cycle training - I Love Bicycling

Visualizing and Mental Training For Cycling

May 13, 2016 by Josh Friedman

Your heart pounds, your palms are getting sweaty. The strange thing is that you are not even on your bike. You are sitting at your desk daydreaming. Or you might be laying in bed at night and staring blankly at a newspaper in front of you. In each instance you are scheming how you will win the big race. And in each instance you feel a physiological response to the images in your mind. Visualizing and mental training for cycling is a powerful tool to prepare your mind for the task ahead. Cycling is mostly mental as its your brain that’s telling your body what to do. Preparing every aspect of yourself for a race will help you to achieve maximum results.

See Your Success

There is a connection between your mental preparedness and physical success. By visualizing critical moments in a race and how you will react to them, you are visualizing and mentally training an important component of your cycling repertoire. While a race will often not play out exactly as you had envisioned it, it is still important to see yourself succeeding, making the winning attack, reacting to the big attack, dropping everyone on the big climb or taking the best lines in a time trial. Your brain will have felt the feeling once before so it then knows how to react in the critical moment.

Clinical Trials

There have been many clinical trials on visualizing and mental training in sports. A few are cycling specific, but there are lessons for cyclists in all of them. Most come to the conclusion that the brain thrives on envisioning physical tasks that are then put into practice with great success.

There is some great stuff from David Henderson’s Blog on some studies with athletes and their performances. One study broke down mental training versus physical training with Soviet Olympic athletes to find that the a 75%/25% mental to physical training yielded the best results. That’s quite surprising considering how much time athletes put into physical training. Another study showed on electromyography scans that the brain does not differentiate between visualization and physical training; if you see it in your mind your brain thinks it is doing the action. There is a payoff to daydreaming about your push to success.

Start Small

Practice visualizing and mental training with a segment of road that you already know. See it in your mind. Take the best lines through the segment. Put the power down where you really require it and recover when it is possible. Imagine yourself going faster than you ever have before on this familiar road . Then go out and ride that road. Did you feel the difference?

Time Trial as Laboratory

In a time trial, there are far fewer variables than a road race. It is rider versus the road and clock. It is also a perfect place to hone your visualizing and mental training skills. Pre-ride or drive the course so you are familiar with the turns and undulations. If you have a day or two to ponder it before the actual race, all the better. Take some quiet time to rehearse the race in your mind – again, taking the best lines, putting the power down and recovering in the appropriate sections. With the other racers removed from the equation, you only have to rely on your mind and the positive thoughts you put in place to ride a great race.

Mass Start Races

It takes some mental flexibility to visualize what is going to happen in a mass start race. Break the course into important segments – a tough climb, a tricky technical section, the finishing sprint – and imagine what it will be like in the thick of the race. Remember that you have to stay alert to the other racers around you; you may have to alter plans based on them. It is important to stay calm in that situation and rethink what the best course of action is at that given moment. It may even be helpful to visualize a situation that does not go your way which you then overcome – maybe a crash in front of you that you avoid or a field split that you must jump across. It will prepare your mind for unseen adversity.

Avoid Negative Thoughts

Keeping your thoughts positive will aid your visualizing and mental training. You do not want to envision failure; it will only lead to actual failure. Make an effort to keep your thoughts positive at all times to allow your visualizing and mental training to flourish. Look at adversity as an opportunity to overcome. Remember that if you are suffering, so is everyone else. That is a great time to put in the winning move. See the perfect race in your head, all the details, and how you execute everything perfectly.

How Often Visualizing and Mental Training Should Be A Part Of Your Preparation

There is a balancing point in visualizing and mental training for cycling as if you are constantly thinking about a race, it becomes a stressor and something you worry about. In the days leading into a race, take the time once or twice a day to visualize the race. Do it for anywhere from one to ten minutes. Some top-level athletes my say to do it even longer but once you are done thinking about it, stop thinking about it, especially if you are laying in bed trying to go to sleep.

Sleep!

The brain is a very powerful but also very energy intensive organ. Just like your muscles need recovery, so does the brain. This happens during sleep when the brain makes sense of what it experienced the previous day and rests active centers that it used during the day. A fresh and recovered brain in the morning will be ready to tackle the day’s challenges ahead – training sessions, visualization, racing, and everything else that comes your way.

Make the Effort

Cyclists put a lot of time and money into equipment and physiological training, but there are great gains available with mental training. Drawing a positive image of competition will allow you to reach and break barriers that were unimaginable before you started visualizing and mental training.

When You Should Stop A Cycling Workout

May 12, 2016 by Josh Friedman

Bicycle racing is not only hard, it puts a premium on suffering. Whoever suffers the most at the right time often wins. Sometimes that suffering to win is an acute ten seconds, sometimes it is two hours. And there is suffering even when you don’t win. To get to a point where you have the fitness and ability to deal with the pain, you have to put a lot of time towards training and suffering through intervals and long rides. But when is the suffering too much? Knowing when you should stop a cycling workout will help keep you from digging yourself into a deeper hole and come back stronger for next time.

