sessions are now very easy and rewarding to do on the turbo trainer," says Hutchinson. "In the 1970s, most people were only riding on the road." On the other hand, a 1970s ride that included a set of sprints to lampposts or village signs was effecting much the same physiological stimulus as a sprint session on Zwift does now.

I pick up this thread with TrainSharp coach Jon Sharples. "Back in the day, only a few people rode indoors because most just didn't believe in it. The attitude was, you know, 'we're not made of sugar, so who cares about the elements?"' What those riders were missing, thinks Sharples, is the precision available indoors.

"The turbo is really beneficial now. People can train for the demands of the race. With the amount of attacking that goes on, everyone knows about their 30-second efforts, their one-minute efforts, their four-minute efforts, and they can all now see where their weakness is, and track the changes, which spurs them on."

As well as the structured indoor riding, another change, at least at the elite level, is volume. "Monday, I took a day off," says Hutchinson, revisiting a typical training week from 25 years ago. "Tuesday, I did 120 miles. Wednesday, I did 105 miles. Thursday, I took a day off. Friday, I spent an hour doing hill reps. And then the weekend I did a 50-mile time trial on Saturday, and a 120km road race on Sunday." That works out to around 400 miles (643km) for the week - far more than most of today's elites are doing.

(Image credit: Future)

Volume is even more pared back at amateur level - with work and family commitments to factor in, club riders chase hard after high bang-for-buck sessions. "It's become more structured and more interval-based whereas 25 years ago many of my rivals' training consisted of riding hard-ish for however long they had available."

One approach to training that has attracted its own label - and a huge number of adherents - in recent years is sweetspot training. Defined as 84-92% of FTP, sweetspot purports to offer maximum bang for buck, especially for those with limited time available. But is it really new?

"Twenty years ago, people who had 45 minutes available for training would have just gone and ridden fairly hard for 45 minutes - probably not very different from sweetspot intensity," says Sharples. "For an everyday rider, you can keep it really basic, and sometimes basic is better. Fundamentally, fitness comes from consistency, and that means doing something every day, keeping going. That is it."

(Image credit: Future)

One way of pondering the differences between modern and old-time training is the good old hypothetical comparison across the decades. "People often ask me, how good would Beryl Burton have been had she had modern training? Or, how good would Alf Engers have been with modern training?" says Michael Hutchinson. "My answer is that those riders were presumably getting it right intuitively. What was it that the likes of Beryl Burton should or could have been doing that she wasn't doing?"

Listening to the body is something that cropped up in all the interviews for this feature. Though hard to define exactly what it means, it's clearly important and largely comes down to intuition. "There were points in her career where Burton was quite badly overtrained, so she could have done with modern recovery - that might be a better way to put it," adds Hutchinson. "But the people who were good in the past were, I think it's fair to presume, generally getting it right."

This consistency idea is backed by exercise physiology Professor Jamie Pringle, who points to the 'hierarchy of training needs' pyramid designed by renowned sports scientist Stephen Seiler. "He's almost a philosopher more than a scientist," Pringle says of Seiler, "because his real area of interest is, how do the very fittest people train? What do they do? How do they structure their training?"

No structure, no problem

(Image credit: Future)

I've witnessed first-hand an example of an unstructured programme that has worked very effectively. My brother and colleague Steve Shrubsall raised his FTP by more than 50 watts in three months simply by doing plentiful indoor sessions whenever he felt like it. Suffice to say, much of it was very hard riding - but he was able to adapt and make gains, rather than just get more and more tired. This isn't a story of zero to hero; we all know that an untrained person can make huge gains quickly. Steve, who is 47, was already in decent shape when his stint of intense training began.

"I didn't ride outdoors for months," he remembers, "but once I started training, it was relentless, and most of it came by way of doing a lot of races on Zwift. And that is the best way to get absolutely everything out of yourself." Racing around three times a week for between 40 minutes and an hour, as well as doing VO2max and sweetspot interval sessions, he pushed himself hard practically every other day. No doubt this would backfire for some riders, but the point is, there was no planning involved: "It was a case of asking myself, how are my legs today?" he says. And he ended up with an FTP of more than 400 watts.

Seiler's hierarchy of needs, explains Pringle, is a pyramid with "the fundamentals at the bottom, and the 'nice to haves' at the top. It's always consistency at the bottom, on which everything else is built. In other words, it doesn't so much matter what you do, or how you do it, as long as you keep doing it."

As we move up the pyramid, we find high-intensity training next - with Seiler using various study protocols to demonstrate its effectiveness over mere low-intensity training. Next is intensity distribution - essentially, how athletes spread the load between easy and hard sessions. Seiler, it turns out, is a big proponent of polarised training. In fact, in a study on cyclists he demonstrated the superior effectiveness of polarised training over a threshold-based programme.

The three components of the pyramid-consistency, intensity, distribution - all interact with each other, the smaller details towards the top of the pyramid are harder to pin down. Periodisation models, heat and altitude training are listed as having unclear, modest or individual effects, while race-pace training and, finally, right at the top, a taper, are finishing touches built on everything else.

Is there any way to pick the most effective sessions? "I always steer away from trying to identify the outcomes of a session," says Pringle. "It's an almost impossible task, because we know that each individual will get different adaptations from different types of training. He demonstrates this by referring to a 2008 study by Kirsten Burgomaster that saw riders who completed sprint intervals three times a week produce similar aerobic muscle responses to riders who did an hour at Zone 2 five days a week. "What matters most is not the session itself," Pringle says. "It's understanding how to put together a series of sessions day after day, week after week, while allowing your body to adapt."

(Image credit: Future)

Putting your body in a position to adapt - creating enough physiological headroom, as Pringle puts it - is still the cornerstone of effective training. Modern sports science still can't tell us exactly what to do, day by day, but where it excels is in helping us quantify training stress and fine-tune how we recover and adapt.

The best power meters and platforms calculate training stress scores or identify fitness trends give greater insight into your performance profile: where you're strong, where you're weak, and how close you're pushing to your limits. (Just don't place too much trust in Al and algorithms, which can produce misleading advice.) The core principles remain unchanged: train consistently, apply enough intensity to trigger adaptation, but avoid overreaching. What has changed is the confidence with which we can now walk that fine line.

Add to that modern fuelling strategies - including multi-source carbs and gut training to enable a higher level of carbohydrate utilisation - and it's clear that some scientific advancements are helping us train smarter. But in the end, success still hinges on the same simple truths: show up, push yourself just enough, and don't let the data get in the way of the work.

'He said spending £5k on a skinsuit was outrageous –so I reminded him he'd remortgaged our house for his rally career': Meet Alex Dowsett and his dad Phil

cm.bell@hotmail.co.uk (Chris Marshall-Bell) — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 07:00:00 +0000

The full, original version of this article was published in the 19th June 2025 print edition of Cycling Weekly as part of our 'Meet the Maker' series. Subscribe online and get the magazine delivered direct to your door every week.

Long before Alex Dowsett was setting Hour record times, winning Grand Tour stages and repeatedly becoming British time trial champion, there was another Dowsett from Essex who was speeding around and breaking records: his father, Phil. Hailing from a motor racing family – Phil’s nephew Oliver runs a successful British touring car team, Napa – the 74-year-old raced single-seater, saloon, sports and touring cars for 22 years.

Though he never accomplished his dream of becoming a Formula One driver, Phil was regarded as one of Britain’s best drivers throughout the 1980s. But it wasn’t how he paid the bills. “I had a job, and that was my biggest downfall because I only had one day a week to prepare and test the car before racing,” he says. In 1989, the year after Alex was born, Phil turned down the opportunity to race in Japan for Toyota Factory, instead beginning an upholstery, carpet and curtain business in London. Phil’s wife Jan gave birth to the couple’s second child, Lois, in 1991.

Alex, who was diagnosed with the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia at 18 months old, began cycle racing at age 13, despite no history of the sport in his family. “My nan on my mother’s side would have swum in the Olympics had it not been for the war, but other than that, neither side of my family was particularly sporty,” Alex says. The father and son have made the Dowsett name synonymous with speed.

Phil’s success was a source of inspiration for Alex from a young age. “I heard these stories as a kid about how good my dad was,” Alex says, “and I thought, How am I going to excel at life to the point where I can tell my own kids similar successful stories?” Phil nods: “He more than achieved that goal – he’s got better stories to tell than I have.”

The son's take

Alex Dowsett
Age: 36
Height: 5ft 10in
Raised: Chelmsford, Essex
Lives: Chelmsford, Essex
Occupation: Performance engineer at XDS Astana
Biggest sporting achievement: Hour record, 52.937km (2015); 2x stage wins, Giro d’Italia (2013, 2020)

Q: What did you know as a child about your dad’s racing success?
I was aware of it because he used to drive fast and his trophy cabinet was in the corner of the dining room. But he wasn’t one to talk about his success. I pieced together the dots when we went to the invite-only British Racing Drivers’ Club and I saw Dad’s name on the board next to 1988 with a silver star denoting that he was that year’s best national driver.

Q: Were you interested in motor racing?
I went to the local go-kart track where, if you got under a certain lap time in a kid’s kart, they let you come back on a Saturday or Sunday morning to drive the adult karts. I was pretty good, but not the fastest.

Q: How did your sporting career start?
I was diagnosed with haemophilia as a baby and doctors told my parents that swimming was really helpful for it. Swimming was my sport and I tried racing but wasn’t very good.

Q: Do you think your cycling talent was learned or inherited?
I find my childhood fascinating: I swam 10,000 hours to master swimming but I was sh*t. I went running and was quite good at a county level but nothing amazing. And then I picked up a bike and within a year I was the best in my age group.

Q: Physically, are you more similar to your dad or your mum?
Dad loves cycling, but you can see that it doesn’t come to him naturally. It’s a useless comparison but my wife Chanel and I took Mum and Dad to New Zealand a few years ago and we did a vineyard tour on tandems. Chanel and Dad were on one bike and me and my Mum were on the other. They wanted to race against us, but they didn’t win a single one! Michael Hutchinson once told me that in most cases the physiology comes from the mother’s side; in my case, I think that’s true.

Q: Did your dad teach you any racing techniques?
Racing lines – on the kart track as a kid. [Ex-pro] Paddy Bevin said to me a couple of years ago that I was one of the only bike riders who took a motor racing line on a push bike.

Q: Do you have a similar mindset to your dad?
Yes, I’d say I got my head from my dad – especially my work ethic.

Q: What about your will to win?
I once had a fascinating conversation with Dad where he said it was outrageous that I was buying a £5,000 skinsuit. I said to him: “Dad, you remortgaged the house to do another year of racing.” But if you ask him, he’ll say he didn’t want it enough – as if remortgaging your house isn’t wanting it enough!

Q: What career advice did you take from your dad?
He always drummed into me the importance of sponsors: “If there’s a logo on a pair of socks you’re being paid to wear, you wear those socks.”

(Image credit: Richard Butcher)

The father's take

Phil Dowsett
Age: 74
Height: 5ft 7in
Raised: Chelmsford, Essex
Lives: Maldon, Essex
Occupation: Retired commercial upholstery business owner
Biggest sporting achievement: 1st – British Formula Atlantic race, Oulton Park (1980)

Q: How much did you train as a motor racing driver?
I ran around London keeping fit, which gave me an advantage over everyone else. Keeping fit was something that very few drivers did back in my day.

Q: Did you want Alex to become a racing driver?
We didn’t have the money for it. You’ve got to be extremely rich nowadays. He’s a good car driver and he’d have loved car racing, but he never approached me about doing it seriously.

Q: Did you give him a love of speed?
Definitely. I used to take him out in my Porsche and he’d enjoy ripping around in it. He had a hunger for speed from an early age, and you saw that in his time trialling.

Q: How did you try to encourage Alex’s cycling?
I used to go mountain biking on Thursday nights, and when he was 13 he asked if he could come along. I said yes as long as he kept up and didn’t fall off. That was the start of it.

Q: When did you know Alex had talent?
When he started racing time trials at Maldon CC, one of the guys said to me: “Phil, Alex is very, very good: his body doesn’t move [around in the saddle] but he delivers power”.

Q: How did you help him as a cyclist?
I didn’t know a thing about the technical side of cycling. I always said to him: “Alex, have a plan B. If things go wrong, you need to be able to execute an alternative plan.” All I could do was get him to where he needed to be, make sure he ate a good meal, had a good night’s sleep.

Q: What was the most important thing Alex inherited from you?
When he was around 15, if he didn’t win, he hated it. That will to win is something that I didn’t teach him, but like me, he had that desire. I think he also grasped early on that when your arse gets kicked, on those bad days, you learn more.

Q: Do you share a similar mentality?
He once told me: “Dad, I’ve learned how I can go quicker.” I was expecting him to go on and say he had new tyres or some new kit, but he said: “I’ve learned how to hurt myself more.” I am not like that on a bike – unlike him, I don’t like putting myself through pain! I push to keep up with my mates, but not to the level where I ruin myself.

(Image credit: Richard Butcher)

The no-conferring round

‘Guess what your dad said when we asked…’

Who’s the best driver today?
Alex: He’d say me.
Phil: He’s better than me now. When you get to my age, you can’t process things as quickly as before.

Could Alex have made it as a racing driver?
Alex: I think I could have been, yeah.
Phil: He’d have been good, but I’m not sure how good.

Could Phil have become a cyclist?
Alex: From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t have the ability.
Phil: No. He’s got the cardiovascular levels and the technique – I don’t have any of that.

What’s one thing Phil can do but Alex can’t?
Alex: He could dismantle an old engine.
Phil: I can windsurf better than him. For now…

What’s one thing Alex can do but Phil can’t?
Alex: I can go under 30 minutes for a 10-mile TT!
Phil: Ride a bike fast! And he’s good at maths.

What’s the tougher sport, rally or cycling?
Alex: He’d have said pro cycling.
Phil: In my era, it was motor racing – it was far more dangerous, but then it became incredibly safe. Cyclists have to be far fitter.

How would Alex describe Phil in three words?
Alex: Humble, loyal and generous. Can I add smart?
Phil: Stubborn old bastard! Impetuous, selfish – to be successful, you have to be. And generous.

How would Phil describe Alex in three words?
Alex: He’d say something about me being focused, and how when I want something I work hard for it.
Phil: Cool, calm and collected.

Who’s more competitive?
Alex: He’ll say himself. He would get pissed off with me if I helped team-mates in time trials.
Phil: I think we’re similar, but I had to be very competitive, as it was often a dog-eat-dog situation.

Who’s more famous?
Alex: Dad tells the story about when his Wikipedia page stopped being about his own achievements and became about being the father of Alex Dowsett.
Phil: Alex, by far.

If I could make use of my underexploited fat stores, my ultra riding would improve dramatically. Here's how I went about tapping into them

stephenshrubsall@gmail.com (Stephen Shrubsall) — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 07:00:00 +0000

When CW’s features editor emailed me one lunchtime, asking if I’d like to investigate FatMax, I almost choked on my pork pie. What exactly was he insinuating? OK, I had to punch a couple of extra holes in my belt over the winter, but surely that didn’t merit such a callous appraisal of my physique.

Only after I threatened to involve HR did I realise I’d been hasty. Although FatMax sounds like the street name of a portly American mobster, it in no way pertains to excess blubber. It is, in fact, a training method that is growing ever more popular among pro cyclists.

Much has changed in the thinking about long-distance fuelling over the past decade, principally a paradigm shift in top-end carbohydrate intake, the amount our bodies can absorb and use per hour. The more fuel you can shovel, the longer and faster you can ride. That’s why fuelling is low-hanging fruit for coaches and nutritionists. But the research never stops, and it isn’t all about the supply end – the amount of carbs we take on – but also about how our bodies process them.

The carbs we consume on the bike are mostly short-chain sugars, usually glucose and fructose. But the body holds a store of fuel in the form of long-chain glycogen and fat. Even the leanest athletes have some 100,000kcal worth of fat at their disposal – practically enough to complete an entire Tour de France. If we could tap into this fat store at will, we’d never again have to bother with on-bike fuelling; but sadly, it’s not that simple.

When burning energy, the body always draws on a mix of carbohydrate and fat. FatMax refers to the intensity – down to the last watt, or heartbeat per minute – at which you’re burning the most fat possible. Having spent the winter in my shed doing high-intensity efforts that rely almost entirely on glucose, this was an excellent excuse to explore how to make the most of my underexploited fat stores. Switching to FatMax training would, I assumed, be the ideal opportunity to lose some fat.

My first job was to ascertain the precise intensity at which my fat-burning was at its max. I booked an analysis session at My Vital Metrics in London, where consultant Alicia Dodd told me I would need to undergo a DEXA scan and a VO2max test. The former would measure my body fat, while the latter would reveal the proportions of fat and carbs I was using at different intensities.

A VO2max test might be feared by most cyclists, but it's an essential performance measure for us all (Image credit: Future)

The entirely painless DEXA scan produced a body fat reading of 17%, which came as a pleasant surprise. Despite tipping the scales at over 90kg, my body composition got the thumbs-up as ‘healthy’. I was starting to like this place – I should come here more often – but now it was time for the main event. Feeling at home aboard a Wattbike Atom, I was confident of doing myself justice in the VO2max test. But then the mask arrived.

With the gas-collecting apparatus sucking at my face like a determined leech, the outlook became less cheery. I was beginning to understand why Darth Vader seems so pissed off all the time. Suppressing panic, I began pedalling and, several wattage increments later, I maxed out, fiercely expelling my lungs into the gas bags – from which Dodd would extrapolate my all-important FatMax figure.

After studying the resulting data, the respiratory exchange ratio (RER) where fat was used at an optimum, corresponded to 205 watts at 120bpm. This is my FatMax, where I’m burning as much fat as possible – and it’s where I would spend the lion’s share of my training for the next two months. The intensity is not just easy, it’s mind-numbingly sedate. So what purpose would all this gentle spinning achieve?

Health over weight loss

“We developed FatMax for one reason,” said Asker Jeukendrup, who was part of the team that invented FatMax training, “and that was just to get a complete picture of someone’s physiology. We did one study early on where we trained patients with fatty livers at FatMax, then compared the effects to interval training. They gained more benefit from FatMax.” What about for someone like me whose liver is (hopefully) not clinically fatty? “Since that study, people have been suggesting FatMax is good for this or that, but we don’t have a huge number of studies.”

Hang on, surely the clue is in the name? Wouldn’t spending more time burning the maximal amount of fat help obliterate the wobbly stuff and improve my tumultuous relationship with the bathroom scales? Not necessarily, according to Javier Gonzales, a professor of nutrition and metabolism at the University of Bath.

“There isn’t really much evidence that specifically exercising at FatMax is any better for fat loss or weight loss than other intensities,” Gonzales told me. “It’s true that you’re burning proportionately the most fat, and least carbohydrate, at that intensity, but overall fat loss and weight loss in the long term is more dependent on the total number of calories you’re burning.” In other words, racking up a calorie deficit week after week was the most direct route to shifting excess body fat.

The verdict got worse: by tapping away at 120bpm, I was burning energy at a slower rate and therefore making it harder to accrue a calorie deficit. FatMax was not going to release me from the burden of my buckle-busting midriff any time soon. So how exactly was sitting in this ultra-low zone going to improve my performance on the bike?

“The idea, for those fatty liver patients, was that if you train at an intensity where you burn the most fat, you would also automatically train the fat-burning system,” said Jukendrup. More hours at low intensity would mean I’d develop more mitochondria, potentially helping my body use energy more efficiently.

Steve getting his results, and they're not as bad as he'd feared (Image credit: Future)

As a health dividend, these sessions would fire up my fat-burning system to make my body less reliant on carbohydrate, increasing my metabolic flexibility. Developing more mitochondria should mean improved endurance and faster recovery. OK, I was sold. First, though, I needed guidance as to the optimum number of FatMax sessions to complete in a week, and the optimum duration for each one. “The longer you go for, the more fat you’ll be burning, and the less carbohydrate you’ll be burning,” explained Gonzales.

The thought of sitting in the shed at 120bpm for hours on end wasn’t a particularly joyous one. Thankfully, spring came a little early this year, so my road bike came out of hibernation and two months of Operation FatMax began. I soon discovered that sitting at my exact FatMax intensity outside was like herding cats. The slightest gradient change altered my heart rate, and my power graph rose and fell erratically. How precise did I really need to be?

“For endurance activities like long, steady cycling or running, your heart rate tends to drift up over time anyway,” said sports scientist and coach Anthony Fletcher, “so a heart rate [target] becomes a moving goal post… I tend to talk about [FatMax] heart rate generally aligning with Zone 2 for most people.”

For Fletcher, FatMax is a range rather than a precise figure, and he advises riders to be guided by their perceived exertion at their prescribed FatMax heart rate, cautioning that “for some people, it’s an RPE of six [out of 10], for others a three”. Fletcher’s rationale is that keeping within the right ‘feel’ ballpark makes FatMax training more feasible on the open road.

Widened FatMax window

After eight weeks of FatMax training, it was time to find out if I had become a more efficient cyclist. My follow-up lab test showed that the heart rate corresponding to maximum fat-burning had remained more or less static at 120bpm. However, the window had widened – up to 136bpm – meaning I had quite a lot more bandwidth to play with. Fletcher advised that, because I was already relatively well trained, I could not expect more than a marginal gain in eight weeks.

As interesting as the experience has been, I remain ambivalent about FatMax training. If its purpose is to improve the health of unfit individuals, why should I incorporate it? Everyone already knows that low-intensity exercise is fundamental for building endurance, and as Fletcher commented, “most of the best cyclists in the world have been doing this stuff for decades”.

For practical ease, can’t we just carry on doing plentiful Zone 2 riding? We may not be oxidising fat with the pinpoint precision of a FatMax heart rate, but, as my follow-up test showed, my window for optimal fat-burning is relatively wide, spanning 120-136bpm. Rather than fixating on my heart rate monitor, I’m content to let my fat-burning range be guided by feel. As for weight loss, well, that’s always going to start and end in the kitchen.

(Image credit: Future)

Feels too easy? Your physiology doesn't care

Canadian coach Steve Neal (stevenealperformance.com) explains why FatMax training matters – even if its benefits aren’t immediately apparent.

The amount of FatMax training I prescribe depends on an athlete’s level of fitness. A really fit pro might be pushing 280-300 watts at just 65% of their max heart rate. On the other hand, with a beginner, if their FatMax is under 150 watts, that’s too low a training stimulus, so instead I start them with a lot of Zone 3 work – because they’re not yet fit enough to make full use of FatMax training.

The riders I test are always surprised by how low an intensity their FatMax is. But remember, our physiology doesn’t care what we perceive the work to be. If you’re riding at FatMax, the energy is coming predominantly from fat – it’s working. We want to see a rider’s FatMax improving relative to their threshold or VO2max.

In the case of CW’s Steve, his FatMax of 205 watts is just 43% of his five-minute power of 472 watts. I’d want to see it closer to 60-70%. Currently, his workload while burning fat is relatively low. He’ll only improve it by doing more training at low, FatMax intensity – you have to push it up from below, you can’t pull it up from above. This would, however, mean training upwards of 10 hours a week.

As an example, one rider I work with had a FatMax of 175 watts when I started coaching him. A year later, his FatMax was still 175 watts, but his fat utilisation at that wattage was 40% higher. His crossover point, from burning mostly fat to burning mostly carbs, had risen to 215 watts. This meant that when he took part in races of three hours or longer, he was much better because he was sparing carbohydrate. This is why FatMax testing matters.

FatMax in numbers

45-65% – percentage of VO2max corresponding to FatMax intensity in most people (or approximately 55-75% of FTP)

60-70% – heart rate range, as percentage of HR max, in which fat-burning is greatest (broadly aligning with Zone 2)

0.8-1.5g/min – rate at which fat-adapted athletes can oxidise fat, compared to 0.3-0.6g/min in non-adapted people

20-30% – percentage reduction in muscle glycogen usage during submaximal exercise in fat-adapted athletes

100,000 calories – stored in body fat, compared to less than 2,000kcal in glycogen

How to strike the perfect balance between indoor and outdoor cycling

Rob Kemp — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 17:35:19 +0000

Pairing smart indoor trainers with training platforms like MyWhoosh has revolutionised how cyclists train, but that doesn’t mean riding on the open road has lost its edge.

Rather than pitting one against the other, smart riders now combine indoor control with outdoor variety to optimise performance, consistency, and enjoyment.

Whether you’re chasing race results, building endurance, or just trying to stay on track through winter, each setting offers unique benefits.

According to cycling coach Paul Mill of Elitecycling the keys are balance and flexibility. By structuring your week to include both targeted indoor sessions and skill-building outdoor rides, you can maximise gains while keeping motivation high and burnout at bay.

The perfect balance for peak performance

The debate around indoor versus outdoor cycling has evolved beyond ‘which is better, to how do I use both to get better?’. “The smartest riders strike a balance,” says Mill. “One that fits their goals, lifestyle, and environment.”

For committed cyclists fitting training around work, family, and social life, Mill recommends a flexible and realistic training structure every week.

2–3 indoor sessions: focused, high-intensity, and time-efficient
1–2 outdoor sessions: longer, lower-intensity, and skill-oriented

This split allows riders to hit their performance targets while making the most of their available time - and keeping motivation high through variety. “Flexibility really is the key,” says Mill. “You get the physiological quality indoors and the emotional and technical benefits outdoors.”

(Image credit: Future)

Indoor cycling's superpowers

Indoor cycling workouts are great for structure and control. Sessions like high-intensity intervals - VO2 max or anaerobic efforts - benefit from the lack of interruptions. You can lock into exact wattages, hold precise cadence, and stick to recovery periods without worrying about traffic lights or terrain. Ideal indoor sessions include:

VO2 max and anaerobic intervals: Riding indoors gives you maximum control and intensity
Threshold workouts: It's easier to hold consistent power targets for 10-60 minutes indoors
Cadence drills: Isolating and monitoring your technique is simpler without distraction
Structured intervals: Riding indoors helps you to be more precise with your work-rest ratios
Race simulations: Taking part in an indoor event like those in the MyWhoosh Sunday Race Club provides you with a high intensity workout, indoor unpredictability, and race-readiness

(Image credit: Future)

Outdoor riding's rewards

Outdoor riding is still essential - especially for building endurance and road skills. “There’s no substitute for the mental and physical variety that comes with real terrain, weather, and the dynamics of riding in a group,” insists Mill. Best outdoor sessions include:

Endurance rides: Longer, steady rides that build aerobic capacity are – for many – easier to do IRL
Group rides: You can, of course, ride in a huge group in an immersive indoor world but tactics, positioning, drafting and even etiquette are best learned on the opened road
Technical skills: Cornering, descending, riding in crosswinds, avoiding potholes – you simply can't get better at mastering these skills in front of a screen
Hill reps: Real, highly variable, gradients challenge your technique and strength differently than simulated climbs

Outdoor hills are worth repeating

“Outdoor hills offer the best training for real-world climbing,” insists Mill. Riders engage more muscles, adapt to changing conditions, and refine technique - standing vs. seated, power delivery, and pacing.

“Outdoors is also better for neuromuscular coordination and handling torque,” Mill adds. “But indoors can work if you’re short on time, daylight, or local terrain.”

For indoor hill simulations, Mill recommends smart trainers paired with rocker plates and gradient simulators to replicate the feel of climbing. “Sure, the latest iteration of cycle training apps add visual immersion - but real-world rides still provide the most full-body engagement.”

The greater outdoors?

The psychological impact of training location can’t be ignored. Riding outdoors offers a powerful mental reset. The exposure to light, nature, and open space boosts mood, the exploration of new routes keeps cycling engaging while the real-world variables – other road users, potholes, force 9 gales and the like – develop mental adaptability and tactical thinking.

