Even though cycling might seem pretty straight forward at first, there’s many different ways of training on a bicycle. There’s a big difference between burning a few calories for the daily equation by commuting a short distance to work, dedicated interval training for racing fast and riding a mountain bike down tricky trails to improve your handling technique.
If you just ride your bike to have fun, commute to work or enjoy nature, you are not training. You are simply riding. Training is working toward a goal you’ve set for yourself. That means, most of the time, you should get on your bike or into the gym with a specific goal in mind for that training session. You should also follow a training plan. If your sessions’ goals don’t align with a properly designed structure for reaching your overall goal, you are reaching in the dark, hoping to strike a bit of luck. Even if you do strike a bit of luck, and get in really good shape for your goal, you can’t repeat that process next time. You simply don’t know what got you there. That’s why a training plan is important.
What makes a good cyclist?
Before we look into how to train, let’s take a look at what creates a good cyclist. If we know the goal, we can create a plan to take us there.
Cycling is an endurance sport, which relies on the athlete’s stamina, endurance, and ability to sustain prolonged physical efforts over an extended period. But it’s not like other endurance sports such as marathon running or cross-country skiing. In long-distance running, you are running at a pretty steady pace all the way. Therefore, the winner of a marathon is almost always the runner who can keep the highest steady pace. Bike races are mostly determined in a different way. There’s an essential element of endurance, as races are often multiple hours, which are well into the endurance realm. But races are mostly determined by periods of very high intensity or sprinting.
This creates a bit of conflict on how people perceive we should train for cycling. If the race is determined by a 5 minute period of high intensity, should we focus our training on high intensity? If we target races that are decided in a sprint, should we focus our training on sprinting?
The energy systems we rely on in endurance sports are typically described as aerobic – with oxygen and anaerobic – without oxygen. The truth is a bit more nuanced than that, but let’s stick with this definition for now. See Energy systems for the detailed explanation.
The anaerobic system is for hard efforts, which can only be sustained for minutes at a time. Once an all-out exercise duration exceeds about 75 seconds, we have tired our anaerobic system so much, that we are relying more on the aerobic system than the anaerobic. For easier efforts, we rely mostly or entirely on the aerobic system. In the classic definition, our threshold marks the point between using our aerobic or anaerobic system. There are many definitions of threshold, often described as your one hour power, but in all cases, when we go above it, we have limited time before we need to recover below threshold.
Is a high threshold the most important metric for cyclists?
Having a high threshold is very important. But it’s not the only ability that matter. If one rider can sit with the peloton up a hill without going above threshold, and another has to go above, obviously the first rider will be less tired from riding up the hill, while the second rider might even get dropped from the peloton.
Having a high threshold is always beneficial. But there’s other important abilities like your ability to repeat efforts above threshold. Your 1 minute, 5 minute and sprint power. Your efficiency to save energy for the deciding parts of the race. As we know, only time trials are won by steady efforts. All other cycling disciplines involves a high power output for a shorter duration to drop the other riders. That’s because drafting is such a crucial part of cycling, and why it’s the most interesting endurance sport.
There also other skills like race strategy, ability to read the race, fueling, saving energy by riding smart and sitting in the draft and positioning yourself correct in the peloton.
Setting goals for yourself
Since there are many ways to win a bike race, you need to set a goal for yourself in order to determine your optimal cycling training path. If your goal is a specific race, you need to analyse what the most important skill to maximize your winning chance is. If it’s a pancake flat race that always ends in a sprint, you should focus on your sprint power, and ability to position yourself at the front of the peloton when the sprint starts, without having spend all your energy.
Does it have three 5 minute climbs in the end? Better train that 5 minute power and your ability to recover from those efforts. Is it often won from breakaways? You need to analyse the field beforehand and during the race. Are there any teams that are unlikely to let a break go without being in it? Then don’t waste your energy by attacking if that team is not. You also need to develop a sense of when the field is likely to let a break go. Sometimes it’s the first try, other times the entire race is just attacks without anyone getting away. It takes experince to tell when the next break is likely to get away. And of course you need to position yourself in the field to be able to follow or initiate it.
Principles of cycling training
The principles of cycling training includes specificity, overload, progression, individualization, and recovery.
Specificity involves tailoring training to match the demands of cycling. If you want to improve as a cyclist, you need to ride your bike. You can’t just run or swim, and expect that training to carry over to your bike.
Overload refers to gradually increasing training intensity or duration to stimulate adaptation. Progression involves advancing training load over time. The human body is extremely effective at adapting to stimuli, but if we keep putting the same stimuli on, we won’t improve. We need to push our limits, but without being overtrained, overly exhausted or injure ourselfs. Consistency is key to develop in the long run. That’s why a training plan is the most important tool for any cyclist who wants to take training serious.
Individualization considers each cyclist’s unique abilities, goals, and limitations. As we talked about in goal setting, you need to work on your abilities and limitations in a way that will maximize your chance of winning.
Recovery is crucial for allowing the body to adapt and improve. Training only provides a potential for improvement. By training we break down our bodies, and when we recover, our body super compensates and comes back stronger than before! Therefore, recovery is where we actually improve as cyclists!
What are the elements of cycling training?
Cycling and endurance training can be, and is often made, super complex. But it’s worth always remembering the fundamentals. When we train for cycling, there’s only really three parameters we can adjust to create the stimuli our body adapts to and recovers from.
- Intensity
- Duration
- Frequency
We can only decide how hard we train, for how long, and how often we do it. Everything besides that is nuances. How you chose to plan your intensity, duration and frequency depends on the training philosophy you choose to follow. So you should head to that section next.