The Love of Riding

If you did not love riding your bike, you would not put in all the work. You ride because you love it. Even on days you do not feel at your best, you feel it is necessary to ride. You do it because you want the freedom of the road; it’s an escape and you don’t want to miss out on training. But sometimes riding when you are not quite one hundred percent can set you back more than you can gain.

Hitting Your Mark

Every workout should have a structure and a goal. If you’ve done a cycling field test, you know your training zones. Your intervals should be a combination of a target zone, a challenging duration that is achievable, and an adequate rest interval. When one or more of these variables is not quite right, you cannot hold the zone. If the duration is too long or there is not enough rest in between intervals, it is time to assess the workout. Is your fitness not quite up to one of the factors? Are you too fatigued? Are you getting sick? Is your mind not up to the suffering of the day? Know when you should stop a cycling workout is hard to gauge but important to identify. This is a time to be completely honest with yourself. Nobody else is watching. You will not improve if you cannot answer these questions truthfully, unless it is a question of mental suffering and your head just isn’t in it.

When Is It Suffering & When Is It Time To Quit?

Again, workouts should be a challenge. Some should be such a serious challenge that you question your life choices and want to leave your bike in the rain to rust into a useless pile of scrap. Those are breakthrough workouts; you make such large physical and mental gains that you remember them months and years later. It’s the second most rewarding suffering you will find, the first after success in races from suffering.

But when you do not find that dark place to be inviting, when it is hard to turn the pedals over, when you do not feel right, it might be a good idea to know when you should stop a cycling workout. Not hitting the marks early in the workout could be an indicator. Late in a workout, on your eighth one-minute full gas effort, your power is not quite as high; that is normal. But if your second effort is way below your first, that workout may be too much. Again, honesty is the key. Do you want to abandon a workout because you are really cracked/getting sick/under-slept/et cetera or because you do not feel like putting in the work? If you’re training with heart rate, not being able to hit your normal numbers can indicate that you are fatigued. Even if after warming up and doing the first or second interval you still can’t get your heart rate close to your objective, it’s time to spin home easy.

Factors To Gauge When Assessing When You Should Stop A Cycling Workout

Properly assessing the reasons why your body feels the way it does can help you make an honest decision whether you should keep riding or not. Things like have you slept enough and have you eaten the right foods to feel good.

Fuel Up

Make sure you have enough of the right food in your system before starting a workout along with plenty of water. Abandoning a workout because you haven’t fueled up properly is no reason to quit a workout, especially when you are in good condition otherwise to have good workout.

The Common Cold

The rule many use for colds is if it is from the neck up, you can ride. If it has moved down into the respiratory system, do not ride. But if you feel like you will get over the head cold quicker and get back to full training sooner, go ahead and rest. It’s better to error on the side of rest than trying to push through and making your sickness worse.

Beyond The Common Cold

There are more maladies in the world than the common cold. What about gastrointestinal distress? What about some sort of fever? Road rash? Headache? Not enough sleep (do not discount the importance of sleep!), muscle soreness? Back to the addendum to the last rule, if you feel that you will heal faster by taking time off and get back to quality training sooner, take that time off. Again, being honest with yourself is key. Most of the time taking an opportunity to heal will be more important than a poor quality workout.

Honesty is the Best Policy

It is clear; honesty is your guide. Some intervals should make you want to abandon a workout and maybe the sport entirely. There is a rest interval at the end of that dark place where you can evaluate if you should continue. Most of the time, you should. But if you are feeling off, if it is really hard to hit your objectives, if you are sick, have not slept enough, out of calories, it will be good to know when you should stop a cycling workout and just ride home easy. Make sure when you abandon a workout you do it for the right reasons – so that you can come back stronger and suffer even more next time.

Time Trial Training – Workouts and Tips

May 4, 2016 by Josh Friedman

Time trial training can be an experience in tremendous suffering but it’s not nearly as painful as showing up for a time trial under-prepared. Some tips on positioning on the bike and a few key interval workouts will put you on the right path to flying through the time checks at the top of the classification.

Ride Your Bike

The first and by far the most important step to going fast on your time trial bike is to ride it. A lot of riders have a time trial bike that they dust off a couple of times a year for a time trial in a stage race and then hang them back up. You should be riding the bike a couple of times A WEEK, not year, if you want to be efficient. Some of the days on your time trial bike can be easy and some should be quite hard to simulate the race effort. Time trial training starts with adapting to the equipment; skip that and you can throw your hope for good results out of the window.

