How To Start Training For Cycling As A Beginner - CTS

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How to Start Training for

Cycling as a Beginner
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The cycling community is always evolving, with veteran riders hanging up their wheels
and beginner cyclists just starting with training for cycling. We see the complete range
at our cycling camps and events, and as coaches we believe teaching the
fundamentals is just as important as important as helping athletes take advantage of
the latest advances in sports science.
Our relationship with bicycles can grow and change throughout our lives, and for
some people that includes a time when you set goals and train to achieve them. Going
from a person who rides a bike to an athlete in training doesn’t need to be an
intimidating transition. Cycling training doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective,
and with the proven information and cycling tips in this guide you can start training
and prepare yourself for rides longer than three hours.
Getting Ready to Train For Cycling As a Beginner
Before jumping into workouts or increasing the amount of time you’re spending on a
bicycle, there are some tasks and purchases to check off your list. Briefly, these
include:
Take your bike to the shop: Get a tune-up and replace worn parts (potentially
brake pads, tires, chain, etc.) so your bike is ready to support your ambitions.
Get a bike fit: Training stresses the body, and optimizing the way you sit on the
bike helps you ride comfortably (https://trainright.com/bike-fit-tips-thatll-improve-
your-comfort-and-power/) and reduces injury risk. A good bike fit can eliminate or
prevent numbness in the hands, soreness in the neck and shoulders, and pain in
the lower back and knees.
Gear up: You don’t have to kit up like a pro, but padded cycling shorts
(https://www.giordanacycling.com/men/summer/bib-shorts) are essential (go for
baggies with a padded liner if you’re not into the skin-tight look). Cycling seats
(https://sdgcomponents.com/) don’t have a lot of padding because they are
designed to work with padded shorts. For other apparel, avoid cotton, stick with
moisture-wicking fabrics, and use layers so you can adjust for weather conditions.
Wear a helmet: Don’t be an idiot (http://www.giro.com/us_en/).
Items You Don’t Need To Get Started

There’s a seemingly endless array of products you can buy as a cyclist, but when
you’re getting started it’s important to realize you don’t have to spend a fortune or get
everything at once. Here are items people (including bike shop salespeople) think you
need that you don’t, at least not right away.
Power meter: Training with power is wonderfully effective and a power meter is a
very valuable tool, but you can make a lot of training progress before needing to
invest in one.
Heart rate monitor: See Power Meter.
Anything made of carbon fiber: Carbon fiber is light, strong, and expensive. If
you want a carbon bike frame, wheels, or components, go for it! If you don’t, more
economical options like aluminum will do everything you need.
Your First Week of Training for Cycling
Ride your bike more than you did last week. If you haven’t been riding a bicycle
regularly, start by riding three to five times for 30-60 minutes each time. If you’ve been
riding recreationally or for transportation, figure out a ballpark for how much time
(not mileage!) you’ve been riding on a weekly basis and increase by 10%.
Don’t worry about going hard. Don’t go from zero to four high-intensity spin classes
(https://trainright.com/how-to-tell-if-an-indoor-cycling-class-is-any-good/) on week
one. Don’t start with intensity; start with volume and add intensity later. Your pace on
the bike should be conversational, meaning you could speak in full sentences to
someone riding with you. This is a moderate intensity level, a 4-5 on a 10-point Rating
of Perceived Exertion (https://trainright.com/is-perceived-exertion-accurate-or-
meaningful-to-your-training/) scale where 1 is sitting at the café looking at your bike
and 10 is as hard as you can go.
Your First Month of Training for Cycling

