12 hours per week training program
This training program is designed for ambitious beginners who want to increase their level of performance. This program has two days with intervals, which is Tuesday and Thursday. Mondays and Saturdays are supposed to be light training days with an intensity about 60% of your maximal heart rate. These light training days are made to accelerate recovery from races and hard training days. After three weeks’ intensive training I recommend that you take a recovery week with less training, less intervals, but at the same high intensity as usual.
One of the main benefits of this cycling program is that you get a really good structure on your training. This is very important as a new rider. Many beginners have no idea about how to get a structure into their training. They go for long rides when they ought to rest and go for easy rides when more experienced riders would do intervals. Often their training is strongly correlated to the weather report. So if you are a beginner, I am pretty sure that you will gain very good results with this program. Not because of the intervals per se as you might expect. Intervals have a huge impact on your performance, but without a structured training plan the intervals will be worth nothing. So this program will give you a good starting point simply because of its good anatomy.
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| app.12hr | 1hr recovery | 3hr – 3x(3+3)min V02 max |
2hr – 4×200m sprint |
3hr – 2×10min AT |
Rest | 1hr easy ride. | Race, 2hr. |
| app.12hr | 1hr recovery | 3hr – 3×5x(40+20)sec. V02 max |
2hr – 4×200m sprint |
3hr – 4x(3+3)min V02 max |
Rest | 1hr easy ride. | Race, 2hr. |
| app.12hr | 1hr recovery | 3hr – 2×10min AT |
2hr – 4×200m sprint |
3hr – 3×5x(40+20)sec. V02 max |
Rest | 1hr easy ride. | Race, 2hr. |
| app.8hr | Rest | 2hr – 2x(3+3)min VO2 max |
1hr – 4×150m |
2hr – 2×4x(40×20)sec VO2 max |
Rest | 1hr easy ride. | Race, 2hr. |
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dan said,
October 6, 2006 @ 1:08 am
Your plan looks great. but because I’m a beginner I don’t know what everything means. here are my questions:
-can you explain what 3 x (3+3) means.
-Also what if you don’t know your VO2 max? is there another performance measure I can use?
-when you mention 2 hours and have 4 x200m sprints, do you mean doa 2 hour ride and incorporate the sprints at any time? or should there be a specified rest between the sprints? Or do the 2 hr ride and sprint afterwards? this applies to the other days also.
i look forward to your response so I can focus my training. thanks.
Jesper Therkildsen said,
October 6, 2006 @ 8:29 am
Hi Dan
thanks for asking,
1) 3 times 3 minutes maximal effort with recovery periods of 3 minutes between each interval. (3min hard work, 3min recovery, 3min hard work etc.)
2) Even if you knew your VO2max you would have to just ride as fast as you can for a period of 3 minutes (but not faster than you can repeat it a couple of times). It is not possible to use a heart rate monitor for pacing because of the delay of the heart rate. A power meter is very useful for such pacing, but they are expensive. When you have tried these intervals a couple of times, you will know how hard you can push the pedals in this length of intervals. In the recovery periods it is a good idea to do some light cycling to remove metabolits.
3) Yea, you should incorporate them in the training, but the best time is probably after an easy warm up, but still in the first part of the ride. This is because your muscles are freshest in that part and makes it possible to recruit most muscle fibres in the sprints. It is important to have at least 5minutes rest between sprints.
14 hours per week training program | Cycling Training Tips said,
November 23, 2006 @ 5:15 pm
[…] Yesterday I presented a 12 hr pr week training program. Now I will go a step further and present a similar program for 14hr per week. Remember that these programs are only guidelines, and it is strongly recommended to have a solid mileage before you start out. I promise that I will post a beginner´s guide soon. Until then I will recommend beginners to train about 3 times a week. […]
Gundars said,
December 23, 2006 @ 4:22 pm
HI! I red this training programm and I like it, but I HAve one question! What i must change in this workaut if I want base training in preseason?
Thanks!
Mauricio Magallanes said,
January 23, 2007 @ 1:10 am
Hi Jesper,
I got a question about this training program, lets talk about the cell
app.8hr X Thursday where it says:
2hr
–
2×4x(40×20)min VO2 max
What exactly does this mean, i understand that you said in the first post answer, but in this one i dont understand what does it mean.
