What approach to winter base training should you take?
Variables like your cycling experience level, schedule, and type of event you’re training for determine your approach to base training. Take a look at these scenarios to help you decide which approach works best for you:
Experience: Beginner Availability: Minimal time to train (4 or 6 hours/week on the bike) Recommended base plan: In this scenario, perhaps you have a family and a full-time job or are a student in a challenging course with little free time. For the limited time you have, you need to make the most of it.
Experience: Moderate Availability: A lot of free time to train (13 hours/week) Recommended base plan: This person has no real limits with the amount of time they can dedicate to training. While this situation is ideal, it often leads athletes into the “more is more” training philosophy. In turn, the chances of injury, illness, or exhaustion increase. Many new and less-experienced cyclists fail to recognise that the body responds most favourably to gradual, progressive amounts of stress. Sudden increases of high-level intensity, lots of time in the saddle, or a combination of the two can overwhelm quickly. At the same time, the challenge to their current ability has to be substantial enough to impact their performance capabilities. Slow and steady (not necessarily slow speed, but a slower uptake of intensity) wins the race !
Experience: Years of Training Availability: Moderate amount of time to train (8-10 hours/week) Recommended base plan: Here is a reasonably experienced athlete, with around 8-10 hours/week to train. This type of rider can benefit from doing either the Traditional Base or Sweet Spot Base. To decide, it’s mostly a question of duration over intensity. Consider the pros and cons of each approach:
Pros of choosing Traditional Base Traditional Base applies high doses of low intensity to help professional athletes or those recovering from an injury who want to avoid high-intensity intervals. This approach can be useful to these types of serious riders, but only if you have a lot of time.
Cons of choosing Traditional Base Traditional Base requires the sort of rider who can tolerate long, mind-numbing hours of steadily turning the pedals in pursuit of slowly earned, incremental aerobic fitness gains. It’s no surprise a mindset that accepts monotonous workouts and training doldrums well is required. The type of gains you can achieve through Traditional Base are useful to a limited number of athletes, such as professional cyclists and long distance/endurance athletes. These types of riders know that with this approach to training, gains come slowly—if they come at all—since they depend on devoting a lot of time to riding easily.
An experienced rider with 10 hours to train would benefit most from Sweet Spot Base. They could go with a high-volume training plan—as long as they fuel well and recover enough to keep consistent. Otherwise, a mid-volume plan would be best.
Pros of choosing Sweet Spot Base In contrast to Traditional Base, Sweet Spot Base is more all-inclusive and can build fitness in relatively less time. The workouts are substantially more varied, interesting, challenging in numerous ways, and are comparatively entertaining. Just two or three of these workouts each week can bring measurable, inspiring fitness gains for all types of riders with varied training time limitations. Higher-volume riders who can train more frequently (4-6 times per week), and want to include more traditional base kilometres, could use Mid-Volume Sweet Spot Base, then add in just enough extra endurance riding to further their gains . Cons of choosing Sweet Spot Base Opposite of Traditional Base workouts, Sweet Spot Base workouts require focus, concentration, and often enough, a willingness to endure more intense—but shorter duration of riding discomfort.
If you commit to either Sweet Spot or Traditional Base, you will have desirable training outcomes. However, we recommend Sweet Spot Base for the majority of cyclists.
Key Takeaway Traditional Base assumes you have almost unlimited time to ride at a slow pace this winter. Alternately, Sweet Spot Base assumes you have a limited schedule like most non-professional cyclists, which allows you to compensate for the lack of duration, with an increase in intensity. That said, time is not the only factor when deciding on your base training plan. You must also consider your experience, the type of rider you are, and the cycling event you’re preparing for.
Action Item First, look at your winter schedule and decide on a realistic number of training hours you can commit to each week. Next, evaluate your most important events for the year and ask whether or not you’d like to get fit quicker for your lower-priority events. Finally, take into account your training history/experience, tolerance for patience, and overall interest in working out. Once you’ve considered all these things, you’ll be positioned to make a decision on the direction to take with your base training.
What approach to winter base training should you take?
