Getting Bike Fit
A number of the good people on the paid list have reached out for advice on improving their cycling.
In May 2022, I wrote a two-part series about my plan to “get back in shape.” Links for Parts ONE & TWO.
It’s taken two years and an average of 14 hours per week to “get fit.”
Two years is fast for getting fit. I had expected a 1,000-day time horizon.
Things that helped:
Healthy to start.
Control of my schedule.
Reduced travel.
Smarter about loading and recovery.
A single-minded focus on improvement, rather than specific targets.
Strictly limited racing.
Across my entire athletic career, what set me apart was everything other than the training.
Some of my high response rate is genetic but much is due to the way I set up my life. We cover this in the Body Performance section of Chapter Three.
Setbacks overcome:
Illnesses => covid, colds and upper respiratory infections.
Injuries & niggles.
Loading errors - too much too soon, unforced errors and poor intensity control.
These setback are normal and likely to continue. Progress is rarely a linear process.
For the technically minded, below is my PMC from TrainingPeaks. Across the period, I have progressed from Developmental to Competitive to Top Amateur loading.
Managing Biases & Expectations
Two years ago, I created a road map.
Each season…
Get your key information on a single page.
Know your paces and powers.
Current
Goal
Stretch Goal
What to expect and where to focus.
Hundreds of days of not much progress. This sucks. Fortunately, my writing partner (John Hellemans) told me to expect it. Hands down, the most difficult period is the first six months. If you don’t quit then things will improve. After a year, it will be clear you are improving on multiple fronts.
Forget about Upper Steady and Tempo. You’re going to be tempted to ramp the intensity of your program. We come up with all kinds of rationalizations for this error. It’s a waste of mojo until you have undeniably demonstrated Metabolic Fitness.
Lactate Testing Will Save You Time. My rate of progress improved once I had reliable lactate data to determine my Green Zone (cycling), and my lack of a Green Zone (running and swimming). This gave me comfort that what felt “too easy” was appropriate for my level of fitness. Initially, my lactate was rising at 70 bpm below my maximum heart rate. That’s really low.
Expect lots of workouts to have surprisingly low averages. I did a lot of slow training. Because any material climb would push me above my Green Zone, nearly all my rides were flat. Many workouts saw heart rate averages 50 beats (or more) below max.
Taking all of the above together…
Consider…
What’s the fastest way to get 1,000 hours of low-intensity aerobic training?
Unsure what to do?
Slow down and do more.
Step Two
Once you can demonstrate Metabolic Fitness, it’s time to consider “what’s next?” The shape of your lactate profile will offer clues.
Probably the most common error of amateurs is misunderstanding what makes up the 10-25% of their stressful training.
Every DAY that does not build us should be counted in the “high stress” buckets.
When we are starting out, with a narrow Green Zone and limited metabolic fitness, it takes great care to avoid stressing ourselves out, constantly.
We are fools to use our recovery capacity for high intensity efforts.
Our #1 focus should be rolling up those 1,000 hours of low-intensity training ASAP.
Our fatigue contains valuable information. If we can’t fit in the volume than we need to:
Chop the peaks off our efforts - reduce power spikes.
Lower the average effort.
Make sure the Zone 3, 4 and 5 work does not cost volume or create extended recovery.
We’ll be offering specifics in our cycling chapter.
Producing Cycling-Specific Force
We started our Strength Chapter with a series of questions. Those questions apply to all sports and all athletes.
In a cycling context… do I have the capacity to generate force through the bike to the ground?
If not then schedule blocks of time to improve your ability to generate sport-specific force. We gave you plenty of options in our strength chapter.
Summary
Get an accurate view of your Green Zone.
Roll up 1,000 hours of Green Zone work.
Consider if you’re a force-limited cyclist.
Persist
While you’re doing that, we’re going to be working on the Bike Chapter.
Back to Table of Contents
Thanks for all your content here and on X
Lots of good hour build over the past years!
One point regarding your PMC I don’t remember seeing: How and when do you update FTPbike and whatever the anchors are for swim and bike?
Thnx in advance
Thanks Gordo, I wonder how many times I'll refer back to this article in the next couple of years. The 14 hours/wk is cycling only correct? I read others who lump all movement into weekly hour goal targets and it gets confusing. Lastly, for those of us who are still in single digit weekly volume on the bike, do you have an article on how to get to those double digit cycling training hours safely?