2 times the cycle 4 times 40 minutes of hardwork with 20 minutes of recovery, but it says 2×4x(40+20)min VO2 max; im not pretty sure about it. But if it is correct 2×4x(40+20)min VO2 max, that excercise its talking about 8 hours.. so i thing i didnt understand completly your explanation, can you help me with this?
Thank you very much.
Jesper Therkildsen said,
January 24, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
Oopsy daisy….
I’m talking about seconds, not minutes…
Thanks!
Mauricio Magallanes said,
January 24, 2007 @ 8:57 pm
Oops.. sorry man i thought i’d read minutes… my mistake.
Now my question will be.. hehe..
In the cell it says
___________________________
|2hr
|–
|2×4x(40×20)sec VO2 max
___________________________
So the 2×4x(40×20)sec will be 8 minutes what do i’ll do the next hour and 52 minutes??
Thanks in advanced…
Jesper Therkildsen said,
January 25, 2007 @ 10:29 am
Well, the rest of the training session is up to you. Normally that would be some kind of endurance ride.
CJB said,
January 30, 2007 @ 2:27 am
I like the idea of a 12-hour a week program, but, because of my job, I can’t really do rides of more than 2 hours on a weekday (and would prefer to do longer rides on weekends). Do you have any advice or programs that can accomodate that type of schedule?
Great Cycling Training Programs For Better Performance said,
April 29, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
[…] 12, 14, 16 and 18 hours per week training program […]
Sean said,
July 10, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
Would you expand on the training philosophy of this program? I am confused as to why you seem to have three hard days back to back to back. Intervals, sprints, and more intervals don’t seem to allow for any recovery. Thanks in advance.
Jesper Therkildsen said,
July 11, 2007 @ 11:01 am
Sean,
Thanks for commenting, good question.
The Wednesdays are thought to be easy/medium days with easier intervals. It is obvious that these short sprints are nothing compared to the day before with e.g. 3×3min vo2 max. Thus, the Wednesdays are not supposed to be a hard days but rather recovery days. Also the training amount on Wednesdays are lower than on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Best regards,
Jesper
Zach said,
August 6, 2007 @ 9:22 pm
My question is what about weather. Here in kentucky it rains quite a bit, so if its raining ont the 3hr interval tues. What should you replace int with. Is one of the 50 min indoor interval training comperable? I just can’t imagine riding on the trainer for 3 hr.
francisco rui passos said,
August 20, 2007 @ 3:35 pm
hi.
I´m also a begginer and I find this program excellent to start improving.
However…what is AT? (2 x 10 min)
and the other part of the training…you say that should be endurance training…what do you understand for endurance?
low heart beats for minute? under 150?
or at a higuer level…let´s say between 150 and 170? this is about 80% of my maximum 187.
MaryJane said,
November 20, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
If I were to incorporate weight training into this program, when would I fit this in? Apparantly weight trainining is important for building strength endurance? Would one day rest then be enought to recover?
brian said,
November 21, 2007 @ 9:01 am
On the Wednesday column, first row, how come the hours indicated is 3 hours? 3 repeats of 3 minute max v02 with 3 minutes rest. It only equates to 18 minutes. Please enlighten me on this. How many sets do I have to do within 3 hours? Thanks
Christo said,
November 27, 2007 @ 5:21 pm
Hi,
I’m starting to cycle and do appreciate your plan alot. However can you clearify what you mean with the following, please:
a.4×200m sprint; Meaning do I cycle at max spead for 200m with how much rest in between the 4 sets?
b. 2×10min AT; What is “AT”, and agian are there any rest periods in between?
Once agin thank you for the program.
Regards,
Christo.
Jesper Therkildsen said,
December 8, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
Sorry, I have been very busy finishing my study on the university for the last couple of months. Well, here are som answers:
AT - anaerobic threshold. It is an intensity you can manage for about 1hour.
3hours is the total training time. 3x(3+3)min is just the difficult par of the training (intervals).
Full recovery between each sprint (about 5-10min).
I don´t agree that strength training is necessary for building strength endurance. In my opinion strength endurance training with sets of 15,20 or more reps is a waste of time.