Get A Proper Fit

An addendum to riding your time trial bike is that you should get a proper fit from a trained and trusted bike fitter. This is because the geometry of a time trial bike is different than a road bike so the setup will be different. The fit will allow you to use your body to its maximum potential.

A Few Basics If You Can’t Get a Fit

If you cannot get a fit, there are a few things to remember. Try to get your body as low and narrow as possible without having to strain while in that position. Position the saddle so your hips are open enough to allow you to pedal without your knees hitting your abdomen. Make sure you can pick your head up enough to see the road. Tinker with the position until you’re comfortable with it for longer than your longest time trial – this way you should have no trouble with comfort on race day.

Pushing a Big Gear versus a Small One

Some people mash and some people spin, but is there a proper pedal cadence? Yes, there is; and it applies to all sorts of riding, not only time trials. It’s important not to burn your matches too quickly and to make sure that you don’t go too deep into the red at any one time. This allows you to maintain consistently high power throughout the race.

The Science

Power is force multiplied by velocity. A higher cadence requires less force. Less force results in a greater reliance on slow twitch muscle fibers, of which you have many more of and rely on oxygen for ATP production (the fuel for muscle cells). This aerobic production of ATP is by far the most efficient metabolic system for producing ATP. With a lower cadence, you are asking fast twitch muscle fibers to take on more of a load because you require more force per revolution. ATP production for fast twitch muscle fiber taps the glycolytic and creatine phosphate systems, both far less efficient than your aerobic system. In short, you will tire quicker. When you are time trial training, or any training really, focus on a higher cadence unless you are doing a specific strength workout.

Speaking of Workouts

Now that you are dialed in on your bike and know how to pedal it efficiently with a higher cadence, you have to put it into practice. The following workouts will work best after you have a bit of a base and are ready to suffer at high intensities.

Field Testing

It is helpful to do a field test to determine your maximal output to establish training zones. The training zones will zero in on the metabolic systems you are training in each workout session. Tests are also an opportunity to track fitness throughout the season.

Using Heart Rate

If you are using a heart rate monitor, warm up well and do a thirty minute all out effort. Take your heart rate from the last twenty minutes of the effort. That will be a very close approximation of your lactate threshold heart rate. Put that number in a heart zone calculator and you now have your proper zones to train in.

Using Power

To test with a power meter, warm up well and then do the following efforts in order at maximal effort, each separated with ten minutes rest:

5 minutes
5 seconds,
20 minutes
1 minute

Take the average power from each of those efforts and put it into a software program such as Golden Cheetah. It will give you your training zones plus a lot more data than you’ll know what to do with. It is a very powerful training tool.

Intervals for Time Trial Training

After riding more, the best way to improve your riding in general is through intervals. They can be hard and painful but are a necessary evil to getting stronger and faster. If you are going to be suffering, make sure you are suffering in the right way.

Lactate Threshold Intervals

Improving your lactate threshold is vital for improving your time trial. Warm up and then do:

6 minutes at zone 4 power (or zone 5a heart rate)
Pedal easy for three minutes.
Repeat 2 more times.
Rest 10 to 15 minutes spinning easy.
Do another set; as you get stronger, extend your work interval until the cumulative working time reaches the time of your target time trial. This goes from a relatively easy workout to quite a hard one if you are looking to smash a forty kilometer time trial.

VO2 Max Intervals

Maximal oxygen uptake (VO2Max) is a critical component of being a good time trialist. The more oxygen you can deliver to your muscles, the faster you can go. It is very difficult to do VO2 Max intervals (zone 5 power) for more than seven minutes and it is even harder to repeat them for that long, even at peak fitness. This workout allows your cardiorespiratory system to function at VO2 Max while your power fluctuates. You are essentially tricking your lungs to keep working at their peak while your legs get a slight respite.

This workout is much easier to do with a power meter. You can try with heart rate only and approximate the effort out of your legs while keeping an eye on your heart rate. Start out with short blocks of four minutes and work your way up to twelve or even fifteen minutes if you can handle it. During the block, you do:

30 seconds at zone 4
30 seconds at zone 5
Repeat that for the duration of the block. (Start with 4 minutes.)
Pedal easy after the block for the duration of the previous block.
Do two or three sets.
Note: Remember that if you are not hitting the target power for your individual training zones, you are not getting the full benefit of the interval. Go harder and hit the numbers and if you are not capable, stop and ride home easy. You are fatigued and attempting the intervals will just make you more tired and not faster.

Ready to Go!

Like any other discipline, practice is key; time trial training is no different. It requires a bit of specialization even though it might appear that it is much like training on a road bike. It also requires a bit of a different mindset because it is really only you against yourself. There are less external factors pushing you to success. With this good foundational knowledge, you are ready to go test yourself in a time trial or two.

