How to Start Training for Cycling as a Beginner

With seasoned riders putting up their bikes and novice riders just beginning their training, the cycling world is always changing. At our cycling camps and competitions, we witness the full spectrum, and as coaches, we feel that helping cyclists benefit from the most recent developments in sports science is just as vital as teaching the fundamentals.

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Throughout our lives, our connection with bicycles may develop and evolve. For some of us, this involves setting and achieving objectives and putting in the necessary training to reach them. It doesn’t have to be scary to go from being a bike rider to an athlete undergoing training. Effective cycling training doesn’t have to be difficult, and you can start training and get ready for rides longer than three hours using the knowledge and riding strategies in this book.

Getting Ready for My First Cycling Training

There are a few things you should buy and complete before starting an exercise program or riding your bike more frequently. In a nutshell, these consist of:

Bring your bicycle to the store: Get your bike tuned up and have worn parts (tires, chain, brake pads, etc.) replaced so it can support your goals.

A bike fit can help you ride more comfortably and lower your risk of injury. Training puts a lot of strain on the body. Pain in the lower back and knees, as well as discomfort in the neck and shoulders, can all be avoided or lessened with a proper bike fit.

Prepare: Although you don’t need to dress like an expert, padded cycling shorts are a must (if you don’t like the skin-tight look, go for baggies with a cushioned inner). Since cycling seats are meant to be used with padded shorts, they don’t feature a lot of cushioning. Choose moisture-wicking materials instead of cotton for other clothing, and wear layers so you can adapt to the weather.

Put on a helmet: Do not act foolishly.

Items You Can Start With Without

As a biker, you have access to an apparently limitless variety of things, but when you’re just starting out, it’s crucial to understand that you don’t have to spend a fortune or buy everything at once. These are things that many, including the salesmen at bike shops, believe you should have but you don’t, at least not immediately.

Power meter: You may get a great deal of training progress before having to purchase a power meter, but power training is incredibly beneficial.

See Power Meter for a heart rate monitor.

Anything composed of carbon fiber: carbon fiber is costly, robust, and light. Go for it if you’d want a carbon bike frame, wheels, or other parts! If so, less expensive materials like aluminum would suffice for all your needs.

The First Week of Your Cycling Training

Make more bike rides than you did the previous week. If you’ve never ridden a bicycle before, begin by going for 30 to 60 minutes each time, three to five times. If you’ve been riding for fun or as a form of transportation, estimate the approximate weekly miles (not the distance!) that you’ve been riding and add 10% to it.

Don’t stress about exerting yourself. Don’t start the first week with four intense spin classes. Start with volume and add intensity afterward; don’t start with intensity. You should ride at a conversational pace when cycling, which allows you to converse in whole sentences with other riders. On a 10-point Rating of Perceived Exertion scale, where 1 represents sitting at a café and staring at your bike and 10 represents working as hard as you can, this is a moderate intensity level, a 4-5.

Your Initial Month of Cycling Training

Beginner cyclists who did not ride frequently prior to beginning training should keep up the volume development by gradually increasing weekly riding time by 10% over the course of three to six rides. At least one day every seven should be spent relaxing and not training. The maximum weekly hours that many athletes can dedicate to training are rapidly reached—some even during the first month. This is especially true for athletes who switched to goal-oriented training after years of ordinary riding.

Increase the length of your weekend rides. Although you may gradually increase the length of each ride to increase training volume, many athletes who prioritize their careers and families find it challenging to bike for more than 60 to 90 minutes on weekdays. Adding additional time to weekend rides is a more popular technique to increase volume. This is also advantageous since, at this point, a longer individual ride generates a large training stimulus (training stress is the stimulus that allows your body to adapt and develop stronger). (Find out how long your longest ride has to be).

Make contact with the cycling community. The greatest approach to pick up cycling abilities is to ride alongside more seasoned riders. Starting off with cycling has a learning curve, just like everything else. Everyone has to start somewhere, and most people are eager to assist less experienced riders in reducing their learning curve. Finding a group you feel at ease with is crucial, and your neighborhood bike store or cycling club is a great place to start. Many provide free weekly group rides for riders of all abilities, speeds, and degrees of experience. Some also plan group workouts, such as a bike where participants climb a nearby hill repeatedly.

You may still interact with the cycling community by using applications like Strava and Zwift if you want to train indoors or if your available training time necessitates it. (Try these indoor riding workouts under 60 minutes.) These applications serve as social networks and fitness trackers, assisting athletes in tracking their development and maintaining accountability for their training objectives. Athletes who collaborate with coaches frequently upload their training data to apps like TrainingPeaks, which is part of our TrainRight Membership, or other comparable services. These applications enable coaches to evaluate an athlete’s data and, when combined with regular one-on-one conversations, plan and modify future training. If you use a fitness tracker, make sure to upload your data because they work better with more information.

Your Initial Three Months of Cycling Training

Increasing your riding hours won’t improve your fitness much when time-pressed athletes reach their 6- to 10-hour weekly training limit. Since workload is a function of both volume and intensity, we must raise intensity in order to increase workload without raising volume. This is when intervals are useful.

By alternating between higher-intensity training sessions and lower-intensity recuperation intervals, interval training raises the overall burden. Periods of time might be any length, somewhat tough or extremely difficult, and anything in between. The amount of time you can maintain an effort and its intensity are inversely related to one another. The interval will be shorter the tougher it is, and vice versa. This connection may be used by athletes to focus an individual session, a set of workouts, or a training block on the energy system they want to stress.

This is the general relationship between interval intensity and duration and energy systems. While some overlap exists, the main issue is that you cannot do 10-minute VO2 max intervals because you are unable to maintain the intensity required to focus on that energy system for a whole 10-minute period of time. Similarly, relatively few athletes are able to maintain lactate threshold intensity for 60 minutes. The majority of athletes can only sustain the required effort for increased performance at lactate threshold for ten to twenty minutes at a time. Intervals that are too lengthy tend to lose intensity in the direction of general aerobic training. This isn’t always a negative thing, but it doesn’t assist the interval accomplish its purpose.