WEEK FIVE:

GETTING FITTER - TIPS FOR THE TIME POOR

In 2012 cycling was given a huge boost by the success of Team GB in the Olympics.  Covid 19 has clearly given it a further boost and we are seeing a great many new cyclists taking to the roads.  Cycling is not just good for your health, it’s good for the environment and is the obvious alternative to public transport when it comes to commuting.

It might be that your interest in cycling will never extend further than your commute or a trip to the shops. But if you have noticed how much better you feel emotionally and physically, even after a short commute, you might be considering taking it further. I have been commuting on a bike for years and I am fond of saying, the only reason I don’t feel better by the time I get home after a terrible day, is that the commute wasn’t long enough. Cycling has been my saviour during lockdown. For those of you that have been lured onto a bike and are keen to ride further, you are in for a lifetime of pleasure and fitness. You will meet new people and take on adventures and challenges you would never have dreamed of just a few short months ago.

With those challenges in mind, it is inevitable that you will want to get fitter. In our last blog we gave you some tips on cycling techniques and we hope you found them useful. In this final blog in our Top Tips for New Cyclists series, we’ll look at how you can get fitter – with an eye on the fact that you have busy lives and not much time available to ‘train’.

SETTING A GOAL

Before launching into the tips, let’s be clear. You will get fitter by riding your bike.  The more you ride the fitter you will get.  For some people this is enough.  You don’t need to know things like your heart rate or your power output. You don’t even need to know your speed.  You can just take a huge amount of pleasure in simply riding your bike.

However, should you decide there is a goal you want to achieve – such as losing weight or completing an event, then training can certainly help. The statement I made in the last paragraph is certainly true but that type of riding will include a great many of what are referred to as junk miles.  ‘Junk miles’ are all the miles covered in those rides that have very little beneficial effect upon your fitness. Obviously, if time is short you cannot afford to waste time riding junk miles.

So, to training. The first thing to note is that word ‘train’.  For many it might conjure up a lycra-clad professional, wired to machines, sweating profusely in a laboratory but I’d rather define it as something less intimidating.  ‘Giving your cycling a purpose while still having fun’, would be my way of putting it!  There is no doubt that getting fitter doesn’t happen by magic and if you are keen to get fitter, lose weight or maybe both then some structure will be required. It doesn’t mean you have to become too serious – in fact I’d argue the more fun it is, the more likely you are to stick to the structure!

All training starts with a goal. ‘Getting fitter’ or ‘losing some weight’ are too vague to be useful motivators in themselves.  The best way to keep yourself training is to set yourself an identifiable challenge.  Having a date to work to and an objective to be achieved will work wonders in focusing your mind.  You will get fitter and lose weight without even thinking about it!

SETTING OBJECTIVES

SET AN EXTERNAL GOAL

While your external goal could be something as simple as riding all the way up a particularly nasty hill near your house, I’d advise that you look for a challenge that involves some degree of publicity.  Find an event you fancy like a local charity ride or sportive and announce to your friends and family that this is your goal.  If you’ve made your intended goal public, you are more likely to be motivated to achieve it!  You don’t have to commit to riding the route of the Tour de France.  In fact, your choice of challenge should be testing but not ridiculously so.  Hard enough to be a motivation but not so hard that you’ll simply give up.

BE REALISTIC

It’s great to be ambitious.  It’s great to push yourself.  Setting the bar high is probably instinctive for you but if you set yourself a challenge and indeed devise a fitness programme that isn’t realistic, given the constraints of family life, work and other distractions, you are likely to be disappointed with the results.  So set yourself a challenge and training goals that are achievable given the time available.  Don’t decide to join your mates on a 6 day tour through the Pyrenees if you haven’t got enough time to train for it!

TRAINING

Before going further, we should tell you that there are a great many different apps that either help you create a plan or provide you with one.  We are happy to answer questions on the choices if you want to know more.

Again be realistic when deciding how many hours a week you can afford to spend getting fitter?  Don’t commit to 5am starts if in reality it’s going to be dark and/or wet and cold and you know you wont feel like it. By being honest you are more likely to stick to your plan.  If you are uncertain about scheduling a session, add it as an optional session in your plan. This way you won’t feel guilty if you miss it due to a work meeting overrunning but will feel super virtuous if time allows you to complete it. These optional sessions are bonuses and you should not be looking to include them in the overall master plan.