On the other hand, indoor training is more efficient in that there’s no faffing with kit, no dealing with traffic, no major mechanicals to stop you in your tracks. Indoor training is – usually – quite laser-focused. (As in the controlled environment helps you hit training targets). There are no issues around sticking to your plan even in the depths of winter either, and thanks to virtual races and group rides there’s no lack of motivation. “Mixing both avoids burnout,” says Mill. “You stay physically sharp and mentally fresh.”

Indoor reality checks

Modern indoor training platforms offer an impressively close simulation of outdoor cycling. Riders can race, climb, and train with precision. But there are still some limits.

That’s why Mill advises blending both styles. “Use indoor training for control and intensity, use outdoor riding to build technical skills, experience real-world conditions, and reconnect with why you ride in the first place.”

It’s not really a question of indoor versus outdoor these days. It’s how to use each to maximum effect. Structured intensity indoors, long steady work and skill-building outdoors, and a training plan that respects your time, weather, and mental energy. “Get the best of both worlds,” says Paul Mill. “The gains come when you combine the control of indoor with the adaptability of outdoor. That’s real training.”

Are you riding too much? Studies show you can get just as fit training only at weekends?

hannah_reynolds@ipcmedia.com (Hannah Reynolds) — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 07:00:00 +0000

“This is rare for me – usually I can only get out at weekends.”

Sound familiar? It came from a rider on my regular Tuesday night ride. As always with a group of cyclists, we were busy getting our excuses in early: too much work, childcare, bad weather, a broken bottom bracket – they all came out. It was a wonder any of us had made it to the start.

That said, my first reaction was to empathise. Lately I’d lost my appetite for cycling, conscious that I’d been failing to string together enough consistent training rides to make progress, and it was becoming disheartening. My ‘Fitness and Freshness’ graph told the story – brief upward blips followed by a steady slide back to the bottom. Cycling, I told myself, is only fun when you’re fit – otherwise, it’s just hard work.

The term ‘weekend warrior’ is often used with a hint of derision by riders with plentiful spare time. It implies that anyone riding only on Saturdays and Sundays is somehow less serious, less committed, and unlikely to reach serious levels of performance. But for many of us, being a weekend warrior isn’t a choice – it’s simply all we can manage. And now there is evidence that weekend-only training might be just as good as training across several days of the week.

No worries for warriors

The good news for weekend warriors comes in the form of research published in February by the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, suggesting that cramming your rides into the weekend might be just as effective as spreading them out. The study compared two groups over an eight-week training programme, one riding twice a week (weekends only), the other four times (high-frequency training).

Both saw similar improvements in fitness and health, particularly in VO2 max and muscle capacity. The implication would appear to be that spreading sessions through the week isn’t crucial, provided you match the volume and intensity at weekends.

Fantastic – we’re not haemorrhaging fitness between Monday and Friday after all. We can keep smashing out those big weekend rides, safe in the knowledge that we’re reaping similar benefits to our weekday-riding counterparts. But hold on – that’s not the whole story. How our bodies respond to training depends heavily on the intensity and duration of each session.

While the effects of exercise intensity are well understood, the role of frequency has been studied less. Here’s the crucial detail: in the study, the weekend warriors and the high-frequency trainers did the same total volume, and none of them began in well-trained form.

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Cycling Weekly, on sale in newsagents and supermarkets, priced £3.35. You can subscribe through this link here.

Turn up the volume

In the study, the weekend warrior group trained twice per week on back-to-back days, while the high-frequency group trained four times per week with no obligation to ride on consecutive days. Because the total training volume was matched, each session for the weekend warriors had to be twice as long as those in the high-frequency group. For the former group, this meant one longer endurance ride of around 80 minutes, followed the next day by a brutal interval session with eight four-minute efforts at threshold.

Meanwhile, the high-frequency group spread out their training stress across five days, with less volume and intensity in each session. The key difference between the two training routines lay in how much stress each workout placed on the body and how frequently that stress occurred. For the weekend warriors, sessions were longer and more taxing, with five days of recovery between each two-day training period, while the high-frequency group trained more often but for shorter periods, with no more than two days of recovery in between.

Generally, intensity is the biggest driver of workout stress. Research shows that muscle fatigue and the accumulation of exercise-related byproducts don’t increase in direct proportion to duration, although longer sessions do expose the body to peak stress for longer. With the weekend warrior model, the body is pushed hard twice a week, followed by extended recovery periods. Little and often, or loads just at weekends – which is better?

To drill down into this question, I spoke with Dr Jamie Pringle, associate professor of exercise physiology at the University of Birmingham. “It’s an interesting study and a hard one to perform from a physiological point of view,” he said. “I applaud the research team for taking it on.” Pringle cautions against viewing the study in isolation: “It should be seen in the context of the authors’ wider body of work.”

One of the authors’ previous studies compared sprint-interval training (SIT) and endurance training (ET), assessing how each influenced muscle metabolism. Despite SIT involving short, intense sessions totalling just one hour per week, and ET requiring 4.5 hours of steady-state riding, both approaches led to comparable gains in fitness and metabolic adaptation. The takeaway was that training need not be time-consuming to be effective. The new study echoes this theme in finding that, when volume and intensity are matched, low-frequency routines like the weekend warrior model are not inherently inferior to high-frequency approaches.

However, there is a catch – and arguably a major one. The study’s weekly training volume – for both groups – was just 2.5 hours, which is far less than the average training volume of a Cycling Weekly reader. OK, an hour on Saturday, then 90 minutes on Sunday might just about qualify as weekend warrior training, but most serious amateurs rack up upwards of four hours per week. To be seriously competitive, even as an amateur, much higher volumes are needed – too much to squeeze into weekends alone.

“You can get fit as a weekend warrior, but can you reach your full potential? That’s a different question,” says Pringle. To illustrate the challenge, he lays out what it might look like: “Four sessions a day, spaced two hours apart, each lasting up to 90 minutes – that’s six hours a day, 12 hours across the weekend. That would get you close.”

Even if cramming that much training into a weekend didn’t break you, would it get you fit? “Would you get the same adaptation as doing 90 minutes a day across six days a week? That’s an interesting question,” says Pringle. But it’s a question few weekend warriors will have the time, or desire, to answer.

(Image credit: Andy Jones)

Jogging muscle memory

While it’s promising that both groups in the study improved despite the low volume, it’s worth noting that the participants were cycling newbies. “If you’re already well trained, that’s a different context – the training effect on someone new to cycling will be very different,” warns Pringle. How long you’ve been cycling plays a big role in how your body responds to training frequency and intensity. “A fair number of weekend warriors have trained systematically in the past,” says Pringle. “There seems to be a kind of muscle memory – if you’ve done high-intensity training before, you can return to it and still benefit from that past effort.” In other words, a previously well-trained weekend warrior can regain fitness more quickly and with less training. Even if they’ve had a layoff and not ridden for weeks, perhaps even months, their training history still counts. Pringle uses a Christmas tree metaphor: when you first start training, you rapidly hang new baubles of fitness on the lower branches. As you progress, gains are harder to come by – you’re reaching for higher branches. “Even if you’re very detrained, restarting almost from scratch,” he says, “your body remembers how to climb the tree.”

If you look closely at the training in the study, it doesn’t truly reflect typical weekend warrior behaviour. The sessions were relatively short – just over an hour – and tightly controlled for both intensity and duration. A real-life weekend warrior, speaking from experience, rides for several hours with a group, digging deep on climbs, launching senseless sprints, and eventually crawling home completely wrecked. That’s the beauty of weekend warrior life: we’re fresh, fired up, and ready to chase anything that moves. As for control, forget about it. Having recovered for five days, we arrive at the weekend ready to throw everything into our rides, which can yield considerable training gains but also carries a risk of going too deep.

Stick to the plan

If you want to train smarter, the answer is almost always the same: have a plan, and stick to it. “You get fit from doing stuff and keeping on doing it,” says Pringle. “Being able to do something month on month, year on year is what makes the difference.” In the study, not only were volume and intensity carefully controlled, but they were also progressively adjusted over the eight-week training block to ensure continual development. It’s worth noting too that participants completed 99.2% of the prescribed sessions – consistency few of us match in real life. As for how much training is actually needed to see improvement, that’s harder to pin down. “You need to do enough, but not too much. Enough to get an adaptation, but not so much that you can’t recover,” Pringle concludes.

At its core, the research is encouraging news for weekend warriors – and for people like me who’ve long carried the guilt that riding only twice-weekly doesn’t constitute proper training. If weekends are all you have, you can still make meaningful fitness gains. Those sessions matter, especially if you’re just starting out or have a solid base from previous training. But if your goal is to move beyond weekend warrior status and push your performance further, adding even one or two more sessions a week will make a real difference. “A consistently higher volume of training seems to be more important in the long term,” says Pringle. “High intensity gives you very fast returns, but not necessarily long-term ones.” The real magic, as always, lies in consistency, control and following a structured plan – whether it’s over seven days a week or just two.

Weekend warrior training: key stats from the study

8 – Length of the study, in weeks

28 – Number of participants – 14 men and 14 women

4.3 – Average increase in VO2 max, in ml/kg/min, among participants in the ‘weekend warrior’ group

4.9 – Average increase in time to exhaustion, in minutes, for the ‘weekend warrior’ group

19 – Average increase in total haemoglobin mass, in grams, in the ‘weekend warrior’ group

150 – Amount of training per week, in minutes, that proved enough to produce significant performance gains

Get it right: Train like a true weekend warrior

SATURDAY: INTENSITY Use a HIIT protocol or intense group ride to hit your VO2 max system. Intervals of 2–7min at 90–100% max heart rate.

SUNDAY: ENDURANCE Ride long to build endurance and muscular conditioning for longer events and sportives. Focus on time in the saddle.

Adapt, overcome, excel: five para-cyclists' incredible journeys

Rob Kemp — Wed, 21 May 2025 13:30:48 +0000

Billy Monger was a professional racing driver until he lost both legs in a devastating crash in 2017 aged just 17. When in 2021 he took on a 140-mile kayak, walk and cycling challenge for Comic Relief, he had just three months to adapt to cycling as an amputee. “The hardest part wasn’t cycling itself – it was starting and stopping,” says the 25-year-old. “On my right leg, which is amputated below the knee, I can clip in and out like most cyclists. But my left leg, without a knee, makes twisting out of the pedal tricky.”

At first Monger used a mountain bike dropper seatpost on his road bike, allowing him to stay seated and lower the seatpost at stops. But when training for the 2024 Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, he needed a more efficient solution. The breakthrough came with a magnetic cleat. “It enabled me to attach and detach quickly and made a huge difference,” he says. “After an hour of practice in a car park, we found a technique whereby I could start and stop safely.” The next day, he rode solo for over an hour without issues. “That’s when I knew I could do it.”

Monger rides three to four times a week, mostly focusing on steady Zone 2 endurance rides. “About 90% of my training for Kona was in Zone 2, with higher-intensity intervals. No matter how much I train, my left leg will never match my right in terms of power output – but the key was improving my overall strength as a cyclist.”

The power imbalance means cycling won’t ever be his strongest event. “I’m a pretty decent swimmer but then I get overtaken a lot on the 90k bike ride. That was demoralising at first, but then I found myself overtaking on the descents – I guess the motor racing driver in me made me a bit braver.”

What I’ve learned: “Getting outside, feeling the fresh air, and taking in the scenery – training can be tough, but there’s something special about just being out there on the road.”

If I could change one thing: “There’s still a stigma around cyclists, and sometimes the way we’re treated on the road can put people off from even trying. I just wish we could get to a point where all cyclists – whether able-bodied or para-athletes – are given more space and respect.”

Jaco van Gass

(Image credit: PA Images / Alamy)

Jaco van Gass was serving with the British Army in Afghanistan in 2009 when a rocket-propelled grenade attack resulted in the loss of his left lower arm. Inspired by London 2012, he pursued paracycling, refining his prosthetics with coach John Hewitt, to create an innovative ‘wing’ prosthetic.

The ‘wing’ was controversially banned on the eve of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, in which Van Gass won two golds. “We still got the result, but there’s a resistance to advancements in upper-limb prosthetics among those governing the sport.”

Van Gass also won double gold at Paris 2024 with a locked-in prosthetic he uses for track and time trials. “Because it’s locked in I have to generate my power from a seated position which is really tough.”

On the road, the 38-year-old switches to a longer prosthetic that enables him to rise out the saddle to generate torque. Van Gass’s approach to training off the bike has developed over time too. “I use my ‘gym arm’ – a multifunctional prosthetic with a ratcheted grip and a lockable elbow – to lift heavy weights.” He trains six days a week, with the training tailored toward whichever event is up next. “In the off-season I work on weak spots and ways to improve any deficiencies.”

What I’ve learned: “Cycling isn’t just about getting on a bike and riding. It’s the hours in the saddle, the time spent training in all weather conditions, the strength and conditioning work off the bike – and for para-cyclists we’re constantly looking for ways to maximise performance within our own limitations.”

If I could change one thing: “More integration with able-bodied events. Ask someone to name WorldTour riders, they could probably do a dozen without thinking. But ask them to name para-cyclists and they can’t. That’s not because we don’t have the talent – it’s because we don’t have the same exposure.”

Disability and cycling: key stats

(Image credit: Comic Relief)

16,000,000 The number of disabled people in the UK, representing 24% of the total population
76 Percentage of disabled people who would like to be more active, indicating demand for more inclusive sporting opportunities
118 Paralympic cycling medals won by the GB team over the past seven Paralympic Games, since 2000
22 Medal haul by the GB team at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games – 14 on the track, eight on the road
43 Para-cyclists currently on the GBCT world-class programme
4,143 Riders have engaged with British Cycling’s Limitless disabled cyclists’ programme since its launch in 2023

Daphne Schrager

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Like Van Gass, Daphne Schrager, 24, took inspiration from London 2012 and tried out for para-canoeing, rowing and cycling. “I couldn’t balance in the canoe and was too short for rowing – so cycling got me.” Watersports’ loss has been para-cycling’s gain, with Schrager now one to watch in the C2 category thanks to a silver medal won in the women’s pursuit at Paris 2024.

Schrager has cerebral palsy (CP), suffering bouts of poor muscle coordination, stiff or weak muscles, neural lapses and tremors. “At the moment I have a lot of double training days as we're focused on a big strength-building drive. I have an issue that’s quite common among athletes with CP whereby some muscle fibres fire better than others – in my case, I can't recruit my hamstrings.”

To combat this, Schrager does hyperoxic sprints on a stationary bike – breathing a higher oxygen concentration than normal air to improve endurance and reduce muscle fatigue. She says having strong glutes and calves helps her compensate for the lack of hamstring strength. “I’m doing a lot of leg presses now as well as banded exercises, glute bridges, Bulgarian squats – we hate those – and Nordic curls which really help engage and develop my hamstrings.”

Bike adjustments are helping too. “On the bike, we’ve fitted shorter cranks which means the turnover is shorter so I don’t have to recruit the muscles as much at the bottom of the turn. Also, my handlebar ends turn inwards because I can’t clasp my hands very well. The developments are neverending.”

What I’ve learned: “I sometimes have neural dips where I can’t coordinate or control the bike. I’ve learnt to look out for the warning signs and ease up on training when they strike.”

If I could change one thing: “I wish people weren’t afraid to ask questions. Kids do – it’s natural curiosity – but adults often shy away, fearing offence. If people asked instead of assuming, we’d break down so many awkward barriers.”

Fin Graham

Graham wins the men's C1-C3 road race at the Paris Paralympics (Image credit: Getty Images)

Fin Graham grew up in the Borders of Scotland, drawn to mountain biking from an early age. Despite having been born with bilateral club feet, meaning he has barely any calf muscle and little ankle movement, he managed to develop his off-road riding skills while wearing special splints supporting the ankle and calf area. In 2016, he transitioned to road and track cycling through the para-cycling pathway. “The biggest difference? Lycra and shaving my legs!” says the 25-year-old. “Coming from mountain biking, that was a shock. The first time I tried, I looked like I’d been attacked by an animal!”

Graham adapted quickly, winning seven world championship golds alongside his Paralympic title from Paris. “When I started my para-cycling journey, I had further assessments by neurologists, who discovered I have spinal muscular atrophy with lower-limb involvement. But I’m fortunate in that I don’t need any major adaptations like brake-splitters to the bike, as some para-cyclists do. I can pretty much jump on any bike and make it work.”

Since Paris, Graham has focused on building muscle. “I was around 63kg but I don’t need to be that light. Extra weight helps with power on the track, and in para-cycling, there aren’t Alpine climbs where being ultralight is crucial.”

He prioritises three gym sessions, emphasising deadlifts, leg presses, and upper body work. “Afterward, I’ll spin the legs for a couple of hours, but right now, strength is the focus, then it’s warm-weather road training in Calpe, Spain, before the season begins.”

What I’ve learned: “Recovery is under-rated. When I started, I was commuting from Scotland to Manchester Velodrome while working to fund myself. Recovery wasn’t a priority. Now, I can rest properly, refuel, and get quality sleep - it’s made a huge difference.”

If I could change one thing: “The myth that para-sport is easier. We train just as hard, sometimes harder - yet our achievements rarely get the recognition they deserve.”

Lizzi Jordan

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Lizzi Jordan was midway through a psychology degree when, in 2017, severe food poisoning from a takeaway meal robbed her of her sight. After three months in a coma due to an E. coli-triggered immune response, she awoke weakened but alive, thanks to a last-resort antibody treatment.

A keen horse rider, she switched to cycling after a 2020 talent ID programme and won three golds at the Rio World Championships, plus Paris 2024 gold with partner Danni Khan. “Tandem cycling is about trust, communication, and adapting to challenges,” says the 27-year-old. Jordan trains solo and with pilots, balancing turbo sessions with real-world rides. Living in Surrey, while Khan is in Birmingham, they meet in Manchester before competitions. She trains five days a week on a stationary bike and joins her local cycling club on weekends.

For any cyclist, turbo training can be monotonous, but for Jordan, it presents additional challenges. "I use Zwift like most cyclists do, but because I can’t read the numbers on the screen, I need someone to sit next to me and read them out," she explains. "Zwift does have an erg mode, where I can set a certain wattage for a set time, and it makes a noise when shifting power zones. That helps with basic endurance training, but for more specific workouts, I need assistance.” Jordan has been advocating for audio prompts to be added to Zwift and other virtual cycling platforms. "It’s not just a para-cycling thing – even sighted cyclists would benefit. When you're in the middle of a hard effort, the last thing you want to do is look up at tiny numbers on a screen!"

Out on the road, Jordan’s not fussy about her pilot’s fitness levels – what’s crucial is competency and safety. “I need someone who can handle the tandem well, communicates loud and clear, then I – as the stoker – can put the power through the pedals." To generate that power, Jordan dedicates time to strength and conditioning. "In the gym I’ve got a great personal trainer who helps me execute strength drills which I need to have explained to me rather than demonstrated. My trainer says that my form is often better than others because I focus intently on listening to instructions.”

What I’ve learned: "On the tandem, you’re relying entirely on your pilot, so you have to trust them completely. It’s all about working together, being clear with each other, and anticipating what’s ahead."

If I could change one thing: “People don’t realise how much teamwork goes into it. It’s not just the stoker putting in the power or the pilot steering – it’s about perfect synchronisation. When everything clicks, it’s amazing."

Credits: Thanks to the Great Britain Cycling Team. Billy Monger is supporting comicrelief.com

Hit a plateau in your cycling fitness? It might be time to look past sweet spot training

James Shrubsall — Sun, 11 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the world of interval workouts in cycling, nothing sounds quite so welcoming as sweet spot.

It has the ring of your favourite ice cream parlour, rather than the sort of workout that might leave you aching and exhausted. Very different to the clinical 'VO2 max intervals', or the alarming 'back to back over/unders' or, perhaps worst of all, '20 minutes max power test'. (I'll make my excuses now, if you don't mind).

However, that is the beauty of sweet spot – or SST, to which it's often abbreviated – done right, it doesn't actually feel that awful and, theoretically, you can get up the following day and do it again.

It's widely touted as the best bang-for-buck workout you can do, racking up the TSS (training stress score) like little else. Does that mean it piles on your real-world riding form in the same way? No, is the short answer to that, says coach Andy Turner of ATP Performance Cycle Coaching.

He says: "For those who chase fitness scores and the build-up of TSS [on virtual riding platforms, for example], it's effective at doing that, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's effective at making you actually physiologically faster."

Defined by Frank Overton and developed with Dr Andy Coggan, sweet spot has become an extremely popular way to pass the time, particularly on the indoor trainer, where blocks of 10 minutes upwards form the bedrock of numerous training plans set by platforms such as TrainerRoad and Zwift.

Measured as a percentage of functional threshold power (FTP), there are numerous definitions of sweet spot but, according to the Fascat Coaching website – run by Overton himself – it falls between 84% and 97% of FTP.

Turner elaborates: "It's the sort of upper end of higher intensity that you can sustain for longer durations – it's that principle of getting as much work done in a shorter period of time. So you can do an hour of sweet spot comfortably, but an hour of threshold is incredibly uncomfortable, even if there's maybe only 20 watts difference between those two numbers."

(Image credit: Future / Richard Butcher)

Part of the attraction of sweet spot training, Turner says, is psychological. It can quickly start to feel easier, and wattage gains at sweet spot intensity can also ramp up, especially at first.

"It's a bit like your classic tempo smash sesh with your mates," he says – "where you just try and do as high an average speed for 90 minutes as possible. It's not very good training for getting fitter, but you can see that that session is now easier."

However, the mid-range intensity level of sweet spot means missing out on the key gains in mitochondrial density and capillarisation that low-intensity riding offers, as well as the boost to raw power and other aerobic fitness benefits induced by training at higher intensities like VO2 max. These are all key, and are essentially what aerobic fitness is built on.

No magic bullets

"I think that there is a place for it, but it's limited in its application," says Turner. "Everyone likes one magic bullet to solve all of their problems, whatever it is. In reality, it's always a mix of things for the individual and their goals.

"Sweet spot can be useful, but then once you've been doing it for a while, you need to change the training stimulus and implement something new. And that's where polarised training starts to become where you see more of the gains."

Turner says he regularly has clients come to him with the same sweet-spot-related issue: "They just say, "I've hit a training plateau, I just can't go any harder; or, on group rides I'm strong on the flats, but then we get to these short, sharp, punchy climbs, and I just can't go any harder. That's quite a common occurrence, and what needs to change is the training stimulus."

Polarised training isn't a new term by any means, and the concept itself is an approach that has been taken by performance cyclists for decades – essentially, it involves mixing low-intensity riding with high-intensity riding, and little in-between.

An example could be a weekly diet of five to 10 hours of riding in zones one and two – your 'all-day' pace – ideally with one of those rides pushed out to four hours or so (or as long as your calendar will let you), with one or two high-intensity interval sessions thrown in. The classic VO2max sessions uses work intervals of three to five minutes (usually the longest you can sustain this intensity for), with at least equal rest intervals.

It doesn't sound very cosy – not like sweet spot. And it doesn't feel it either: "VO2max, frankly, are really unpleasant sessions to do," says Turner, adding that you need to be well rested to do them right.

This is where we swing back around to sweet spot. There's no 'getting in the zone' or sick buckets required, it helps us stay acquainted with the somewhat harder effort levels, and it's easy to recover from.

As such, it's an intensity unlikely to be going anywhere soon. But you see that basket marked SST? Perhaps don't put all your eggs in it. Spread them around a bit and see the benefits.

As ever, if you are new to hard training, or returning to cycling after a long layoff, do err on the side of caution and get clearance from your doctor.

How to become a better cyclist in 5 simple steps

Cat Glowinski — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 11:29:41 +0000

This article has been frseshly updated as part of our 'New to Riding' week, running from March 10 to March 17, with a special focus on tips, tricks and inspiration for new riders.

From the very start of your cycling journey, you’re likely going to want to improve, whether that means polishing or developing new skills, or becoming faster, stronger, or able to ride for longer. You may have a specific target, such as completing a sportive or doing your first race, or you may just want to keep up with speedy friends or improve your fitness.

A personal tip would be to join a cycling club, where you'll find riders of all abilities and experience levels normally keen to help and advise. A club is a great place to make new friends with common interests and will, ultimately, push you to progress. Whilst many clubs may look intimidating from the outside, most exist to support and nurture cyclists, and will welcome you with open arms.

Whatever your reasons, we have five tips to help you become a better cyclist.

Five simple steps to becoming a better cyclist

1. Make sure you're comfortable

If you’re comfortable while cycling, you’re naturally far more likely to ride further, faster or longer. Of course, you’ll have to put in the work to become a better cyclist, however this doesn’t mean suffering unnecessarily. Cycling is meant to be fun, after all.

If you have the budget, having a professional bike fit is a worthwhile investment. A fitter will tweak your position on the bike and look at your saddle to check that it provides all the support you need — having the right saddle can be a gamechanger. Alternatively, take a look at our DIY bike fit guide with tips on how to set up the bike yourself.

Make sure you’ve got your clothing right: a good pair of cycling bib shorts or tights is a must, as is the right kit for the conditions. If you’re riding through the colder months, invest in a good winter cycling jacket and cycling gloves as an absolute minimum.

Holding a cycling position takes some effort if you don’t have a strong core, so condition your body off the bike for support on the bike, using core exercises and training such as pilates. Your aim is to strengthen the muscles that support your upper body.

Having a good routine of stretching and strengthening exercises to do after and between your rides will help prevent many of the niggles and aches that come from bending over the bars for significant periods. Looking for a routine you can do at home for free? Try these strengthening exercises for cyclists.

2. Avoid bonking or hitting the wall

Bonking, when you run out of energy while cycling, is something every cyclist dreads. It can come on pretty suddenly and can rapidly ruin a ride. In simple terms, it happens when your body runs out of glycogen and your muscles don’t have the fuel to keep them working. It’s more than just tired legs and when it hits, the fatigue is intense and you feel like you just can’t keep going.

You can avoid it though, by making sure you eat and drink properly before and during a ride. Nutrition for cycling doesn’t have to mean eating expensive supplements; bananas, cereal bars and jam sandwiches all contain lots of easily absorbed carbohydrates, are convenient to carry, and easy to digest.

A simple way of ensuring you stay hydrated and have enough energy for rides over two hours long is to use a carbohydrate drink — we've pulled together the best energy drinks for cycling here. Always carry a bit more food than you think you need and if you plan to be out for several hours, start eating after the first 30 minutes. Taking on 60 grams of carbohydrates an hour is a good rule of thumb, so check the back of packets to make sure you have enough.

3. Gradually increase your average speed

According to Strava data, the average male cyclist rides at an average speed of 20.4kph (12.7mph), whilst the average female hits 17.7kph (11mph). Although it might interest you, don’t read too much into this data — it’s best to only compare your own rides, at least at first.

Although many factors can impact your average speed on the bike: wind direction, how well you’ve recovered from your last ride and terrain, to name just a few, if your average speed over a similar ride loop shows a general pattern of increasing, this is a very good sign that you’re getting faster.

But the real question is ‘how do I increase my average speed?’ Firstly, you can get some free speed by considering aerodynamics, which may include your bike, wheels, position and clothing. You may think that this isn’t technically improving your cycling, but being faster means you can ride with faster people, and, in turn get faster again.

Try to incorporate some intervals into your training. You can find some structured sessions or a cycling training plan to follow, with short hard efforts included, or you can simply use markers on your ride. This could be a road sign or a building up ahead that you can target, pedalling harder until you reach it, then easing off.

You should try and increase your average speed gradually, and be sure not to get too focused on average speed alone, as there as so many contributing factors that can’t be changed. Find more tips on how to increase your average speed in our guide.

4. Work on your biking technique and bike handling skills

(Image credit: Future)

Improving biking technique and your bike handling skills are key to becoming a better cyclist. If you can ride around corners or descend faster — choosing your lines correctly — you’ll naturally increase your speeds. You can practice key skills such as track standing, picking up objects off the floor while cycling, and cornering, in a safe area, and you’ll soon feel more in control of your bike and more confident on the roads and at speed.

