How to Improve your Bicycle Fitness Training

Question: How can I improve my cycling level or what types of trainings do I have to make to improve more?

Hi Mario,

The basic answer is to train more and harder! If you do more kilometers or hours training then you will get stronger, but this doesn't mean that you will get faster, to get faster you have to train faster. More hours in the saddle followed by some fast riding should improve all your levels of fitness and you will be able ride longer and faster.

Strength

To build up your strength you need to add more kilometers to your training rides, or if you work on time spent in the saddle, you then need to step up your training by say half an hour at a time. Spending many hours in the saddle gets you strong and used to the hours you need to do to get fit.

This could be up to six hours a day, top professionals will do six or more hours as that is the sort of time they race for, you could also do this sort of hours, but I would suggest that five hours be more of a reasonable maximum time spent training, more than this and you will just tire yourself too much. Two rides a week of five hours with less on the other days and one rest day and a recovery ride of an hour or so at an easy pace will help you get fit and not get so tired that you don't improve.

A very good tip is to split the day by riding three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon or evening. The morning three hours seems easy, at the time, but the later three hours can feel very hard. Splitting your training rides is a very good way of improving you fitness and strength.

Be careful to listen to your body, if you are tired don't train, the best way to know this is to take your pulse at rest in the morning, it should be the same every day, within a few beats per minute. If it is suddenly higher then you are either tired or you have a cold or flu on the way, if this happens, don't ride your bike and take a day or more off, until your pulse returns to normal.

Speed

You go faster if your body is used to going fast, this can be done in three different ways. First train with a group sharing the effort and taking turn at the front, this keeps the average speed higher than if you are on your own and is also a great way of learning race tactics at the same time.

Interval training is how you gain speed when training on your own, this you do by either using a course with set distances that you ride as hard as you can between predetermined points as fast as you can.

For speed you should do this on a flat course, for power and climbing you can do the same on an up hill route. You can also use a course that you use regularly and pick lamp posts, gates, house signs or any immovable objects and ride as fast as you can between the first and the second point and then rest between the second and the third, then hard again between third and fourth and so on round the circuit. The third method is very hard, but you need to know what you are doing with this one and that is motor pacing.

You need someone with a scooter or small motorbike and a quite piece of road, ride behind the scooter being protected from the wind by the driver at a manageable high speed, but you need to be very careful of collisions, falling off and the law of the roads in your area, this is the preferred training methods of the Pro's.

You have to be very careful with this method, because if it all goes wrong any injuries could be very bad.

What to do?

Before you start to do interval speed work you must have basic fitness, so first long hours in the saddle then intervals, but don't forget to listen to your body, rest if you need it and if you don't feel well stay home and if you have not trained for some time get checked out by your doctor before doing anything too strenuous.

Ride more and faster Mario!