If you’ve planned a session but the train home is delayed and you can’t do the whole thing. Don’t beat yourself up just do what there is time for. It might be only half-an hour with 20 minutes hard work but it’s better than not doing the session at all. Make a note to try and add a bit to another session later that week or the next but don’t just abandon the session. You’ll feel better even for that half an hour, both mentally and physically.

You are now ready to write your training programme.  Yes, that’s right . . .

WRITE YOUR PLAN DOWN!

Now this might start to sound a bit too serious if you are a new cyclist, but trust me, don’t be tempted to free form your training.  Without a plan written down, or devised using an app like Training Peaks, it is much less likely you will stick to your training.  There can still be some flexibility as mentioned above but having a written plan is a great motivator.

Keep a track of your training. You can do this manually by adding notes after each session, scoring your perceived effort (see below for more on this) and adding any additional comments you think might be helpful.  So, get out a pen or your laptop and create yourself a plan. But what to put in it?  The answer will very much depend on your overall goal.  If your primary objective is to lose weight then what you put in your programme will differ from someone whose aim is to improve their aerobic fitness.

WEIGHT LOSS AND CYCLING

It is important to note that cycling itself will not see you lose weight.  There is no magic bullet to losing weight.  Calories taken in must be lower than calories burned and exercise like cycling can help with the latter but if you are eating 3 slices of chocolate cake on each ride, you’ll struggle to achieve your weight loss goal.

If your primary goal is to lose weight then I’d strongly recommend using a calorie counting app like ‘My Fitness Pal’.  This will allow you to count your calorie intake much more precisely. Roughly gauging what you have eaten will not work.  Be committed to recording everything and you’ll then have a good basis to assess the equation above and how exercise can help you reduce the overall balance of calories.

But a word of warning:  most apps tend to overestimate the calories you burn during various forms of exercise so I would strongly recommend halving anything the app says to stay on the safe side!  Here is an online calculator to help you but again be aware that the number it produces should probably be be reduced by at least a third. https://caloriesburnedhq.com/calories-burned-biking

If you are looking at a weight loss benefit from cycling then you should aim to cycle at a relatively low intensity as this is where the body will burn most fat.  This is an intensity at which you are making some effort but can still talk easily.  At higher intensities the body will seek sugars to power your muscles but at lower intensities it will burn fat.  Riding ‘fasted’ i.e. in the morning without having eaten breakfast, can help with fat burning too. Remember though that you have to ride for quite a long time – maybe an hour or more - to burn around 500 calories. But imagine you scheduled an hour-long ride for four days a week that’s roughly a whole day’s extra calories you could consume without putting on weight! 

But as you can see, cycling can only ever be part of a weight loss programme in conjunction with a level of control over your calorie intake.  Weight loss also requires patience and often after an initial rapid downward trend, the line on the graph can rise for no apparent reason.  This is perfectly normal so don’t despair.  Keep to the programme and you’ll see the line move steadily downward again soon. As you lose weight you’ll also find that hills become easier – this is the simple physics of power to weight ratio – but again don’t expect it all to happen overnight!

While losing weight is a noble overall goal remember too that as you cycle you’ll be building muscle which weighs more than fat. Becoming leaner and fitter is more important than weight loss in itself.   In most cases, you’ll find that you’ll lose weight anyway but by setting yourself an external goal or a cycling challenge you’ll not be completely obsessed with the needle on the scales!

So you have set yourself a challenge – maybe to ride from London to Brighton or to do your first ‘half century’ of 50 miles in a local sportive.  Let’s look at the principles which should be behind your attempts to prepare for this challenge.

HOW MUCH EFFORT SHOULD I MAKE TO GET FIT?

And I don’t mean how motivated are you!  Improving your overall aerobic fitness can involve a number of things but all of them will need you to gauge how much effort you are making.  By that I mean how hard are you working?  There are many ways of assessing this which I’ll describe below but first of all: why is this important?

To put it at its simplest, knowing how hard your body is working to push the pedals around when you are cycling is the key to maximising the fitness gain you’ll make from your time on the bike.  As we have already mentioned, relatively easy, low intensity cycling is best for burning fat.  We’ll call this ‘Zone 2’.  Broadly speaking there are five main zones which define your effort level.  These are Easy, Fat Burning, Tempo, Threshold, VO2 Max + but there are some more subtle sub-divisions you can also use and we’ll talk about those later. What the zones are called is less important than what they represent.  In order to get the biggest bang for your ‘training’ buck’ you need to work out these zones as precisely as you can.

