If you’ve been doing the same old cycling workouts for the past few months, mixing things up is time. Cycling workouts will help you to become more assertive on the bike by targeting different muscle groups. This is important because these muscles are not recruited enough for speed or endurance when you train.
For example, your core is one of the most important muscle groups to develop for cycling. If you train just for endurance and speed, your core muscles will not be as trained as other muscles. When you push yourself to ride harder or longer, your body will start to recruit more of those core muscles. Not only does this help to prevent back pain and injury, but it also makes you stronger and more efficient on the bike.
Can Check: Mongoose Dolomite Fat Tire Mountain Bike Review
Here are 5 Cycling Workouts That Boost Your Power and Endurance
With these five cycling workouts, you can find new challenges to keep your training fresh and develop your power and endurance. All of the below workouts are compound movements. They work for higher than one muscle group at a time. This is important because it allows/permits you to complete the workouts in less time while also increasing the intensity of your workout. The workouts are placed on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the hardest. Depending on your fitness level, you can make them easier or more complex.
1. Anaerobic Endurance Tabata Intervals
On any flat roads or paths, perform eight rounds of your chosen interval exercise, with each round consisting of 20 seconds of hard work followed by 10 seconds of rest.
2. Speed Workouts With Lead-outs
Setup lead-outs are short sprints at the end of a longer ride. The idea is to beat your previous efforts or average speed or catch a faster cyclist. You can alternate between these workouts with real intervals or long endurance rides or do them on separate days.
3. Lactate Threshold Intervals
Lactate threshold intervals are longer than anaerobic intervals, so they work your endurance too. These intervals are controlled and sustained, so your legs gradually feel fatigued as you go.
4. Strength Workouts With Nice and Slower
These intervals start at slower than your usual efforts and gradually speed up. They’re great workouts to do early in the morning, after a hard session ride, or as a climb out.
5. Easy Spin High Intensity
Easier spin for those needing to recover after a spin class or tough session ride. There’s much more to cycling workouts than just these suggested exercises. Research has shown that doing 20 minutes to half-hour-long sessions twice a week is enough to improve your cycling fitness. They can be done at any time and in any order. It doesn’t matter if you do endurance, speed, strength, and conditioning in one session, in separate sessions, or any order. Just do them.
If you’re ambitious, you can build endurance by riding harder and building up the time you spend at that level over time. Another way to build endurance is to do long endurance rides, such as the build-up to 200 miles in a single ride.
Cycling workouts to boost power and endurance will focus on three main areas
i. Endurance – develop your cardiovascular system and muscular endurance by riding at a low heart rate and increasing the distance and intensity. Examples:
- Long, Slow Distance (LSD) – 1-3 hours (120 minutes) at low intensity. Example: 12×20-30 minute intervals where you increase the speed at the end of each interval.
- Steady-State Interval Training (SSIT) – just 10 minutes at an intensity of 85-90% VO2 max with 3-5 minute recovery. Example: 30-minute steady-state intervals with 3 minutes rest between.
ii. Speed – the focus here is on increasing power and explosiveness by working on your leg strength and pedaling technique. You will want to use higher resistance for this part of the training session, focusing on short intervals involving fast cadences and short recoveries. Examples:
- High resistance/low cadence (HRC) – 8-15 seconds at 90-100 rpm with 1 minute between intervals. Example: 2×10 HRC intervals on the wheel.
- High resistance/high cadence (HRC) – 8-15 seconds at 95-100 rpm with 1 minute between intervals. Example: 2×10 HRC intervals on the wheel.
- Power intervals (PI) – 20-30 seconds pushed your heart rate to 90% of your max. Example: 4×20 seconds at 90-95% of the power perished every minute.
iii. Strength – unfortunately, no “superfoods” out there will place you on the Tour de France podium. However, cycling strength training is helpful if you want to improve your leg strength and pedaling technique. Examples:
- Functional strength – this work will help you to develop dynamic stability. For example, jumping onto a bench, benching weights, or moving heavy objects.
- Push-ups – perform bench presses, planks, & reverse bench presses.
- Barbell Squats – 3 sets of 6-8 reps at 60-70% of 1 RM.
- Foot pedals – use a combination of sprints and bodyweight squats followed by sprints for 5-30 minutes.
- Full-body resistance workouts – you will be doing exercises such as squats, bench presses, overhead presses, and burpees.
Related: What are Fat Bikes Good for
Nutrition Strategies for Cyclists: Fueling Performance and Recovery
Hey there, young cyclists! Did you know your eating can significantly affect how well you ride your bikes? That’s right! Good nutrition helps fuel your body for maximum power and endurance. Today, we’ll learn some easy and essential nutrition strategies to boost your performance and help you recover after a fun ride!
- Pre-Ride Fueling: Energizing Your Body Before the Ride Before hopping on your bikes, giving your body the right fuel is essential. Here are some simple tips:
- Eat a healthy breakfast with foods like whole-grain cereal, oatmeal, or whole-wheat toast. These provide energy that lasts.
- Consider grabbing a banana or a handful of berries for a delicious and convenient snack. Fruits are a great source of natural sugars, which can provide you with energy.
- Drink water to stay hydrated before hitting the road. Water helps keep you alert and ready to pedal!
The Bottom Line
Training to improve cycling power and endurance is essential to a cyclist’s development. If you have been training hard but need to pay more attention to speed and strength work, you will slow down and lose endurance. It isn’t easy, and it takes time to build the power and endurance, but the results will help you for years.
Transcript:
Preparation for this workout involves finding a relatively flat road to remove the front wheel and place it on the nearest fencepost. You can also do this on a training stand, use up to 140 pounds of resistance on the front wheel, and then do intervals as you would on a real bicycle.
The exercise is 20 seconds of hard and fast work on the pedals, and these intervals can be done with your hands off the handlebars for the high-intensity portion of the training.
Each interval should be followed by 10 seconds of rest. You can repeat this 8 times on any flat road or path, and you should feel the burn at the end of the interval set.