Variables like your cycling experience level, schedule, and type of event you’re training for determine your approach to base training. Take a look at these scenarios to help you decide which approach works best for you:
Experience: Beginner
Availability: Minimal time to train (4 or 6 hours/week on the bike)
Recommended base plan:
In this scenario, perhaps you have a family and a full-time job or are a student in a challenging course with little free time. For the limited time you have, you need to make the most of it.
Experience: Moderate
Availability: A lot of free time to train (13 hours/week)
Recommended base plan:
This person has no real limits with the amount of time they can dedicate to training. While this situation is ideal, it often leads athletes into the “more is more” training philosophy. In turn, the chances of injury, illness, or exhaustion increase.
Many new and less-experienced cyclists fail to recognise that the body responds most favourably to gradual, progressive amounts of stress. Sudden increases of high-level intensity, lots of time in the saddle, or a combination of the two can overwhelm quickly. At the same time, the challenge to their current ability has to be substantial enough to impact their performance capabilities. Slow and steady (not necessarily slow speed, but a slower uptake of intensity) wins the race !
Experience: Years of Training
Availability: Moderate amount of time to train (8-10 hours/week)
Recommended base plan:
Here is a reasonably experienced athlete, with around 8-10 hours/week to train. This type of rider can benefit from doing either the Traditional Base or Sweet Spot Base. To decide, it’s mostly a question of duration over intensity. Consider the pros and cons of each approach:
Pros of choosing Traditional Base
Traditional Base applies high doses of low intensity to help professional athletes or those recovering from an injury who want to avoid high-intensity intervals. This approach can be useful to these types of serious riders, but only if you have a lot of time.
Cons of choosing Traditional Base
Traditional Base requires the sort of rider who can tolerate long, mind-numbing hours of steadily turning the pedals in pursuit of slowly earned, incremental aerobic fitness gains. It’s no surprise a mindset that accepts monotonous workouts and training doldrums well is required.
The type of gains you can achieve through Traditional Base are useful to a limited number of athletes, such as professional cyclists and long distance/endurance athletes. These types of riders know that with this approach to training, gains come slowly—if they come at all—since they depend on devoting a lot of time to riding easily.
An experienced rider with 10 hours to train would benefit most from Sweet Spot Base. They could go with a high-volume training plan—as long as they fuel well and recover enough to keep consistent. Otherwise, a mid-volume plan would be best.
Pros of choosing Sweet Spot Base
In contrast to Traditional Base, Sweet Spot Base is more all-inclusive and can build fitness in relatively less time. The workouts are substantially more varied, interesting, challenging in numerous ways, and are comparatively entertaining. Just two or three of these workouts each week can bring measurable, inspiring fitness gains for all types of riders with varied training time limitations. Higher-volume riders who can train more frequently (4-6 times per week), and want to include more traditional base kilometres, could use Mid-Volume Sweet Spot Base, then add in just enough extra endurance riding to further their gains
.
Cons of choosing Sweet Spot Base
Opposite of Traditional Base workouts, Sweet Spot Base workouts require focus, concentration, and often enough, a willingness to endure more intense—but shorter duration of riding discomfort.
If you commit to either Sweet Spot or Traditional Base, you will have desirable training outcomes. However, we recommend Sweet Spot Base for the majority of cyclists.
Key Takeaway
Traditional Base assumes you have almost unlimited time to ride at a slow pace this winter. Alternately, Sweet Spot Base assumes you have a limited schedule like most non-professional cyclists, which allows you to compensate for the lack of duration, with an increase in intensity. That said, time is not the only factor when deciding on your base training plan. You must also consider your experience, the type of rider you are, and the cycling event you’re preparing for.
Action Item
First, look at your winter schedule and decide on a realistic number of training hours you can commit to each week. Next, evaluate your most important events for the year and ask whether or not you’d like to get fit quicker for your lower-priority events. Finally, take into account your training history/experience, tolerance for patience, and overall interest in working out. Once you’ve considered all these things, you’ll be positioned to make a decision on the direction to take with your base training.
Stay tuned for the next article............