Cycling Training Plans And Programs

Cycling training used to be a case of miles, miles and more miles, now things are a bit more scientific, with the use of pulse rate monitors and power cranks.

Now it is possible to train in your country and have your coach on the other side of the world, you can send him all your daily training data, distance, duration, altitude, speed, pulse and power output in watts, all from your bike via the internet, your coach can tell if you are training properly or going to the coffee for too many cakes.

Pulse Monitors

There are many different pulse monitors, some cycling specific and some only read your pulse, and these are good but are an extra thing to clutter up the handlebars on your bike or wrist.

Polar, and specially its triathlon heart rate monitor, the Polar S725x is perhaps the most known brand for fitness rate monitors. Most give you information on how far you have gone and how long it has taken you and what speed you were doing, as well your pulse while doing it.

Spend a little more money and your monitor will tell you your altitude, the steepness of the climb, the temperature, pedal revolutions and will work out approximate power out put and you can download all of this too your computer for you or your coach to analyse later.

Power Cranks
These are very expensive piece of kit; you replace the existing cranks on your bike with this special chain-set.

The read out from these special cranks tells you all that the pulse monitor does, plus your power out put and with some power cranks the difference between the left and the right leg. It’s mainly used on cycling high intensity training.

How To Train

The old ways of training as much as you could, made you strong, possibly fast, but definitely tired. These days’ people make more of there time training. You still have to do the miles, but after you have the basic fitness you can turn to specialised training methods.

This is where a pulse monitor can come in helpful. Interval training has been around for years, the best way is to go with a group of others and take turns to ride hard at the front and rest behind, the smaller the group the more times you have to ride hard and less places to hide from the wind.

On your own you can do the same, but you have to pick points were to ride hard and when to rest. With a pulse monitor you have it to tell you when to try hard and when not to and when to go home because you have done enough.

The main thing is to enjoy your cycling, when it becomes a chore that’s when to stop and do some thing else until you want to ride your bike. Pulse monitors can take the guess work out of training, but you must listen to what you body says, rest when you don’t want to do it and ride hard when you do, but have fun.

There are also some kind of accessories for warming up and body care.

• Warming Oil : If you are racing or going to be training hard you need to prepare the muscles for the coming efforts, the warming oil helps that preparation for physical activity by increasing blood circulation and oxygenizes the muscle thanks to the presence of Ozonides
• Reskin BioRacer cycling patches : protecting inner-thigh/buttock areas from irritation and friction

The best way for a successful season is setting a proper training plan. This could be done simply by having a four season cycling training program . However, if you are new on cycling, or have just started riding bikes, and don’t know how to train with some kind of improvement, we HIGHLY recommend reading first our beginners cycling program .

We received an e-mail from a reader who feels that his age (48) is slowing him down and what can he do to combat it. Read what we have to say about age and cycling training.

Winter and Indoor Bike Training

Vartan (one of our newsletter readers) wants some pointers on training on rollers, the do’s and don’ts. We give him and anyone else contemplating home training some help with how you should go about it and warn about the boredom and the heat read more here:

Indoor Cycling Training for the Winter