4ucycling

Training to ride your bike fast will not only increase your cycling pleasure and improve your overall skills; it will also increase your general fitness level. Cycling for fitness should include speed training in your training plans. Don't start speed training until you have built a good fitness level. Look at your fitness like a pyramid. The broader the base the greater peaks you will reach. Here are a few drills to increase your speed training. Sprints Incorporate sprints into your training rides. While you are out riding pick a spot, a lamp post or tree or parked car as your sprint target. Begin accelerating towards it and change up the gears, build some speed up, get off your seat and cycle as hard as you can, give everything you have and get the bike going as fast as you can. When you reach the spot you have chosen ease off, go down the gears and slow down. Resume your normal cycling speed and allow yourself to recover, if you need to go slower then do so. It's imp...

Finding it hard to fit cycling training around a working week? The solution is to take a quality approach to cycling training. This means taking a "less is more approach" to workouts so you see similar fitness improvements, but with less overall training. To follow through with 'quality training' to get workouts completed, you need to be flexible as to how and when you train. Follow these 5 tips below to ensure you're taking a flexible approach to all your training when trying to fit it around a busy working week: Tip 1 - Reduce training to 3-4 times a week Riding less frequently does not mean a loss in fitness. In fact, in many cases you gain fitness, because you allow your body adequate recovery between sessions. Not only this, but training 3 or 4 times a week is easier to maintain when busy than trying to tear yourself apart squeezing workouts in every day of the week. You effectively become more consistent with training from week to week which is one k...

1. Base Fitness. Base fitness refers to the underlying aerobic fitness of an athlete. Aerobic fitness is increased through training at a heart rate zone of between 60 - 80%; this level of training is often associated with long steady training rides. At this level of training the heart is exercised, increasing its capacity to send blood around the body. Base fitness is important for endurance events, however it is also important to have a good base of aerobic fitness before undertaking more strenuous, interval training sessions. 2. Winter training. Winter is a good time to have a break for 2 to 3 weeks. You will lose some top end fitness, but in the long term it can beneficial, especially if you have had a hard season. After taking a break for a couple of weeks it is important to work on building up your base fitness through steady training miles. This will get you ready for the racing season in spring. 3. Monitor performance with Power Meter. A power meter enables you to accu...

The usual approach to train for endurance riding is lots of long rides. On paper this makes sense but in practice it isn't the most effective way to train. A targeted approaching building all facets of cycling fitness will improve your endurance cycling fitness faster than a diet of long steady rides. Learn how to put the pieces together and see your performance increase. There are many fitness factors that let you do well at endurance events. You need high threshold power, good recovery ability, aerobic endurance, muscular endurance, core strength and upper body muscular endurance. If any of these areas are weak you will find your performance drops quickly in the later miles of a long event. Long rides do need to be part of your training program but not the foundation. I advocate a periodized approach that builds functional threshold power and speed with a progression to longer rides as the season progresses. Speed is the hardest thing to build so we spend a far amount of time o...

While you have to ride a bike to get better at riding a bike, you can speed up your gains with these metabolic conditioning workouts. They are time effective, require little or not equipment and will increase both cardiovascular and muscular endurance. Unlike traditional strength training that will usually have more rest than work, with these workouts get a synergistic effect as you are getting more of a muscular and cardiovascular improvement than you would doing them separately. Metabolic conditioning workouts give you much more bang for your buck as long as you are willing to put the work in. The reason they work so well is that by taking a 2 or 3 functional movements and do them in repeating circuits with no rest, you are providing training stimulus to both the muscles and the cardiovascular system. You become stronger, your anaerobic threshold increases and your ability to work hard for long periods improves. Combine this with the fact that full body exercise that has a lot of...

Strength and Endurance Training Programmes in your cycle racing training can give you high threshold power, good recovery ability, aerobic endurance, muscular endurance, core strength and upper body muscular endurance. All these are quality attributes for elite cycling fitness. Your training programmes need to be varied and balanced, with outside road training, yoga, indoor exercise bike training and plenty of rest. Here let's focus on gaining elite cycling fitness from interval training, both on the road and indoors on your exercise bike. In three sessions of 30 minutes, Interval Training can give you as much benefit and improvement as five sessions of 60 minutes of steady tempo or aerobic training. Why is this? Working your muscles during High Intensity Interval Training combines two of the most effective fat-burning methods. First, through working your muscles to a level of fatigue that prompts the highest amounts of oxygen use during a quick burst. Second, at this level of ...

