REBOOT YOUR RIDING
SIMPLESTEPSTOGETYOU BACKONYOURBIKE
If you went into hibernation over winter and stayed off your bike, it’s time to jump-start your training. We reveal how to ease yourself back into the saddle, regain your fitness, lose weight, avoid injuries and get prepped for a new year of cycling adventures
Even passionate cyclists can end up hibernating indoors over winter. A week off the bike stretches into two. Before you know it, Christmas is here and suddenly you’re dodging training to watch Home Alone with a plate of mince pies instead. By the time the new year comes around, you’re feeling seriously unfit - and pretty guilty about the fact that you haven’t cycled outside for over a month...
The first step on your comeback trail is to banish that guilt. Even pro riders enjoy a winter break – often earlier than the rest of us, around November – in order to restore their energy and motivation. “When the season finishes, we get almost five weeks off the bike to see family and live like a normal person,” says Ineos Grenadiers rider Ben Swift.
“For all that time off the bike, I just end up fixing stuff at home and doing little chores. Pro cycling is 24/7 so you do look forward to your end-of-season break. The first part is the period when we recover and have our own personal time. Then our off-season training is the second part, which is all about building up our fitness.”
If your cycling kit appears to have shrunk in the wash over Christmas, don’t worry, it’s normal to add a few kilos. “We put on quite a bit of weight naturally, just by eating normally for a couple of weeks,” admits Swift. “I put on five kilos (over the last winter break) but that is water retention too. We’re so used to working hard that when we suddenly stop, the body holds onto everything.”
The second step is to accept this new reality: you aren’t as fit as you were last autumn, so don’t push too hard. It can be demoralising when you get back on your bike and struggle up climbs that used to feel easy, but thrashing yourself will only lead to injuries.
“The most important advice is to build up distance and intensity gradually and consistently,” says Nichola Roberts, founder of Velo Physio (velophysio.co.uk). “Many injuries I see are from cyclists doing too much, too soon. Don’t look at where you left off, but where you are now. Consider a ‘ramp test’ to assess your fitness level and build things up from there.”
A ramp test is a simple way to track your fitness: using an indoor trainer, start at 100W and ramp up your power every minute in 20W increments until you reach failure. Now compare your progress every fortnight to check your fitness and see how you’re progressing.
Ace of base
Start off with some fun coffee-stop rides or relaxing spins with friends of a similar fitness level, rather than competitive club rides or self-flagellating solo rides. “Avoid long rides and group rides [easy this year as they’re currently illegal under lockdown!] because they encourage you to push beyond your current conditioning in terms of volume and intensity,” says Roberts.
Even the pros have fun when they first return to training. “I like to ride with my (non-professional) friends,” says Swift. “It’s funny when we start out after our offseason because guys who you
normally give a hard time to are now give you a kicking. That’s because some hobby cyclists tend to be constant throughout the year, whereas we have to peak. But if I’ve had a good break, I just ride my bike for fun.”
Matt Rowe, founder of Rowe & King coaching company (roweandking.com), insists simple unstructured social rides will be super-beneficial. “When you’re getting back on the bike after a chunk of time off, you need to develop your aerobic base,” he explains. “For the first sessions, just go out and ride, but try to be consistent. Getting out with friends - lockdown permitting – will help you to be consistent.”
Cycling coach Matt Clinton (clinterval.com) says don’t ride too far at first. “Although you’re looking to build base miles, it doesn’t mean you do four-hour rides straightaway,” he cautions. “Aim for slow and steady. Make the rides fun and a reasonable length: an hour or two is sufficient to begin with. Remember, if you keep consistency and increase volume, the lost power will come back.”
Even if your first ride back was painful, the best thing about this first phase is that you will make fast gains. “We are all so unfit compared to how we are in our peak, and that means you really notice your progress,” says Swift. “When you are fit, it’s hard to see the small gains sometimes. But when you get back after a break, you make big gains quite quickly.”
Strength with conditions
After a winter break it’s easy to pick up injuries, so strengthen your body off the bike before you crank up the mileage. “Conditioning drills to prevent injuries include working the core and glutes with single-leg bridges, Bulgarian split squats, planks, side planks, and weighted step-ups with dumbbells or a heavy rucksack,” suggests
“For the first sessions, just go out and ride, but try to be consistent. Getting out with friends will help with this”
Matt Rowe, Cycling coach
Nichola Roberts. Start with two sessions a week with 2x5 reps per exercise then slowly build up to three sessions a week of 3x5 reps.
If you have been cycling indoors over winter, you will have maintained decent aerobic fitness but you may still lack the balance and strength to ride efficiently on the road. “When cyclists return to riding outside after being indoors, they can lack the strength required for handling the bike on the road, which affects their balance, reactions and muscular strength endurance,” warns Roberts. “If they have been focusing on 60-90 minute turbo sessions, this can result in injuries when cyclists return to longer road rides.”
