I have often been asked how beginners should train if they want to improve fast. The thing you can do is to stop reading this article now and get out on your bike.
OK, did you finish your training? Read on… 
Structuring and Planning Cycling Training
One of the best ways to improve fast as a beginner cyclist is to get structure into your cycling. I have often been told by my riders that they feel much stronger when they’ve started on one of my cycling training programs.
In the beginning they believe that it is because of the special combination of intervals, but I keep telling them that the single best explanation for their progress is that they now have a structure on their training program.
If you are a hard working cyclist, you deserve to achieve good results with the work you do. You don’t (necessarily) have to train more or harder to achieve better results. If you get the right structure with proper amounts of interval training on the right days, there is a good chance that you will improve fast and continue doing so.
I like the idea of being smarter not training harder. I know it is a cliche but there is some truth waiting for you in this slogan.
The Principle of Super Compensation
When you’ve performed a hard training ride, your body will have to recover before it get’s stronger. How much time you need for recovery depends on the type of training, your overall fitness and nutritional status.
There are also some other factors that influence on your recovery time, but for a beginning it is important to know that hard training takes more time to recover from than light training.
When you have trained for a while you will start to experience that your legs might feel sore the day after a hard interval workout and feel fresh the day after a light training session. Thus, you are about to get the idea about super compensation. To get the best progress you will need to find the perfect combination of training sessions and recovery.
Frequency, Intensity and Duration
There are mainly three ways to change the total workload in a training week: Frequency, intensity and duration. E.g. if you train more frequent, ride with a higher intensity (more races, more intervals) or simply just ride more, you will force your body to adapt to these challenges.
This way you can reach a higher level of fitness, but your body will not allow you to increase the total workload too fast. Good cyclists make use these buttons to turn up and down the workload all the time.
Remember that it is the consistency that makes you a strong cyclist, not just one hard week of biking. Small adjustments over time will help you to become a better cyclist.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear Jesper!
I’m reading your articles for quite a while and I should say that being amateur cyclist for more than 15 years I’d found vast amount of valuable and professionally structured training information here! Thank you very much indeed, you are doing great job.
Thanks, I’m glad to hear these words from an experienced rider.
my wife does a lot of cardio on stairmasters,body pump,spinned classes..etc……i mountain bike and recently for the last 3 months started to road bike-wow! what a big difference!! my questioned,everytime my wife and i go road biking, she always ahead me. do i have to do what she doing, or just road bike more?
Greetings!
I would like to get my instructor certif.in order to teach a Road Drills course at Goodlife. Would like to go to a training course not in Toronto. Any ideas?
Thanks
Great work with the blog. Having ridden over 10k miles, mostly touring, I agree with what you say about frequency, intensity and duration. Timely reminder that not all rides have to be full-on!
I can handle the pace of the race, as long as the course is flat. However, in the last criterium, there was a short steep hill that we hit every minute for 45 minutes. I would lose at least 2 bike lengths every time up that hill, and then have to work very hard to close the gap in time for the next trip up the hill. What workouts should I concentrate on to eliminate this weakness?
Thank you
George
Hi Jesper –
How can one make the most of a daily bike commute of about 1h each way?
Thanks,
Dennis
Good question Dennis, I was thinking to ask the same. What’s the best way to incorporate that riding time effectively into an overall plan?
Thanks, Kyle
Hi, first sorry for my english. I downloaded the 12 week training program, and I have a doubt about it. It gives you the total time you have to train each day and the kind of aerobyc work you have to do (ie aerobic power) but what should i do the rest of the training time exceding the hour or so that the aerobyc work takes?
thanks
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