Riding off-road, be that gravel, cyclocross or mountain bike, will give you a whole new skillset, which translates to better bike handling. Similarly, track cycling is a good discipline to try, where you’ll practice drills like riding in close bunches, riding in contact with another rider and single leg pedalling, which leads to smoother pedalling overall.

5. Pack in the miles with commutes

(Image credit: Future)

Commuting to work by bike can help build a good endurance base. This kind of low intensity cycling builds aerobic fitness, which in turn prepares your body for more intense training.

If your commute is fairly short, try and extend it into a longer loop a couple of times a week and you’ll soon be getting some good weekly mileage under your belt. If your office is a decent distance away, you’ll naturally be packing in the miles, and by riding both to and from work, you’ll really up the training volume.

Try and keep your heart rate low during commutes — keeping it steady up the hills, spinning at higher cadences and not going too hard off every traffic light will help prevent excess muscle fatigue. If you go too hard on these easy rides, you’ll end up too tired to get any real physiological benefits during dedicated training sessions. Remember, riding easier does make you faster. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t turn any commutes into intervals, just that your body needs time to recover with some easy pedalling, particularly if you’re riding to work five days a week. Remember to fuel properly too, before, during and after your ride.

'Make everyone run the same draggy tyres... but it would kill the spectacle': Tour de France star's solution to the 'impossible' question of rider safety

stephenshrubsall@gmail.com (Stephen Shrubsall) — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 11:56:03 +0000

Multiple Tour de France stage winner Matej Mohorič has suggested that wider, slower tyres could help slow riders down and improve safety in the sport.

However, the Slovenian Bahrain-Victorious rider conceded it was a far from perfect solution to what he called an impossible question.

He was speaking on the Cycling Weekly Going Long podcast, which focuses on the feats of riders who make a habit of ultra-distance endeavours.

"It's an impossible task," he said. "I think limiting the gearing is an option, though not the most efficient option. Because by limiting the gears you're also going to limit the time the riders spend spread out, so there's more contact. They're going to bunch up before important corners because you can't go any faster.

"I think the more efficient option would be to oblige everyone to regulate the tyres we're on," he said. "Make everyone run the same slow, draggy tyres. That would bring the speed down.

"But it would also kill the spectacle," he added, "and it would also benefit heavier, stronger riders. There's never a good solution."

Ultimately, Mohorič said "we are always going to be bike racers", always pushing the limits. "Nobody's going to give an extra centimetre to make the race safer."

Mohorič also spoke about his Grand Tour and Classics wins, as well as his forays into the gravel world and how he "flicked" Merida's marketing strategy by winning the Gravel World Championship on a bike designed for endurance.

Listen to the whole conversation with Matej Mohorič here. The Cycling Weekly Going Long can be found on all podcast platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Previous podcasts

Going Long 5: A million metres in a year Professional ultra-rider Jack Thomson on his extraordinary climbing challenge, riding the Tour de France route, and a whole lot more

Going Long 4: Sleep strategies for ultra riders Robbie Britton chats to us about the switch between ultra running and ultra riding, as well as talking through sleep strategies during long-distance races

Going Long 3: Bikepacking through the Americas James Benson-King talks all things bikepacking and how he plans to become the first ever person to cycle across Antartica

Going Long 2: The world's toughest ultra race? Liam Yates chats with us about FKTs and his recent ride at the Tour Divide, one of the toughest races on the ultra cycling calendar

Going Long 1: The Godfather of ultra riding Mark Beaumont – the godfather of ultra riding – talks to us about his palmares of epic rides including his centre piece, the round-the-world record

How do I deal with a headwind on a round biking loop?

James Shrubsall — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 12:37:42 +0000

What's the weather doing this week? Chances are you'll know, because you're a bike rider. There are few more diligent weather geeks than we who enjoy riding bikes outside – because it can have such a dramatic effect on the enjoyment of it.

But what, really, is the bike rider's nemesis? Ice, surely, is right up there, but many of us would also single out rain. And wind. The invisible and capricious foe that might offer a helping hand – or conspire to ruin our progress and enjoyment, often both within the same ride.

Which leaves us in a quandary.

When you look out of the window on the morning of a ride and see the trees bending in a stiff breeze, do you celebrate because you know you're going to enjoy a tailwind? Or do you feel instantly demoralised at the thought of an inevitable headwind.

Assuming you don't decide to sack it off altogether, which way do you head out the door? Because unless you're riding from A to B, you're going to experience both head and tailwind on the same ride.

"Unfortunately, we're all at the mercy of more headwinds than tailwinds," says Dr B. Xavier Disley of aero experts Aerocoach. "You're going to be going slower and spending more time into the headwind than you will do coming back with the tailwind."

This is because you'll almost inevitably be going slower for any given distance into a headwind than in a tailwind, and therefore taking more time over it. Take a hill with an ascent and descent of the same length and gradient – you'll take longer over the ascent than the descent because of your speed. Head and tailwinds work in the same way.

Just for fun?

Disley points out that your riding goals can dictate how you approach the wind. The big question is whether you want the headwind first, or the tailwind.

"Is it a training ride, or is it just a fun ride?" says Disley. "If it's a training ride and you want to get the most benefit from it, then you want to make it as hard as you can when you can. So you'd want your headwinds up the climbs.

"Whereas if you wanted to even out your speed, you'd probably want to have your tailwinds up the climbs, and then your headwind on the descent part. And then that keeps everything a lot more even."

Like a lot of people, Disley says he prefers to head out straight into the wind while he's still fresh, rather than saving it for the second half "so when you're knackered you're not struggling into a headwind and killing yourself".

There is more besides. Because of the exponentially growing nature of drag, you might consider attempting to engineer your ride so that the headwind falls at the part where you would naturally be riding slowest. This is because it would have less effect on your speed – or at least, the power required to maintain that speed – than it would if you were riding faster.

But the mental and emotional equations need balancing against the scientific ones. If you had the choice would you really want to save the headwind and hills for the second half of your ride? While the science insists the headwind would affect you less, knowing you had by far the hardest part of the ride to come could damage morale and spoil your ride.

Doing it this way would also mean you would be more tired when you hit the headwind, meaning it would be liable to slow you down more.

The other side to this coin is that your freshness in the first half of the ride means you can more readily adopt an aero position to combat the wind. Sixty miles into the ride, your arms and shoulders and back might put up a good deal more fuss when you try to hunker down low.

Friend and foe

Throughout this piece we've examined headwinds, essentially, as the enemy. But it can be worth reframing that. Headwinds might rarely (never) be enjoyable, but they can make for a useful training aid.

A little like a hill, riding into a headwind requires more power for a given speed. No hills? No problem. This can be particularly effective on a flat road if you want to carry out an interval session. (It goes without saying that this is a quiet road and you're being careful, right?).

Doing the efforts into the wind means you'll go slower and not as far for each effort, making it more practical.

It also offers a handy push back to the start.

Headwinds on the average cycling loop are very difficult to quantify, because the shape of the route is almost never uniform, and even the wind itself can change direction.

A perfectly straight out and back, for example, or a perfectly circular loop, might result in equal parts head and tail, but this is rarely the case.

As Disley says: "It's a tricky one to determine, because winds are so changeable and weird. You could have a bit of a crosswind for most of your ride, which can actually give you a bit of a boost at certain points when you turn direction.

"I think the thing to understand is that you'll spend more time in the headwind than you will in a tailwind, all things considered," he concludes.

So, there are various ways you can approach a headwind, but one thing you can't do is make it go away. Tackling it head-on (quite literally) in the early part of the loop is going to make for the most pleasant ride. But if suffering is your goal (or at the very least raising your VO2 max) then you can use it as a tool for efforts, or even save it to the end if you're feeling particularly masochistic.

Either way, you'll appreciate those perfect windless days that come along every now and then even more.

Riding with Raynaud’s: How to beat cold hands and feet over winter

Lexie Williamson — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 08:59:10 +0000

Most cyclists scan the weather forecast over the winter months but if you suffer with Raynaud’s a drop or two in temperature, or some windchill, could have serious consequences. It might lead to hours of agonisingly sore fingers and toes and – even more worryingly – an inability to brake or shift gears due to numbness.

The symptoms of this disease - sometimes called a syndrome - which causes blood vessels to contract, leading to the characteristic white fingertips, vary from irritating tingling to excruciating pain. Many a ride has been shelved over concerns about the cold, but there are many ways to prevent an attack.

However, there are solutions available. Let’s explore all the options, from ‘lobster’ gloves to electrically charged socks. Hopefully, with a bit of cold proofing the outcome can be the open road over the indoor trainer.

The science of Reynaud's

(Image credit: James Gill)

According to James Gill, triathlete, GP and Associate Professor at Warwick Medical School, Raynaud’s disease is a vascular phenomenon whereby blood vessels contract in response to cold. This is a natural reaction to a degree but here the reaction is extreme, leading to fingers turning white, or even blue. They are often numb leading to issues changing gear, braking and fixing roadside punctures.

Gill says Raynaud’s can also be triggered by stress. This can be emotional stress but for us cyclists it is more likely to be the ‘biological’ stress of pushing hard on the bike as well as the cold. So, a gruelling three-hour club ride on a frosty day might double your chances of an attack if you are susceptible.

According to Gill the hands and feet are basically the same ‘evolutionary speaking’ so diseases which affect the hands often affect the feet. While medication is occasionally given to Raynaud’s patients, such as the blood pressure treatment Nifedipine, Gill says this is usually only considered in severe cases and it would be preferable to try some of the tips listed above first. “We have to balance benefit verses risk,” he explains. “We don’t want to risk a cyclist come off the bike due to low blood pressure. As with many things in life prevention is better than cure.”

Try ‘lobster’ gloves

Lobster gloves keep the fingers pressed together which can make for a warmer experience (Image credit: Future)

There are a lot of winter cycling gloves on the market which claim to be insulating but don’t always deliver the high level of warmth that cyclists with Raynaud’s require. Another issue here is that symptoms vary in intensity from person to person, so one type of glove could work wonders for one rider and leave another with icy fingers.

So-called lobster gloves keep two warm fingers pressed against each other instead of separating every finger as with normal gloves. Just check that they allow you the dexterity to switch gears or reach for the brakes easily. Opting for lobster gloves made by established cycling brand, such as these from Specialized or Giro, will make this more likely.

Layer your gloves

Some cyclists swear by a layering system by wearing thin silky or merino wool gloves underneath a more durable, waterproof one. This has the advantage of trapping and warming air between layers. There are ‘systems’ sold which do this for you by offering two or three different thickness gloves designed to be worn together. Ultimately, though, it’s a trial-and-error business as to whether this works for you.

Cycling Weekly gave the brand Dissent 133 a 4.5 star review for its layering system although noted that dexterity was reduced when wearing all three layers together.

Buy heat pads

Sliding a disposable hand warmer, such as the creations from Hot Hands -into each glove works well for some Raynaud’s sufferers. They will stay hot for up to 10 hours, so certainly for the duration of the average winter ride, but because you can only really position them on the wrist or palm they’ll keep that part of your hands cosy but not solve the main icy fingers issue.

Go electric

Hannah Bussey was taken by the Sealskinz electric gloves (Image credit: Future)

You can also buy electric/rechargeable hand warmers, gloves and even socks. Reynaud’s expert and GP, Dr James Gill, is a ‘big fan’ of the electric hand warmer although he acknowledges he is just someone who feels the cold as opposed to a cyclist with Raynaud’s. However, when tech writer Hannah Bussey - who does suffer from Reynaud's - tried the Sealskinz pair, she was smitten.

The issue with some electrically charged gloves is that they heat the palm rather than the fingers which, for some cyclists means they don’t alleviate the symptoms. Most also look fine for hybrids or mountain bikes but look quite bulky to wear while riding a road bike.

Guard against windchill

Windchill can be just as triggering as a colder but calmer day with zero wind. Try windproof outer gloves, with a thin merino wool ‘liner’ glove underneath as produced by the company Ice Breaker. Merino wool is renowned for its insulating properties.

Cold-proof your summer shoes

Overshoes alone may not be enough (Image credit: Future)

Reynaud’s can affect any extremities, so sufferers prone to icy fingers often also get cold toes. Sometimes the usual route of layering overshoes and even additional toe covers is not sufficient to keep out the cold, even if they claim to be ‘thermal.’ Some riders go up a size in shoes to accommodate a thicker pair of socks, although it is advised not to jam feet into shoes too tightly as a thin space can between socks and shoes can allow air to warm and circulate. It also may further prevent already restricted blood flow.

Or just invest in winter shoes

If you’ve tried layering your normal cycling shoes with overshoes and/or toe covers to no avail, it might be time to bite the bullet and buy winter ones. Why? They have fewer vents than summer ones, more thermal insulation and look more like boots than shoes as being higher around the ankle to cover gaps between the shoes and bottom of your leg warmers. Fitzik, Lake and Northwave all do winter versions. As always, they vary according to thickness, foot width and the type of riding you want to do (on or off road). Head to our dedicated guide to the best winter shoes for a comprehensive review.

Thaw your hands gradually

Take time to warm up before you plant your hands straight onto a hot coffee cup (Image credit: Future)

While it’s tempting to jump into a steaming bath as soon as you get home post-ride Dr Gill advises against re-heating those fingers and toes up too rapidly. This is likely to cause discomfort or even extreme pain as previously shut down blood vessels reopen. The advice is if you are at home immerse your hands in warm (rather than hot) water. If you’re stuck out on the road Gill advises using ‘straightforward physics’ by making circles with your arms to help shunt the blood back to the fingers. Sometimes wiggling the fingers and toes while riding (if safe to do so!) can stave off some of the worse symptoms.

‘Total numbness and an inability to change gears’

(Image credit: Lucy Collins)

Raynaud’s sufferer of 30 years Lucy Collins has what can only be described as an extensive library of gloves to choose from and these are only the ones that have passed the chilly ride test. Collins estimates she’s spent hundreds of pounds on gloves that promised to keep her fingers toasty and just ended up in the bin. Many a ride has been abruptly aborted on the onset of Raynaud’s which causes total numbness and an inability to change gears, followed by a stressful race home and inability to even get the key in the door. An excruciating pain, which she describes as ‘hot poker pins and needles,’ then sets in as her hands start to warm up. After years of experimentation Collins has settled on Rapha’s Deep Winter gloves with a silk or merino wool liner underneath and Hot Hands hand warmers on her wrists which usually works above 1 or 2 degrees. But even this sometimes fails to prevent an onset and many a ride has been scrapped altogether due to concerns about the cold to be replaced by Zwift. Thankfully the gravel bike provides an alternative cycling option; it’s slower (therefore less wind chill) and allows her to wear slightly thicker gloves. The search for the foolproof solution for the road, meanwhile, continues, as does the expansion of the glove library.

How many rest days should a cyclist take each week?

James Shrubsall — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 11:18:25 +0000

As bike riders, many of us feel most at home when breathing hard on an upward slope with beautiful vistas all around, so it's sometimes difficult to process the idea that fitness is accrued through rest. That's right – sitting on the sofa reading this article on your phone or your laptop could well be gaining you more fitness than heading out for yet another ride.

But how many rest days should we be taking, assuming fitness gains are what we're after – and what should they look like?

The answers to those questions are mostly down to the individual, and there can be a lot of variation. That said, there are a few useful rules of thumb we can look to.

Why rest anyway?

If training is the process of breaking your body down, rest is the process of rebuilding it, enabling you over time to become a stronger and more accomplished bike rider.

However, the new, stronger you can only emerge with sufficient rest and recovery, as your body repairs fatigued muscles and replenishes the glycogen stores that will enable you to ride hard again another day.

Matt Bottrill is a former National 25-mile champion, and these days he runs a successful racing team and is the owner of Matt Bottrill Performance Coaching. He tells Cycling Weekly: "Your body can only absorb so much load."

How often should we rest?

For most riders, especially at this time of year, when training involves more of a slow build towards the summer months, Bottrill recommends two days off the bike each week.

"If we're looking at the winter phase a couple of rest days would be sufficient for most people," he says, but adds that racers might be OK to do more: "If you're more geared towards performance, you might just want to go for one day."

There are no hard and fast rules around how many days off you should take, he points out, as individual needs vary so much.

"That's when coaching, or understanding how your own body works, kicks in. Because how one athlete adapts to training is so different to the next," he says. The key thing is being able to recover sufficiently to be able to make your 'quality' days count – those when you are performing intervals or riding hills, for example.

Even if you feel like you could ride every day, the smart advice is not to, says Bottrill.

"It's not worth it," he cautions. "What happens is the quality of those sessions, it just starts to dwindle. For the majority of people, you just end up with a flat line in training, ultimately, because your body can only absorb so much. It's definitely not a smart decision."

But taking a day off the bike does not mean you have to take a day off, says Bottrill. In fact, he says, many would benefit from some mobility work and, if you're a bit older, some strength work too.

"A rest day doesn't necessarily mean you have to take the full day off," he says. "Some of that should build in some mobility work, stretching… I think a lot of people would benefit from that. It's about functional movement. That will only enhance performance really.

"Especially for a lot of older athletes, once you're into your forties, you're better off replacing sessions with some form of strength training than having a day off," he adds. "You're getting the most bang for your buck that way."

Don't be afraid to rest when you need to (Image credit: Getty Images)

When to take an unscheduled rest day

The rest days marked up on your calendar aren't the only ones you'll ever need to take. There will be occasions when you're tired or run-down that you're going to be better off taking a duvet day.

"The tell-tale signs are when you wake up and you feel fatigued, a bit sleepy, you need that extra coffee," Bottrill says. Sometimes all it takes is the first hill or effort on the bike to wake you up. But if your heart rate won't rise like it usually does, "then you generally know that you're going to be better off coming home."

And be careful before you rush back into it the following day, he adds, because that initial day of tiredness could be a sign that you need a few days' proper rest.

"If you wake up the next morning and you're still tired, and that's when you probably need to go, 'you know what? I'm gonna back off. Let's take, three days off here,' right?" he says – whereas doing the opposite could see you end up getting ill.

Don't be afraid to take the time off you need, advises Bottrill, and once you're feeling recovered, be prepared to build back slowly.

He suggests a final "check-in" day with no hard riding, just to make sure your heart rate looks back to normal, and then a slow build back up to full speed, for which you should allow twice the time you were ill for.

"If you go out and smash it the first day after you've recovered, it's going to come back and bite you," he says, but adds: "Training is not about one day – it's the consistency that's key."

What to wear cycling: A temperature-by-temperature cycling dress guide

kristin.goett@gmail.com (Kristin Jenny) — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:51:41 +0000

We’ve all been there. After obsessively checking the weather forecast, you stand in front of your closet, staring at your cycling gear. You weigh your options, hem and haw over which layers to wear. Will a base layer and light jacket suffice, or will you be shivering by mile ten? Should you start off in knee warmers or ditch them altogether? The wrong choice can lead to shivering descents or sweat-soaked climbs, quickly turning an enjoyable ride into a miserable slog.

Before you second-guess that extra layer—or leave one behind—turn to our temperature-by-temperature dress guide. It’s designed to help you get out of the door faster, and ride in comfort no matter the weather.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind that your riding environment and terrain can significantly impact how you experience temperature. Wind exposure, rain, ride intensity, and changes in elevation can all alter how warm or cool you feel during a ride. When in doubt, it’s always better to bring along an extra layer just in case —you can always shed a layer if you’re too warm, but if you’re underdressed, there’s no quick fix for the cold.

32°F and below

(Image credit: Getty Images)

If you’re riding in temperatures below freezing, more power to you. But riding in such cold weather can bring a real concern for frostbite or hypothermia if you are not dressed correctly. As such, you’ll want to ensure you’ve got on a variety of layers that are windproof and potentially waterproof or water-resistant if snow or sleet is in the forecast.

(Image credit: Kristin Jenny)

Tops:

- Long-sleeve baselayer

- Thermal long-sleeve jersey

- Insulated, windproof and/or water-proof jacket. Even if it's not raining, a hardshell will go a long way in keeping the chilly air out.

Bottoms:

- Thick thermal bib tights

Accessories:

- Thermal neckwarmer (Buff) or balaclava

- Insulated gloves - “lobster-style” gloves may keep fingers warmer

- Skull cap that goes over your ears

- Neoprene shoe covers or even winter cycling shoes

- Wool socks or double up on regular pairs if needed

32-39°F / 0-4°C

(Image credit: Getty Images)

For many, this range is the coldest they’ll consider venturing outdoors in, though many will have turned to indoor riding by then.

When the sun is out and there is no precipitation, this temperature range can actually feel quite refreshing - but only if you’ve got the right gear on.

(Image credit: Kristin Jenny)

Tops:

- Baselayer

- Thermal long-sleeve jersey

- Down-filled or insulated vest or jacket.

Bottoms:

- Thermal bib tights

Accessories:

- Thermal neckwarmer (Buff)

- Insulated gloves

- Skull cap that goes over your ears

- Neoprene shoe covers or even winter cycling shoes

- Wool socks

40-49°F / 5-10°C

(Image credit: AlpKit)

Once you get moving on your ride in the 40-49°F (5-10°C) range, you might even break a sweat. But with sweat can come post-sweating chills, so warm clothes are still needed to stay comfortable as you cruise along in these brisk temperatures.

(Image credit: Kristin Jenny)

Tops:

- Baselayer

- Long-sleeve jersey (doesn’t need to be thermal)

- Wind- or rain-proof jacket

Bottoms:

- Thermal bib tights or insulated bib shorts with lined legwarmers

Accessories:

- Thinner neckwarmer (Buff) - merino wool is a good option

- Thinner, but still full-fingered gloves

- Headband or cap (optional)

- Neoprene shoe covers

- Thinner wool socks - again, merino wool is a good option

50-59°F / 10-15°C

After a long, cold winter, nothing feels quite as good as the first sunny day that cracks 50°F (10°C). While temperatures in the 50s can still carry a chill in the shade, these early springtime conditions offer a welcome opportunity to start peeling off the heavy thermal layers you’ve depended on all winter. It might even be time to let those pale arms and legs soak up some long-missed sunlight.

However, dressing for this temperature range can be tricky—sunny skies can feel pleasantly warm, but overcast conditions can quickly cool you down. The best strategy? Bring plenty of layers and shed them as needed!

(Image credit: Kristin Jenny)

Tops:

- Lightweight baselayer

- Non-thermal long-sleeve jersey

- Packable jacket or warm vest

Bottoms:

- Bib shorts with Leg warmers

- Or, non-insulated lycra-only bib tights like Ornot's Lightweight Tight or Velocio's Luxe Bib Tights

Accessories:

- Non-thermal neckwarmer or bandana (optional)

- Non-thermal full-fingered gloves

- Toe covers (optional)

60-65°F / 15-18°C

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Spring has really sprung now! The 60-65°F ( 15-18°C) range is the first set of temperatures where you can truly feel “free” on the bike again, leaving your gloves, neck gaiters and toe covers at home.

But while this spring weather may feel pleasant in the sun and on the flats if you’re climbing and descending, be sure to pack a windproof vest to fend off the wee bit of chill that still remains at this temperature range.

(Image credit: Kristin Jenny)

Tops:

- Short-sleeve jersey with arm warmers (stash those when things warm up)

- Windproof vest or packable wind shell

Bottoms:

- Bib shorts

- Knee warmers (optional)

Accessories:

- Fingerless gloves (optional)

65-70°F / 18-21°C

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The riding season is in full swing by the time the weather warms up to the 65-70°F ( 18-21°C) range. And breaking out the first short-sleeve jersey of the season is a great reward for slogging through all of that wet and cold weather.

You won’t need much other than a jersey and bibs at these temperatures, but it’s not a bad idea to bring a packable vest if you’re ascending to cooler temperatures or descending at rapid speeds.

(Image credit: Kristin Jenny)

Tops:

- Light baselayer (optional)

- Short-sleeve jersey

- Packable windproof vest

Bottoms:

- Bib shorts

Accessories:

- Fingerless cycling gloves

70-80°F / 21-26°C

(Image credit: Future)

This may just be the most comfortable temperature range for cycling comfort without excessive sweating or needing to bundle up.

While you'll be perfectly comfortable in just a short-sleeve jersey and bib shorts, a mesh base layer will help regulate your body temperature and manage moisture. As you sweat, a wicking baselayer pulls moisture away from your skin and moves it to the outer layers of the fabric, where it can evaporate more quickly. This keeps you dry, reducing the risk of feeling clammy or chilled, especially during descents or stops.

(Image credit: Kristin Jenny)

Tops:

- Mesh baselayer (for wicking)

- Short-sleeve jersey

Bottoms:

- Bib shorts

Accessories:

- Fingerless cycling gloves (optional)

85°F+ / 30°C+

(Image credit: Future)

When the summer weather really start heating up, you’ll want to think just as carefully about your apparel choices as you did back in the days of frigid temperatures.

Opting for an ultra-light kit will help to keep you cool(er), and if you’re particularly sensitive to the sun’s UV rays, you may want to choose a long-sleeve summer jersey to protect your arms from sun exposure. Remember to apply sunscreen!

(Image credit: Kristin Jenny)

Tops:

- Ultra-light jersey

- Summer sun protection arm sleeves or summer long-sleeve jersey (optional)

Bottoms:

- Ultra-light bib shorts

Accessories:

- Fingerless cycling gloves (optional)

Power to weight ratio explained: watts per kilo matter - here’s how to improve yours

anna.abram@futurenet.com (Anna Marie Abram) — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 16:00:11 +0000

Many factors influence a rider's speed on the bike, but power to weight is undeniably crucial.

The ratio is calculated, very simply, by dividing the watts produced (measured via a power meter), by kilograms in weight: watts/kg. All things being equal, the higher the number, the faster a rider will go.

However, it's important to be aware that losing too much weight, or losing it too quickly, can impact power production - negating any speed gains made by shedding the extra pounds. For some riders, increasing power by following a cycling training plan may be more productive than losing weight.

It's also important to understand the effect of gradient on these equations. A rider who can put out 300 watts as their Functional Threshold Power (FTP) but weighs 100kg will have the same watts per kilo (w/kg) as a 50kg rider who has an FTP of 150 watts. However, on the flat (where weight doesn’t play a large role), the heavier and more powerful rider will have a sizable advantage over the lighter rider. But as the road tips upwards, the advantage of raw wattage dwindles and w/kg becomes the most important number.

Although the two riders as described would be evenly matched on the climbs, the lighter rider doesn’t have to add many more watts to gain the advantage here. An FTP increase to 175w would see the 50kg rider’s k/kg leap to 3.5 w/kg - conferring a significant advantage on the climbs.

Understanding power-to-weight ratio/watts per kilogram

(Image credit: Future)

Those are the fundamentals. Simply put, there are three ways by which a rider’s w/kg can be increased:

Increasing power output while keeping weight constant
Keeping power output constant while decreasing weight
Increasing power output while also decreasing weight

It’s important to note that if you gain weight - whether through increased muscle mass or otherwise - whilst increasing your power output, your w/kg will not improve and you won’t see a benefit on the climbs (although you will be faster on the flat, all else being equal).

Likewise, if your power declines significantly as you lose weight, your w/kg will similar not improve - plus your performance on the flat (where raw wattage matters most) will suffer as well.

The table below shows the relationship between power, weight and w/kg. Looking at this table, notice how the w/kg number rises as power output rises and bodyweight falls - i.e. higher and further to the right in this table. Notice, too, how any given power-to-weight ratio (we’ve highlighted 3W/kg) can be achieved at much lower absolute power outputs when the rider’s mass is low. For example, a 50kg rider churning out just 150 watts has the same power-to-weight ratio as a 90kg rider churning out 270.

Now suppose this 90kg rider wants an improved power-to-weight ratio. If he or she sheds 10kg (down to 80kg), P/WR jumps from 3.0 to 3.4W/kg - that’s a bigger (and in most cases more attainable) improvement than staying at the same weight and developing their aerobic fitness to add another 30 watts and hit 300w. This underlines why shedding excess body mass (fat) is so effective at boosting performance - even if your aerobic fitness remains the same.

