A cycling training plan normally takes the form of something stuck to the fridge or a noticeboard in your office. You've carefully planned out your week and you wonder why you're bothering. A training plan can help even the casual cyclist get more out of their time on the tarmac, though. Here are a few of the reasons why it's so important to have some sort of cycle training plan.
Getting Lazy
Cycling is a commitment. If you don't put the miles in you're going to lose all those magnificent gains. You want to get a great body and you want to get healthy. You can't do this with a cycling session every so often. You need to do everything you can to make sure you get out on the road at least 2-3 times a week.
A cycling training schedule can help you do this. It does it by making you feel guilty. If you get lazy and you decide not to train, you will feel terrible about it. The guilt will force you to get out there.
Overtraining
It's possible to cycle too much. Beginners are the most high risk group for this. All that initial enthusiasm can boil over and you suddenly find yourself cycling twice a day. It won't take long before it all ends in tears and they're injured. Cycling is a low impact sport, but if your muscles aren't used to racking up the miles you can find yourself lying on the sofa for the next few weeks.
A training plan can help to keep you in line. We've discussed the risk of not developing discipline before. It's the same for cycling too much. You need discipline to bring your enthusiasm back into the house.
Making Your Gains
You want to push your strength and stamina forwards. Your strength and stamina can only continue to make gains if you're training in the right way. If you stick to riding to work each day you're going to see progress, but only up to a certain point. Once you hit this point, you'll plateau because you're no longer challenging your body.
A training schedule helps you to keep pushing forward. At the same time, it's tracking what you're doing now. To increase your stamina you need to keep increasing the distance of your rides. To increase your strength you need to ride harder and tackle more hills. Over time, you'll be thanking the fact you can track your progress and plan ahead with your training plan.
Taking Over
Sometimes we can let our enthusiasm take over. We need to be able to have a healthy balance in life. Use your training regime to make sure you don't neglect the other things in your life in favour of cycling. Whilst we would always advocate more cycling, you don't want to transform it into something destructive.
These are just some of the benefits of regimenting your new sport. Some of you might prefer to go free, but most need the discipline of a training plan so they can better fit it into their lives without causing problems.
Getting Lazy
Cycling is a commitment. If you don't put the miles in you're going to lose all those magnificent gains. You want to get a great body and you want to get healthy. You can't do this with a cycling session every so often. You need to do everything you can to make sure you get out on the road at least 2-3 times a week.
A cycling training schedule can help you do this. It does it by making you feel guilty. If you get lazy and you decide not to train, you will feel terrible about it. The guilt will force you to get out there.
Overtraining
It's possible to cycle too much. Beginners are the most high risk group for this. All that initial enthusiasm can boil over and you suddenly find yourself cycling twice a day. It won't take long before it all ends in tears and they're injured. Cycling is a low impact sport, but if your muscles aren't used to racking up the miles you can find yourself lying on the sofa for the next few weeks.
A training plan can help to keep you in line. We've discussed the risk of not developing discipline before. It's the same for cycling too much. You need discipline to bring your enthusiasm back into the house.
Making Your Gains
You want to push your strength and stamina forwards. Your strength and stamina can only continue to make gains if you're training in the right way. If you stick to riding to work each day you're going to see progress, but only up to a certain point. Once you hit this point, you'll plateau because you're no longer challenging your body.
A training schedule helps you to keep pushing forward. At the same time, it's tracking what you're doing now. To increase your stamina you need to keep increasing the distance of your rides. To increase your strength you need to ride harder and tackle more hills. Over time, you'll be thanking the fact you can track your progress and plan ahead with your training plan.
Taking Over
Sometimes we can let our enthusiasm take over. We need to be able to have a healthy balance in life. Use your training regime to make sure you don't neglect the other things in your life in favour of cycling. Whilst we would always advocate more cycling, you don't want to transform it into something destructive.
These are just some of the benefits of regimenting your new sport. Some of you might prefer to go free, but most need the discipline of a training plan so they can better fit it into their lives without causing problems.