Intro
You can't train hard year-round without taking regular periods of reduced volume and intensity. If you do, you'll find yourself burned out, over-trained, and perhaps injured. You may also find your performance degrading rather than improving.
This guide outlines how you can structure your cycling season and have a structure that works and gives you a sense of direction. Here are 5 different phases you should split your cycling season to:
Phase 1: Off-Season Adaptation: Duration: 2-4weeks, Purpose: Recover mentally and physically
Phase 2: Off-Season Preparation: Duration: 3-5weeks, Purpose: Strengthen your body and improve technical skills
Phase 3: Base Build Phase: Duration: 8-12weeks, Purpose: Improve aerobic fitness, strength, improve fat metabolism, lose unnecessary fat
Phase 4: Specialized Phase: Duration: 4-8weeks, Purpose: Improve anaerobic fitness, fine-tune your speciality
Phase 5: Racing & Peak Phase: Duration: 4-8 weeks, Purpose: Enjoy and leverage your peak fitness
Phase 1: Off-Season Recovery
START 7-8 MONTHS BEFORE YOUR TARGET SHAPE
Duration: 2-4 weeks
Activities: Spa, Sauna, Swimming, Low-Intensity sports eg. Tennis, Skiing, Skating, Golf, Hiking, No Cycling
Purpose: Recover mentally and physically
Include recovery phase before starting the preparation for next season. The goal of the recovery phase is to reduce total body stress, physical and mental fatigue accumulated from the previous season. It’s difficult to maintain both motivation and your shape throughout the year without a break. Usually, the recovery phase is 3 to 4 weeks long without any structured training.
NOTE: BY NOT INCLUDING RECOVERY PHASE, YOU RISK THAT YOUR UPCOMING PREPARATION MIGHT NOT BE AS EFFECTIVE.
Gaining a little bit of weight can be an advantage – it’ll give you the energy to transform your body throughout the preparation. It is easier to transform fat into muscles then gaining muscles from the ground up. Feel free to get up to 3- 4kg more than your racing weight.
Give your body and mind rest in all directions. Professional cyclists usually take time to go to a spa or go on holiday. For those wanting to be more active, we suggest alternative sports - tennis, skiing, skating, golf, swimming etc.
By including a recovery phase from cycling, it’ll allow you to be fresh, motivated and ready for the upcoming preparation.
DYLAN TEUNS, WINNER OF TOUR DE FRANCE STAGE 2019 :
"Every season, I take 3 weeks completely off. I do this in order to have both physical and mental strength for the upcoming preparation, which is very challenging. It allows my body to fully recover from the previous season."
Phase 2: Off-Season Preparation
START 5-6 MONTHS BEFORE YOUR TARGET SHAPE
Duration: 3-5 Weeks
Activities: Mtb, Running, Gym/Core Training, Skiing, Swimming, Yoga, Sauna
Purpose: Strengthen your body with off-bike exercises and improve bike handling with MTB
Building a solid base will lay foundations upon you can build your intensity later on. The goal of this phase is to gradually build your aerobic fitness and muscular strength to the point where your foundations are strong enough and prepared for more difficult training. This phase will also assist you in lowering the risk of injuries.
Develop areas which you don’t focus on during the season as much. For example, strengthening parts of the body supporting your overall fitness and health - with weight lifting, core training and swimming. You can also focus on improving your technical skills with MTB.
In this phase go to the gym at least two times a week, and focus on developing aerobic endurance with a running or cycling. Stay at your lower training zones and include low cadence & leg efficiency workouts.
Phase 3: Base Build Phase
START 3-5 MONTHS BEFORE YOUR TARGET SHAPE
Duration: 8-12 weeks
Activities: Increased time on bike, gym, core training, yoga, stretching
Purpose: Improve aerobic fitness, strength, improve fat metabolism, lose unnecessary fat
Buy Training Plan: Base Builder Training Plan
After the off-season preparation, it's time to increase the number of hours on a bike. Add longer rides and include intensity below and at your threshold. Reduce activities like running, swimming or skiing. This is also a good time to go on a training camp to usual cycling destinations, like Spain or Italy.
Each day you should focus on a different aspect of your fitness. The usual week should contain: twice per week gym or core training, twice per week low cadence bike workouts, and once per week intense training and long endurance ride, complemented by yoga and stretching.
The aim is to prepare you for the more specialized, race-specific training that comes later in the season. You should improve your aerobic system, that increases oxygen transport to the muscles, and increases energy production and utilization resulting in increased endurance. This is achieved through fasting rides that improve fat metabolism, long endurance rides, lots of sweet spots segments, and alternating workouts to higher zones.
By improving your fat metabolism, you'll make your body utilize fats as fuel on lower training zones, instead of carbs resulting in increased endurance.
In addition, aim to slowly achieve your ideal racing weight. Therefore include fasting rides up two hours, and long endurance rides with a combination of ideal nutrition that will help you lose unnecessary fat.
Phase 4: Specialized Phase
START 1-2 MONTHS BEFORE YOUR TARGET SHAPE.
Duration: 4-12 weeks
Activities: Depends on your specialization. Include Intense Workouts, both short and long
Purpose: Improve anaerobic fitness, fine-tune your fitness eg. increase threshold power, explosivity, lactate tolerance
Buy Training Plan: Browse Our Specialized Plans
After the Base Build Phase include one adaptation week to recover.
The next phase is a specialized phase, oriented around your strengths, goals and your physiological type. For example, are you a climber or a sprinter? This phase is more specialized to your needs but should contain workouts for improving lactate tolerance, VO2, both aerobic and anaerobic endurance. Aim to start this phase 1-2 months before your first race.
As a sprinter, you'll be focusing more on explosivity. As a climber, you'll be focusing more on improving your threshold power.
Here are a few examples of what you can specialize in:
- Criteriums and Sprint Specialization
- Time Trial Specialization
- Gran Fondo Specialization
- Threshold Power Improvement
You can find the training plans here ->
Phase 5: Racing & Peak Phase
After the specialized phase, you should be at your desired peak shape. This peaks fitness can be usually maintained for 4-8 weeks, depending on your fatigue. Use these next 4-8 weeks for racing, bunch rides or smash your Strava personal records. Alternatively, continue developing your abilities with specific workouts tailored for you.
Duration: 4-8 weeks
Activities: Races, Bunch Rides, PR's Strava Segments
Summary
After completing the "Phase 5: Peak", repeat the process. If your season is long and want to continue, you can repeat the phases without "Phase 2: Off-Season Preparation" and jump directly on the "Phase 3: Base Build Phase".
This guide outlined some of the principles for structuring your preparation suitable for amateur and professionals cyclists alike. However, make sure to define your goals and implement workouts that work best for you. Cycling fitness preparation can be very complex as everyone is different. The key to successfully structuring your cycling season is to have targets, knowing when you want to achieve peak fitness. Make sure to follow the basic training principles and work on your weaknesses from a previous season.
If you'd like to structure your season with a help of a former professional and qualified coach, feel free to get in touch.
About Us
Jakub Novak is performance cycling coach at ProCyclingCoaching, and a former professional road cyclist with over 11 years of cycling experience. Jakub specializes for Road and MTB cycling. As a professional cyclist, Jakub rode for BMC Pro Racing Team, alongside Tour de France winner Cadel Evans or World Champion Philipe Gilbert.