	120w	150w	180w	210w	240w	270w	300w	330w	360w	390w
45kg	2.7	3.3	4.0	4.7	5.3	6.0	6.7	7.3	8.0	8.7
50kg	2.4	3.0	3.6	4.2	4.8	5.4	6.0	6.6	7.2	7.8
55kg	2.2	2.7	3.3	3.8	4.4	4.9	5.4	6.0	6.5	7.1
60kg	2.0	2.5	3.0	3.5	4.0	4.5	5.0	5.5	6.0	6.5
65kg	1.8	2.3	2.8	3.2	3.7	4.1	4.6	5.0	5.5	6.0
70kg	1.7	2.1	2.6	3.0	3.4	3.8	4.3	4.7	5.1	5.6
75kg	1.6	2.0	2.4	2.8	3.2	3.6	4.0	4.4	4.8	5.2
80kg	1.5	1.9	2.2	2.6	3.0	3.4	3.8	4.1	4.5	4.9
85kg	1.4	1.8	2.1	2.5	2.8	3.2	3.5	3.9	4.2	4.6
90kg	1.3	1.7	2.0	2.3	2.7	3.0	3.3	3.7	4.0	4.3
95kg	1.2	1.6	1.9	2.2	2.5	2.8	3.2	3.8	3.8	4.1

What is a good power to weight ratio?

What would be a ‘good’ W/Kg? Well, this depends on the time period and the level at which you’re riding. Dr Andrew Coggan, an internationally acclaimed exercise physiologist, has compiled some typical power-to-weight ratios, which are shown in the table below:

Rider type	5 mins (male/female)	1 hour (male/female)
Professional	7.0 / 6.15	6.0 / 5.36
Amateur	3.7 / 3.19	3.0 / 2.57
Recreational	2.5 / 2.07	1.8 / 1.5

Is power-to-weight ratio important in cycling?

(Image credit: Dan Gould)

As we saw earlier, shifting mass uphill means that you have to work against the force of gravity. This explains why power-to-weight ratio becomes especially important when climbing. However, absolute power is still important.

To illustrate this, let’s compare power requirements of a 70kg and 80kg rider riding a superlight 6kg road bike up a hill of seven per cent gradient at 16kph (10mph) in still winds. Using data on rolling and aerodynamic resistance, we can calculate that an 80kg rider would have to maintain an average power output or around 298W, requiring a power-to-weight ratio of 3.73W/kg. The 70kg rider would only need to average 266W to ride up the same hill at the same speed on the same bike. However, although it’s 32W less power overall, this translates into a slightly higher power-to-weight ratio of 3.80W/kg.

Why is this? In simple terms, although much of the riders’ power requirements are a function of body mass (because they’re climbing), there’s an extra, fixed amount of work that has to be done to push the air out of the way (i.e. overcoming aerodynamic resistance), which is the same for both riders. As speeds rise, the contribution from aerodynamic resistance becomes proportionately greater. This in turn begins to favour absolute power output over power-to-weight.

Of course, it’s worth bearing in mind that, in a real-life scenario, the heavier rider is likely to be physically larger and have greater frontal surface area, increasing their aerodynamic resistance further (a discussion to be explored another time). To illustrate this, let’s now suppose that the riders are travelling twice as fast (32kph) but the gradient is half as steep (3.5 per cent).

The rate of ascent overall is still the same and the 70kg rider still requires around 32W less power than the 80kg rider to maintain a speed of 32kph. However, both riders have had to find a massive 163W extra to overcome the increased aerodynamic resistance experienced at 32kph compared to the resistance at 16kph.

So, your power to weight ratio is important, but only really when cycling up steeper climbs. Still, for professional cyclists, it is the climbs which really matter. On the flat, drafting behind the rider in front can save you around a third of the wattage to maintain that speed - if the person in front is putting out 350W, you may only have to put out 231W to hold the wheel.

This means it’s difficult for the strongest riders to pull away, as they would have to put out significantly more watts than the people behind them. On steep climbs, though, the benefits of drafting are greatly reduced because the speeds are so much slower. It’s on these climbs that the strongest riders can put time into their weaker competitors. But, as we’ve covered, speed on steeper climbs is determined not only by your watts, but also by your weight - which is why a rider’s power to weight ratio is quite so important.

What does this mean in practice?

(Image credit: Future)

Essentially, the hillier the terrain, the more your power-to-weight ratio matters. The flatter the terrain, the less power-to-ratio matters and the more absolute power output comes into play (figure 1). We can draw another conclusion: when power-to-weight ratios are identical, the rider with the highest absolute power will be faster.

For example, if rider A weighs 80kg and can sustain 240W, while rider B weighs 70kg and can sustain 210W, they both have a power-to-weight ratio of 3W/kg. But A will be faster because he/she will have more power to overcome aerodynamic and frictional drag.

The flatter the terrain, the more important absolute power becomes.

The hillier the terrain, the more important power-to-weight becomes.

Testing your own power output

Calculating your own power-to-weight ratio requires only two measurements: your weight and your maximum sustainable power output. The first is easy to measure - just hop on some accurate bathroom scales. The second requires a power output measurement. To do this, you’ll need to use a bike with a reliable power meter fitted - or better still, hop on an accurate, power-reading smart indoor trainer, where you can pedal furiously without needing to slow down for bends, traffic, etc.

To measure your maximum sustainable aerobic power, ride gently for 10 minutes to make sure you’re thoroughly warmed up. Take a couple of minutes’ rest, then ride as hard as you possibly can for 20 minutes and record your average power output figure in watts. This is your 20-minute maximum sustainable power output.

Your one-hour maximum sustainable power output will be around five per cent lower (depending on fitness) than this figure, e.g. a 20-minute figure of 275W would equate to around 260W for an hour. Your five-minute maximum power will likely be around 10 per cent higher than the 20-minute figure, e.g. in this example, around 295W.

How do you increase your power-to-weight ratio in cycling?

(Image credit: Future)

We’ve seen that increasing power, reducing body weight or a combination of both can significantly improve your power-to-weight ratio. But how can you best achieve this? This will depend on your cycling background:

Relative beginners/novices

Simply riding more miles will boost your power-to-weight ratio. Putting in more miles will not only boost your level of aerobic fitness (i.e. your sustainable power output); you’ll almost certainly lose a bit of excess body fat in the process. For example, if you drop from 86 to 82kg and increase your 20-minute power output from 210 to 235W, your power-to-weight ratio increases from 2.4W/kg to a very respectable 2.9W/kg.

Fitter and more experienced riders

You need to be a bit more focused than simply adding more miles. Yes, more miles might result in reduced body weight, but add too much extra volume and you run the risk of fatigue and burnout. Moreover, an attempt to reduce weight when your body-fat levels are already quite low can lead to muscle mass loss as well as fat loss.

Given that power is generated by your muscle tissue, you might end up reducing your weight and losing some power with it - resulting in minimal improvements to your power-to-weight ratio. In fact, it’s worth remembering that absolute power is most important on the flat and even on gentle climbs. If you add both weight and power, although you won’t be any faster on the steepest climbs, you’ll still be faster elsewhere.

As a result, the best option is generally to include some specific training to boost your maximal power output. This includes sessions such as intervals (long and shorter, more intense), hill repeats and some threshold rides. Because these sessions are quite demanding, make sure you build in sufficient recovery time into your weekly cycling training plan - it’s during recovery that your muscles adapt and become more powerful.

Weight training

(Image credit: Future)

Another useful strategy, especially for more accomplished riders, is to perform some regular strength training. Studies have shown that performing heavy resistance training for the key cycling muscles (quadriceps, hamstrings, buttocks and calves) not only boosts muscle efficiency, it can help prevent the loss of muscle power during periods of high-volume training, or during periods of weight loss.

Cycling nutrition

Regardless of your riding ability, consuming a healthy diet, avoiding an excess of sugary, fatty and (especially) processed foods will play a part in improving power-to-weight ratio. All other things being equal, higher intakes of sugar and sugary foods in particular have been unequivocally linked with higher levels of body fat.

Unlike muscle tissue, excess body fat blunts power-to-weight ratio and contributes nothing to power output. By the same token, a plentiful intake of dietary protein is recommended, especially after training. Protein is needed for recovery and repair after training, and studies show that higher intakes of protein can help prevent muscle mass loss when training volumes are high.

The best workouts and training plans on Zwift, as picked by our coaching expert

Andy Turner — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 09:18:41 +0000

Zwift has come into its own lately, at least in the UK where we've been on the verge of gathering up the animals two by two and setting sail. But the indoor riding platform offers far more than an escape from the weather, as anyone familiar with it will probably already be aware. There is the sizeable community, a thriving race scene, and miles of roads and routes to discover from the comfort of your indoor space.

But there is also a huge bank of training sessions, enough to make it one of the best indoor training apps for cycling. If you're looking to improve, it's really worth checking out. But where to start?

We got our resident training expert at Cycling Weekly, Andy Turner – who is also head coach of ATP Performance – take a look at the sessions and cherry pick nine of the best.

Andy digs into the physiological benefits of each session and, as an extra bonus, he’s given the same treatment to three of Zwift’s multi-week cycling training plans.

This might be a little full-on if you're only just starting out on Zwift – in which case you might want to take a look at our guide to getting started with Zwift, or how to put together the cheapest possible Zwift set-ups.

Alternatively, if you're brand new to indoor riding and have yet to bag yourself a trainer, check out our guides to the best cheap smart trainers alongside the best smart turbo trainers that includes trainers at a host of different price points.

Meanwhile, let's take a look at those sessions.

Best Zwift workouts

Best Zwift workout to improve FTP

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: 2x15 FTP Builds

This workout starts with a progressive warm-up, then dives straight into two 15-minute intervals at FTP with a 10-minute break in-between.

The progressive warm-up is vital, as working at FTP is tough for this duration of time. The benefit of working at or around FTP is that it helps not just physiologically but also psychologically when it comes to maintaining this level of power.

Improving your FTP comes down to increasing your aerobic threshold, the effort that you can sustain maximally for longer periods of time. One way to do this is via long slow duration training (which takes up a lot of time) or by doing higher intensity intervals such as this session.

What makes this session one of the best Zwift workouts for improving FTP is that it assists in reducing our time to exhaustion – how long we can sustain FTP – which, in turn, results in us being able to maintain a higher power for durations of up to 20 and 60 minutes.

Best Zwift workout for weight loss

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: The Long Ride – Intervals & Progression

This session is primarily a Zone 2 endurance ride, but with sub-threshold and some supra-threshold efforts thrown in there. There are several factors that make this is the best Zwift workout for weight loss.

Firstly, being nearly three hours long, this session expends a significant amount of energy – and therefore calories. If looking to shift some body fat, we want to create a calorie deficit, either by eating less or burning more. Eating less risks shedding muscle as well as fat, so burning more and eating enough to fuel your body creates a more optimal calorie deficit.

The other benefit to this session is that the efforts towards the end are above FTP and assist in creating an oxygen deficit (referred to as EPOC). This means that even after exercise has finished, we continue to use calories at a higher rate as we recover from the physiological effort of these higher intensity blasts.

Best Zwift HIIT workout

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: Lauren Kitchen – HIIT Intervals

This session combines a block of x10 30/30s and x8 45/45s, both conducted at around 120per cent of FTP which puts them firmly into the maximal aerobic power and above level of efforts, high intensity interval training that’s for sure!

The reason why I think this is the best HIIT workout on Zwift is that it’s all about very hard efforts and repeating them with limited recovery. So even when the power is low, you will find that your heart rate is still recovering and likely remain well elevated to where it would normally be for a recovery intensity of power.

These kinds of efforts are great for developing glycolytic power, improving recovery from efforts, and improving maximal aerobic function as our heart rate and oxygen consumption increase towards their maximums as the effort blocks go on.

Best Zwift workout for climbing

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: Seated and Standing

This is the best Zwift workout for those looking to improve their climbing ability. Not only does the workout start with some high cycling cadence efforts to give a bit of neuromuscular stimulus – warming the legs up nicely – but the main efforts combine both seated and out-the-saddle work, delivering a rounded training stimulus.

The biggest difference between riding on the flats and the climbs is that we are likely to spend more time out of the saddle on the climbs, so it’s nice to see a workout which addresses that. The efforts are only 2.5 minutes long, but they are hard ones and ramp up in power throughout the entire effort.

The first two minutes are done seated, with the final 30 seconds being a sprint over the top. The idea is as the effort level increases, the cadence drops and resistance increases, preparing you for climbs when the gradient increases and we need to get out of the saddle to get over them.

Best one-hour Zwift workout

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: Random Attacks

The Random Attacks workout is a very fun one – part of the the reason why I think it is the best Zwift workout if you’ve got an hour to spare (plus two minutes!). The session doesn’t repeat any of its efforts and includes a big mix of things to keep it interesting and you engaged in the session.

Once the warm-up is over, it goes straight into race mode, with attack efforts flying left right and centre. That in itself makes this a great workout for those doing e-races, criteriums, and cyclo-cross races where the pace is hard from the start and the efforts are more random and variable. The large amount of time spent at or above FTP with limited recovery also makes this workout a hard one, but definitely a fun and useful one to complete.

Best Zone 2 Zwift workout

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: The Long Ride – 6 x 20min Tempo

There are not many predominantly Zone 2 workouts on Zwift that have structure, many of them are a free ride or jumping in with a Pace Partner at your Zone 2 power. However, this is the best Zwift workout for Zone 2 that we found – even though it calls itself a Tempo (Zone 3) workout, the actual power targets are still more Zone 2 rather than Tempo.

The session is a long one at 3.25 hours, but includes a good amount of time spent well into the higher end of Zone 2. The benefit to this is that it can be easy with Zone 2 rides to end up complacent and ride at too low an intensity. This session breaks the workout up into sections of Zone 1, and longer blocks of solid Zone 2, that remain below the first lactate threshold.

This also keeps things a bit more interesting and mentally engaging having the session broken up into multiple segments. It requires a good level of fitness to complete, so for those who are starting out with endurance training, maybe best to complete x3 of the 20min Tempo efforts to start.

Best Zwift recovery workout

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: Active Recovery

As the name would clearly suggest, this is the best Zwift workout for recovery days. Just 33 minutes of riding at predominantly Zone 1 with some little excursions into Zone 2 just to get the heart beating a little more without generating any fatigue.

The big benefit of active recovery is the musculoskeletal pump. When we do hard efforts or high intensity/duration training, we generate fatigue metabolites that require clearing. The way to clear them is via increased blood flow, which is where a lot of recovery products claim to be beneficial such as massage guns and compression clothing.

Active recovery rides do this for us as they increase cardiac output, and therefore assist in the removal of the metabolites in our legs, without generating any fatigue metabolites themselves.

Best VO2 workout on Zwift

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: The Ganna, or Finish Focus

The Ganna – we already know by the name that this session is going to involve a fair amount of time at an intensity that we’re going to find uncomfortable. With a total of 15 minutes out of 50 spent at VO2max levels of power, this makes this the best zwift workout for VO2.

Although the efforts are short, they are very hard. The first two 30 seconds surges are just to get the legs up to speed for generating high power. Then it’s a two-minute effort at 120 per cent of FTP – which is a lot harder than you think it will be, even though it’s only two minutes.

The next efforts are each five per cent easier, but also a minute longer at three and four minutes. Then if that wasn’t enough, you work your way back to two minutes of 120 per cent of FTP but now with a solid amount of fatigue in your legs. Working at this maximal aerobic capacity is a great way of improving VO2max.

Best Zwift workout for beginners

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift workout name: Basics

This session is the best Zwift workout for those just beginning to include structured workouts in their training and haven’t done any FTP (or similar) threshold testing. The Z3 block is an effort which will be more about feel and likely one which you will end up overdoing – as it’s a short interval and therefore easy to go too hard in.

But the six 20-second sprints are a great way of generating a high level of torque whilst keeping a high leg speed, assisting in muscle recruitment when cycling and also cycling specific leg strength. Being just over half an hour, it is also not an overly exerting session for those just starting out.

Best Zwift training plans

Zwift has more than just individual workouts to choose from. For those looking to follow a structured routine across a number of weeks as they build towards a goal, Zwift also offers cycling training plans.

Best Zwift training plan for weight loss

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift training plan name: Gran Fondo plan

This plan is the best Zwift training plan for weight loss, as it has the highest total volume of riding. Although shown as being only five hours a week, the rides at the weekend are referred to as ‘Endurance Free Rides’, meaning they can be significantly longer than the advertised 50 minutes.

Longer rides present the opportunity to ride at lower intensities (which burn fat) for a long duration (so the total amount of fat burned is high). Combine this with a calorie deficit of only 500-800, and then you will still have consumed an adequate amount throughout the day to avoid slipping into low energy availability.

The addition of many very good training sessions to improve aerobic performance will also help you burn more fuel at lower intensities – thus burning more fat – as well as helping increase the maximum power at which you continue to burn predominantly fat. There is also the excessive post oxygen consumption (EPOC) after the interval sessions during the week.

Best Zwift training plan for climbing

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift training plan name: TT Tune-up

Although not traditionally what you would consider to be the best Zwift training plan for climbing, the TT Tune-up is actually ideal for this.

A lot of the workouts in this plan are centred around being able to maintain a high power and heart rate for a prolonged period of time. This is ideal for longer climbs where due to the gradient you can’t really ease off the pedals – similar to in a time trial. Being able to produce higher powers for longer periods of time while maintaining a high heart rate is similarly very beneficial to climbing performance.

Additionally, there are plenty of sessions which work the anaerobic areas of power production needed for shorter and sharper climbs – Week Six in particular has some good leg-burners in there with Power Intervals, AC + Sweet Spot, and Neuromuscular + AC.

You can also use this plan to build up to a specific event, if you start nine weeks out from it: eight weeks for the plan, and one week for a taper.

Best Zwift training plan for beginners

(Image credit: Zwift)

Zwift training plan name: Build me up

This is the best Zwift training plan for both beginners, and those resuming their training after a break, perhaps aiming to successfully bounce back after a crash (and injury).

The plan starts with assessing power benchmarks for determining power zones, and tests this again more regularly than most plans, as beginners can expect to see faster progression than experienced riders.

The sessions are a nice variety that will keep riders entertained. The wide range of efforts will also help riders determine what their strengths and weaknesses are on the bike. There is also a good number of sessions dedicated to pedalling technique and efficiency, very important for beginners – and a lot of more experienced riders as well – as this is something that often gets neglected.

A lot of the sessions are one hour or less, making them easy for most beginners to cycling to complete, without being too hard or taking up too much time in the day. On the weekends, some of the sessions stretch to 90 minutes. To finish off the plan, the final week builds you up to an FTP test, which will give you a good indication of how far you’ve come in the 12 weeks.

11 ways to increase your average speed: training tips and instant gains

hannah_reynolds@ipcmedia.com (Hannah Reynolds) — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 11:05:23 +0000

"What's a typical average speed for a cyclist?"; "How can I increase my average speed when cycling?"; "Average cycling speed by age"; "Beginner average cycling speed": it doesn't take a deep dive into Google's 'Autocorrect' (or, indeed any internet forum), to realise that cyclists of all levels are interested in benchmarking and building upon their pace.

Even the most inexpensive best bike computers will show your max, current and average speed as you’re rolling along. But once you have that information, how can you see where you sit, compared to other riders? And, how can you up the numbers?

Well, we've got lots more tips and tricks for instantly increasing your speed - as well as some guidance which requires a bit more practice and patience to enact. Whatever your starting speed, follow these tips to see your average increase.

What speed does the average road cyclist ride at?

This is a really hard question to answer - it depends where you live (is it hilly? windy?), and of course your base level fitness will have an impact. However, it's a question a lot of beginners ask.

Average cycling speed according to Strava data
Male cyclists	20.4 kph (12.7 mph)
Female cyclists	17.7 kph (11 mph)

To satisfy your curiosity, the answer is that according to Strava data, the average male cyclist rides at an average speed of 20.4 kph (12.7 mph), whilst the average female hits 17.7 kph (11 mph).

However, alongside differences in terrain and weather, these numbers also encompass the full spectrum of rides uploaded to Strava. That includes (typically) slower urban and gravel riding to the much faster speeds seen in group rides on Zwift and other indoor training apps for cycling.

If you want a more granular look at the speeds people are riding, checking out Strava’s segment leaderboards is a good place to start. Plus it gives you the option to filter by age, weight and gender - as well as other options - making it easier to find a yardstick that’s relevant to you.

Still, no matter what speeds other people are riding at, there is always that warm satisfaction of improving on your own times. Here’s our top tips for improving your average speed.

How to increase your average speed on a bike ride

1. Bend and tuck elbows

(Image credit: Future)

The biggest thing slowing you down when you cycle is wind resistance. Many of these tips concern ways to reduce your frontal area and your drag so you slice more easily through the wind.

The simplest of them all is to slightly lower your body position on the bike. Instead of sitting up straight in the saddle and catching a lot of wind, try lowering your body closer to the bars by bending and tucking in your elbows. You’ll immediately feel a difference.

2. Get your tyre pressure right

(Image credit: Future)

Correctly inflated tyres are key to riding at your maximum potential speed. You should check your road bike tyre pressure before every ride as changes in temperature and slight seeping of air can mean that they go soft without necessarily being punctured.

If your tyres are too soft, the rolling resistance you encounter will be proportionally higher, sapping away your speed. Insufficiently inflated tyres are also more susceptible to punctures - so there’s an additional reason to keep your pressures topped up.

But on the other hand, if you make your tyres completely rock-solid with air, they will no longer be able to conform to the bumps and imperfection of the road surface. It’s more efficient - and more comfortable - if your tyres soak up this chatter themselves, rather than transmitting it up the frame and juddering both you and your bike.

There are many factors which determine what the optimal pressure for your setup will be. The width of the tyre and the combined weight of you and your bike are two major ones. But the casing of your tyres and the internal width of your rims also plays a part. To take out some of the guesswork, the component manufacturer SRAM has developed a handy online tyre pressure calculator which will give you recommendations for your setup.

3. Brake less

(Image credit: Future)

How’s this for an obvious one? Try braking less. Braking slows you down and requires you to pedal harder to accelerate back up to speed. Unnecessary braking is a waste of energy and momentum. So how do you improve? Firstly try to eliminate ‘comfort’ braking. This occurs when you are rolling along a fast road or downhill and you start to go a little bit quicker than you are used to.

Braking to get your speed down to a level you feel comfortable with is fine - but take a good look around first: if the road surface is good, clear of obstructions and relatively straight, there is no reason to slow down so let the bike roll and enjoy some free speed. The next place to improve confidence is during cornering. Braking later will help you hold your speed for longer. Remember to always brake in a straight line and get to a comfortable cornering speed before you start to turn.

4. Ride on the drops

(Image credit: Future)

If you are riding a drop-handlebar bike, how often do you actually use the drops? Chances are not that much. But getting down lower improves your bike handling, reduces your aerodynamic drag and will help you corner and descend with confidence. Riding on the drops lowers wind resistance by 20 per cent compared with riding on the tops.

There are two main causes which typically stop people from riding in the drops. The first is not being able to reach the brakes and the second is simply not feeling comfortable. Both of these issues can be addressed with a proper bike set-up.

If your bike fits you properly, you should be able to ride in the drop position for large parts of your ride. If you’re struggling to hold an aero position comfortably, you may also need to do some stretching as tight hamstrings and an inflexible lower back makes it harder. How about also trying this 10 minute daily routine to boost your flexibility and endurance.

5. Learn to track stand

You may have spotted other commuters and bike couriers balancing, seemingly effortlessly, at traffic lights and thought that they were just showing off their superhuman bike skills. However, there’s much more to this little maneuver than showboating. While you’re still fumbling for your pedal, they’ll have put in three or four good strokes and already be up to speed and away. Track standing does require practice and this is not best done in front of a van driver during the Monday morning rush hour. When you stop for food or are hanging around waiting for your mates, start playing around with the technique.

To learn this, find a slight incline - the gradient helps find your balance point. If you normally ride clipped in, you can switch to trainers for confidence. Start by riding really slowly in tight circles. This will help you get a sense of how to balance your weight. Go as slow and tight as you can and try to use smooth movements.

When you are comfortable, come to a slow stop with your wheel pointing uphill. Keep your head up rather than looking at the front hub. Pick a spot and focus your eyes on that spot. Now, with your lead foot — the one that is forward (feet at three and nine o’clock), turn the wheel (about 45°) into the incline keeping enough pressure on your lead foot to keep your balance, but not enough to move up the incline.

Using the same ratcheting technique you employed to ride in circles, relax the pressure slightly so the wheel will roll back, apply it again and it will roll forward. With that slight rocking back and forth motion, you can maintain balance. Initially, you can always cheat by grabbing hold of a lamp post or railing when you are stopped. Just remember to start pedalling slightly before you let go so you have momentum, otherwise you might just plop over sideways!

6. Ride out into a headwind and home in a tailwind

Unless you are a sailor as well as a cyclist, you might not give wind direction a thought on a daily basis - but the wind can be both your friend and your enemy. A headwind can make riding feel like a struggle, making you feel slow regardless of the effort you put in. A tailwind makes you feel like a superhero as you can easily spin along at top speed.

Make use of the wind by planning your route so the outward part when you are freshest is into the headwind and the homeward leg when you may be feeling tired has a tailwind.

7. Cut excess fat

If you want to go a bit faster, and you're carrying excess weight, then losing weight may be an avenue for performance gains. Improving your power to weight ratio can help you to climb and accelerate faster.

For those seeking weight loss, make sure to do this steadily and over a sufficient length of time. It’s very important you still take on enough nutrition to fuel your rides and to ensure effective recovery - but it is possible to do this while still losing weight. You can find our in-depth guide on how to lose weight through cycling without losing strength over here.

If you are already lean, you’ll be better off focusing on building strength rather than trying to lose any more weight. Losing too much weight could impact the power production element of the equation, and put your health at risk (read more about Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport here).

8. Add intervals into your training

(Image credit: Future)

The fastest way to increase your average speed is to train at speeds above it. Obviously, you can’t just go out and ride your normal route faster than usual - you’d rapidly start to hurt and run out of energy. Instead, coaches recommend interval training as a key constituent of their cycling training plans. This means you will be cycling for short bursts at speeds above your usual average pace, before then slowing down to recover for a period - and then going fast again.

You can try this technique during any ride, it doesn’t have to be saved for strictly set ‘training sessions’. ‘Fartlek training’, as it’s also known, was designed by a Swedish coach and basically means ‘playing with speed’. You might choose to ride as fast as you can to the end of the road and then recover until you pass five lamp posts before going fast again.

Use any markers you like from your environment: parked cars, road signs, gateways. Pick your target and pedal hard till you reach it, then ease off. Make sure the road is safe and that no matter how hard you are trying, keep your head up to spot any hazards - or try completing session cycling indoors where you can concentrate on the efforts alone.

If you want a more structured session try this one. If we assume you usually average 23 kph / 14 mph on the flat, ride for 15-20 minutes to warm up before finding a reasonably flat stretch of road. When you get there, cycle for two minutes at 26 kph / 16mph. Choose a harder gear, and maintain the same cadence rather than trying to pedal faster.

After pedalling hard for two minutes, change back into your easier gear, slow down and take it easy for five minutes - but keep your legs pedalling, this helps the recovery process. Then repeat this whole ‘interval’ process another three or four times. If it feels too easy, next time aim to go three, four or five kph / mph quicker during your interval than you would normally ride.

After a few trips out you will know what works for you. Your average speed for these rides might well be less than your ‘normal’ average speed. But this is not a problem at all, since that is not the challenge. The challenge is to slowly get you and your legs used to cycling at 26 kph / 16mph instead of 23 kph / 14 mph - which you will later be able to do for a whole ride.

9. Ride with others

You might consider this cheating, but riding with other people will increase your average speed in several ways. Firstly if you take it in turns to ride in front and share the work of cutting through the wind you will travel faster as a group than on your own.

