Here is the latest installment of Felix’s training tips series – this time covering the importance of training little and often to help get you ready for summer cycling adventures like a Bike the UK for MS trip. Whether you are used to riding and are looking to up the mileage in preparation for something like Land’s End to John O’ Groats or you found your love of two wheels more recently and are looking to test yourself on a shorter trip like Coast to Coast or Lon Las Cymru; consistency is the key to preparing yourself for a cycling challenge.
One Step, Not a Giant Leap
Whilst riding all day (or weekend, or week…!) is the closest thing to what you will do on a long-distance cycling trip, relying on those rides alone is not the most effective way to prepare. These rides take a lot of physical energy (not to mention emotional energy) and time and as a result you will need to recover for a substantial amount of time between each one. As a result, the adaptations to training won’t be able to accumulate and make you fitter. In order to achieve the frequency of exercise to start to see fitness gains, you need to make the training stimulus a frequent enough thing that your body reacts; “I am being asked to exercise lots, I should prioritise making it easier to do so.” If you were asked a question about the headlines each morning when
getting to work, you might check the news on your way in.Â
However, if you were asked to write a detailed analysis of international politics with no preparation on an irregular basis then you would not be able to do an effective job. You might give up and work elsewhere. This is like asking your body to muster up a huge bike ride once in a while with little preparation. It isn’t ready to carry out the task properly and as a result you are likely to quit.
Better to accumulate knowledge in small chunks over a long time. It is the same with training and fitness. Something that you can do often can build up to a really strong base of fitness. When you then ask your body to do a big ride (like being asked to write that long essay), then all it takes is a bit of final preparation to build on what you already have in the locker.
Starting with an achievable amount of training that you can replicate day to day and week to week is the key at the beginning. As you get used to training and your body adapts, then you may be able to train for longer or harder and continue to develop your fitness that way. Trying to skip ahead and do too much too soon is likely to cause injury. Or, like the analogy above, increases the chance that you will just give up on what you are trying to achieve
Build a Routine to Build a Habit
Same time, same place, same kit – you can almost start to do things on autopilot. If lots of the pieces are in place then it allows you to focus your energy on the other things that may be making it harder for you to do your session.
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I am More Spontaneous Than That!
Maybe a fixed routine isn’t for you. What tricks can help to get a consistent pattern of training established? Whilst a routine is the set dinner – put an a la carte menu in front of yourself. Having a range of different sessions on hand to allow you to react to the
circumstances (or what you fancy doing) is super useful. This is also a really good tool to have at your disposal should life get in the way of your routines.
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Here is the kind of menu that you might have available:
–2 hour road ride
–30 min easy run
–Strength session at the gym
–45 mins hill rep session on the bike
–Brisk walk for an hour
–Yoga and stretching session at home
–Mountain bike ride on the local pump track or trails
–1km interval run
Imagine the scene: I have got home from work and it is dark & wet out, dinner needs cooking and so I only have an hour or so to exercise. If I saw things as a 2 hour ride or nothing then I would have to do nothing. It isn’t worth getting all my wet weather cycling gear on (I would have used my entire hour up by the time I got out of the door!). I don’t want to ride in traffic
in the dark.
But… running in the rain isn’t as bad (in my opinion) as cycling can be and there is a good loop around the neighbourhood where I can do some intervals. Or, I could get out for a walk/easy run if I don’t fancy running hard. I could do a yoga session at home or pop to the gym and get a strength session. If you have a ton of options available, instead of “it’s dark and rainy” meaning that you don’t get any exercise done then it just changes what you do. You can be a lot more consistent as a result. All the things on the menu will help in their own way and the variety can actually be a huge help.
To read more on how to be consistent with your training, click here to read the second part of this blog.