Beginner cyclists who were not riding regularly before starting to train should
continue building volume by increasing weekly riding time by 10% each week, over the
course of 3-6 rides. Take a rest day – no training – at least one day out of seven. Many
athletes quickly reach the weekly maximum number of hours they can devote to
training, some within the first month. This is particularly true for athletes who were
riding regularly before transitioning to goal-oriented training.
Add longer weekend rides. You can add training volume by incrementally making each
ride longer, but many athletes with career and family priorities find it difficult to ride
more than 60-90 minutes during weekdays. A more common way to add volume is to
add time to weekend rides. (Find out how long your longest ride needs to be)
(https://trainright.com/how-long-should-longest-training-ride-be/) This is also
beneficial because at this stage a longer individual ride creates a significant training
stimulus (training stress is the stimulus that causes your body to adapt and grow
stronger).
Connect with the cycling community. Riding with more experienced cyclists is the best
way to learn cycling skills (https://trainright.com/cycling-group-ride-etiquette-skills/).
As with anything else, there is a learning curve to getting started with cycling.
Everyone started somewhere, and most are happy to help shorten the learning curve
for less experienced riders. The key is to find a group you’re comfortable with, and the
best place to start is your local bike shop or cycling club. Many organize free weekly
group rides at various skill, speed, and experience levels. Some also organize group
training sessions, like a group ride that goes out to ride climbing repeats up a local hill.
If you’re more comfortable training indoors (https://trainright.com/weekend-reading-
3-indoor-cycling-workouts-to-match-your-goals/), or the times you have available for
training require you to be indoors, you can still engage with the cycling community
through apps like Strava (https://strava.com) and Zwift (https://zwift.com/). (Try these
sub-60 minute indoor cycling workouts (https://trainright.com/3-best-sub-60-minute-
indoor-cycling-workouts/)) These apps are fitness trackers as well as social platforms,
and help athletes measure their progress and stay accountable to their training goals.
Many athletes who work with coaches upload their training data to TrainingPeaks,
(http://www.trainingpeaks.com/)which is included in our TrainRight Membership
(https://trainright.com/membership/), or similar apps that allow coaches to analyze an
athlete’s data and, in conjunction with frequent personal communication, schedule
and adjust future training. Fitness trackers are more effective with more data, so if
you use one be sure to upload your data.
Your First Three Months of Training for Cycling

Riding more hours can only take your fitness so far, especially once time-crunched
athletes hit their maximum training time at 6-10 hours per week. Workload is the
product of intensity and volume, and to increase workload without increasing volume
we have to increase intensity. That’s where intervals come in.
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Interval training is a means of increasing total workload by alternating between

periods of higher intensity and recovery periods at lower intensity
(https://trainright.com/recovery-timing-for-perfect-intervals/). Intervals can be long or
short, mildly challenging or cross-eyed difficult, and anything in between. There’s an
inverse relationship between the intensity of an effort and the length of time you can
sustain that effort. The harder the interval, the shorter it will be, and vice versa.
Athletes can use this relationship to target the energy system they’re trying to stress
with an individual workout, series of workouts, or entire training block.
Generally speaking, here’s how interval duration and intensity correlate with energy
systems. There is some overlap, but the larger point is that you can’t do 10-minute
VO2 max intervals because you can’t sustain the intensity necessary to target that
energy system for 10 minutes. Likewise, very few athletes can sustain 60-minute
efforts at lactate threshold intensity. For most athletes 10-20 minutes is as long as
they can maintain the intensity necessary to target improved performance at lactate
threshold. When intervals are longer than they should be, intensity decreases toward
general aerobic conditioning, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not helping
achieve the goal of the interval.
RPE Energy System Workout Names
20 to 60+
minutes
6 Aerobic Tempo
Lactate
10-20 minutes 7-8 SteadyState
Threshold
Lactate ClimbingRepeat, Time
5-10 minutes 8-9
Threshold Trial
1-4 minutes 10 VO2 max PowerIntervals
Anaerobic
<1 minute 10 Sprints, SpeedIntervals
Power
Cycling Workouts For Beginners