Secondly, riding with others on a group ride will also encourage you to lift your effort level. Trying to keep up with someone that bit faster than will provide an impetus that will help to increase your average speed - both on that particular ride and on subsequent ones, as your fitness level starts to increase.

Another option is to enter a sportive or gran fondo. Way-marking, feed stations, mechanical support and the motivation of others around you all serve to help you ride faster than on your usual weekend loop.

10. Aero bike and/or wheels

(Image credit: Future)

If you really want to go all-out, you can buy speed. Aerodynamic tubing on the best aero bikes, as well as the aero-profile spokes and deep-section rims found on the best road bike wheels help reduce your drag, enabling you to go faster. However, the human body causes about 70 per cent of the total drag (the bicycle and wheels about 30 per cent), so improvements to your riding position will be the most important factor.

But before you start shelling out money remember that these improvements will be very small compared with the speed gains you could get for free - such as working on your position, improving your flexibility and servicing your bike. If you want to spend some money in your bid for speed, then your best bet is to get properly bike-fitted (you can find out more about what to expect at a bike fit and recommended fitters over here) and make sure you’re wearing figure-hugging cycling kit.

11. Wear tighter clothing

(Image credit: Future)

There are two reasons to wear tight-fitting cycling clothes. One: the material is designed to wick away heat and sweat, keeping you cool and dry in hot weather riding conditions, which makes it far less tiring to ride. And two: loose baggy clothing adds a lot of drag, which will only serve to slow you down.

Look for slim-fitting garments and do away with any flapping tops. Do zips up if you want to go faster. The really serious even cover their shoes with Lycra booties. One of the best aero helmets may save a few watts too.

Does your average speed really matter?

It’s natural to wonder how your average speed compares to other riders. Scanning the forums there are plenty of people wondering if their average speed is enough to allow them to ride with a club or enter a race.

It’s a tough question to answer as so much can influence your average speed on any ride. While keeping a mental note of your average speed from rides can help you see how your fitness progress is shaping up, it’s dangerous to become a slave to it.

Many things influence your average speed on a ride; wind direction and strength, terrain, road surface, humidity and heat and traffic volume. If you become too obsessed with minor changes you can feel demoralized on the slow days, even though a slower speed might not represent your effort or fitness levels but be due to changes in conditions.

Chasing ever faster averages on a daily basis will leave you strung out and tired. Plus it might encourage you to take more risks as the speed becomes more important than the ride. Other than as a way of monitoring your progress, average speed doesn’t matter that much. We’d recommend that you pick a safe, flattish route that you know reasonably well and ride it hard once a month with a view to watching your average speed rise.

Cycling training plans: 10 week plans for beginners, intermediates and racers

anna.abram@futurenet.com (Anna Marie Abram) — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 12:10:45 +0000

Are you looking to get fit through cycling, as a total beginner? Or, perhaps you'd like to build on your existing fitness levels to train for an event, or even a race? We've got you covered, with three ten week training plan, whatever your current level of fitness.

Ten week training plans

We've teamed up with Dig Deep Coaching to present three cycling training plans for fitness gains; one for beginners, one for riders looking to improve their endurance for longer bike rides, and one for racers looking for that competitive edge.

No matter who you are - these 10-week training plans for fitness will give you the structure, motivation and know-how to get fitter, healthier, and stronger on the bike.

The training sessions incorporate intervals based upon maximum heart rate, or functional threshold power - so you can train using a heart rate monitor or power meter. If you don't have access to either, you can still take part using perceived exertion, which you can learn more about further down this page.

The beginner plan includes 6.5-8 hours a week of training, whilst the intermediate plan looks for a commitment of 8-10 hours. However, we realise that not everyone has these hours available. It's possible to see fitness improvements riding just 3 to 6 hours a week, by honing in on the sessions which best suit your goals.

Cycling training plan for beginners

The beginner cycling training plan is designed to suit those with no prior cycling background (Image credit: Future)

Our beginner cycling training plan is designed for people who are new to the sport and looking to take on a challenge to build fitness and improve overall health.

The idea of this fitness plan is to get you to point where you can ride at a consistent pace for around three hours. The first five-week block will get you started with some low-intensity workouts, building into the second half of the programme and some longer and higher-intensity sessions.

Overall you'll need to commit around 6.5 to 8 hours of exercise per week, which includes some sessions off the bike to work different muscle groups and reduce the chance of injury.

Start now: Cycling training plan for beginners

Cycling training plan for endurance

The endurance cycling training plan is designed for those looking to up their mileage and perhaps their speed (Image credit: Future)

This fitness cycling plan is for riders looking to build up their stamina for a long-distance sportive or just for bigger weekend rides of five hours or more.

The 10-week training plan will build your aerobic base, starting with muscular strength and a focus on cycling cadence, which will boost your resistance to fatigue. The second half of the programme uses low-intensity sessions to improve your body's ability to use fat as a power source, and then higher aerobic efforts to improve overall fitness.

You'll need to commit around 8-10 hours per week to complete the programme, which includes a small amount of off-bike cross-training.

Start now: Cycling training plan for endurance fitness gains

Cycling training plan for road racers

The racer's cycling training plan will take you from avid cyclist to beginner racer (Image credit: Future)

If you're getting started in road racing and targetting events of 30-90km, then this one is for you. It'll also be useful if you're an established racer whose fitness has stagnated.

This cycling fitness plan assumes that you're already a cyclist with at least a year of consistent training behind you; you'll also need to be confident riding fast in a bunch.

The first half of the 10-week programme focuses in particular on changes of pace, which are vital in racing whether for responding to an attack or tackling tough sections of terrain. It'll also improve your anaerobic threshold.

In the last five weeks you'll work delivering short, explosive bursts and recovering quickly. This will allow you to produce strong efforts even when tired. You'll also work on your VO2 max power and anaerobic capacity.

This programme isn't about big miles; too much volume will just make you fatigued, so the priority is to target specific race intensities in a strategic way.

Start now: Cycling training plan for road racers

How to use these cycling training plans for fitness gains

Understanding the intensities

During each training day, each effort has a prescribed ‘Zone’ (e.g. Z1, meaning Zone 1). If you do not have a heart rate or power meter, you can also use Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) to judge intensity. The Borg scale, from one to 10, provides a guide to how these effort levels should feel:

Perceived exertion	Effort level
0	Nothing at all
0.5	Extremely easy
1	Very easy
2	Easy
3	Moderate
4	Somewhat hard
5	Hard
6	Getting harder...
7	Very hard
8	Starting to hurt
9	Arrgggh...
10	Extremely hard

If you have a heart rate (HR) monitor and/or power meter, we suggest finding out your cycling training zones. We recommend Andrew Coggan’s training levels, explained on the table below.

To find your functional threshold HR and power (needed to develop your zones), you will need to complete the following procedure:

After warming up, perform an all-out 20-minute effort, either inside on a turbo or outside on a quiet road. This effort is similar to a time trial effort. Once you have your average HR and power number for this 20-minute test, use this number as your 100 per cent threshold figure. Take your average power for the 20 minutes and multiply by 0.95 (e.g. 225W average x 0.95 = 209W FTP). This number is your Functional Threshold Power — and your zones are based on a percentage of this figure.

Zone	Name	Average power (% FTP)	Average HR (% FTP HR)	Perceived exertion	Description
1	Active Recovery	<55%	<68%	<2	"Easy spinning" or "light pedal pressure", i.e. very low level exercise, too low to induce significant physiological adaptations. Minimal sensation of leg effort. Relaxed breathing.
2	Endurance	56-75%	69-83%	3-4	"All day" pace, or classic long slow distance (LSD) training. Sensation of leg effort/fatigue generally low. Breathing is a little heavier than in Zone 1.
3	Tempo	76-90%	84-94%	5-6	More frequent/greater sensation of leg effort/fatigue than at Zone 2. Requires concentration to maintain. Breathing deeper and more rhythmic than in Zone 2. Breathing too hard to chat.
Sweet-spot	Sweetspot	84-97%	88-100%	6-7	Between high Zone 3 and low Zone 4. For riders who aren’t using a power meter, I’d call sweetspot “medium hard”. It’s just below your 25-mile TT race pace, but harder than a traditional tempo workout.
4	Lactate Threshold	91-105%	95-105%(may not be achieved in first few efforts)	7-8	Similar to TT race effort. Relentless feeling of leg effort/fatigue. Breathing too hard to say more than the odd word or two. Mentally very taxing to maintain.
5	VO₂ Max	106-120%	>106%(may not be achieved in first few efforts)	8-9	The maximum effort you can sustain for three to eight minutes. Intended to increase VO2max. Severe leg effort/fatigue. 'Ragged' breathing; unable to speak.NB: Average heart rate less useful as a metric, as HR will be rising throughout the interval.
6	Anaerobic Capacity	N/A	N/A	10	Ultra-high-intensity intervals of 10-30 seconds, designed to increase anaerobic capacity. Flat-out; no holding back. Heart rate of limited use.

The above is based on both the Borg scale of intensity and the training zones developed by Andrew Coggan.

Glossary

Understanding the terms used within these training plans:

Cadence (rpm): the number of revolutions of the crank per minute — the rate at which a cyclist is pedalling/turning the pedals. If you do not have a cadence sensor, then simply think in terms of ‘medium’ (85-95rpm), which should feel natural and normal with no increase in upper body movement; ‘high’ (95-120rpm) is often described as ‘spinning’ — it feels out of your comfort zone and may cause you to bounce slightly in the saddle and breathe at a faster rate.

Threshold Efforts: The term ‘threshold’ means the upper limit of the effort level you can sustain for the period requested. ‘Lactate threshold’ or ‘LT’ refers to the byproduct of anaerobic exercise — the harder your effort, the more lactate accumulates in your blood. The point at which lactate begins to accumulate more quickly than it can be processed is your LT or, in riding terms, the fastest pace you can maintain for 20-40 minutes.

Tempo: Tempo is an intensity often referred to as ‘hard aerobic’ training — a ride that requires more concentration and effort than regular endurance riding. The term tempo means a consistent ‘solid’ effort, suitable for periods of 20 minutes to one hour.

Aerobic Ride: This is generally a short ride (one hour or less) at low intensity. It works your aerobic system without putting too much training stress. Typically, this is a training session that can be done either indoors or on the road. Easy!

Endurance Ride: These Zone 2 endurance rides are carried out at a lower intensity but for longer durations, so they build your ability to perform exercise for prolonged periods of time. Levels of fatigue post-ride will be higher than that of the aerobic training sessions. These rides are normally longer than 1hr 30min.

Cross Training: Cross training describes another activity that’s not cycling: a range of activities either outside, at home or at the gym. Mixing up your activities allows you to work different muscle groups while giving your main cycling muscles a break.

Slow Tension Efforts: These focus on building your overall strength on the bike. We all know strength plays a big part in cycling fitness, and using strategic on-the-bike strength workouts we can maximise this essential component of performance. Generally, these efforts are completed at a low cadence, below 70rpm, and at a moderate intensity.

Endurance Fatigue Resistance: Enhancing aerobic fitness by developing your base endurance, these workouts recruit slow-twitch muscles fibres and train the body to use fat as a fuel source. This session has the additional benefit of teaching your body to work hard while fatigued. Make sure you hit the required duration.

VO2 Max: These is maximal aerobic intensity, lasting between two and five minutes. These intervals are intended to increase VO2max — your maximum rate of oxygen uptake. (Note: It takes a minute or two for heart rate to reach its VO2max level, so do not rely on average HR in these intervals.)

Burst: A burst is a short acceleration out of the saddle, intended to mimic a short/intense change of pace. This is not a full-out sprint; it is more like an effort to jump on to a passing wheel or accelerate over the top of a hill. After the burst, return to a solid steady state effort.

Tolerance Efforts: These efforts develop your capacity to endure prolonged high intensity without fading. This is achieved by completing short durations at a high intensity to accumulate a high lactate state, followed by a short recovery period, inducing oxygen debt and speeding up recovery.

Cycling Weekly provides these training plans in collaboration with Dig Deep Coaching – a global coaching company that works with athletes of all levels across road, track, cyclo-cross and MTB. Whether you are taking part in your first ever Gran Fondo or aiming to compete in the professional peloton, Dig Deep Coaching offers personal coaching to help you build your training around your lifestyle and make sure every pedal stroke counts. Learn more about Dig Deep Coaching by signing up to its Training Tips & Advice mailing list HERE, or follow Dig Deep Coaching on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

If you would like a digital version of your chosen Cycling Weekly training plan, with smart-trainer-ready sessions, please contact Dig Deep Coaching via this link here.

Ask a coach: ‘Is it worth doing fasted bike rides?’

Alex Welburn — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 07:20:06 +0000

There are a whole host of reasons why you may consider cycling fasted. You may be looking to increase weight loss through an increase in fat utilization during your ride, or you may be searching for some performance benefits. A quick search in Google and you will be flooded with options, various suggestions and advice, and you may rightly be wondering whether fasted riding has the same effect on the female physiology as on the male. Cycling coach Alex Welburn is on hand here to clear a few things up…

The concept of fasted rides

Fasted rides typically occur in the morning, with breakfast being omitted and maybe a black coffee to make us feel awake. Often, we will have had eight to 12 hours without consuming food - most will class this as being fasted. But it is a little bit more technical than that. The aim is to have low glycogen availability, i.e. your internal stores are low.

This is to enhance fat utilization, i.e., our ability to utilize more fats as a fuel source, thus sparing our limited storage of glycogen. Evidence also suggests it can enhance training-induced skeletal muscle adaptations. In short, this increases the number of mitochondria we have, which are the energy powerhouses of our cells.

But it isn’t quite as simple as getting up and just doing your morning ride on an empty stomach. Fasted rides aren’t a magic hack that will automatically guarantee you performance gains otherwise unattainable with breakfast.

To get the most out of fasted rides, you have to really understand what you’re trying to achieve - and ensure you go the right way about it. For instance, if you have a large meal at dinner time, your body may not be in a low glycogen state by the morning, meaning you won’t reap those training benefits despite having skipped breakfast.

For your everyday cyclist, doing your morning ride fasted may just fit into your life easier. I often had an early commute, 30-40 minutes and I never enjoyed eating breakfast that early, so I often had it after. Did this improve my performance? Unlikely. It was always an easy session, so being fasted would not have compromised my ability to complete it.

Carbohydrate periodization and fasting

(Image credit: Future)

A research paper by Impey et al. (2018) ‘Fuel for the work required’ highlights the term carbohydrate periodization which is about fuelling for the work you need to do - but also using this periodization in line with your training to get the most of fasted riding (or, let’s call it, training with low glycogen availability). Normally, you would plan it over a few days and consider meals of either high, medium or low carbohydrate content to make planning easier.

You can break this down into sections: 'pre-training meal', 'during training', 'post-training meal' and 'evening meal'. You would design your training so you can still complete your training session, then post training you may go to a low glycogen state, and during training would be low, too.

Training would typically be a Zone 1 endurance ride, because if there was intensity the training would be compromised as you simply would not be fuelled enough to complete it. Post-training you would keep yourself in a high glycogen state, allowing these enhanced signals to make the adaptations we aim for: i.e. more mitochondria and thus able to produce more power.

It may seem complex. This approach has been used by James Morton at Team Sky (now Ineos Grenadiers) who was one of the authors of the mentioned paper. It’s quite common amongst WorldTour teams, who have the support of physiologists and nutritionists.

I have used this with athletes previously where I have also worked with a nutritionist, so we could best optimize the training and nutrition for the individual - without comprising the training sessions and overall progression.

What should I do if I have only 6 hours to train?

But, if you only have six hours to train, more often than not your focus should be on quality, which, to a large extent, means intensity. This isn’t to say training in a low glycogen state isn’t going to be beneficial, but it’s unlikely you would feel the benefits in comparison to sticking to some interval work to improve your FTP/Critical Power.

If you were looking for some variety, rather than a 60-minute fasted session, think about adding in a strength session instead.

If your goal is weight loss, while you may utilize more fats in comparison to carbohydrates, you may also find yourself quite hungry after you have finished and over-compensate with the calories you consume - so do consider this.

Will fasted rides be detrimental to my performance?

No, having the odd fasted session will be no problem. Always start small and build up and keep the intensity low. Most of my morning sessions were fasted, not because that was what I wanted, but because it made life easier for me in the mornings - which is also something to consider.

However, according to Dr Stacy Sims, a world-leading physiologist who specialises in female nutrition, training and wellbeing, women should apply caution to fasted riding. Men and women can both fall foul of low energy availability (LEA), but women are particularly susceptible. In the long term, underfuelling can have serious implications for overall health including endocrine dysfunction and higher risk of bone fractures. For women, the obvious sign of LEA is disputed or missed periods.

"Women tend to burn more fat and amino acids during exercise compared to men, regardless of the intensity," says Dr Sims. "Men blow through carbohydrate and have to work harder to burn fat. Women are born with more of the protein and mitochondria to burn fat."

In summary, while female bodies are predisposed to going long, women are better off fuelling the fire with carbohydrates at all times – before, during and after workouts.

Should I do fasted rides?

It depends on what your training is like, the time you have available, your goals and you need to bear in mind the differences between men and women (see above). I’m an advocate of trying things out and then deciding. Would I use it with an athlete that has only six hours to train? Very unlikely as other sessions will have a greater impact. But if it fits into your life, or you’re curious to try it out, go ahead. As always, I recommend working with a specialist to get the best results.

How often should I ride my bike to get fit?

James Shrubsall — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 08:23:48 +0000

There are plenty of reasons to take up cycling, beyond it being a very enjoyable and inexpensive way of getting from A to B, but a big one for many people is the pursuit of fitness – whether that's getting back in shape after a bit of time out of the saddle, or holding on to hard-won fitness that you've built up away from the bike.

But that prompts a question: how often you should be saddling up if fitness is your goal. To some extent this will depend on your personal situation, such as family and other commitments or working arrangements. There is also the fitness level at which you are starting from, and other activities you might be doing alongside riding your bike.

Unsurprisingly, it's not an exact science and there are no hard-and-fast rules that work for everyone, but there is a sweet spot that makes a great starting point, and which you can ultimately tailor to your own circumstances.

Go on then, what's the magic number?

According to Andy Turner of ATP Performance Cycle Coaching, three times a week is the magic number.

"Everyone's quite individual in terms of what they can build up fitness-wise with the amount of hours they have," he tells Cycling Weekly. "But I think for beginner riders who are wanting to improve fitness, then starting off just with getting out for an hour or so, or an hour on the indoor bike – probably twice during midweek and then one at the weekends."

If you are brand new to bike riding – or even if you were once a regular rider but you haven't ridden for a long time – then even three hours per week spread across three rides might be a fair bit to conjure with. In which case you can make them less – half an hour each is fine, says Turner.

"Even just half an hour of exercise a couple of times a week is a way to get started. Even doing that level of work will help improve cardiovascular fitness and they can progress from there.

"That's the thing," he adds, "when starting from zero anything additional is going to improve things. Quite a lot of people have a reasonable level of NEAT activity [non-exercise activity thermogenesis] such as doing household chores or walking around. But adding 30 minutes of focused exercise on top of that will often be beneficial."

What if I feel I could do more?

Assuming you're a new or returning rider, it's worth being cautious about taking on too great a workload too soon. The usual recommendation for an established rider increasing weekly volume is not to add more than around 10%. Thus even going from zero to three hours is off the scale.

"It's quite easy to start full of motivation, all guns blazing, and do too much too soon and find it's not really sustainable," Turner says. "So it's good to start small and build up."

How do I add structure to my riding?

When it comes to adding some structure to your riding, Turner's message is 'don't overthink it'. As a beginner you don't necessarily need an expensive personalised plan, because just riding the bike full stop will bring your cycling ability along in leaps and bounds.

"As a beginner, it doesn't matter so much what you do as long as you're doing something," he says. "I've had beginners approach me for coaching, and for the most part, honestly, at that point, things like Zwift or Trainer Road or even AI training plans, they work pretty well just for giving people a structure based on what they have time available for."

Another way of adding value to your usual rides, Turner advises, is to join a cycling club

"Find some that have different paced group rides, because that keeps it nice and social as well. And you can learn bike handling skills and get advice from people who've been doing it for a long time. It's a good way of getting free advice, basically."

If you would rather not join a club, he says, finding a group of friends to ride with can also work well.

Where do I go from here?

(Image credit: Future / Richard Butcher)

Turner suggests slowly lengthening your weekend ride, if you have the time available. Of course, it's not essential to ride for the same duration every weekend, so if you can only add time on once a fortnight or once a month, you will still benefit.

"Extending the weekend ride is probably the first port of call, because you get the benefit from the longer duration, and if you keep it at a nice low intensity it shouldn't leave you feeling wiped out."

That low intensity is quite important, Turner says, because if you end up making lots of moderate to hard efforts in your long ride, it can make your routine unsustainable if you're unused to it.

"A [hard] one-hour session you can recover from alright," he says, "but when get to two-and-a-half-hours it can leave you feeling wiped out for the next day, and then that can make it difficult to adhere to what you're doing."

When it comes to your weekday rides, you could use either or both of those to add some 'sweetspot' recommends Turner – an intensity of riding that feels sustainable but not easy.

"It's always known as the best bang for your buck intensity," he says. "You get quite a good session that is building into higher intensity, but with quite a limited amount of fatigue from it. It's really useful for fitting into busy schedules as well.

"It's that kind of intensity where you could do 10 to 15 minutes, and it feels hard, but not so much that you can't do another one after five or 10 minutes. You're not coming to the end of it out of breath and thinking, Oh, thank God that's over."

Measuring effort

You might be wondering how on earth you measure 'intensity' as a beginner, but it's not difficult and it doesn't require any special equipment if you follow Turner's advice and use 'Rate of Perceived Exertion' (RPE). It sounds fancy but it basically means 'how hard it feels', on a scale of one to 10.

"I'd go off Rate of Perceived Exertion," he says. "Sweetspot probably feels seven and then eight towards the end of the effort, or the last effort of the day. So it's not obscenely tough, you don't feel wiped out afterwards. You feel like you've worked hard, but you don't feel out of breath."

If you want to go even further, both literally and figuratively perhaps, the next thing to try could be to add another ride, Turner says, and that can be during the week or at the weekend – whichever suits your life best.

In summary

So that's three rides a week, starting from as little as half an hour each to begin with, but then building up to around an hour each. Done consistently this will get you some very useful base fitness.

After that you can lengthen the weekend ride – build it out slowly; and after that you could add some sweetspot to your weekday riding, starting with a single 10-minute effort or 'block'.

Beyond that, time and legs permitting, you can add a fourth ride to your week.

Taking it as far as it will go, this is a framework that will garner you almost as much or as little fitness as you'll ever need. Be sure to remember that the journey is as important as the destination, and to enjoy all miles as you go, be they crisp winter days, life affirming rainy ones, or summertime epics. Have fun!

These five winter training mistakes can ruin your fitness - here's how to avoid them

Andy Turner — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:41:12 +0000

Whilst winter training comes with its own challenges, for those looking to be competitive or tick off new targets come summer, it's a very important time to build a foundation ahead of the sunnier months.

However, get it wrong, and you could find yourself making great strides backwards, through either injury or burnout. Here are the five mistakes to avoid if you want to ride into summer in the best shape possible...

1. Getting your clothing wrong

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Firstly, not wearing enough kit. It can be quite easy when you’ve been used to wearing shorts and jerseys to get your kit wrong and not wear enough when the temperature starts to drop. If you’re not wearing enough kit then it can be difficult to raise your temperature sufficiently to enable you to perform well for any efforts you have to do. Not being warm enough can also increase the time it takes you to recover from training sessions, even if you're spending a lot of time in the lower cycling training zones.

Both these will have a negative impact on your fitness in the short term and, if you get too cold and become unwell as a result, then that will impact on your training and fitness longer term. Even just forgetting winter cycling gloves or cycling overshoes and getting numb hands or feet can affect you significantly, as hands and feet have a very high level of nerve endings meaning that if they get cold, the rest of you will feel cold and you’re not going to feel great on the bike as a result.

Secondly, wearing too much and overheating. When it gets to winter, it can be tempting to layer lots of kit on to stay warm and reduce the chance of getting a cold. I would say it is always better to have too much kit on and then strip/unzip if you start getting too warm. However, if you can get your kit right first time, then that will reduce the need for you to carry more kit and stuff your pockets. For example, the Sunday club run (Zone 2 endurance ride) is a staple of most winter cycling training plans.

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However, if you’re leaving the house at 8:30am, it will likely be a lot colder than it will be mid-way through the ride. Wearing too much and overheating has two potential issues. Firstly, fluid loss increases and dehydration can become more likely. The easy fix is drinking enough fluids as well as consuming salts. But, in the winter, it can sometimes be more difficult to want to drink as much. If you become dehydrated, this will not only impair training sessions, but also your recovery from training and therefore your overall fitness.

The other downside of overdressing is that unzipping to cool down can lead to quite a rapid chill. If you do an effort over the top of a climb, you will have become sweaty. We know that the purpose of sweat is to help remove heat, so when you combine that with unzipping and a rush of cold air, you can get cold very quickly.

2. Forgetting intensity

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It’s commonplace in many people’s winter training routine to neglect intensity when cycling; it is often seen as being all about the base (training). Although this follows a traditional periodisation training plan, there are several issues with periodisation when trying to emulate the pros. Although professionals spend a limited percentage of their training time at higher intensities when it’s winter training and out of season, they are spending a small percentage of a much larger overall training volume.

If you aren’t training 30 hours a week, and are doing say just 7, then periodisation would suggest you spend maybe an hour and 24 minutes of time above Z1/2. If you’re training that total volume, then doing mostly Zone 2, with such a limited time at higher intensities you are likely not making the most of your training time and over the course of the winter you will lose fitness.

3. Riding indoors only

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Training indoors with one of the best indoor cycling training apps is fantastic, there is no doubt about that. However, limiting your training to solely being indoors could be impacting negatively on your overall fitness as well as other important elements of cycling.

Riding purely indoors - stuck to a turbo trainer - does nothing for bike handling or bunch riding skills. These are skills that many could seek to improve and see their results in races improve alongside. Training purely indoors not only limits the opportunity to work these skills, but can also lead to loss of some of them.

Another area where riding only indoors can impact your fitness negatively is that you may be neglecting the easier rides or the longer endurance rides. Some people are die-hard indoor training fans and are happy to ride for 5 hours or even longer indoors. For most people however, this isn’t their idea of fun, which is something that a good training plan should always be. Intensity is required to improve and maintain fitness, but the best plans balance a mix of intensity and volume, or else fitness will suffer.

Finally, purely training indoors can lead to greater chance of burn out longer term. Not only is spending time outdoors good for physical health, but it also benefits your mental health. Add to that the lack of in-person social interaction and the fact that there is no let-up in pedalling while indoors, and mental burn out is a serious consideration if training purely indoors.

4. Neglecting strength work

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This is an area which a lot of cyclists neglect throughout the whole year. Dedicated strength training can be a huge benefit, both for increasing power while also reducing the likelihood of suffering from common cycling injuries. During the winter, many people try and increase their volume of cycling to get those base miles in. However, doing just volume work and neglecting strength work really does put you at a comparable disadvantage.

Strength work has been shown to increase time to exhaustion, increase maximal power production, and decrease time trial time. For those worried that they’ll put on loads of muscle and get heavy, unless you’re very genetically gifted you will not put on kilos of muscle. You may gain some but, with power increasing, your watts per kilogram will increase with your Watts/CdA increasing by more. In other words, you’ll be faster everywhere. So, if you’re just training volume, or just on the turbo and neglecting strength work, you could be damaging your fitness and potential to be faster.

5. Overdoing it

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A common mistake made by those moving from their end of season break to their winter training is overdoing it. Doing too much too soon is a sure-fire way to either get ill, burn out later on in the winter, or give yourself an injury. Any of these will impact significantly and negatively on your fitness.

