This training program is designed for ambitious beginners who want to increase their level of performance.
This program has two days with intervals, which are Tuesday and Thursday. Mondays and Saturdays are supposed to be light training days with an intensity of about 60% of your maximal heart rate.
These light training days are made to accelerate recovery from races and hard training days. After three weeks’ intensive training, I recommend that you take a recovery week with less training, fewer intervals, but at the same high intensity as usual.
One of the main benefits of this cycling program is that you get an excellent structure for your training. This is very important as a new rider.
Many beginners have no idea how to get a structure into their training. They go for long rides when they ought to rest and go for easy rides when more experienced riders do intervals. Often their activity level is strongly correlated to the weather report.
So if you are a beginner, I am sure that you will gain outstanding results with this program. Not because of the intervals per see, as you might expect.
Intervals have a considerable impact on your performance, but the intervals will be worth nothing without a structured training plan. So this program will give you a good starting point simply because of its good anatomy. You can read more about basic cycling training principles here.
| – | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| app.12hr | 1hr recovery | 3hr — 3x(3+3)min V02 max | 2hr — 4x200m sprint | 3hr — 2x10min AT | Rest | 1hr easy ride. | Race, 2hr. |
| app.12hr | 1hr recovery | 3hr — 3x5x(40+20)sec. V02 max | 2hr — 4x200m sprint | 3hr — 4x(3+3)min V02 max | Rest | 1hr easy ride. | Race, 2hr. |
| app.12hr | 1hr recovery | 3hr — 2x10min AT | 2hr — 4x200m sprint | 3hr — 3x5x(40+20)sec. V02 max | Rest | 1hr easy ride. | Race, 2hr. |
| app.8hr | Rest | 2hr — 2x(3+3)min VO2 max | 1hr — 4x150m | 2hr — 2x4x(40×20)sec VO2 max | Rest | 1hr easy ride. | Race, 2hr. |
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Your plan looks great. but because I'm a beginner I don't know what everything means. here are my questions:
-can you explain what 3 x (3+3) means.
-Also what if you don't know your VO2 max? is there another performance measure I can use?
-when you mention 2 hours and have 4 x200m sprints, do you mean doa 2 hour ride and incorporate the sprints at any time? or should there be a specified rest between the sprints? Or do the 2 hr ride and sprint afterwards? this applies to the other days also.
i look forward to your response so I can focus my training. thanks.
Hi Dan
thanks for asking,
1) 3 times 3 minutes maximal effort with recovery periods of 3 minutes between each interval. (3min hard work, 3min recovery, 3min hard work etc.)
2) Even if you knew your VO2max you would have to just ride as fast as you can for a period of 3 minutes (but not faster than you can repeat it a couple of times). It is not possible to use a heart rate monitor for pacing because of the delay of the heart rate. A power meter is very useful for such pacing, but they are expensive. When you have tried these intervals a couple of times, you will know how hard you can push the pedals in this length of intervals. In the recovery periods, it is a good idea to do some light cycling to remove metabolites.
3) Yea, you should incorporate them in the training, but the best time is probably after an easy warm-up, but still in the first part of the ride. This is because your muscles are freshest in that part and make it possible to recruit most muscle fibres in the sprints. It is important to have at least 5minutes rest between sprints.
HI! I red this training programm and I like it, but I HAve one question! What i must change in this workaut if I want base training in preseason?
Thanks!
Well, the rest of the training session is up to you. Normally that would be some kind of endurance ride.
I like the idea of a 12-hour a week program, but, because of my job, I can't really do rides of more than 2 hours on a weekday (and would prefer to do longer rides on weekends). Do you have any advice or programs that can accomodate that type of schedule?
Would you expand on the training philosophy of this program? I am confused as to why you seem to have three hard days back to back to back. Intervals, sprints, and more intervals don't seem to allow for any recovery. Thanks in advance.
Sean,
Thanks for commenting, good question.
The Wednesdays are thought to be easy/medium days with easier intervals. It is obvious that these short sprints are nothing compared to the day before with e.g. 3x3min vo2 max. Thus, the Wednesdays are not supposed to be a hard days but rather recovery days. Also the training amount on Wednesdays are lower than on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Best regards,
Jesper
My question is what about weather. Here in kentucky it rains quite a bit, so if its raining ont the 3hr interval tues. What should you replace int with. Is one of the 50 min indoor interval training comperable? I just can't imagine riding on the trainer for 3 hr.
hi.
I´m also a begginer and I find this program excellent to start improving.
However...what is AT? (2 x 10 min)
and the other part of the training...you say that should be endurance training...what do you understand for endurance?
low heart beats for minute? under 150?
or at a higuer level...let´s say between 150 and 170? this is about 80% of my maximum 187.
If I were to incorporate weight training into this program, when would I fit this in? Apparantly weight trainining is important for building strength endurance? Would one day rest then be enought to recover?