Tempo is the first beginner cycling interval workout to add to your training. It is a
moderately challenging aerobic intensity interval, meaning it is harder than your
cruising endurance pace but not so hard you can’t speak in short sentences. The key
to incorporating Tempo into your training is accumulating time-at-intensity. These
intervals should be long, starting at a minimum of 15 minutes and progressing all the
way up to 60 minutes. Typically, athletes complete one long interval in a Tempo
workout. For instance you might ride for 60 total minutes and include one 20- or 30-
minute Tempo interval in the middle of it. A 60-minute ride with a Tempo interval
produces a greater aerobic workload than 60 minutes cruising at endurance pace.
The next cornerstone interval to incorporate into your training is called SteadyState.
These 10-20 minute intervals target your maximum sustainable power output, or
power at lactate threshold. Without a power meter or heart rate monitor you can tell
you’re at the appropriate intensity if your breathing is deep but labored (not out of
control panting!) and you can only speak in short phrases. A cornerstone lactate
threshold interval workout is 3 10-minute SteadyState intervals separated by 5
minutes of easy spinning recovery.
Sports Nutrition For Cycling Training
As you increase your weekly caloric expenditure it is important to make sure your
caloric intake is sufficient to meet your needs. The vast majority of Americans
consume more than enough calories, and one of the big mistakes people make is to
increase caloric intake way more than necessary as they start training. At a moderate
endurance pace, 500 calories per hour is a good ballpark caloric expenditure during
cycling. A hard interval workout for an athlete starting out might push that to 750-800
calories per hour. Use the following guidelines as starting point for personalizing your
sports nutrition.
Hydration is King. Being and staying hydrated takes top priority because it helps
regulate core temperature through sweating, helps maintain blood volume to
deliver oxygen to working muscles, and helps digest food. Hydration drives
nutrition (https://trainright.com/optimizing-workout-nutrition-for-hot-weather/).
Your hydration status determines whether your nutrition strategy has a chance of
being effective.
No additional calories are needed during workouts that are 60 minutes or
shorter. You start training sessions with 1600-2000 calories of stored
carbohydrate energy in your body, as well as tens of thousands of calories worth
of fat. You have more than enough readily-accessible energy to fuel a a 60-90
minute workout.
Consume carbohydrate during workouts longer than 90 minutes.
Performance diminishes as carbohydrate stores run out, as carbohydrate is the
body’s preferred fuel for higher-intensity efforts. For improved performance
during longer rides, aim to consume about 20-30% of your hourly caloric
expenditure, mostly from carbohydrate. If you’re riding a 3-hour endurance ride
and estimating expenditure at about 500-600 calories per hour, aim to consume
100-180 calories per hour.
Hydration in your bottles, calories in your pocket. Sports drinks are great, but
there can be downsides to combining fluids with calories. When you separate the
two – water or electrolyte drink in your bottles and food in your jersey pockets –
you can increase fluid intake in response to high temperatures or increased
exertion without overloading your stomach with more calories than it can process.
Read more on hydration/nutrition for hot weather
(https://trainright.com/optimizing-workout-nutrition-for-hot-weather/).
Off the bike, a generally healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables, lean
proteins, and natural fats will do the trick. Cycling training does not dramatically
increase protein requirements, meaning most cyclists should be able to meet their
nutritional needs through meals and snacks rather than supplementation. The
most important component is getting enough energy. Significant caloric
restriction, in an attempt to lose weight as you start training, often prevents your
body from creating the positive adaptations that enhance your fitness and
performance.
Your First Six Months
After improving basic endurance fitness through volume and fundamental aerobic
and lactate threshold intervals, it’s time to make your training more specific to the
goal you’re trying to achieve. If you’re preparing for a hilly or mountainous event, you’ll
want to make your training more specific to climbing and descending. If you’re
preparing for an event in flat to rolling terrain and potentially a lot of wind, you’ll want
to work on group riding skills like drafting and using a paceline to share the work and
conserve energy. If your aim is to get into racing, you’ll need to focus on increasing
speed for accelerations and high power efforts.
By 3-6 months, most cyclists with career and family priorities have reached the
maximum number of weekly training hours their schedule will reasonably sustain. At
this point varying combinations of interval and endurance workouts are necessary to
generate the workload necessary to improve performance. While the specifics of
individual training plans are beyond the scope of this guide, here are some of the
common mistakes athletes make during this timeframe:
Insufficient rest. Training stress has to be balanced by adequate recovery in