When starting riding again after a break, it is very important to build up the training load, be that intensity or duration, progressively and sustainably. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the winter season is when a lot of illnesses are more prevalent. If you have children in school or work in an office, the likelihood is that you will contract a cold virus once or twice over the winter.

This may require you take some time off from training to recover from the cold properly. If you do train through it, you may be unwell for longer, and training will be negatively impacted along with fitness. If you have a break to get well again, you then need to be careful not to overdo it too soon afterwards. Cycling lots can weaken your immune system, making you more susceptible to getting illnesses.

Seven benefits of riding outdoors - which you’ll miss out on if you train inside all winter

Andy Turner — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 07:25:31 +0000

As the winter weather settles in to stay, many of us will be considering whether we should be spending more of our time on the turbo. It’s cosier for a start, you don’t need to worry about when the sun sets and there’s no need to clean your bike afterwards.

Are there any reasons why we should instead be staying out on the roads? The short answer is: yes, there’s more than several reasons why you might be better off embracing the elements and heading outside. The long answer? Well, all that is just below…

1. Varying pace/intensities

Although riding indoors can be great for keeping a consistent effort, it’s not a perfect analogue for riding on real roads. When we ride outdoors we experience resistance in the form of rolling resistance, air resistance, and gravity. With indoor cycling we only experience rolling resistance.

For any events we do outdoors, for the most part they will include a lot of variability in our pacing, and riding purely indoors can dull our capacity to deal with that varying pacing for longer periods of time. In short, if your events and goals of the year are outdoors, it is important to maintain your outdoor riding.

2. Riding up gradients

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As part of a scientific study I conducted on how gradient affects muscle activation during the pedal stroke I found that as the gradient steepens, so too does the activation of several locomotor muscles in the legs. The study was done using an indoor gradient simulator - a Wahoo Kickr Climb, but the Elite Rizer is another option - whilst riding at a sweetspot level of intensity.

Essentially, what can be suggested from the study is that riding up the gradients most often experienced outdoors does significantly change the way our muscles work during the pedal stroke. This is important if any events or goals that you are targeting include climbs as part of the challenge. In that case, make sure to include regular riding up climbs within your training plan - it’s much easier (and cheaper) to do this by riding outdoors than buying a gradient simulator for indoors.

3. Bike handling

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We can get most of the physiological training benefits when riding indoors - what we really miss out on are technical skills. Even something as simple as clipping in and out of the pedals - although you do get to practise that to some extent on the turbo or bike rollers, it's still a quite different ball game when actually needing to clip in and out quickly at junctions.

Cornering and bunch handling are also essential skills for cycling that can only be learned when riding outdoors (and in the velodrome), not on the turbo. You get more proficient at these skills the more that you practise them. So, spending time out on the road getting your cornering dialled in, or getting better at saving energy while riding in the wheels, are both vital skills for pretty much every cycling event or goal.

4. Being outdoors

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We know from multiple studies that exercise is good for our mental health (like all things, in moderation). It helps boost our mood with the release of endorphins and it also reduces anxiety. But being outdoors also brings its own heap of benefits as well.

Even in the winter months, there is still the exposure to the sun. It’s true we don’t get as much during the winter, as we are wrapped up, and that there’s fewer hours of daylight - but we still need vitamin D and being exposed to sunlight can also help against Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

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Although we can use Discord when riding indoors (as I did with teammates during the lockdown) it doesn’t quite have the same impact as being sociable with people in real life. Humans are social animals and it’s good for our mental health to spend time with other people and our friends.

Group rides offer a perfect opportunity to share some banter, as well as learn new skills and get advice such as how to adjust an awkward derailleur or how to get a tubeless tire off a rim without the need for a fleet of tire levers!

6. Resistance to weather

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Given that for those of us in the northern hemisphere, we often encounter pretty foul and miserable conditions to ride in - even during the summer months, at times - it is vital that we are resilient to the bad weather. There’s the practical side of knowing what kit we need to wear in certain conditions, too. There have been several occasions where I’ve under or over dressed for events and it’s been a nightmare!

Then there’s also just the mental element of it. If we see a key event - or even a cycling holiday - is going to be afflicted by cold or rain, we want to be able to go into it with the attitude that we can deal with riding in the rain, for example, and that it doesn’t phase us. The negative mindset that can come from being unprepared will almost certainly impact performance and enjoyment. Even some of the foulest days on the bike can be fun! Albeit perhaps in more of a ‘type 2’ kind of way…

Here you can find our guide to the best winter cycling clothing to make things more bearable.

7. Increased volume

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Although interval and high intensity interval training (HIIT workouts) are both beneficial for aerobic fitness and overall health, long slow duration (LSD) training has still been proven time and again to be essential when it comes to building fitness and becoming a better, faster rider.

We don’t all have the time available to train like the pros, but we often have some time at the weekends to do some longer Zone 2 endurance rides. Doing these on the turbo can be mind-numbing, I’ve managed a few 4 hour rides indoors when it was icy but I would rather ride for 4 hours in rain and gales! Each to their own, but for the most part you can more happily manage LSD training outdoors rather than indoors.

Another benefit has more to do with cycling nutrition. Outdoors on the road you'll be able to practise fuelling strategies. If we’re doing longer events or rides it is vital that we practise what we’re going to consume during training. Let’s say we have a 100 mile ride in 5 hours as a target. We’re going to need to eat a fair bit during that ride. We can test the grams of carbs per hour that we consume during training and, although we may not need to ride the full 100 miles, it’s still helpful to do some either slower four hour rides or shorter (still 2-3 hours) ones at the pace we want to target.

We’d have to do quite high volume on the turbo to practise this fuelling strategy. Also, it’s warmer on the turbo generally, so the rate at which we use carbs and fats will be different, as well as hydration/sweat rate.

How to challenge yourself on Zwift without entering a race

anna.abram@futurenet.com (Anna Marie Abram) — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 06:00:20 +0000

There is just so much more to Zwift than simply working your way through set workouts or burying yourself in a race –although these do have their own draw. Routes, segments and pace partners are all at your disposal and can be excellent ways of staying interested and returning to the platform regularly to make gains and track your progress.

With these challenges you aren’t tied to specific times, just rock up in the virtual world whenever you want all year round, test yourself, and repeat. You don’t have to worry about any other uncontrolled variables getting in the way, you can simply jump on your turbo trainer or smart bike and get on with your session.

So, without any further ado, let’s see what else the world’s most popular indoor cycling app has to offer – aside from the racing.

Complete Zwift’s impressive catalogue of routes

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Zwift has nine different worlds to explore and within each of these are plenty of routes to take on - currently 112 of these earn you a special achievement badge. Admittedly, some are event-only routes, but most are just free to ride whenever you want.

With so many courses, there’s a lot of scope for gradually upping the distance of the rides you tackle. Just make sure to pay attention to the amount of elevation the route is packing - it might be the same distance as a course you’ve just completed, but you could find yourself spending a lot more time in the saddle.

Increasing your total volume slowly is important so as not to beset yourself with an overuse injury. ABCC Level Cycling Coach Jonathan Melville of Breakaway Coaching and Analytics recommends increasing by no more than 10% for beginners and 15% per week for more experienced riders.

“If you’re a beginner you’ll be making a lot of gains in the first month but sustaining that same level of gain can be quite difficult, so think of it in the long run, making slow improvements each month,” Melville advises.

So if you are looking to build your endurance, and train for your first 100-mile ride for example, completing these routes can be a motivating way of increasing your mileage and time on the bike. And then returning the following week - as you’ll have another to tick off for a long while to come.

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Completing one of these routes can be part of your longer Zone 2 endurance ride (3-4 hours at 55-75% FTP) each week, as detailed in this training plan for building up to 100 miles. If you’re unsure what your FTP and power zones are you can check out our guide to setting up your training zones here.

As well as using the routes for regular training, if you don’t have a real-world sportive event on your calendar, one of the longer routes could be used as your end goal, the target of your cycling training plan.

The longest route on Zwift is the PRL Full in London at 173km long and it’s not flat either, it packs in 2496m. Other challenging ones include The 107km long Mega Pretzel with 1642m of climbing and the 128.3km long Uber Pretzel at 128.3km with 2335m.

Attack the sprint and climb segments

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In addition to Strava segments, Zwift has its own in-game timed sections that you can use to track your fitness progress by beating your own times - and also allowing you to see how you stack up against others that are riding on the platform. Or, at least, those on the platform at a similar time to you - the leaderboard shows your overall out of everyone online for the last hour and there’s a women’s specific ranking leaderboard too.

Across the worlds and the courses, Zwift has sprint and climb segments within each and all of varying lengths and difficulties.

The sprint segments are around 200m and 400m, and are typically flat. The Achterbahn route in Innsbruck, for example, has a 200m and 300m segment.

Climbs vary from the short and steep, to the long and shallow, to the long and still fairly meaty.

If you take the Four Horsemen route in Watopia, for example, there’s the Volcano KOM/ Volcano QOM which is 3.75km at an average gradient of 3.2% and the much longer and steeper Alpe du Zwift at 12.44km with a taxing 8.5% average gradient.

The climb segments can be a lot shorter and sharper too, though. The 23rd St climb in Richmond is 10% but only for 0.28km. You can find this one by following the 2015 UCI Worlds course.

“The segment aspect of Zwift allows you to focus in on specific areas of your cycling fitness and make improvements that way,” Melville notes.

“Choose a segment to test yourself on, then in four to eight weeks time retest on that same segment to determine if you’ve made any improvements.”

For each segment Zwift shows a list of your 30 day PRs so if you’re looking to put in another attempt at the longer end of Melville’s recommendation make sure you’ve made a note of your time off the platform - basically, don’t rely on Zwift for this data for longer term fitness tracking.

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Zwift isn’t your local lanes, which may be pan flat for miles or frustratingly hilly all around. It’s easy to find a segment that is in line with the effort you’re looking to target. Also, you don’t have to worry about other factors such as traffic or the weather preventing you from executing the effort on the day.

If you’re looking for a truly accurate PB, it’s best to select a TT bike as this prevents your in-Zwift avatar from drafting off other riders. If you just ride a standard bike you’re likely to get a faster time, which sounds great, but it’s likely to be harder to replicate - it all depends on the riders around you and that’s not a useful way of tracking improvements.

The only other thing to be aware of is that the worlds are on rotation and so not always open for riding. Zwift does have a colour-coded calendar, showing which worlds are open in the upcoming month. Watopia is always available though, so focusing on segments that suit your targets there - and there are plenty to get stuck into - will allow you to keep on coming back for more.

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“One of the potential downsides with Zwift is that it can be hard to do low intensity training because of the segments,” Melville warns. Be sure not to treat the glowing start lines as a red flag to a bull - it’s fine to just roll through if that’s what your session requires.

Work off a pace partner

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Looking to challenge yourself to riding at a sustained pace? “Pace partners are great for beginners or even advanced riders looking to feel what high power output feels like,” Melville notes. Pace Partners are not real riders so they are guaranteed to ride at a consistent pace, and unlike group rides, they are always around to join.

“If you’re trying to ride at a higher intensity that you’re less familiar with, like an anaerobic effort, you could use the pace partner as a tight rope to understand what that intensity feels like for a prolonged period,” Melville suggests.

Another fun challenge is to attack off the front of the pace partner group and then settle back into the pace of the group - and repeat. This will improve your ability to recover while still sustaining an effort, which is important for races and ‘spirited’ rides with your mates.

Just don’t do this in Zwift’s group rides, though, as it disrupts others and the intention of the ride. But pace partners are bots, so they won’t mind.

As an aside, if you are struggling with your discipline to keep the intensity low, Melville recommends choosing a pace partner with a low w/kg to help you understand what a low intensity effort feels like.

What other challenges are there on Zwift?

In addition to the route achievement, watt and distance badges, Zwift has three challenges: Climb Mt. Everest, Ride California and Tour Italy.

These challenges are essentially awarded by commitment to the platform, by regularly showing up and riding.

The Climb Mt. Everest challenge is achieved by climbing 8,850 metres and so those who don’t shy away from the hillier routes are going to work towards this challenge a lot quicker than those you find they always choose a flatter course. Plus, if you keep on going to 50,000, you’ll unlock the ‘Tron bike’.

Are your indoor and outdoor rides working against each other?

Deena Blacking — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 05:00:55 +0000

Every good cycling coach knows that there are huge fitness gains to be made from indoor cycling.

If you want to be an excellent cyclist (and not just a masher of pedals), you still need long days in the saddle and familiarity with the road. The training holy grail is when riders successfully integrate indoor and outdoor riding. If you want to get the most out of your training, read on to find out how you can leverage the positives of both riding indoors and outdoors.

What are the main benefits of riding indoors?

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By investing in one of the best turbo trainers or the best smart indoor bikes, you can ride all year round, no matter the weather nor how dark it is outside. You don't even have to spend a fortune with the best cheap smart trainers getting you up and running on a budget - and there's even more benefits to this approach:

Specific and safe intervals

Indoor training allows you to hit and sustain specific intensity levels (set by power and heart rate based cycling training zones) without distractions, delays, or the risk of external environmental factors getting in the way e.g. stop lights, undulating terrain, or traffic on the roads. Suffer at your best!

Maximum ROI for time spent

Have you ever looked at the time vs power data on an outdoor ride? If you haven’t already clocked it, training outside clocks up a lot of dead time. By contrast, indoor training gives you no such leeway - you rarely stop pedalling on an indoor session. A mere 30-45 minutes on the turbo can give your body the stimulus it needs to maintain fitness - check out these 30-minute cycling workouts if you're short on time.

Pedalling efficiency and leg strength

The pedal stroke, particularly on a direct drive turbo trainer with a heavy fly wheel, requires more engagement than pedalling outdoors. Over time, this is an additional benefit for developing your pedalling efficiency and potentially leg strength.

Keep respiratory illnesses at bay

The cold climate can make it difficult to push the body to perform intervals, particularly if you need long recovery between efforts. Training indoors eliminates the risk of getting cold while training and, worse, getting a respiratory illness like the cold, coughs or Covid.

What are the main benefits of riding outdoors (versus indoors)?

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If you're well-prepared for the colder seasons with a drawer filled with winter cycling clothing, then there are some very good reasons for heading outside on your bike.

General endurance

If you want to be good at riding bikes for several hours outdoors, ultimately you need your body to be able to endure at doing it - and so riding outside is the best approach for building your endurance.

Bike handling and technical skills

Riding outdoors, particularly in groups, requires good bike handling, balance and coordination. By riding in (well-behaved!) groups, you develop many key cycling skills, including cornering and braking, mastering descents, feeding while riding, and more.

Core strength and posture

When you ride outside for hours in a forward leaning position, many of the muscles in your body are working, even if you don’t feel it. Developing and maintaining your core and upper body are important for cycling as well as general health.

Enjoyment and social

Riding outside in the fresh air is a positive for most of us; having a social group to do it with is often the main appeal for a Sunday ride, especially in winter!

How to successfully combine indoor and outdoor riding

The best combination for indoors and outdoors, especially during winter, is to perform high intensity work indoors and low intensity work outdoors. During winter, we recommend doing most of your training indoors but keep the Sunday club ride or an outdoor ride with mates in the diary.

The best indoor training apps such as Zwift are ideal for intervals and e-racing during the week – this will keep you fit and satisfy any thirst for an adrenalin hit. At the weekend, the Sunday club ride or a ride with mates will tick many of the boxes needed for outdoor riding without putting too much strain on your body during the cold winter weather.

Medium intensity rides are a coin toss – you can do these indoors or outdoors, depending on what your priorities are. If you have the time and the weather isn’t an issue, we recommend that you go outside. If you’re feeling time poor and need to get it done, stay inside.

When the weather is truly wintery – to ride outdoors or not?!

If you are training towards a racing goal that requires good bike handling and tolerance for riding in wintery conditions (for example, if you are a classics rider!), then it makes sense to sustain and develop your tolerance for riding outdoors. But you risk developing a cough or a cold and losing several weeks of consistent training, it might not be worth it!

Iain McNaught shares how riding indoors during the pandemic changed his fitness for the better. “Until lockdown, every winter I needed antibiotics for hacking coughs,” he explained. If he hadn’t been forced indoors, McNaught might never have realised that riding in the cold was having a negative impact on his training.

If you are susceptible to respiratory illnesses, it may even be worth training completely indoors over winter. While you’ll lose some of your cycling dexterity and underlying endurance, the benefit of staying out of the cold and being able to train consistently will more than outweigh that negative of losing some familiarity with the feel of the road. Come springtime, you just need to dedicate yourself to sharpening up your technique by safely regaining the habit of riding outdoors.

How to lose weight cycling without sacrificing strength

Dr Eimear Dolan — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 06:17:58 +0000

Body weight and composition are widely discussed, and sometimes hotly debated, topics among cyclists. That’s hardly surprising, given that your body weight – along with the cycling nutrition and training habits that got you there – has huge potential to influence your performance, for better or worse. How can an individual cyclist know what’s best for them? When does weight loss benefit performance, and when might it be detrimental? These are the questions this feature will investigate, to help you figure out whether you really need to lose weight.

When asked about how weight influences performance, cyclists generally talk about wanting to be lighter and narrower, so as to improve their power-to-weight ratio while decreasing aerodynamic drag. They are not wrong. But it’s also more complicated. Reaching optimal performance is about harmonising body weight with your training load, fuelling needs, sleep, rest and recovery. It’s about tailoring your own individual goals and strategy to find that sweet spot where you can maintain a healthy weight in a way that’s harmonious with all other aspects of your life.

In an ideal world there would be a simple formula to calculate where your own personal sweet spot lies. Sadly no such formula exists. The best we can do – here and now – is to examine how body weight influences performance and health, to define our own personal health and performance goals, then to combine this information to develop a strategy that helps you to feel strong, light and comfortable in your own skin.

How to lose weight through cycling

1. Define your goal

(Image credit: Future)

The glorification of weight loss is so ingrained within many cycling circles that the practical objective gets lost amid distracting rhetoric. While for some losing weight may be beneficial for health and performance, for others it would be more useful to gain weight. And of course plenty of riders are close enough to optimal weight that they shouldn’t even be worrying about it in the first place. So, if you’re thinking about losing weight, the first question to ask yourself is: why?

Generally cyclists want to lose weight for one of three reasons: for health, for performance or for aesthetics. Knowing your ‘why’ is essential, as the ‘ideal’ body weight and composition depends on your motivation – what is conducive to best performance is not necessarily optimal for long-term health. The good news for those recreational and amateur cyclists who ride primarily to stay physically and mentally healthy is that the body weight and composition ranges considered healthy are quite broad. Your overall health and performance are far more important than where you fall within that range, meaning that a large proportion of non-racing cyclists really don’t need to worry about their weight at all.

If you ride competitively, particularly if you do so on hilly terrain, you’re unlikely to be content with just staying within general ranges – you will want to optimise your weight to be as efficient as possible on the hills. This is where things start to get quite a bit trickier. When cyclists talk about losing weight for performance, what they really want is to improve their power-to-weight ratio. Historically, far too much emphasis was placed on the mass side of the equation; we are now much more aware that losing weight, beyond a certain point, can be counterproductive if it means losing strength and power.

Losing weight requires an energy deficit: fewer calories consumed than burnt. This means either eating less or training more, or both. The conundrum here is that training hard relies on effective fuelling – while cutting calories may help you shed a few kilos, it is counterproductive if it also diminishes your ability to complete and recover from hard training sessions. The holy grail is to find that elusive balance between being light but not so light that you lose power; eating enough to support optimal training but not so much to accrue and/or maintain excess weight.

2. Set the finish line

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Once you’ve figured out your broader goal, you need to define how you will know when you’ve reached it. Weight loss – a number on the scales or a body-fat percentage – should never be the goal in and of itself. Instead, you should monitor your progress toward some larger objective, such as feeling healthier, more energetic, or improving performance. Imagine your new nutrition and cycling training plan led to weight loss but also left you feeling sluggish and stressed. Sure, the numbers on the scales would be favourable, but overall you would not be on track for success.

Similarly, if your goal is to improve performance, keeping a close eye on performance metrics (speed, power, etc) is essential. If you are losing weight but also slowing down, something is wrong. Perceived exertion is another metric well worth checking – how are you feeling on the rides? Strong or sapped? Are you struggling to recover after a longer ride? If so, you may need either to rethink your weight-loss cycling goal or adjust the process to get there.

3. Cost versus benefit

Time, focus, money, mental and physical energy are all valuable and finite resources. Spending them in one pursuit means they are not available for others, so you need to invest wisely. It’s easy to say, “I want to lose 3kg”, but for most people it’s much harder to actually do it.

“When it comes to performance, body weight is one of many factors to consider,” says Dr Jose Areta, exercise physiology and sports nutrition researcher at Liverpool John Moores University, and ex-national level cyclist. “Losing weight takes quite a bit of effort, and you have to consider whether that effort is really worth it, or whether it would be better spent elsewhere. Where can you get the most bang for your buck when it comes to improving performance?” The reality for many cyclists is that the biggest ‘bang for buck’ may come from other changes besides weight loss.

Before you pursue weight loss, consider whether you might first be able to improve the overall quality of your diet, the way you fuel your rides, your sleep, or your training programme. The return on investment from such improvements may be greater than that from losing a few kilos. Besides, you are likely to lose some weight ‘unintentionally’ as a byproduct of simple tweaks aimed at improving the overall quality of your diet or training.

4. Watch out for warning signs

There is a darker side to striving for leanness, and crossing that line must be avoided at all costs. Cutting calories while training hard forces your body to be extra frugal, sparing energy wherever possible, even in essential processes. The body is extremely smart and adaptable, and can cope well with short periods of energy deficit (e.g. by drawing more energy from fat reserves and ramping up energy efficiency). But there is only so much it can do to make supplies stretch.

If you are consistently consuming less energy than your body needs to run at its best, something has to give. This has been likened to a phone with low battery going into power-save mode. Just as essential phone functions may continue running while background apps are switched off, brightness reduced etc, your body is forced to prioritise by reducing the energy it spends in the background. You may not notice this as it happens, but continuing to force your body to run on “power-save” mode may have long-term consequences – not only for your training and performance, but also your health.

Unlike your phone, your body won’t send a notification to let you know that your battery is running low, but there are a number of red flags to watch out for. The simplest is a change in how you feel, on and off the bike. This warning sign from your body might be quite subtle and easily missed – unless you are watching out for it. A sense of general sluggishness, feeling more sapped than usual on the longer rides, struggling to recover, regularly coming down with coughs and colds – these may all be signs that you might be under-fuelling.

If you notice these signs, revisit your weight-loss goals and make sure your body is getting what it needs to run at its best. It takes time and patience, but getting to know your body puts you in touch with warning signs and allows you to adjust your diet healthily and sustainably.

For nutritionist and author Dr Desire Coelho, a key warning sign that her clients may be taking their weight-loss journey too far, is when they display “rigid versus flexible control” – overly fussy, pedantic dietary habits beyond what is necessary to lose weight. “Discipline and planning is a good thing,” says Coelho, “but sometimes people take it too far, and become obsessive about counting every last calorie, which can be problematic.”

Cyclists tend to be a disciplined bunch – no bad thing in itself – but there must remain room to adapt. You also need the freedom to cut loose every now and then. Importantly, you must be ready to listen to your body and to pay attention to what it is trying to tell you. Riders who exercise too rigid a control over their eating and training habits take an “all or nothing” approach and don’t like to deviate from their plans – whether or not those plans are working. Ironically, the more you strain to control everything, the more your body will fight back against you, and the harder it becomes to find a healthy balance and optimal weight.

Recommended weight and body fat percentage ranges for cyclists

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'Get to the punchline,’ I hear you cry, ‘and tell us the recommended weight and body fat percentage ranges for cyclists’. Unfortunately calculating your own optimal ranges is not that simple. There are guidelines and ranges that can give you a rough idea where you fall in relation to others. For example, body mass index (BMI) is calculated by dividing your weight by your height in metres squared, with 18.5-25 described as the “healthy range”. Most Grand Tour cyclists have a BMI of 20-22, but there are plenty of outliers, some lighter, some heavier, revealing no clear relationship between BMI and cycling success.

It’s similar in the case of body fat percentage, a useful metric for indicating the overall proportion of fat to muscle in your body. Recommendations range from approximately six to 22% for men, and about 16-32% for women. As with BMI, well-trained cyclists tend to fall within the middle to lower end of this range, but again, this varies widely from cyclist to cyclist.

The reality is that broad-brush guidelines are only really useful in characterising groups; they tell us little about any particular individual. Your genetics, biology and training; health, performance and life goals; work and family responsibilities, social life and interests outside cycling all combine to determine what is optimal for you – or where your own sweet spot lies.

No simple formula can account for all of this, and the only relevant comparison that you can ever make is with yourself. How are you progressing over time? Do you feel like you are getting stronger? If you believe that losing some weight might help you meet your health and performance goals, go for it – tailor your nutrition plan to cut surplus calories, and consider if there is room for improvement within your training programme. Seek support from a professional if possible. Whether to monitor weight and/or body fat percentage comes down to personal choice. Whatever you decide, keep in mind that weight is just one factor in determining your overall health and performance. Keep the bigger picture in mind and don’t obsess – instead, keep your eye on the main prize, whatever that is for you.

Top tips from a cycling nutritionist

Dr Desire Coelho, a nutritionist, author and keen amateur cyclist, urges all cyclists to stick to these golden rules:

Sleep well: “Adequate sleep is key to both health and performance, and can even influence your appetite, with lack of sleep increasing ‘hedonistic hunger’, i.e., hunger that has nothing to do with what your body needs and everything to do with how tasty you find certain foods.”

Eat plenty of protein: “Cyclists are generally very focused on carbohydrate intake, and rightly so, as it’s key for cycling. But making sure that you eat plenty of high-quality, lean protein – 1.5-2g per kilo of body weight per day – can help you build and maintain muscle mass, even while losing weight, and can keep you feel fuller for longer.”

Plan ahead: “Failing to plan really is planning to fail, so don’t rely on motivation and good-will to keep you on track. Figure out a strategy that will help you to stick to your plan even when life is hectic.”

Tracking nutrition

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Many cyclists use tracking apps and wearable devices such as the best smartwatches to monitor their energy intake and expenditure. Tracking can be useful to monitor progress and to identify potential areas for improvement. But the actual numbers need to be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

Energy expenditure in particular is notoriously difficult to measure, and most apps and fitness devices provide only a rough estimate at best. So go ahead and track if you find it useful, but don’t obsess over these numbers. Instead, focus on your performance stats, and listen to what your body is telling you – not your watch.

Glossary

Body weight: The combined total of your muscle, fat, bones, body organs and fluids. Body weight can fluctuate by as much as 1-2kg a day, mainly due to alterations in fluids and food.

Body composition: Body weight broken down into its component parts, generally reported as the proportion of fat to muscle (e.g. body fat percentage). This can be measured by DXA scan, skinfold assessments or bioelectrical impedance. Each of these provides imperfect estimates, and are best used to track your own progress, rather than to compare with others or to compare to reference ranges.

Power-to-weight ratio: Your maximum power (Watts) divided by your body mass (kg). The higher your power-mass ratio, the stronger you will feel on your bike, particularly when climbing.

Energy balance: The balance between calories consumed and calories burnt. Every cell, organ and tissue in your body requires calories to function, and the more you train, the more energy you will burn. You must eat sufficient food to cover all your daily calorie costs (energy balance). If you habitually consume more than you burn, you will gain weight, whereas losing weight requires a calorie deficit. Weight gain or loss due to energy imbalance will primarily come from fat or muscle, with your training habits determining proportional changes.

Periodization: Training periodization refers to adapting the volume, intensity and type of training undertaken throughout the season, the ultimate goal being to reach peak performance at competition time. Nutritional strategies should be tailored to the training phase, e.g. you may need to eat more during particularly arduous training phases.

