Fitness Training

Fitness training

Burning fat or building muscle:

Keep your first rides down to 20-30 mins, perhaps 3 days a week. Remember ... start small and build up.

Cycle to works a couple of days a week or if you are off to the local shops, take the bike, if the shops are to close go to the next shop.

Concentrate on pedaling briskly, but don't get out of breathe .As your fitness improves try 5 days a week for at least 30 mins and increase the time you ride But don't increase the length of your rides by more than 10% per week.

Build up a weekly program that should include both speed and distance if are trying to firm your legs or weight loss and increase your health, try to use a program that contains:

Moderate days:

To lose weight riding at a speed but keep within your limits and keep to a medium distance, this will burn fat and not carbohydrates.

Endurance days

On Endurance days you should fit in a long ride. Try to fit one in once a week. It does not matter how long it takes you just as long as you complete the distance. Stamina is built up by keeping your heart rate at a level, so charging down the round at 100mph stopping for 5 mins and then going at it again, this will build up strength not stamina

Speed days this is the day you think ouch! These hurt but will eventually help your enjoyment of cycling. Do 1 a week and maybe another at intervals, but never do 2 back to back. Your cardiovascular and muscle tone will benefit from this.

Change  Try going on different rides or just changing the direction you ride, have several routes. On long rides throw in a couple of sprints every half an hour or so, these will help develop your speed.

Speedwork once a week you need to do some speedwork to improve acceleration and speed. This is a training session based on a warm-up , and several short bursts of flat out hard as you can go effort followed by slow easy riding to recover.

Recovery the day after a speedwork training session take a day easy riding the sort of day you do with the family or people who are normally too slow for you. These are the days which refresh your body, they also give you time to do the maintenance on your bike.

Calories:

a formula for working out how many calories you are burning is :

A 150lb adult riding at about 15-mph, burns 12 calories per minute.

For each 15lb above 150, add 1.2 calories per minute and for each 15 under take off 1.2 calories per minute.

60/70 % of your daily calories should come from carbohydrates, and after a long ride try to eat a high carbohydrate meal within 2 hours to refuel for the next days ride.

The biggest cause of fatigue is dehydration so take plenty of fluids it’s a big mistake to become thirsty while cycling.