order for an athlete to make progress. If you overload the training side with too
much stress and don’t take enough time to rest, your progress will stall. Signs that
you are not getting enough rest include diminished ride performance, fatigue,
irritability, trouble sleeping, lack of interest in riding, and minor illnesses (common
cold, stomach bugs, etc.).
Efforts that are neither hard enough nor easy enough. As you get more fit,
your training efforts need to be at intensities high enough – for long enough – to
create a training stimulus. Similarly, your easy efforts need to be deliberately easy
in order to allow for active recovery. Many cyclists get stuck in a rut where all their
rides gravitate toward the middle – workouts that aren’t challenging enough to
improve fitness, and recovery rides that are too hard to allow for recovery.
Scattered focus. In the very beginning of training you can make progress by
training with different kinds of workouts all at once. You might ride for endurance
one day, do a group ride another, climb hills on a third day, etc. After a few
months of consistent training, however, athletes are better served by focusing
their training on a specific type of workout for a period of weeks, in order to
maximize the training load directed at a specific energy system. For instance, to
develop greater sustainable power for climbing, you might focus on 2-3 climbing
interval workouts per week for three weeks, in addition to some general
endurance rides.
Moving From Beginner Cyclist To Intermediate
Ideally, the experience of getting started with training inspires you to continue
developing fitness and participating in challenging cycling events. While you can
certainly continue to make progress directing your own training or absorbing
information from the cycling community, here are some recommended ways to take
your cycling performance to the next level.
Work with a cycling coach (https://trainright.com/coaching/cycling/):
Professional endurance coaches have degrees in exercise science, licenses and
certifications specific to coaching, and careers devoted to improving performance
for athletes of all ability and experience levels. Through frequent communication
and sound sport science, a professional coach will help integrate training into your
lifestyle and guide you through the ups and downs of preparing for your event.
Learn more about what sets professional coaches apart from hobbyists
(https://trainright.com/the-inconvenient-truth-about-coaching/).
Signup for the TrainRight Membership (https://trainright.com/membership/):
Our TrainRight Membership is a great way to get started with structured training,
get advice from professional coaches, and connect with other cyclists. It’s a low-
cost membership that includes training plans including a Beginner Cycling Training
Plan, TrainingPeaks Premium account, private forum, live Q&A coach calls, and
more.
Try a cycling camp: Training camps provide time to immerse yourself in cycling.
Ride with and learn from professional coaches, including handling skills, group
riding skills, training techniques, nutrition strategies, and more. Training camps
also provide a significant training stimulus, because you will likely ride more hours
than during a normal weekend or week on your own.
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Comments 11
Pingback: Strength Training For Cycling - Mostpupolar

Sirichandana thota
I want to learn and practice bicycle riding could you please tell me the details.
Reply 
Marcia O. Lee
I do remember my first bike. My parents couldn’t afford much either, there were too many of
us. But oh when I went to change my clothes after school and found it hidden in my closet to
surprise me….I was over the moon happy. Dark blue, white seat. Perfect.
Reply 
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Amy S
Hello, I was wondering if anyone would be able to take this short survey. It’s for a school
assignment and shouldn’t take more than five minutes.
Survey Link- https://forms.gle/Q7NxYAMu31uYEJEU6
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Praveen
Great article, I am a beginner. Doing alternate days 40-50 kms. There are lots of tips I can get
from here.
Would love to know what kind of exercise can prepare my body to improve on cycling.
Reply 
Mary
Very impressive info. I’m excited to learn. My girlfriend has been trying to get me to start.
Was a mountain runner. Never to late to start!!!!
Reply 
sandro D
This is a great article, with a detailed plan, especially for start up training. Only thing I would
add that U need to buy is a kit, with spare inner tube, tool for tire removal and mini bike
pump or Co2 pump. Flat tires happen unfortunatly, so U need to be prepared to change one.
Especialy if U ride solo. Luckly, bike shops sell a tiny. Bag that fits behind /under your seat
that has eveything U need to change a flat, including tool, to remove the tire. Mini Pump Is
the only extra thing that may not fit in the tiny bag that can be attached to the bike frame.
CO2. Pump should fit in the bag with 1. refill.
Reply 
Casey R Cline
Great advice! If you’re not into the whole flat tire thing, look @ getting a pair of Tannus Tires –
pretty nice for the commuter. Ride on!
Reply 
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A pioneering company in the endurance coaching industry CTS has improved the performance of tens of
thousands of everyday time-crunched endurance athletes since 2000. Founded by renowned coach and author
Chris Carmichael, and home to more than 50 professional coaches, CTS seeks to change lives and ultimately the
world, through the power of movement, healthy habits, knowledge, and inspiration. CTS provides free training
content, personal coaching, training plans, training camps, and Endurance Bucket List experiences to athletes of
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All About Carbohydrate for Cycling Training, Performance, and Recovery (https://trainright.com/all-about-
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Endurance Ride Checklist: What Smart Cyclists Take on Everyday Rides and Epic Adventures
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How to Start Training for

Items You Don’t Need To Get Started

Your First Month of Training for Cycling

Your First Three Months of Training for Cycling

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Interval training is a means of increasing total workload by alternating between

Cycling Workouts For Beginners

Insufficient rest. Training stress has to be balanced by adequate recovery in

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