The first version of this article was published in the print edition of Cycling Weekly. Subscribe online and get the magazine delivered direct to your door every week.

Here’s why cycling workouts with short recoveries are so effective - like this 30s on, 30s off session

Andy Turner — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 09:25:39 +0000

Designed to improve your ability to put out hard efforts repeatedly with limited rest, this 30s on, 30s off session is a progression from the 20/40s cycling workout that we've previously talked about.

It improves your capacity to tolerate a high heart rate for extended periods of time and your resistance to the build-up of fatiguing metabolites.

After warming up, you’ve got 10 sets of 30 second efforts at 130-140 per cent of Critical Power, followed by 30 seconds of very easy pedalling. After this block, recover at 50 to 60 per cent of Critical Power for 10 minutes, and then repeat the 30/30s block.

The workout

To download the session click on the embedded graph above. If you’re not already set up on TrainerDay it’ll ask you to register for an account - it’s free to do so and it’s free to download the session.

Golden rule

Don’t go full out on the first 30 second interval or you will struggle immensely with the following efforts. To start with, the 30 seconds at 130-140 per cent of CP will feel easy but, as the session progresses and fatigue builds, the efforts will start to feel more and more difficult. So, keep to the recommended power and don’t overdo it.

Simply explained

This cycling workout targets similar adaptations and stimuli to a 20/40s cycling workout. However, these 30/30s efforts put additional strain on the cardiovascular system as the effort duration is increased and the recovery portion is reduced.

So, rather than being a ‘sprint/recover’ kind of effort, these are a bit more aerobically challenging. Expect to see a higher average heart rate over the course of the effort block even though the power is a bit lower for each effort.

Let’s geek out

Due to working at a power that is still above Maximal Aerobic Power (MAP), these efforts still elicit the same fatigue mechanisms as 20/40s. However, with the efforts now longer and the rest reduced, the heart rate response is more like a threshold one for the 10 minute block.

Therefore, heart rate is elevated to a higher level and does not recover as much. This additional stress helps us to become better at dealing with the psychological fatigue that comes from reaching a high heart rate and then attempting to recover from it quite quickly.

Focusing on both deep breaths in and out during the recovery phase can be useful for reducing our heart rate more quickly, thus improving our capacity to recover and also clear metabolites.

Sunny out? How about…

(Image credit: Future)

These efforts can be done quite comfortably outdoors, either on a 10 minute flat or rolling section of road, or on a 10 minute climb. However, be aware that, on a climb, it may be more difficult to recover at a low enough intensity, so it will be important to get your gearing right for both the effort sections and the recovery sections.

Don’t worry so much about the time before, after or between the 30/30 blocks – this can be as long as necessary; the main focus is to get the 10 minute effort blocks nailed and recovery can be tailored around those.

Looking for another workout? How about...

- Cycling workout of the week #1: 20/40s [50 mins]

- Cycling workout of the week #6: 1 min on, 1 min off [45 mins]

- Cycling workout of the week #7: Pick ’n’ Mix [1hr 1 min]

- Cycling workout of the week #11: Sweetspot block [1hr]

How to train with a power meter: the benefits and limitations explained

hannah_reynolds@ipcmedia.com (Hannah Reynolds) — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 11:23:46 +0000

Whether you have a power meter on your road bike or you use a smart turbo trainer with a power meter built-in, power meters are a useful tool for measuring your efforts and tracking your fitness progress.

Power meters are certainly getting more affordable, but knowing what to do with one to get the most out of your training is a different matter.

Jon Sharples of Train Sharp Cycle Coaching explains: “The main benefit is to give you real time information so that you can gauge your effort.”

It’s not just about looking at your numbers after a ride, though: “Simply looking at the data afterwards will not let you make the most of your training ride or pace your race effectively,” says Sharples.

What is a power meter?

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The watt is the standard unit of measurement for power, and it’s been around for nearly 140 years, thanks to Scottish engineer James Watt. Power is the rate at which energy is used over time, i.e. the work a cyclist does to propel the bike forward. The more energy we expend, the further and faster we go. The scientific equation is this: power equals force times velocity, i.e. the result of the effort you push through the pedals (force, or torque), and how fast you push those pedals (velocity, or cadence).

You can choose to rely more on torque (grind), or more on speed (a high cadence) to produce the power you need. Generally speaking, more torque means more stress on your muscles; higher cadence means more stress on your heart. If you’re climbing up a hill, do you tend to grind or spin? Not all watts are created equal. Understanding how you produce power is key to efficient use.

What are the benefits of using power over heart rate?

Heart rate is a very useful metric but can vary as a result of numerous factors. “Factors such as hydration, energy levels, overall muscle fatigue and temperature can have a huge impact on heart rate, so you can never really be sure if there is more to give or if you should back off to conserve your energy,” explains Sharples.

It also lags slightly behind your effort. Unlike a heart rate monitor, power is immediate and precise to within a few watts (subject to the error measurement of your power meter), particularly when efforts are shorter and/or more intense.

“This gives riders huge pacing benefits as they will know the numbers they can ride at for a set distance and stick to them. But the biggest advantage is that it allows you to train in the correct energy zone for your desired event(s),” explains Sharples. “If you are concentrating on 25-mile time trials then the only energy system that you want to build is the one that enables you to ride as hard as you can for one hour.”

Essentially, the benefits of a power meter are...

Pace with perfection
No drift, as with heart rate
Train accurately
Track your fitness
Know when to rest

What are the limitations of power meters?

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Monica Greenwood is British Cycling’s former Podium women’s endurance coach and is now an elite racer herself. She has been instrumental in developing world-class British female talent, including Elynor Bäckstedt, the youngest British female in the Women’s WorldTour. Her credentials need no further introduction. Greenwood doesn’t mince her words and gets straight to the point. “Power is a great training tool but it has its limits.”

There are two related benefits of power, in Greenwood’s view: first, as a motivational tool - it helps to track progress over time; second, it allows riders to be objective about their own performance rather than comparing themselves to others. “The best riders don’t just stare at their screens,” Greenwood continues. “They can corner; they can handle a bike. Most importantly, they have the ability to pace efforts based on feel and sensations.” The best riders dare to go beyond power targets and into uncharted territory.

“You won’t find new limits if you base your ability on what you’ve done before,” adds Greenwood. “To push beyond and find your potential, you need to race and see what comes out.”

Being a competitor as well as a coach, Greenwood draws on her own experience. In the 2020 UK National Hill-Climb champs, the then 31-year-old knew she needed to hold 400W for three minutes – but her three-minute personal best was 370w. Did that stop her? Of course not. She ended up averaging 407w, and claimed an impressive third place. The lesson? Let power guide and motivate you, but don’t let it limit your ambition.

How to get started with a power meter

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First off, you're going to need a power meter. There's pedal-based, bottom bracket-based, chainring-based and crank-arm based systems, some that measure from only one side and others that are double sided. Which one is best to go for all depends on how you intend to use it, your bike, your budget and if you want to use the power meter on more than one bike - our guide on the best power meters is a really great place for finding a power meter that will suit your needs.

But a power meter is nothing more than an expensive number-generating machine unless you know what you are doing with the data and can apply it to your training.

To train effectively with power, you need to find your thresholds and set your cycling training zones to guide your training. However, none of these benchmarks represent the gospel or universal truth. Cycling coaches and sports scientists often disagree on the exact definitions and applications. Nonetheless, every endurance cyclist can benefit from knowing their power at these three physiological thresholds:

Power at VO2 max/aerobic capacity (2-7min effort): The most common way to find this is to perform a maximal ramp test with 15-25W increases every minute. VO2 max is your top end.

Power at anaerobic threshold (20-40min effort): This is essentially an FTP (Functional Threshold Power) test; it can be found through a 20-minute test or by following Stephen Seiler’s open access Critical Power protocol, requiring several all-out TT efforts at various durations between three and 12 minutes.

Power at aerobic threshold (>1hr effort): This is harder to test for without lactate testing; essentially it’s your power at your long ride, general endurance pace, where heart rate tends to settle. Some say it’s roughly 70-75 per cent of your anaerobic threshold.

How to use power data to set a training plan

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To improve your fitness, your body needs the right mix of hard training and effective recovery. However, without a power meter giving clear, accurate data it is very easy to train either too hard, or too easy, to get your desired results.

Power meters are especially useful for performing intervals, particularly short ones. Unlike heart rate there is no lag in the feedback so your training effort is precisely the right intensity for the full duration of the interval. “Very short, intensive intervals are not possible to judge using heart rate,” says Sharples. “By the time the heart speeds up to keep up with the muscles, the effort is often over.”

Getting to know your power output compared to heart rate is also a useful way to determine whether your training is working, Sharples explains, “Riding with power and heart rate allows you to track aerobic conditioning. If your heart rate starts to drop for the same power you are becoming more efficient [fitter].”

It can also pre-warn you of illness or overtraining when used in conjunction with a heart-rate monitor: “If your heart rate reads much higher or lower than normal for the same wattage that’s a good indication something’s not right.”

How else can you get the most out of a power meter?

(Image credit: Future)

Pacing gives you the edge over your competitors: If you know your threshold, you know what you’re capable of over a given amount of time, meaning you know you rode the fastest time possible in your TT or sportive.
Find out whether you’re getting the most out of yourself in races: Tracking power allows you to compare training with racing so you can see if your pre-race taper is actually working, or whether a different strategy is needed.
Compare yourself to previous years with accuracy: Your time in an event can change according to things like the road surface and weather conditions, and heart rate is affected by multiple factors. Power isn’t changed by outside variables so you know if you’re improving or not.
Learn how to pace effectively: Set off at a power in your endurance zone - it will feel easy to begin with. Four hours in it will be hard to maintain but you’ll have done the most work.
Calibrate your power meter regularly: Your device’s instruction manual will tell you how to do this. It ensures you’re not riding with numbers higher, or lower, than reality and are training at the right level.
Say goodbye to ‘junk miles’ - the training that makes you tired but not fitter: If you ride with power there’s no denying when the numbers are down and it would have been better to have a day off.

Power meter data mistakes to avoid

Failing to bear in mind whether average power includes freewheeling time, which dramatically affects the number.
Confusing simple average power with normalised power. Normalised power accounts for intervals and efforts that have occurred over the entirety of the ride. Average power will simply average out the training session as a whole, which can lead to misinterpretation of more intense sessions that may have been more fatiguing than it appears.
Forgetting to ‘zero offset’ a power meter before riding and then relying on inaccurate data. Think of zero offsetting a power meter as the same process as resetting a set of measuring scales. Air pressure, ambient temperatures and other things can alter power meter readings in between rides. Therefore ‘zeroing’ your power meter before each ride clears the residual torque and sets an accurate baseline to work from.
Failing to acknowledge the differences between indoor and outdoor riding: the former involves zero coasting and no air resistance, whereas outdoors there are many variables such as wind and drafting gains.

Training data glossary

Many power meters and training plans convert training effort into stress, load and fatigue scores. If your power meter is outputting additional figures, here's how to understand them…

Training Stress Score (TSS): The number that relates to the intensity of a single training session. The higher the number the more strenuous it has been.

Acute Training Load (ATL): The short-term fatigue number that is accumulated, estimated over a seven-day period.

Chronic Training Load (CTL): The longer-term fitness accumulation rating based over a 42-day period of time. Rides that are completed more recently will be more weighted towards this number.

Training Stress Balance (TSB): This number is the difference between CTL and ATL and addresses whether a rider may be approaching top form. When this number is positive it indicates a good performance is approaching following a decent block of training combined with a low recent value of fatigue. This is where the tapering effect comes to fruition.

Which power meter should you buy?

You want to buy a power meter, but how do you choose from the 20- plus options? This is a good problem to have; the general increase in manufacturers making power meters has driven down costs over the years and forced companies to work on improving their products. Your own personal needs (and budget) should guide your choice.

Dipping your toe in? Consider less expensive options such as the 4iiii Precision or a Stages crank arm power meter. Need to transfer your power meter between bikes or take it on holidays? Take a look at the Favero Assioma power meter pedals, which are the most competitively priced of their kind. That said, be aware that pedals tend to be less accurate than crank-based power meters.

Desire for absolute accuracy, whatever the cost? We’ll reserve judgement on this one, as no power meter is completely immune from error. While technology has improved over the years, there are still many stories of inaccurate readings and malfunctioning units. Before you drop the cash, decide what you need it for and make sure to do your research.

When you do take the plunge, make sure you follow the instructions and avoid the avoidable mistakes. Install diligently obeying the instructions, and calibrate every time you ride.

Peter Sagan’s views on power meters

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“As far as I’m aware, no bike race has ever been won on a power meter,” wrote Peter Sagan in his autobiography My World. The triple world champion and owner of more points jerseys than there are days in a Grand Tour doesn’t care for big talk about wattages.

We asked Sagan for his top advice for CW readers on training with power: “I think that the most important thing one has to understand is that the power meter is a device which should help us improve our training. In my view, it will never be a predictor of future victories but it helps me track my progress. The power meter is a tool for me and my coach but the way I feel and my sensations are the most important factors during training.”

The seven-time Tour de France green jersey winner is even more forthright about the role of power in racing: “During a race, you could even ignore it. Every race is a completely different story, with so many factors that can influence the result. You can even win with fewer watts than the rest of your main competitors. In a race, you should concentrate on how to win it, without limiting yourself by the watts you see on your screen.”

There is, let’s remember, no jersey for power - because power is only a guide to help you to get faster. True performance gains, and associated racing glory, come from much more than one metric. Watts don’t win bike races. People do.

Distance versus time - which is best for keeping track of your training volume?

Charlie Allenby — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 10:35:06 +0000

Watch a well-drilled group of road cyclists pass by and they might appear to be the picture of perfect harmony, but scratch beneath the surface and there’s a big split: how those riders keep tally of their training volume. Some count up the miles, others the hours. But which side has got it right? And does it matter?

Even the most basic cycle computer records distance and time, while cycling apps like Strava and Garmin Connect have automated the totalling up of training across weeks, months, and even years. This makes it easy to track training volume – essentially, how much you’ve ridden during a specified time period. This allows you to plan for progressive overload, gradually increasing distance or duration each week to keep your body adapting and fitness increasing.

The difference between duration and distance as the measurement of training volume might seem unimportant, at least on the surface. But it’s more contentious and consequential than you might think. In fact, some of the riders and coaches I spoke to for this feature suggested that this choice alone can say a lot about an individual rider, their cycling goals and focus.

“When you hear about people training to time, it’s a symbol of them taking their whole approach to cycling more seriously,” suggests Harry Ashman, a 26-year-old duration convert from London who competes in ultra-distance gravel events. “It’s almost like a microcosm of a larger mindset switch. They’re not riding just for pleasure – they’re thinking about getting fitter, improving and racing.”

Coach Ken Buckley agrees. “For someone who is on the bike for training purposes – to get faster for an event or race – then duration is much better.” Logging time is a mark of athletic seriousness, then. “If you’re just riding for fun and don’t really care about power, heart rate, fitness,” continues Buckley, “it is more fun to tick off distance goals. Everyone talks about their 100-mile rides; they don’t talk about their five hour rides – it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!”

It’s too early to write off distance just yet, however. In a poll I ran on Twitter, almost a third of respondents (32.4%) said they logged their training by distance. Many riders I spoke to said they preferred tallying up mileage because it meant easier planning and greater psychological satisfaction – ‘getting the miles in’ is a principle not about to die out any time soon. But does racking up hours pay off with greater gains in the long run?

The case for training using distance

(Image credit: Future)

Before fitness technology like cycling computers, heart rate monitors and power meters became accessible to the masses, the distance you covered each week was estimated by map work – and was a sign of how serious you were as a rider. The training diary of the most serious of them all, five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx, is the stuff of legend. The Cannibal apparently logged almost 1,000km the week before the 1969 race (and no, there was no mention of hours or minutes).

Even with today’s extensive quantity of data fields and the in-depth post-ride analysis offered by our apps, mileage still has its charm. There’s a reason why Cycling Weekly challenges its readers to ride 5,000 miles each year with its CW5000 – that’s 96 miles a week or 13.7 miles a day. A time target of, say, 312 hours (six hours a week) just wouldn’t have the same collective appeal. It’s the same reason why CW’s New Year issue still comes with the iconic annual mileage wall chart – counting miles is a habit that’s hard to shake.

There are benefits beyond accumulating impressive numbers, too. “I find logging distance quite useful if you’ve got a long ride coming up,” says cycling coach Michelle Sharland. “It gives you some progress benchmarks. An improving rider should be slowly increasing their distance by around 10% per week, and if you’re tracking that measurement, you can see if you are overdoing it and heading towards overtraining, have got it just right, or are undercutting it a bit.”

If you’re training for an event of a fixed distance, completing that mileage in training may help to give you confidence. “Ahead of tackling a long race or sportive where you need to ride a certain distance, it can be helpful to know that you can complete that distance in training,” says coach Mark Walker, “or at least get fairly close to it.”

The case against training using distance

(Image credit: Future)

Despite the advantages, calculating training volume in distance has a major downside, even if you factor in the intensity using metrics like power or heart rate. “Distance is not a reliable measure of your effort,” explains Buckley. “Riding at a set duration for a set power will always require the same amount of effort, but if you’re riding a set distance, the effort will vary every time depending on terrain and weather.”

Buckley points out that variables including wind, elevation, road surface and kit (bike, clothing, tires) affect your speed and therefore the distance you cover. “There are just too many [variables] for you to be able to say ‘I was a better athlete that day’, whereas if you’re tracking duration and intensity and you produced more watts, then you can categorically say that was a bigger physical performance.”

When tallying only distance, though it may have psychological benefits, you may underestimate the training load, particularly if you have completed lots of short, sharp, high-intensity efforts. “Your accumulated distance may not accurately reflect how hard you’ve worked that week and can be demotivating,” says Sharland, “even when you’ve done everything right.”

The case for training using time

The majority of respondents (67.6%) in my poll said they tracked duration, and they do so with good reason. Almost all pro riders tally up training volume in hours, and all of the coaches I spoke to favoured duration over distance in almost all situations, be it for recording or prescribing training, regardless of a client’s ambitions or goals. “Every part of training should be measurable, repeatable and precise,” says Buckley, “so you have the ability to track your progress reliably.”

So it’s all about logging time, right? Not quite. “If I’m purely going on duration – no other input – it leaves too much grey area and guesswork,” says Sharland. “If I set a two-hour ride but it’s ridden slowly and without purpose, only a short distance will be covered with scant training stimulus, whereas if I say, ‘I want you to do a 30km ride’, there are literally no shortcuts.”

If you’re used to training by distance, switching to duration can seem unappealing. It’s hard to impress your mates with the number of hours you sat on your bike at the weekend, whereas miles are a relatable reference they can visualise and maybe even be awed by. “Sometimes it takes people a bit of time to adjust how they’re thinking about their training when they start focusing on duration,” admits Buckley.

Digging into the data

(Image credit: Future)

The accessibility of training data has poured fuel onto the duration vs distance fire, entrenching opinions. Logging multiple metrics has never been easier. All you need is a smartwatch or a phone in a jersey pocket, while relatively inexpensive tools like power meters and heart rate monitors can add extremely detailed breakdowns of efforts and intensities.

What can’t be debated is that tracking training volume is key to making progress. Knowing the amount you have ridden – whether counted in miles or hours – over a week or training block is a crucial measurement. However, that doesn’t mean more is necessarily better. “Increasing your weekly volume by ‘x’ amount isn’t the goal,” says Buckley. “The goal is to go faster through the most efficient stimulus. Besides, for many amateur riders with busy lives, increasing volume isn’t realistic anyway.” Accruing six to 10 hours per week consistently alongside work and family isn’t easy. “Once you’ve nailed consistency, then you can look at what type of riding within those you’re doing and start to make changes specific to your goals,” adds Buckley.

It’s clear, then, that neither distance nor duration is the one data field to rule them all. But when you factor in variables and changes in speed and intensity, duration is the much more reliable method of logging volume. Of course, a whole suite of data fields are now available from GPS devices and training apps. One of the most popular is TrainingPeaks’s training stress score (TSS), which factors in the duration and intensity of a ride to calculate its training load (an estimate of physiological stress), where one hour spent at FTP equals 100.

Buckley uses TSS but not uncritically: “It has its flaws– it doesn’t really catch the difficulty of a workout,” he says. “A session of four 10-minute intervals at threshold, with five minutes’ rest in between each, would produce the same TSS as 40 minutes at threshold straight through, despite the latter being much harder.”

Strava and Garmin offer similar stress measurements free of charge. The TSS equivalent on Strava is Training Load, which benchmarks your average power from a ride against your FTP – a fairly rudimentary method that relies on your FTP being kept up to date. To get the most accurate reading, your head unit needs to have auto-pause on and net zero averaging turned off – and even then should be interpreted with caution.

The results are in

The case is settled: when it comes to tracking training volume, duration wins. Although distance still has its appeal – a 200-mile week will always command more respect than a 12-hour week – if fitness is your focus, then clocking it up by minutes has greater accuracy and is more likely to yield gains in the long-term.

Rider views: two amateur riders with two very different approaches

Harry Ashman, 26, London: “When I first started cycling, I was looking at distance as a measure of output. But I quickly realised as I started training more seriously that you can hide behind distance quite easily – it can’t take into account other important factors. I now train to time but I also think about how much of that time is actually spent pushing the pedals. It helps using metrics like TSS and being realistic about how hard each ride or each hour felt.”

Reece Preston, 31, Burnham-onCrouch, Essex: “I’ve tried training to power and time but I found it dull and boring. These days I tend to go by distance, making it nice and easy to plan a ride. Where I live is so flat that I know 20km takes me generally the same amount of time every time. I’ve got lots of little routes that I can bolt together to make up different distances, so I can easily add or subtract 10 or 20km here and there. If I lived somewhere hillier with climbs that would impact my average speed, I’d probably have to change my ways.”

Tracking the hard stuff: ‘Add up your sessions, not your time in zone’

Polarized training: Splitting your riding roughly 80/20 between low and high intensity is a popular rule of thumb. But should those proportions be based on the number of high- and low-intensity sessions or the time spent in high and low training zones?

“I’ve always focused on programming the high-intensity intervals, not precisely accounting for time in zone,” says coach Mark Walker. “If you try to determine your 80/20 split according to heart rates or power output, it gets too complicated – it may look like you hit 80/20 on one measure but not on another.” Rather than adding up the time spent in particular zones, Walker prefers the simpler ‘session goal’ approach whereby every hard session is classified as high-intensity. The aim is to complete two of these for every 10 sessions ridden.

This full version of this article was published in the print edition of Cycling Weekly. Subscribe online and get the magazine delivered direct to your door every week.

Ask a coach: 'What's the best workout for increasing my average speed on a 100-mile bike ride?'

James Spragg — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 08:40:09 +0000

A century is a nice target for a lot of people… and once you've completed your first 100-mile bike ride, well the obvious question is, can I do it faster? Cycling coach James Spragg unpacks a century ride and explains what workouts could help you achieve this cycling goal.

Demands of a 100-mile bike ride

Whenever we think about key workouts for a particular event the first stop is understanding the demands of that event. These can be broken down in duration and intensity.

So the duration of a century is likely in the 4hr plus range. Anyone going quicker than that will be nailing the key workouts already. The intensity of a 100-mile bike ride is fairly low. Yes, it feels hard at the time but as a percentage of threshold power (that can be sustained for 30-40mins) the average power output during a 100-mile bike ride is quite low. Typically, most people will ride a century at just below the intensity where their breathing rate increases.

Physiology

The great thing about physiology is that it is relative to each person. You won’t find anyone that can hold threshold power for 4hrs plus. Everyone that can complete a century will complete it at a similar relative intensity – as I mentioned, just below the power output at which the breathing rate starts to increase. Thus, the question becomes – how can we increase the power output at this intensity!?

Training

A good way to train and improve at any intensity is to train a fair bit just below it and a little bit above it. This is pretty much the stock standard way coaches try and improve athletes. Therefore, the same goes here. However, how can one calculate this intensity?

Luckily there is a nice easy test – the talk test.

Ride along and try and say, out loud, a big, long paragraph; in research, we use the American Pledge of allegiance, but any long paragraph will do. If you cannot talk normally – i.e. you need to alter your speech to accommodate breathing, then you are above century pace. Find the maximum power or heart rate (HR) at which you can talk normally – this is what we call the ‘first threshold’.

Now to train for a 100-mile bike ride you want to do a lot of work below this first threshold – pretty much as many hours as you can and you want to do some blocks of work above it.

Specific sessions

(Image credit: Future)

Below the first threshold

A nice steady long ride where you maintain the same intensity for multiple hours at a time – wear a heart rate monitor and use as a guide rather than power, and just tick away the hours!

Above the first threshold

Start off with 3 x 10 mins at an intensity half way between the first threshold and your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) or Critical Power (CP). Take 10 mins of easy riding between each effort.

As this starts to feel easier you can progressively increase either the time of each interval or the intensity – don’t go above ~90 per cent of FTP / CP. If you are doing two harder sessions a week, then a good idea is to increase the intensity in one of the sessions and the duration in the other.

Every few weeks repeat the talk test and just make sure you still know exactly where you are at. With time you will find that even though the HR at which the first threshold occurs stays consistent, you will be pushing more and more power and going quicker! Keep this up for a few months and I am confident that you will see your century time tumble.

Struggling to hold an aero position comfortably? This 10 minute daily routine will boost your flexibility and endurance

Andy Turner — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 15:14:55 +0000

Adopting an aerodynamic riding position is one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways of going faster on the bike. But if you try to mimic the pros by going straight into the lowest tuck you think you can contort yourself into, you’re likely going to end up reducing the power you can put out. Favouring only aerodynamics or only power will see you going slower than a more balanced approach.

But there are ways through which we can improve our power output whilst in an aerodynamic riding position. We spoke to strength and conditioning coach Chris Peden of Combined Athletic Performance to find out more.

“Having poor hip and thoracic (mid spine) mobility could hinder the positions that you are trying to get into on your bike, so it is important to keep on top of these areas when off the bike to give ourselves the best chance of moving freely,” Peden explains.

“Mobility work will help with enabling you to get into a better riding position, while a combined strength training programme which helps strengthen your posterior chain will allow you to maintain those positions and optimally transfer your power through the pedals.”

Incorporating a series of mobility exercises into your cycling training plan doesn’t have to take long, Peden has put together a mobility routine that should take no more than 10 minutes to complete each day. Following this series of movements will help with improving both comfort and power output in an aerodynamic position, so that you can hold this position for longer, and ultimately go faster

“This mobility routine is a great start for many individuals and can be incorporated into your daily routine to help with how you feel both on and off the bike,” he says. “Follow the routine from top to bottom and repeat two to three times.”

1. 8 Point Plank

(Image credit: Chris Peden)

Place your feet against a wall and adopt a plank position
Then drop your knees to the floor, tuck your pelvis under and push your forearms into the floor so that your upper back raises to the ceiling
From here, take a large controlled and deep breath through your nose and try to get your lungs to inflate so that your rib cage expands at the front, side and rear
Then exhale out of your mouth and try to feel your rib cage wrap around your body and your core contract, all whilst continuing to push through the floor with your forearms with the aim of expanding your upper back even further
Repeat and do 5-10 breaths total

2. Wall Assisted Hip Airplane

(Image credit: Chris Peden)

Single leg RDL (Romanian Deadlift) and hinge forward so that you can place your hands against a wall for support
With your hips starting in a neutral position, dip your hips down to inwardly rotate your pelvis before externally rotating as far as your body will allow to get your pelvis rotating on the head of your femur
Use your hands on the wall to help guide the rotation of how your body moves and keep repeating through this full range for 10-20 reps
Repeat on the opposite leg

3. 90/90 Knee Rolls

(Image credit: Chris Peden)

Lie on your back and place your feet against a wall so that you are in the 90/90 position and then place a foam roller between your thighs
From here, push your feet against the wall and pull your feet down without them moving so that your glutes and hamstrings activate
Tuck your pelvis under to raise your bottom off the floor by roughly an inch or two whilst ensuring your lower back remains firmly against the floor
From here, slowly and under control, start to roll the foam roller between your legs by using your inner thighs to pull one knee down whilst the other goes up
Repeat on the other side so that your pelvis starts to move up and down on the left and right side
Make sure your feet stay in position and that there is no rocking of the body
Repeat for a total of 20 reps

4. Scapula Push Ups

(Image credit: Chris Peden)

Adopt a tall plank position with your hands placed underneath you just wider than shoulder width with your body creating one long line between your shoulders down to your feet. Keep your core tight to ensure your hips don’t sag.
From here, keep your arms straight but allow your body to lower slightly so that your shoulder blades squeeze together before pushing hard through the floor to return back to the starting position with the aim of trying to get your shoulder blades to pull apart at the top.
Repeat for a total of 10-20 reps

Ask a coach: 'How fit can I get if I only ride at the weekend?'