Roberts suggests doing regular core exercises to improve your balance, stability and cycling posture: after all, it’s easy to abandon your aero position when pedalling on an indoor trainer all winter. “Planks, alternating into side planks with your arm raised to the ceiling, will challenge your glutes, core, upper neck and shoulder muscle endurance,” she says. “Add some spinal mobility stretches like the crucifix stretch, the puppy pose or other yoga poses.”
Taking things steady will help. “If you’ve been doing nothing but turbo rides, that is what your body will be trained to do,” says Roberts. “This does not translate into the physical conditioning needed to be out on a bike for five hours. I saw a spike of injuries caused by this two years ago, when we had an exceptionally warm February. Everyone went and did super-long rides and then the unlucky few had knee pain as a result.” Always build up your mileage slowly to avoid early-season injuries.
All the trimmings
As you return to training, you’ll no doubt want to shift some unwanted kilos too. But forget fads and monkish diets: effective weight loss comes down to basic maths, says nutrition consultant Richard Tucker (humanperformancelab.co.uk). “If weight loss is a primary goal then the number one rule is creating an energy deficit,” explains Tucker. “This is where we consume fewer calories than we burn. Typically, a calorie deficit of 500-750 kcals a day should be the aim, without your training sessions being compromised.”
To achieve this, Tucker has four golden rules. First, aim for 1.6-2.2g of hunger-busting protein per kg of bodyweight, spread throughout the day. Second, eat 0.5-1g of healthy fat per kg. Third, adapt your daily carb intake, between 100g and 400g, according to the length and intensity of your training session. This will ensure you stay fuelled for longer sessions but don’t pile on the pounds on rest days. And fourth, don’t ignore the weight-loss value of other activities. “A simple target could be 10,000 steps per day,” suggests Tucker. This would burn an extra 500 calories, which, if you maintain a sensible diet, should be enough to tilt your daily calorie equation into weight-loss territory.
“Adding in some 30-second sprints every five minutes is also great for opening up top-end fitness”
Matt Clinton, Cycling coach
For a winter training day including a standard two-hour zone 2 session, Tucker recommends a sample diet of two or three poached eggs with smoked salmon, spinach and half an avocado for breakfast; a black coffee and some walnuts before your ride; water with electrolytes during your workout; grilled salmon with a mixed vegetable salad and olive oil for lunch; and turkey mince chili con carne with basmati rice for dinner.
Low-carb workouts, where you perform low-intensity rides after a highprotein, low-carb breakfast, can also help you to burn fat for fuel. “You eat a low-carb breakfast, like an omelette, and then go out for a longer and easier ride,” explains Swift. “It’s ideal for a winter ride when you are riding at a relatively low intensity. It’s very good for your endurance and losing a bit of weight.”
Stepping up base
After a month or so back on your bike, you will likely have built up your fitness, strengthened your physique and slashed your weight. So it’s time to enter phase two by cranking up your training intensities. “Sweet-spot riding (at 88-92 per cent of your functional threshold power, or FTP, which is the maximum average power over an hour) is good for making gains,” advises Matt Clinton. “Start off with a 10-minute effort, then try 20 minutes and build up to an hour. At first, trying to train at this intensity will feel tough, but just keep increasing the duration over a few weeks. Adding in some 30-second sprints every five minutes is also great for opening up topend fitness.”
Matt Rowe recommends doing highintensity sessions as soon as you’ve built up enough fitness to handle them. “This comes down to the concept of periodisation,” he explains. “When you periodise your training, the closer you get to the target event, the more your training should replicate the demands of that event. So if that target event is a long summer sportive, you don’t want to be doing that kind of long ride when you are in January and the weather is crap. Save that for May or June and do your highintensity stuff earlier when the weather is bad and the nights are dark and you don’t have as much time.”
A sample high-intensity drill for phase two might be ‘explosive power development’ efforts – or EPDs. “Do some all-out 10-second sprints, settle into 10 minutes at zone 3, and then finish with a 10-second sprint at the end of the block,” explains Rowe. “It’s a nice way to get an explosive power workout so you develop power and all-round conditioning as well.”
Rowe recommends you inject plenty of sprints into your training too. “In this second phase, around March time, it is worth sprinting,” he insists. “It increases neuromuscular power and engages your type 2 fast-twitch muscle fibres, which improve all aspects of cycling, from making you faster to improving your endurance.”
Swift says that in phase two you should also do some sustained efforts at zone 3 – that means ‘tempo rides’ at 76-90 per cent of your FTP, so you can just about hold a conversation but you feel out of breath. “It’s the pace you can ride at for an hour,” he explains. “The idea is that you feel like you are going faster but you are not time trialling. In this phase, after getting your base miles in, it’s about priming your body so you have a decent level of fitness for when you start bigger intervals later in the season.”
By the spring, you will be ready to attack the roads with everything from full-gas sprints to 100-mile rides. But right now it’s about steadily building up your fitness and reacquainting your body with the unique demands and joys of cycling. “Just enjoy riding your bike again and save the mad stuff for the spring and summer when you can really smash it,” advises Swift.
“A calorie deficit of 500-750 kcals should be the aim, without your training sessions being compromised”
Richard Tucker, Nutrition consultant