Once I changed this I got faster on my bike

As a coach I see a lot of cyclists fall into this trap.

I’ll let you into a little secret before I understood this I made this mistake all the time and It left me thinking I’d never be as fast as I wanted to be.

You might be thinking I’m going to give you a nutrition hack that will change everything, nope, but stick around and I’ll reveal what my big mistake was, how I fixed it and how it's helping the cyclists I coach get even more out of their training.

When you talk to most cyclists about training on the bike to build their fitness, ride faster and rip up climbs with ease you are led to believe that harder, harder and harder training sessions are the way to get there. It doesn’t!

Quiet early on in my training and coaching I uncovered a HUGE fact that made a massive change to my training and the cyclists I coach.

And this is it,

Older cyclists recover to the same level as younger cyclists it just takes them TWICE as long.

Read that again

TWICE AS LONG

This was a light bulb moment!

I was doing too much, too close together, never fully recovering and it meant I was always super tired and my training was a bit…rubbish.

So, I went back to the drawing board, rewrote my training plan with this in mind and guess what?

The quality of my more brutal training sessions improved because I was better rested.

I enjoyed more social easy rides with mates because I wasn’t always smashing it on the front.

And, I started to get quicker on climbs and riding faster sportive times.

So you see,

It wasn’t the fact that I was training hard it was the fact that I wasn’t recovering long enough.

Stripping back the intensity to a couple of specific training sessions a week made me faster!

So my question to you. Do you do too much intensity and, how much recovery do you factor into your cycling training?

Thanks for reading, Simon

Performance & Nutrition Director
2 X Winner of Gym Based PT, and founder of VPCC