James Spragg — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 08:46:11 +0000

For most of us, time is tight, and we might only be able to fit in some rides at the weekend. Does this mean we will never be able to get fit? We put the question to cycling coach James Spragg to find out how much weekend-only riding limits fitness gains, and whether there are any hacks he recommends.

Something is better than nothing

First thing first - if you only ride on the weekend, you will still be considerably fitter than if you don’t ride at all. Something is always better than nothing. Just because you can’t train like a pro, doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from training.

Your level of fitness will be capped

However, if you do only ride at the weekends you will need to accept that your level of fitness will be capped. At a certain point, you just won’t be doing enough training to keep progressing and getting stronger. The reason is that while it will probably take a few days for your body to adapt and recover from the weekend’s training, you then have three days where you are ‘de-training’ before the next bout of training over the next weekend. Therefore, you will, to a certain extent, be playing a game of two steps forward and two back. I have previously spoken about reversibility in answer to a question about what to do if you're stuck in a training rut, when your fitness has plateaued.

A possible solution…

(Image credit: Future)

I have numerous coached athletes in this position and my advice has always been the same… try and fit in a 20 minute session midweek (such as these HIIT workouts, or these 30 minute cycling workouts if you have an extra 10 mins spare). It doesn’t need to be more than that, but if you are only training at the weekend then you will be amazed at how much a short hard session of only 20 minutes will do wonders for your form.

The reason is that the 20 min session it is giving another, albeit small, stimulus between the work you do over the weekend. This means rather than taking two steps forward and two steps back each week you might be able to take two and a half steps forward and only one backward. If you add up that small difference over weeks, months and years, it really starts to make a big difference. When it comes to improving, especially over a longer period of time, it’s all about making small consistent steps in the right direction.

What should the 20 minute session look like?

To really make the most of these 20 minutes I would suggest you do something really quite intensive. To enable that you will need around five mins to get going and warm up and a five mins to cool down after. So that leaves you 10 mins to play with!

The goal is to maximise how hard you work in those 10 mins. In such a short session I would recommend what coaches call SIT – sprint interval training. This is going as hard as you can – AKA sprinting, for a short period before a short recovery and then repeating the whole thing again.

A classic SIT session is 15:15s – 15s of sprinting followed by 15s of recovery. Do that for 10 mins and I guarantee you won’t think you have just done an easy session. The great thing about SIT is that as you get fitter because all the efforts are maximal, you will naturally progress the intensity of the session.

The verdict

Only training at the weekend is far better than doing no training at all. But if you want to improve you are likely going to need to add an extra training session into your cycling training plan each week. Keep it short, 20 mins is perfectly fine and harness the power of SIT to maximise the training stimulus.

Tapering for a big event: here's how to ace your lead-up to a important ride or race

Marc Abbott — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 09:46:32 +0000

The art of tapering is underestimated, especially when you’re targeting a long ride or an event such as a sportive this summer. Essentially, it involves spending a period of time before your event that allows you to maintain your fitness but lose fatigue. As Colin Batchelor of Total Cycle Coach (totalcyclecoach.com) explains: “The goal of any taper can be described with a simple equation: freshness, plus fitness, equals fun.

“You can complete a century ride based on training that comprises a regular long weekend ride — no more than 80-85 miles — and a couple of midweek rides of around 60-90 minutes.”

But how best to work up to the serious mileage? Batchelor explains: “For a steady build-up, increase your weekend total by 10-15 miles a week, adding in some higher-intensity rides in the week.”

Asked what these rides should look like, he advises: “The midweek rides can be part of your commute even, and that weekend ride shouldn’t be an all-at-one-pace plod — incorporate higher-intensity elements.”

(Image credit: Future)

The essentials

Taper your training to lose fatigue
Build your mileage up gradually
Drop your shorter rides first
Start a taper two weeks out

So assuming you’ve built up to 80-mile rides gradually, what should the nature of your taper be?

“If you’ve been riding most days, adding in longer weekend rides as you go, then you could possibly be carrying a lot of fatigue,” says Batchelor. “Depending on your athletic history I suggest starting a taper two weeks out, and gradually reducing your midweek and weekend riding volume.

“It’s OK to keep some intensity in there to help support your development. But then as you are a week out, lose several of your midweek rides and drop your final weekend ride down to a couple of easy hours, if not less.”

(Image credit: Future)

Of course, what you’re naturally doing during this tapering period is aiding your recovery. Batchelor continues: “As you reduce your riding volume you gain more recovery time. That extra recovery time will help you shed fatigue.

“But if you have too much recovery, for example a couple of weeks off before your century, then you will lose fitness and may struggle.”

It’s simple stuff, but vital all the same. Get the balance of your training and recovery right and you’ll finish the event with a smile on your face and start scouring the internet for the next one.

(Image credit: Future)

Key points

Use your shorter training rides to put in some high-intensity efforts — these will help to develop your fitness more quickly.

Start to taper your training when your 100-mile ride is about two weeks away. That way you won’t be too relaxed by the time you line up for the ride.

Just as when you’re beginning your training, it’s important to make gradual changes to your training volume during a taper.

The key to your tapering period is to arrive at the event fresh enough to enjoy it, but without it feeling like an easy spin.

Your final weekend ride should be no longer than two hours in duration, to ensure you’re adequately recovered in time for the big one.

Even if you’re incredibly time-poor, you can train for a century and incorporate an adequate taper with just one long weekend ride and a few others in the week.

This article was first published in the print edition of Cycling Weekly. Subscribe online and get the magazine delivered direct to your door every week.

Ask a coach: Can 'panic training' ever actually help ahead of a big event?

James Spragg — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 09:37:24 +0000

We all know that feeling – the first races are just around the corner, and you start to question just how ready you are. Is everyone else going to be going much better than last year? Could it be worth squeezing in some last-minute training? We put the question to cycling coach James Spragg to find out....

First thing first – your form is the product of a lot of training over a long period of time. This is why we all spend all winter training and don’t just get the bike out of the shed a couple of weeks before the first race – well I hope not anyway!

Panic training is never going to make up for a longer period of sub-par training - but let's explore when and when not to get in some last-minute ‘panic training’.

When to avoid

The biggest mistake I see riders making when it comes to those last couple of weeks before the start of the season, or before a big cycling goal, is to try and squeeze as much training in as possible simply because they are not confident in their own performances - this is a path to self-destruction!

If training has been going well, you have had a cycling training plan in place and have followed it then you just need to trust in that plan. Doing anything else is more likely to compromise your performance than improve it.

When to use last minute training

(Image credit: Future)

The opposite also applies. Let’s say that you had a great plan in place but then for whatever reason things went sideways and you missed a chunk of training. Now might be the time to revise the plan and get in some last-minute work.

You might notice that in this section I am avoiding the term ‘panic-training’. Panic training infers that the training load is uncontrolled and unplanned - this type of training will 99/100 do more harm than good.

Instead, a far better approach is to re-plan your training around the time you still have available. Remember to apply all the fundamentals of training: overload, specificity, recovery, and adaptation.

What to include in the ‘re-planned’ training

If you are having to make last-minute changes then chances are you are pretty close to your next event. At this point, it’s probably sensible to focus on intensity rather than volume. The physiological adaptations to intensity are quicker to take place than those to increased training volume. This is why when we plan training, we typically work from high training volume to high training intensity.

You should also consider the specificity of the training – When you need to re-plan at the last minute make the sessions as specific as possible to the intensity you will encounter in your upcoming event. This will not only give the best short-term boost in fitness but will also help you prepare mentally for the task ahead.

The verdict

If all has been going well in training, then it’s time to trust in the process. Those last-minute doubts are normal but trying to alleviate them through panic training is likely to do more harm than good!

However, if things haven’t been going swimmingly in training, then it's time to re-plan rather than panic! Figure out how much time you have left, how much time you will need to recover from the training to be fresh and ready to go on race day, and then plan backwards from that to judge what you can do in the remaining time! Remember in the short term it makes sense to focus on specific intense training than general high-volume training.

Hitting peak form is easier with the help of training apps - here’s how

michelle.arthurs@futurenet.com (Michelle Arthurs-Brennan) — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 18:12:03 +0000

If you’re training in earnest for an event, or you’ve got an entire season of racing planned, then it’s highly likely that you’re using a form of training software.

It's entirely at the user's discretion how deep they delve into the tools available to them. Athletes can simply manually log the number of hours and minutes spent riding a bike, or they can use the software as a daily log of absolutely every element of their physiology and psychology.

Those looking to use the software to train their bodies to be ready for a specific event, on a specific date, will likely have further explored the capabilities of their chosen software, using charts that track metrics like fitness, fatigue and form.

What are Performance Management Charts?

(Image credit: Future)

Most training software options offer a pictorial view of an athlete’s fitness based on their training load, fatigue level – and resulting freshness.

Popular training software options on the market are Training Peaks (and its more advanced sibling WK04), Today’s Plan, Golden Cheetah and to a lesser degree Strava.

They each employ their own terms and algorithms. In the interests of making a fairly complicated topic a little easier to explain, we’ve stuck with the terms used – and in some cases trademarked – by Training Peaks.

Glossary of Training Peaks terms:

Performance Management Charts – the pictorial view which charts the metrics below
TSS – Training Stress Score – Training Impulse of a given session
IF – Intensity Factor – how hard a session pushed your body based on watts produced/heart rate, and your current fitness
CTL – Chronic Training Load – Fitness - training load from last 42 days
ATL – Acute Training Load – Fatigue - training load from last 7 days
TSB – Training Stress Balance – Form – how you should be feeling and performing based on CTL and TSB

How do Performance Management Charts work?

Credit: Stephen Gallagher

The chart above shows Cannondale-Drapac Rider Ryan Mullen’s Classics Campaign, as analysed by Stephen Gallagher of Dig Deep Coaching – there's a detailed review on written by Gallager himself on the Training Peaks site.

Discussing the system, five-time British cyclo-cross champion and Dig Deep Cycling coach Ian Field told us: “Ultimately we can use all these numbers to predict performance on a given day. There are possible downfalls, but I’ve used it for four to five years for myself, and I've found it to be fairly accurate.

"When I first started using it, I really wanted it to fail – I'm really more a hands-on person, not massively into numbers – but nine times out of ten I’ve found when you’ve worked out what works for you – and it is very individual – you can predict performance for your goal events.”

The entire system is based on your TSS following each given session. TSS is a term that belongs to Training Peaks, but you'll find a very similar principle used elsewhere (Suffer Score, if you’re living in an orange world with segments to hunt for, for example).

“TSS is a training impulse. It's based off FTP [Functional Threshold Power] and makes evaluating one session quite easy. It's relative to intensity and duration – it takes into account how hard you've gone and for how long.”

TSS comes from data from your power meter, though it can be calculated using heart rate (Image credit: Future)

Riding at FTP for one hour would give you a score of 100 – that's the maximum you can score (since you shouldn't be able to do more than your one-hour power for an hour). Field suggests intervals sessions will be about 50 or 60 for an hour.

Once you know what sort of TSS your go-to sessions typically yield, you can plan entire training weeks with the optimum TSS, tailored to your targets. Which is where incorporating CTL and ATL to peak for an event comes in.

“TSS can be presented on a chart – this has three lines – CTL [Chronic Training Load], a 42-day rolling average. This is your fitness. ATL is Acute Training Load – that's what you've done in the past seven days – and is called fatigue. The final line is TSB – Training Stress Balance. This is often called form – how well you're going on a specific day.

“So in an ideal world, before an event, you see your CTL gradually rise [leading up to the event], you then back off during a taper period and ATL will drop [in the week or so prior]. That means that your form [TSB] should rise – the result should be that you're going well.”

Field says that the recommended number to “feel really good” is between five and 15, though he’s keen to point out that as per all of this it’s very individual. The best form will always be on an upward curve – letting your TSB drop to the right number is nowhere near the same experience as letting it rise from a point where you were in the negatives.

With this knowledge you can manipulate your training and taper weeks – adding in the values, checking the chart – and changing them until you hit the sweet spot.

What are the limitations?

There are, however, some limitations to bear in mind.

The very basis of all of this – TSS – isn't infallible. As Field says, problems occur "when a watt is not a watt" – for example when it’s hot, your body will suffer more for the same results. If you’re wearing one of the best heart rate monitors to calculate all of these metrics, you’ve got to understand that heat, fatigue and things like caffeine dramatically affect it.

TSS might be just 80, but you know that session was harder... (Image credit: Future)

Ex-pro and director at Dig Deep Coaching, Stephen Gallagher, has used these metrics extensively – but he says amateurs using them to plan their own training need to be well aware of the pitfalls.

“The performance management charts and the detail within each ride is dependent on the accuracy of your cycling training zones. If you have your zones wrong – for example your FTP changes and you don’t update it – the trace that you're following, whatever you're tracking in terms of ATL, CTL, is inaccurate. That's a big area people don’t realise,” Gallagher says.

“The other thing is that a lot of the zones are set on FTP – that's the traditional approach. But FTP doesn’t dictate intensity of every ride. Some people can have a lot more fatigue from doing V02 efforts than threshold. It doesn’t take into account individual physiology – you may be dominant in another area, so if TSS is based off FTP it won't always be accurate – and that will throw your other data out. Threshold isn’t always representative of how hard a session is on an individual.”

Some activities are harder than TSS would suggest they are, too. Gym sessions where heart rate remains low for the relative amount of muscle damage, for example, are hard to provide values for – and as Gallagher puts it: “I do a lot of mountain biking and the training stress I get from that isn’t reflective of my broken body as I come in the door after a two-hour mountain bike ride.”

A form score of -2 suggests this athlete is pretty fatigued, but given an easy week that number would shoot up pretty quickly. However, it all depends if the zones were set up right and TSS recorded was correct. (Image credit: Picasa)

All this information needs to be used and applied with knowledge, too.

“A misconception people have is that CTL needs to be higher and the higher it is, the better your fitness is. That’s not necessarily correct – it tells you how much load you've done for that period. We have a lot of people who come to us and want to get CTL as high as possible: you can get that by just riding your bike four hours a day, but it won't necessarily make you faster. It can be used to help ramp your training but it has to be used in relation to intensity of sessions.

"How you approach your training, and how much of a ramp your CTL is, can be dictated by your event. Take a track rider: it's not possible to get a large spike as a lot of your rides will be 60-90 minutes and intense, while someone training for a gran fondo will ramp their CTL up quite a bit."

The two riders will need to reach whatever their ideal CTL is via different routes, too. A high CTL could be achieved via logging many four-hour rides, but with low intensity factored in, that athlete would probably get dropped like a stone from the start line of a crit race.

Considering individual factors is crucial. “You also need to be aware of what CTL you can handle. Someone who works 40-hour week, has a family and other commitments can't raise their CTL as high as someone with the same FTP and more time to recover. External factors can have just as much effect on performance as training sessions and weekly training stress."

WKO4 – the advanced tool from Training Peaks – allows you to track more of this, but it can't take into account every factor such as the all-night wail of a newborn baby.

How should we using training software?

On the whole, Gallagher doesn't advocate all amateurs poring over the numbers for hours on end.

“It's a gauge. Individual sensations are as important as what it says on the software. We have some people who focus a lot on these charts and it’s not healthy in a lot of cases. Technology has unfortunately dulled our senses and stopped us using our own common sense and what we feel in ourselves about what we should be doing and training.

"You can’t let lines on a chart dictate how you think you’re going – it doesn’t tell you exactly how you’re feeling. You need to be able to listen to yourself,” he says.

This is not to say that amateurs shouldn’t be using training software – more that we don’t need to get bogged down in all the wrong numbers.

Gallagher says: “The principle [of a training diary] is to tell your story. Whatever you use, the more information you have the better enabled you are to tell your story in the future."

“From a coaching point to view, when somebody comes on for coaching and they have a lot of data and information from their past, it's so much easier to get a snapshot of that person. We can look at it and see what worked and what didn’t. You can have a coach do that, or you can do it as an individual, but you need that background of information to work out what worked and what didn’t.”

He adds: “The ability to plan your training and focus going into an event is now so much easier. We live in an age where everything is on your phone – your calendar, work meetings – and it's exactly the same with training software: you can be very specific and you can organise yourself based on how much time you have and being able to use that going forward. Regardless of power, heart rate zones, that's the essence of most of the software people use.”

While Performance Management Charts are created specifically to help athletes peak for events, Gallagher reckons combining personal knowledge and information along with tracking fitness via software brings the best chances to peak perfectly. With a well used, detailed training diary, you can do it based on just looking at what you’ve done in the past.

“One of the benefits [of keeping a proper training diary] is being able to look at templates of what you've done before. Having the data along with the personal knowledge on how you felt and the sensations at the time is a great way to understand what worked and what didn’t.”

What does a 'perfect' taper look like?

If you want to peak for a target event, a taper – period of preparation – is going to feature. It's during the taper that you'd expect to see ATL (fatigue) drop and TSB (form) rise.

The perfect taper varies dramatically between individuals but the general principle is to lower volume but maintain some intensity.

“In my opinion, and with quite a big scientific backup – the best taper is approximately 10 days and a really good way of doing it is day on, day off,” says Field.

“Then you’re getting adequate recovery, but going really hard on the ‘on’ days. A good taper means cutting back the volume, but keeping the same number of sessions as a normal week – so riding your bike just as many times as normal, but bringing the volume down and keeping the intensity.”

The bottom line

Training tools and performance metrics can provide amateur cyclists with a huge wealth of information. However, it’s not the be all and end all – there’s nothing wrong with simply going on feel and listening to your body.

No matter what approach you take, keeping a detailed training diary will help you to look back at past events and establish what sort of approach helped you to be in your best (or worst) form – so you can avoid past mistakes and be an even better version of yourself the next time around.

Love or loathing? What your favorite and 'dreaded' cycling workouts say about your strengths and weaknesses

Andy Turner — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 18:34:33 +0000

One of the best things about training in cycling is that there is such a huge variety of sessions which we can choose from to boost our fitness and progress our development.

But this also means that - for most of us - there are some sessions which we excel at and particularly enjoy, whilst others can stimulate feelings of dread when we see them coming up in our cycling training plans!

But what do our feelings of love (or loathing!) for particular sessions really mean? What does that say about our strengths and weaknesses? And what can we do to improve in these areas? We take you through the details on seven key sessions...

1. Zone Two Endurance ride

Why you might love these

Being good at these sessions requires solid aerobic endurance as you will be exercising for multiple hours. To fuel this work, your body has to be well adapted at using fats as a fuel source as for longer durations; your muscle glycogen will be depleted and fat utilization becomes very important.

Why you might hate these

If you do not have good aerobic endurance and fat burning ability, you may find these longer rides particularly difficult. This will likely result in the dreaded ‘bonk’ where your legs feel empty and you have no energy left.

How to improve at these

There are several ways to improve your performance in these rides. Consuming enough fuel will help ensure the 'bonk' doesn’t happen - for longer rides, ideally 40-60g of carbohydrates an hour.

Doing a combination of Zone 2 endurance training and higher intensity intervals will improve your muscles' ability to use fats as fuel as well as increasing your aerobic engine and endurance capacity.

Curious to find out more? Here's this Zone 2 Endurance session explained.

2. Under/Overs

Why you might love these

Being good at these efforts likely means that you have an ability to recover at higher intensities. When performing , you will be switching from below your Critical Power, to working above it. This means you are constantly using and replenishing your Watts Prime - otherwise refered to as your anaerobic capacity. You also need a high pain threshold to deal with the increased Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) from generating fatigue metabolites.

Why you might hate these

If your ability to utilize lactate as a fuel is lower, then riding for extended periods above both the first and second lactate threshold is understandably going to feel tough. Generating a lot of blood lactate also results in increased hydrogen ions, which is one of the fatigue mechanisms that decreases our performance at higher intensities.

Additionally, if your Watts Prime is low compared to your Critical Power, then you will have a smaller reserve to dip into for the 'overs', meaning you will run out of that reserve sooner.

How to improve at these

Working on sustained workouts above your lactate thresholds can help deal with your ability to both tolerate and clear lactate from your blood, thus reducing the amount of hydrogen ions present too. Aerobic endurance training also helps with this thanks to greater fat oxidation reducing the associated generation of hydrogen ions after using carbohydrates.

Curious to find out more? Here's this unders/overs session explained.

3. Sweetspot

Why you might love these

Sweetspot efforts are right on the brink of what we can find sustainable for a longer duration of time. Being good at these efforts likely means that you are better able to control elements such as body temperature, carbohydrate usage, and lactate clearing.

Why you might hate these

If your lactate clearance isn’t great, if you don’t have great carbohydrate storage, or if you’re not great at heat tolerance... then you may find these quite difficult. Also, if your higher end aerobic endurance is low, then the longer sweetspot efforts will feel particularly difficult.

How to improve at these

Getting the endurance in will help - but so will some tempo work where you are doing longer durations at a power that is sustainable, but that is also uncomfortable. Doing those on the turbo can help build heat tolerance, whilst doing them outdoors can boost pain threshold.

With these sessions, it's particuarlly important to fuel well with carbs two to three hours beforehand - but not so much that you feel uncomfortable full for the efforts.

Curious to find out more? Here's this sweatspot session explained.

4. Micro intervals

Why you might love these

Being resistant to pain and having a high Watts Prime will make these efforts feel a lot easier, as they generate a lot of inorganic phosphate which is what causes the burn we feel during high intensity workouts.

Why you might hate these

If you have a low Watts Prime, then your reserve above CP will be low and these will drain quicker. Also, if your pain tolerance is low, then the repeated efforts will be particuarlly difficult as the pain in your legs steadily increases.

How to improve at these

As with so many things in life, practise will help - over time your tolence of these efforts will start to increase. You'll also get stronger and better able to put out the power, as any degree of high intensity workout above CP will help boost Watts Prime.

Curious to find out more? Here's this 30/30s session explained.

5. Sprints

Why you might love these

You’re a big watt monster with plenty of fast twitch muscle fibres who loves to feel their muscles burning!

Why you might hate these

Being fully anaerobic, these produce a lot of inorganic phosphate which causes our legs to burn. Additionally, fewer fast twitch fibres will mean less capacity to produce huge sprint watts relative to our CP/FTP.

How to improve at these

Hitting the gym and doing high torque strength work and then high speed power work will increase muscle fibre contractions to generate more force in a shorter amount of time. Also creatine supplementation can assist in both maximal sprints and repeated sprints.

Curious to find out more? Here's this sprint mixer session explained.

6. Maximal Aerobic Power efforts

Why you might love these

If you’ve got a big aerobic engine and a high VO2max then these efforts will be your strength as they require a huge amount of energy to be produced aerobically requiring a lot of oxygen to fuel them even though they are likely only 4-6 minutes long.

Why you might hate these

If you don’t have a very high VO2max or can work at a higher percentage of VO2max for longer, these will be tougher. Some people find 120% CP/FTP fine for MAP efforts, others it’s more like 105%. Peak VO2 is a strong indicator of performance in these efforts.

How to improve at these

A combination of Zone 2 rides to boost mitochondria and blood capillaries increases the amount of oxygen that goes to the muscles and the rate that fuel can be broken down to produce ATP. Additionally micro intervals at a 40sec MAP, 20sec easy ratio can be helpful at boosting capacity in these longer efforts.

Curious to find out more? Here's this MAP (Maximal Aerobic Power) session explained.

7. Glycolytic capacity

Why you might love these

These are your big long sprint, big attack style of efforts. Those with a strong sprint will likely enjoy the first part of these efforts, and those with a high glycolytic capacity (breaking down carbs without oxygen) will also flourish.

Why you might hate these

A low ability to break down carbs very fast anaerobically will mean you struggle with these efforts. Also a low overall muscle mass in the legs will be a limiter.

How to improve at these

Gym work can be great for increasing the muscle size and force production, following a structured programme with progressive load and correct phases. Improving your glycolytic enzyme function can help too, by doing these efforts as well as long sprints where you keep pushing after the sprint has ended, and by making sure you fuel these efforts well with carbs. Low carb or neglecting any form of intensity can reduce the level of these enzymes present so we can’t do these really short sharp efforts.

Curious to find out more? Here's this glycolytic capacity session explained.

Ask a coach: ‘What should I do if I miss a workout from my training plan?’

James Spragg — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 06:15:35 +0000

There are so many reasons as to why sometimes it’s impossible to fit in the cycling workout you had all nicely laid out in your training plan. And if it’s a training plan that you’re following on Zwift - or another of the best indoor training platforms - it can be difficult to know how to best precede. Cycling coach James Spragg explains the next step you should take and why…

This is a great question as I feel it's one of the things that athletes really get wrong! Every once in a while, even the most dedicated athlete will miss a session in their cycling training plan - it happens, it’s not the end of the world… that is so long as what you do next is along the right lines.

The common response

Most riders don’t like missing training and will, understandably, want to find a way to get the missed training done. However, the way athletes go about this tends to cause a few problems.

Typically I see athletes do is what I call, ‘chasing training’, which is where they try and add in the missed training as quickly as possible - almost always they'll try to do this before the end of the week to keep their weekly total up. More often than not they will skip rest day or recovery ride to achieve this.

This is a terrible idea. First and foremost it’s during the recovery period that the body adapts. Cut out the recovery and you aren’t allowing your body any time to really get stronger.

Secondly, not only does this approach decrease the time to recover it also increases the stimulus as you are cramming more training into the same period of time.

So it’s a double whammy and a recipe to ride yourself into what coaches call – non-functional overreaching. Training hard with no improvement in form.

What should you do?

(Image credit: Future)

Sometimes it's important to catch up on missed training and sometimes it's better to just forget about it and move on.

If the reason you missed the workout in the first place was due to an injury or fatigue then just move on. It's only one session, one session won’t make or break your cycling goals this season. If you start chasing training you will only likely make yourself more tired/injured.

However, if there was another reason you missed the training session then it might be possible to catch up on that missed session. However, you should think long term and look to reschedule your training rather than just sticking in the session on top of what you had planned. Aim to catch it up over the course of the next two to three training cycle and NOT by the end of the week. After all, your body doesn’t care if you do a session on a Sunday or a Tuesday. In this case, to fit in the missed training, you will probably need to reschedule quite a number of sessions to make sure you are just adding a missed session on top of what you already had planned. You then need to ask yourself the question – is it really worth rearranging everything to fit in this one session? If it’s a recovery ride you missed then probably not, if it was a key session in this block then most certainly.

In summary

Yes, it’s perfectly possible to catch up on missed training but don’t just do it so that you don’t have a red-flagged session on whichever training platform you use. Firstly, be honest with yourself as to why you missed the session. Then decide whether it’s worth re-arranging two to three weeks of training to fit that session back in? If you decide that it is worth it then always reschedule and never chase training!

Do you ever find yourself with a burning question you’d like to directly ask a cycling coach? Well, now is your chance to ask away! In this series, we’ll be putting your questions to expert coaches – send them in to Cycling Weekly's Fitness Features Editor at anna.abram@futurenet.com

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