The Benefits Of Having A Cycling Training Plan

March 24, 2016 by Wade Shaddy

Cycling training plans are not rocket science but if you have goals in mind, they are vital to the success of achieving them. Starting out without a defined program is like driving in a foreign country without a map — you’ll get somewhere but your location may not be anywhere you wanted to be. Without a defined cycling training plan, your fitness may not lead you to your end goal.

The Benefits of Having a Cycling Training Plan

The month of May is National Bike Month. By this time of the year you have probably seen or received various invitations to any number of gran fondo’s, benefit century rides, metric centuries, races or recreational group rides. Why not do one of them? You might not think that you’re ready for it but you are capable of much more than you think. All it requires is a plan. The benefits of having a cycling training plan are undeniable. It will make you fit and give you an incredible sense of self worth. Get involved. It could be a way to change your life.

Measure It to Improve It

Cycling training plans do one thing in particular — they allow you to measure your fitness. Once you sign up for a cycling training plan you will see your body, mind, and outlook improve over the next few days, weeks, and months. You will contentiously break your own personal records and the records of your friends, as you monitor your own fitness.

Mental to Physical

The benefits of a cycling training plan are almost as much psychological as they are physiological — and your mental outlook will change. Once you begin to see yourself gaining power, endurance, and confidence, you will want more as your cycling training plan progresses. Breath control becomes natural, finding the zone or “flow” becomes automatic, and you reap rewards benefiting every aspect of your life.

Knowledge is Power

Knowledge is power and a personal cycling training program will show you the way. You’ll learn about yourself and how your body is responding to your cycling training plan. You will advance your own capabilities allowing you to make better decisions regarding your health and you will continue evolving your level of fitness. Once you embark on a cycling training plan, a new way of life is in your future.

Make a Change in Your Life

Establishing a cycling training plan eliminates the danger of becoming complacent or falling into the destructive “I will do it tomorrow” thought pattern. It makes you accountable as you follow the plan. It motivates you to change your habits and manage your time more efficiently to finish your first century ride or sign your name to that first gran fondo event.

Fitness and Weight Loss

A good cycling training plan helps you to keep track of less-obvious issues of fitness such as sleep and recovery, nutrition and hydration. You’re more likely to meet your fitness and weight loss goals if you’re well rested, well hydrated, and properly nourished. A detailed cycling training plan helps you keep track of these small details and makes you more conscious of them on a day-to-day basis.

Not Just Any Program

Don’t accept any old workout plan you found in a book or magazine. Stick to a cycling training plan crafted by cyclists for cyclists. Once you start putting the plan into practice, you will understand how simple, achievable steps laid out in front of you helps motivate your success.

A Blueprint for Success

A good cycling training plan breaks down your established goals of fitness, century riding, or gran fondo participation into smaller, achievable short-term goals — it’s a blueprint for success. With every goal achieved, you pass a turning point on the way toward long term goals. Looking back at how much you’ve progressed through the stages of your plan, you will see a visual record of your progress and positive reinforcement in moments of doubt. More importantly, having a cycling training plan means that you never lose track of what you’re next step is. Staying on track is a simple implementation of the instructions in the plan.

Make it Happen

Lack of time is the most common excuse for skipping a detailed cycling training program. But do you have time later in life for multiple doctors appointments? Will you make the time and enough money for medication every day to treat high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes? In the light of advancing your health into the future, you will make the time when engaged in a cycling training plan — and there’s really plenty of time when you become accountable for it. Time management skills are one of the hidden benefits of having a cycling training plan.

Time Management

The best way to make time for cycling is to sign up for a cycling training plan. Go over the plan and figure out the best times for cycling in your schedule and enter it into your computer or phone calendar on a repeating schedule. It shows up daily and there’s less chance of scheduling something during that time. Check your schedule in the morning, form a mental picture of when and how you’ll be cycling that day, and it will quickly become routine and will help keep you motivated.

Schedule an Event

With tons of planned century rides, gran fondos, group rides, benefit and charity rides already out there, pick one, sign your name to it and pay the entry fee if applicable. Nothing motivates you like an upcoming ride. These types of rides are planned months or even years ahead of time and you’ll have plenty of opportunity to initiate your cycling training plan ahead of time. Just do it.

Life is a Challenge

A cycling training plan might not be the easiest thing you’ve ever done in your life and there will be challenges — but what is life if not a series of ongoing challenges. The benefits of having a cycling training plan far outweigh the challenges that you will face and once you beat them, you’ll realize they were nothing to be concerned about.

Be Safe Out There

Cycling strengthens your bones and muscles, helps you control your weight, and reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes, among other things. It builds confidence and self-worth. The benefits of having a cycling training plan are good health and fitness. But if it’s been awhile since you’ve been on a bike and you’re over about 35 years in age or you have health concerns at any age, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor before starting a cycling training plan.