10 Ways To Improve Your Cycling Fitness
Cycling is an amazing sport, and once you have caught the bug for it, you won't be able to get enough. One thing that really enhances the cycling experience is having a decent amount of cycling fitness.
It makes going up hills easier, helps your ride further and faster, and it’s great to challenge other riders by entering a race or two. Cyclists are always looking for ways to improve, so we thought we would go to an expert coach and tell you ten ways to improve cycling fitness.
Increase Volume
The first way to help improve your cycling fitness is to increase the volume you're doing. If you are cycling three hours a week, consider increasing it to five or even six. The extra volume helps the body adapt to cycling more and creates the adaptations to get fitter.
You could add an extra ride each week or even slightly improve the duration of the rides you are already doing. You have to be careful not to increase too much and end up overtraining and not having enough recovery.
Increase Intensity
The next way to improve cycling fitness is to increase your cycling intensity. A great tool to do this is to use a heart rate monitor. Increasing the heart rate during your typical bike ride will force your body to work harder and become more efficient at higher intensities.
Although increasing intensity does help improve fitness, it does mean you require more recovery, and it’s also important to work at lower intensities too. If you want to make the most out of a short session, going in at a high intensity will be the way to go. A good example is interval training.
Different Types Of Training
Although riding your bike generally improves your cycling fitness, you can speed up the process by doing different types of training. You could run intervals by sprinting every few minutes or do a ramp session by increasing the resistance often.
This kind of training puts your body into uncomfortable positions, forcing it to adapt quickly and build that fitness up to compensate for the extra load it takes.
Nutrition
One of the biggest mistakes cyclists make is neglecting their nutrition when it can have such a positive effect on cycling performance. Eating the right carbohydrate-rich foods and drinking the correct amount of water can massively improve your cycling fitness.
You can also get a lot of benefits after you finish training to get a decent amount of protein in as well, which will massively help with your recovery. If you want to learn more about cycling and nutrition, speaking to a sports nutritionist is going to tell you everything you need to know.
Recovery
It’s vital never to underestimate the power of recovery. One of the biggest reasons people struggle to improve cycling fitness is not that they are not training enough but training too much. This actually stops the body from making the correct adaptations and leaves you feeling awful.
We highly recommend allowing time each week to rest. This could be a couple of days off the bike or, at minimum, recovery sessions where you cycle very lightly. The better the body can recover, the stronger you will be when returning to the bike.
Strength And Conditioning
Cross-training is when you use other forms of exercise to improve your main focus, which in this case is cycling. Many cyclists turn to strength and conditioning sessions to improve their cycling. Not only does it make you stronger, but it is great for injury prevention.
This doesn’t mean you have to go to the gym, but doing exercises such as squats, lunges, and deadlifts is ideal for improving cycling fitness. You will see many professional cyclists in the gym getting ready for races.
Bike Fit
A bike fit is the process of a professional fitting you to your bike properly. They look at saddle height, reach, and other aspects, such as cleat positioning. A bike fit makes you much more comfortable and greatly improves pedaling efficiency.
This can directly improve your cycling fitness, comes with many other benefits such as injury prevention, and can even make you more aerodynamic. We highly recommend a bike fit for any cyclist.
Stretching
Cycling, although easy to adapt to for the body, is not a natural position. It’s not like power walking or running, where our day-to-day lives often have us doing this. Cyclists often find that they start to lose mobility and find themselves getting uncomfortable on the bike.
A great way to avoid this is stretching. It not only improves mobility but also helps flexibility and can improve comfort, helping your cycling fitness. A fifteen-minute stretching routine after you train will go a long way for you and your cycling.
Consistency
If you want to get fitter and do it the proper way, you will have to be consistent. The more often you can train with adequate rest, the better your body can get at cycling, and the faster your fitness improves.
We recommend that you have the time to try and train between three to five times a week. This is optimal for many riders, and not only does it allow enough rest, but it also doesn’t let your fitness go the other way.
Turbo Trainer
Most bikes from the best bike brands are compatible with a turbo trainer. This is a device that has the ability to turn your bike into a stationary bike. By doing this, you can cycle while still and at home.
Not only does it help you stay consistent in winter, but it also allows you to do more structured sessions in a much better environment instead of out on the road.
Final Note
Improving your cycling fitness will make your time riding so much more enjoyable. There are many ways to improve it, and you don’t need to be on the bike to do so. We hope you enjoyed our article and are now ready to get training.