TRAINING ZONES

Probably the best way of doing this for a new cyclist is to get a heart rate monitor which can be bought relatively cheaply.  For the super keen among you with a limitless budget there are power meters which actually calculate the watts you are outputting when pedalling but as a new cyclist we wouldn’t recommend this just yet.  The simplest way of assessing your training zones is by feel.  Although this is not as accurate as a heart rate monitor it can still work and before the modern era when monitors and meters didn’t exist, was how even the pros trained!  The following is a rough guide to the zones and what they should feel like:

Zone 1 EASY – Sometimes known as ‘Active Recovery’ – you can talk, sing or shout easily!

Zone 2 FAT BURNING – Sometimes known as Endurance  – you can chat easily

Zone 3 TEMPO – You can hold a conversation - just

Zone 4 THRESHOLD -  Hmmm - talking is not your main priority

Zone 5 VO2 MAX + - This hurts too much to say more than the odd word

The above guide is only an approximation and although experienced cyclists will be used to assessing their perceived effort, as a new cyclist you may want the security of some more precise numbers!  If you are going to use a heart rate monitor there are two methods you can use to determine heart rate zones.

HEART RATE – and how to use it

The first is to use your maximum heart rate (MMR) as the guide. The advantage of this is that you can use a formula to determine this rather than having to do a test. The downside is that pretty much all the formulae you can use are based on age and are not that accurate as they don’t really take into account the wide variations in maximum heart rate that can exist between people of a similar age. However if you don’t fancy doing a test and are happy to adjust your zones as you start training if they feel too hard or too easy then you can use the following formula to help you work out an estimate of your MHR.  There are other formulae but this we feel is as good as any.

Fairburn: 201 - 0.63 x age (women) OR 208 - 0.80 x age (men) = MHR

The above formula though is only an estimate.  The best way of using your heart rate to determine your training zones though is to use something called Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (LTHR).  There are some quite sophisticated tests to determine LTHR which involve cycling in a lab and taking blood samples but for our purposes we can use something much more simple.  Be warned though, you have to be prepared to cycle as hard as you can for 30 minutes!  You then take the average heart rate for the final twenty minutes to give you an approximation of LTHR.

You may also have heard of something called ‘FTP’ or ‘Functional Threshold Power’.  Don’t worry overmuch about the terminology just understand that this refers to the theoretical level of effort you could sustain for one hour on a bike before falling off it in a heap!  If you sign up for our free training programme we’ll explain in detail about this test and you’ll get our ‘FTP Calculator’ which will help you work out your training zones.

SWEET SPOT IS YOUR FRIEND

As we mentioned previously there a couple of extra zones we can add to our basic five.  The sixth zone sits atop them all and is usually referred to as ‘Anaerobic’.  You do not need to worry about this – suffice to say that on our perceived effort guide it is described as ‘Talking?  You gotta be joking!’   The seventh zone though is much, much more important and will be your key to getting the most from your cycling in terms of fitness gains.  This zone is what we call ‘Sweet Spot’ and it overlaps high Zone 3 and low Zone 4 above.  Don’t be fooled by its name though, this level of effort is hard, just not quite as hard as Threshold.  The advantage of Sweet Spot is that this is where researchers have found you can get the most improvement in fitness in the shortest possible time because you need less time to recover from these sessions.

80/20 and what it means

At this point we’d like to introduce you to the 80/20 rule.  This rule will help you get what we call ‘bang for your training buck’. Many cyclists spend hours disobeying this rule – and is where all those ‘junk miles’ I mentioned before come from!  While their efforts will not be decreasing their fitness they could be training much more efficiently. Broadly the 80/20 rule (or sometimes the 75/25 rule) is a guide to how much of your time on the bike is spent making those big efforts in Sweet Spot/Threshold zones (20-25% of the time) and how much is spent riding at a lower effort level in Fat Burning zone two (75-80% of the time).

So this means you should plan to try and spend roughly 20% of your time on your bike riding at a level which feels hard.  There are various ways of using sweet spot training as part of your programme. The objective is to build the ability to ride at a moderately high intensity for longer and longer periods. For example, starting off perhaps with a couple of 5 minute efforts in an otherwise easier ride and looking to increase this up to 2 or 3 periods of 10, 15, 20 and even 30 or more minutes of continuous effort. You can plan to do these efforts on a local hill but actually they can be done just as easily - and in many ways more easily when it comes to doing the longer efforts - on the flat – unless you can find a hill which takes you 20 minutes or more to cycle up!