“Where do I start if I want to lose weight?” I think I have heard this question hundreds of times over my last 10 years in the fitness industry. While everyone’s blueprint for weight loss will (and should) be different, there are definitely certain starting blocks that work for absolutely everyone. You’re not alone if you don’t know where to start. There are tons of people just like you and you should not feel ashamed or embarrassed to ask this question. But hopefully this posting will answer this question and you won’t need to ask it anymore – that’s my goal! Where to start for weight loss: 1. DECIDE! This is the #1 most important thing ever. YOU have to decide that you’re sick of the way you’ve been living and it’s time for a change. YOU have to hit that point – no one will be able to force you to do it. YOU have to put in the work every day, so this commitment and decision have to come from YOU! I’ve worked with people before who hadn’t fully decided but hired me as a trainer any...

According to studies, people who eat breakfast usually weigh less – and those who skip the first meal of the day tend to choose high-calorie foods later for lunch and dinner. Nevertheless, breakfast is not always breakfast! A bowl of store-bought chocolate granola is loaded with sugar and anything but healthy. It all comes down to a balanced meal. Now, it’s time for a reality check: are you guilty of these five breakfast mistakes? Mistake #1: You have breakfast on the go Instead of making breakfast, you hit the snooze button. Then you pick up something quick at the bakery and scoff it down in the car or the train. And you think, “What’s the harm in this?” After all, our body doesn’t care if we eat at a table, on the go or in a rush. But what does matter is how much we concentrate on our meal: people who focus on their breakfast tend to eat more mindfully. The results of a study suggest that walking distracts our brain and therefore we consume more calories when we eat on the go. Pl...

Instead of wasting your valuable time driving to the gym or waiting for your favorite machine to free up, try these at-home bodyweight exercises instead. These 3 are the best bodyweight exercises for burning calories, strengthening multiple muscle groups at once and getting in a great total-body workout! All of these exercises (and more!) can be found in the Runtastic Results app – start your 12-week training plan today! 1. Flat-out Burpees Get ready for your heart rate to elevate! We love burpees because they are a great metaphor for life – when you fall down to the ground, you get right back up! 2. Jump Squats Jumping exercises, also known as plyometrics, are great for fat burning and really activate your core. Not only are you working your big leg muscles, (quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes) but you’re also working your inner and outer thighs (adductors and abductors), calves and challenge your stabilization as well. If you’re not ready for jump squats yet, regular squats are g...

We offer a wide range of cycle training sessions, so there's bound to be one to suit you or your family. Urban Cycle Skills - Bespoke Adult & Family Training Sessions Personalised one to one cycle training, tailored to your needs and abilities. For a limited time these sessions are being offered at a discounted price. For full details on these sessions and how to book, please see our Urban Cycle Skills page. Children's Cycle Training Bikeability If your child goes to School in York, he/she will have the opportunity to take part in cycle training to a National Bikeability Standard. To consolidate this training or to move up to the next level, extra private lessons can be bought - £23.00 for a 60 minute lesson or £34.50 for a 90 minute lesson. How can I book a lesson for my child? For further information on additional or private lessons please contact the team on 01904 555 579 or cycle.training@york.gov.uk Balance Bike Sessions Suitable for children aged 3-5 year...

What is bike polo? Bike polo is a team sport. A team consists of three players on bikes who try to hit the ball into the opposing team’s goal using a mallet. They are not allowed to touch the floor with their feet – if this happens they cannot intervene in the game until they have hit the designated area with their mallet. The game ends either after ten minutes or when a team has scored five goals. Janku: “A few minutes changed my life” “One-handed cycling was completely new to me”, explains Jirka Janku, a Czech bike polo player from Prague, when looking back at his first (bicycle) test rides. “Holding a mallet at the same time seemed impossible. However, after a brief familiarisation period, I found it much easier and the game became more fun by the minute.” Today, Janku is a multiple tournament champion and even reached fifth place at the world championships in New Zealand in February 2016. “A few minutes at the beginning of my bike polo career changed my life dramatically. I bec...

Not progressing your training As you get closer and closer to the first events of the season, whether it’s a sportive or road race, then your training needs to adapt. If you carry on doing what you have for the last two months then you won’t be stretching yourself in training. As you approach the season your rides need to become more and more specific. For example, if you are a sportive rider targeting a major European event then you should start to incorporate more sweetspot work into your training order to replicate the effort required on climbs. Doing too much, too soon The principles of training are simple: train hard, recover to allow your body to adapt to that training, and then train hard again. The key is to allow your body to recover in between hard blocks of training and then make the next block slightly harder than the one you have just completed in order to encourage consistent and sustainable progression. Not getting enough recovery Without adequate recovery, your...