Get Fit Fast
Your in-a-hurry training plan.
S#IT HAPPENS. ONE minute it’s July, and you have all the time in the world to get ready for those summertime rides and races. The next minute, you’re pedalling past the last of the spring flowers wondering where the off-season went. Don’t panic. Unless you’re prepping for Le Tour, you still have plenty of time to ramp up your training and build speed and endurance, even on a tight time budget. Here’s exactly what to do to get into shape fast.
STRESS THE SYSTEMS // Stress gets a bad rap, but in the right doses, it’s actually good for you. That’s what training is, after all: stress. It’s the practice of pushing your body past its current state and forcing it to adapt so those higher intensities become your new normal.
Once you have a fitness base, there are many ways to stress your body on the bike. But on a very basic level, you can stress your system slowly, pedalling at an aerobic pace for hours at a time, or you can speed up the process by imposing stress for shorter but much harder periods. Both work to improve your engine because they build up the capacity of your mitochondria, the energy factories of your cells. The more you have and the bigger and stronger they are, the more energy you can produce. By applying the right blend of training stress, you can increase both the number and strength of yours. “Research shows that while longer, lower-intensity exercise increases the number of mitochondria in your cells, highintensity training makes those mitochondria more powerful,” says exercise physiologist Paul Laursen, PHD, endurance coach and co-founder of Hiitscience.com.
HIIT IT // High-intensity interval training, or HIIT for short, not only builds powerful mitochondria, but also improves your VO2 max and lactate threshold. The best part: though you obviously can and should do these workouts on your bike when possible (bike-specific training works best for bike performance), you don’t actually need a bike to get benefits, which is super-convenient for people who struggle to squeeze in rides during the week.
Research conducted by the American Council on Exercise reported that kettlebell HIIT workouts were ‘off the charts’ in terms of their potential to raise your heart rate and burn kilojoules. During a 20-minute workout that alternated 15 seconds of work with 15 seconds of rest, the study participants worked at 93 per cent of their heart rate max on average and burned up to 75 kilojoules per minute, which is more than the amount of energy you’d burn doing all-out hill repeats.
HIIT sessions also work fast. Laursen’s research shows that when well-trained cyclists perform two interval sessions a week for just three to six weeks, they can improve their VO2 max, peak aerobic-power output,
and endurance performance by 2 to 4 per cent.
Here are two HIIT workouts you can do both onand off the bike. No matter which you do, twice a week is plenty for these high-stress sessions, because your body needs the time to recover so you can come back stronger. hiit on the bike: Cyclists looking to optimise their interval training for endurance benefits should perform intervals ranging between 30 seconds and five minutes, at a very hard intensity, Laursen says. These build your aerobic system while also being hard enough to recruit and train some fast-twitch sprint fibres.
3-2-1 Intervals:
● Worm up as needed
● Pedal hard for 3 minutes
● Pedal easy for 1 to 2 minutes
● Pedal hard for 2 minutes
● Pedal easy for 1 to 2 minutes
● Pedal hard for 1 minute
● Pedal easy for 4 to 5 minutes
● Do 2 to 3 sots total
● Cool down as needed
hiit in the gym: This full-body workout takes about 19 to 22 minutes total and combines high-energy kettlebell moves to hit every single muscle in your body and keep your heart rate high.
Kettlebell Crush:
● After a 10-minute warm-up, perform this interval set:
● Kettlebell swings for 30 seconds
● Rest 15 seconds
● Kettlebell push-ups for 30 seconds
● Rest 15 seconds
● Kettlebell goblet squats for 30 seconds
● Rest 15 seconds
● Kettlebell alternating lateral lunges for 30 seconds
● Rest 15 seconds
● Repeat circuit 3 to LI more times
● Cool down as needed
Master these moves: to learn proper form, visit bicycling.co.za/training/8-kettlebell-moves-to-fireup-your-core-muscles
GO LONG AND STEADY // There’s a reason ‘zone two’ aerobic intensity rides are the hallmark of base training: they make a lot of mitochondria, especially in your slow-twitch muscles. These muscles are the ones you use for endurance exercise such as cycling, because they keep firing over long periods of time compared to the fasttwitch muscles used for sprints, which burn out easily. When you churn out endurance kays, you’re stimulating mitochondria growth and improving their function.
Type-i muscle fibres in slow-twitch muscles also help recycle the lactate that your highintensity Type-ii fibres pump out, so you can push harder for longer before blowing up. That’s why you need to go slow to get fast. Zone two rides are designed to get your heart rate up to between 65 and 74 per cent of your max heart rate (an effort of 5 to 6 on a 1-to-10 scale). Here, your breathing is deep and steady, but you can still talk in short sentences. These rides should be at least an hour, but ideally 90 minutes to three hours in duration. Aim for 60 to 75 per cent of your rides to be zone two endurance rides to shape up fast for summer.