December 19, 2024

Consistent Training: The Key to Summer Cycling Success – Part 2

Part two of Felix’s Consistency Tips when training for a multi-day cycling trip. Read Part 1 here!

Don’t Take it on Alone

This also features in my winter cycling tips but linking up with someone else to improve your commitment to training is a huge help. I don’t like strength training but a neighbour wanted to start training more and so we now do a strength session together each week.

Without this setup, I can guarantee that I would not do a weekly strength session. The last 15 years of my life are the evidence to support that.

Nevertheless, it has worked. We train each week and if schedules are tight then we have found a way to squeeze a short session in. Both of us are training when normally we wouldn’t have. In no small part, because it is social as well as being

a chance to improve our fitness.

It doesn’t need to be strength training. You could arrange to ride to a café and meet a friend there regularly. Tying in a social element to your training creates a completely different mindset towards the activity – one that is more immediately gratifying.

Many of the positive effects of training are only felt a long time later – enjoying spending time with a friend gives you an immediate pay-off.

Fitting it in With a Busy Life

When surveyed, the most common reason that people give for not exercising is a lack of time. You are not alone! It can feel like a big challenge to fit in frequent exercise around everything else that is going on in your life.

Everyone’s circumstances are different but ultimately it is about integrating exercise into the rest of your life. This may mean that compromise is necessary.

I love riding my bike. Long, social café rides are the best. Family commitments make going for 6 hours out on the bike at the weekend impossible for me. So, I dusted off my running shoes and headed out for short morning runs with the running buggy.

Would I prefer to be on a café ride? Yes. I always used to joke that running was for people who hadn’t discovered cycling yet. Here I was though, running pretty much every morning and it was able to give me a significant chunk of what cycling did. It was (a lot) better than nothing. It also meant that when the opportunity for a good bike ride can along I was ready and able to make the most of it.

I had made a compromise that allowed me to ensure that regular and consistent exercise remained part of my life despite changing circumstances. The same might go for someone who loves mountain biking but has to get most of their riding in along the road as they commute to work. Maybe you can only train on the turbo or at the gym but doing so means that you can still enjoy your trip to ride in the mountains in the summer (Highlands Tour, anyone?).

Rest Weeks – Do Less to do More

If you are trying to train more consistently – how does resting more help?!

I’m “resting” all the time now anyway! Rest weeks have a few helpful benefits from the perspective of your physiology, your psychology and also the practical aspects of training.

Resting between periods of time where you have increased your training allows your body to carry out the adaptations that you are trying to trigger by exercising. It allows your muscles to develop, your blood capillaries to grow around your body, your bones to remodel and reform.

Training adds stress and stimulation to the body by design. Blending this input with time to recover is what all athletes do from Olympians to those trying to build new active lifestyles.

Your mind also needs support and rest weeks can contribute to this. A rest week can give you a more immediate objective than an event that can be several months away. I often tell myself that I just need to keep up my training sessions for another few days and then a rest week can act as an opportunity for a release in pressure.

Resting keeps your training consistent

Practically, having rest planned in as part of your training can also make it more possible to keep up with a consistent pattern of exercise. You might know a busy week of work or travel is coming up and so plan to train in the run up to that week, safe in the knowledge that you will not have to try and fit too much into the time when you are busy.

What if you get caught out and something you weren’t expecting comes up. That can be enough to break your training routine and make it feel like you need to go through all the effort to “get back on the horse” again. Well, if you know that a rest week was coming up then you can just bring that forward and take the time you need without falling too far from what you were planning to do in the first place. You can get back into a training week after things calm down a little.

This small change can make a huge difference psychologically and whilst it is of course a compromise from an “optimum” situation it is these compromises that are essential to long-term consistency.