Shorter sweet spot sessions can be also done on an indoor bike as well as on your daily commute.  Threshold efforts, in shorter intervals either on an indoor bike or possibly outdoors as hill repeats (riding up and down the same hill using the descent as a breather), are also useful as your fitness improves but, in short, Sweet Spot is the ideal tool for the time-poor cyclist training for an endurance-based cycling adventure or challenge!

INDOOR CYCLING

If you are short of time you are going to need to squeeze in some training in the evenings or early mornings – or if you work from home some days - maybe even at lunchtime.  Getting your bike out and riding outside is not always practical so having some way of indoor training makes sense. If you are a member of a gym – and some people find the discipline of actually going to a gym helps them stick to a plan – then you can use an exercise bike there – but remember to take your heart rate monitor if the equipment doesn’t have one.

Likewise, you may want to schedule a spin class for one or two evenings a week to get some real quality sweet spot training done, leaving the weekends for a more leisurely ride.  Do talk to the spin instructor though and see what they advise as the best classes to fit in with your personal plan.

TURBO TRAINERS

An alternative option, and in these strange times perhaps the only option until gyms and spin centres open again, is to buy yourself an indoor trainer.

These vary hugely with some replicating the gradients on hills through smart technology linked to online apps, but to be honest if you have a road bike – or anything with relatively smooth tyres (big knobbly ones won’t feel very comfortable strapped into an indoor trainer!) – then you can pick up a basic ‘turbo trainer’ for £50 - £100.

Do buy a trainer tyre though as these are designed to withstand the friction created by the trainer and will save your normal tyres from undue wear!  As long as you have a way of measuring your heart rate, the time saved by having an indoor trainer set up in the spare room, which you can hop on in a matter of minutes is a significant plus – not to mention a much cheaper option than a gym membership!

And one final tip if you have not used a turbo before. Buy a mat (or use an old bit of lino) for it to stand on and a fan. This will save your spare room floor from the inevitable ‘dampness’ you’ll produce and the fan will make things a bit more bearable.

You can also buy covers for your bike handlebars and stem and this will prevent potential internal corrosion. In total you may spend around £200 but the time you save will make it a great investment.

MAKE IT FUN!

While it is important that when you are training you are focused on your goal for that session, you should ensure that you build some fun into your programme. Generally this will mean that your higher intensity efforts might need to be done on your own but you should always find room for a social ride from time to time  – with or without coffee and cake and social distancing regulations permitting.  Try to vary higher intensity sessions too, inter-weaving longer sweet spot training on the road with shorter HIT intervals on an indoor trainer, or hill repeats.

If you have a friend who can train with you, even better, and as I mentioned previously, if you commute and your route permits it, you can turn one or two days into sweet spot sessions. Variety is the spice of life and the same applies to your training.

We hope that all the above tips have been useful.  Having talked and advised the clients who come on our trips and tours, I feel able to cut through the welter of training information that is available. Much of what is in this guide is common sense and there are plenty of other resources that can be found elsewhere but we hope that by distilling some of the endless articles about training - often, it seems, aimed at hyper-serious cyclists - into something tailored more specifically for someone like you with a family and a full-time job, we have made things a little clearer and given you a tool to plan your own training.

If you’d like to download our free seven-week training programme which will give you a lot more detail on some of the aspects of training mentioned in this blog as well as three levels of training programme, please click the button below.

WEEKEND COURSE FOR NEW AND RETURNING CYCLISTS

And there is more . . .Fancy cycling with us?  Contingent on the Covid 19 crisis permitting, Viva Velo is looking to run some single day and weekend cycling camps in the autumn of 2020 specifically aimed at new and returning cyclists, where you’ll get the opportunity to put into practice some of the things we have covered in this series of blogs, as well as learning even more from our experienced ride leaders.  Obviously at this stage we are having to remain flexible as to exact dates and how we structure the camps, but the broad intention is to run a single day and weekend option.  These camps will be run as inexpensively as possible and we anticipate charging no more than £50 for the single day camp and £75 including accommodation (but not food) for the weekend option.

If you would be interested in joining us we require no commitment at this stage but in order to gauge interest and the best location/s to organise the camps at, it would be great if you could register your interest by clicking on the link below.

Viva Velo specialises in providing unique cycling experiences for our clients and there is nothing we like better than to see them achieve their goals.  Why spend years learning what you could discover in a single day?   If you like to contact us about these camps or anything else then don’t hesitate to email us at enquiries@vivavelo.uk to find out more.  Hundreds of our clients have benefited from our advice and you can see some of their great comments featured in this blog. For more great client feedback visit www.vivavelo.uk.