cycling workouts - I Love Bicycling

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.

While going out for a ride is great for improving your overall cardiovascular fitness, those with a slightly more competitive side to them will likely be interested in ways that they can use their bike to improve their overall fitness levels, thus making them a much tougher prospect to face during races.

If that sounds like you, these quick workouts should help you to build the power and endurance that you need to compete against the top riders in your class of competition, and all of them can be done using your bike.

30 30s For More Power

This is the perfect workout if the event you intend to participate in is going to require repeated surges of strength and speed to keep up with the competition.

All you need to do is place your bike in a medium or high gear and then pedal as hard as you can for 30 seconds, before slowing down into recovery speed for 30 seconds. Repeat this process ten times to complete one interval and then take a five minute rest before starting all over again. Complete the same process three times in total to get the most from the workout, though it may be an idea to build up to three intervals if you are new to training.

Endurance Intervals

Stamina is just as important as strength in many events, so it is a good idea to ensure that your muscles have the endurance required to keep pushing you through particularly difficult sections of the track.

Start with a warm up of easy spinning on a low gear for about 10 minutes before bumping up to a higher gear and pedaling at a fairly slow cadence of around 70-75 rpm, this should be done at an effort that is difficult to maintain. Continue this cadence for 15 minutes before dropping into your easier spinning for another seven minutes. One more 15 minute set of cycling in the higher gear and a warm down at your easier spinning rate and the workout is complete. This cycling workout with improve strength and endurance.

10 Speeds For A Smoother Cadence

A fluid pedaling motion can be just as important as your overall fitness, particularly in events where speed is of the essence. As such, being able to develop a fluid cadence that you can maintain over distance is very important.

In this exercise, you need to pedal in a high enough gear to offer a decent amount of resistance, which means finding one where you can push 90 to 110 rpm. Pedal as hard as you can in that gear for ten seconds before spinning easy for another 20. Repeat this for 10 minutes to not only improve your pedaling power but to also improve your cadence. After a five minute rest do the whole thing again and you will feel the burn.

Hill Repeats For Faster Climbing

Cyclists have a love hate relationship with hills, as they require far more effort to climb than riders sometimes care to use. Strong leg muscles and a regular cadence are extremely important, so anything that builds your strength is a positive.

In this drill you will need to find a hill that has a fairly moderate incline, so that it offers some resistance without being extremely unwieldy. Stand up in the saddle and power your way up the hill as quickly as possible for 30 seconds, getting as high as you can before gently riding back down to the base of the hill.

Repeat the entire exercise while seated and then alternate between the two for a total of six climbs to complete a set. Take a little break for about ten minutes and then do it all over again and you will find your hill climbing technique improves in no time at all.

These cycling workouts will increase your speed, endurance, efficiency and power.