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How to Achieve Better Results with Spinning

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How to Achieve Better Results with Spinning
Spinning is extremely popular and it’s a great way to train your endurance in the winter season. Here are some simple tips that will increase your gains from spinning:

1. Warm up before spinning

Spinning lessons have a normal length of around 50 minutes. For trained cyclists this is a very short amount of time, when this time includes both warm up, intervals and cool down.

Remember that most spinning lessons are made for people who are not very familiar with cycling training. Therefore, I suggest you do a quick warm-up before you enter the spinning room in order to get more training time.

2. Drink water with electrolytes and carbohydrates

Spinning rooms have a very high temperature and high humidity. Therefore, it is quite normal to sweat much more than you are used to.

Some people believe that they sweat more at spinning lessons because they work harder. That is not true.

They sweat more because of the climate, not because they work harder than normally. I will recommend you to drink water with electrolytes and carbohydrates to maintain a high level of performance during the whole session.

3. Choose intervals carefully

Spinning instructors plan their lesson to be interesting and challenging for a wide range of riders. Most of them train spinning only 2 to 3 times week, so they can use all their effort in this short period.

If you do not like the program made of the instructor, consider to use your own program or one of the indoor cycling programs here on Training4cyclists.com.

It is possible to ride one of these programs without telling the instructor. Just remember to stand up and sit down when the instructor tells you to (and ignore his commands about pacing strategy).

4. Remember rest days

You can’t do intervals every single day. Some days should be easy days. If you go for a ride in the spinning class on one of these days, please remember your goal with the training.

Effective Training Programs for Indoor Cycling

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For most riders the winter season is a boring time with indoor training like spinning, home trainer or stationary bicycling. I think it is boring too, and therefore I have invented a couple of training programs and an e-book, which have proved to be very effective and short in time.

Indoor Cycling Saves You Time

All of these programs can be done without a heart rate monitor. The programs have in common that they are time-saving and specific for either aerobic or anaerobic metabolism.

For most riders the winter season is a boring time with indoor training like spinning, home trainer or stationary bicycling. I think it is boring too, and therefore I have invented a strong 12-week winter training program, which have proved to be very effective and short in time.

Also, you can get tips to reduce your training time AND ride much faster in my popular e-book: Time Effective Cycling Training

In fact these intervals are based on a large amount of scientific research.

The short version is: To increase or maintain your VO2 max it is optimal to train at a level close to your VO2 max. The recommendations are that you spend as much time as possible at your VO2 max in intervals and with active recovery.

So now you can keep your training short in time and still reach your goals. All you need is a bottle of plain water. Have fun!

Indoor cycling training programs

Aerobic power 1 (50 minutes)
15 minutes – Warm up (increasing intensity)
5 x (4min high intensity + 2min low intensity)
5 minutes cool down

This program is designed to increase your maximum oxygen consumption. It gives you 20 minutes at a very high oxygen consumption, but it is not designed to be ridden to complete exhaustion.

Your VO2 max will gain improvements even at a more comfortable pace. It is, however, still important to push yourself very hard during the intervals. In the resting periods you should maintain an intensity at about 60% of VO2 max.

Aerobic power 2 (49 minutes)
15 minutes – warm up (increasing intensity)
5 x (40 sec. very high intensity ”“ 20 sec. low intensity)
3 minutes recovery
5 x (40 sec. very high intensity ”“ 20 sec. low intensity)
3 minutes recovery
5 x (40 sec. very high intensity ”“ 20 sec. low intensity)
3 minutes recovery
5 x (40 sec. very high intensity ”“ 20 sec. low intensity)
5 minutes cool down

This program is also designed to increase your maximum oxygen consumption. You work with a slightly higher intensity during the intervals than in the previous ‘Aerobic Power 1’ program. You will also gain increments in your anaerobic capacity.

You can expect results after only a couple of training sessions. This program really rocks.

Anaerobic power 1 (50 minutes)
15 minutes – warm up (increasing intensity)
5 x (60sec. maximum intensity + 6 min. recovery)

This program is designed to increase your anaerobic capacity. During the intervals the body is exposed to enormous amounts of anaerobic metabolits. After only a few of these sessions your body will be better to work at an anaerobic enviroment. This skill is primarily used in competitions, where jumps and sprints demand anaerobic efforts. This art of training is very exhausting and therefore it should primarily be used for competition preparation.