How to Train for Cycling: A Simple Weekly Structure

Most people who want to improve their cycling fitness do one of two things. They ride whenever they feel like it, at whatever pace the day gives them. Or they find a training plan written for racers, with intervals and zones and a vocabulary that assumes you already know what you’re doing, and give up by week three.

There’s a much simpler middle. Training is just riding with a bit of structure: knowing which rides are easy, which one is harder, which one is long, and when to rest. Get those four right and you’ll get fitter week after week without needing any equipment beyond the bike.

If you haven’t started riding regularly yet, begin with how to start cycling, which takes you from your first 20-minute ride to an hour or more. This guide picks up from there.

Most of your riding should be easy

This is the part people don’t believe. Easy riding is what builds the engine: your heart gets stronger, your muscles get better at using oxygen, and your body learns to keep going for longer. It happens at a pace that feels almost too gentle to count.

A good rule is that about four of every five hours you ride should be easy. Easy means you could hold a full conversation, breathe through your nose most of the time, and finish feeling like you could have kept going. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the hardest you could possibly go, it’s a 3 or 4.

Every plan on our training plans page is built this way, with the long ride doing most of the work and nearly all of it at a chatty pace.

What “harder” means for a beginner

Once you’re riding three times a week comfortably, one of those rides can include some harder efforts. Harder means a 7 or 8 out of 10: you can speak a few words at a time, not sentences, and you’re glad when it stops.

You don’t need much of it. Some simple ways to do it:

• Short efforts: after a 15-minute easy warm-up, ride 4 × 3 minutes hard with 3 minutes easy between, then ride home easy.
• A hilly loop: ride the hills at a strong effort and the flat and downhill bits easy.
• A steady stretch: 15 to 20 minutes at a 6 out of 10, the pace you’d hold on a long event if you felt good, in the middle of an otherwise easy ride.

One of these a week is enough. Two is the limit for most beginners. If you’re training for a longer goal, the 100 mile century plan shows how hills and steady riding build up over sixteen weeks.

Rest is where you get fitter

Riding is the stress; recovery is when your body adapts to it. Skip the recovery and you don’t get fitter, you just get tired. That’s why every good plan has rest days in the week and easier weeks in the month.

• Rest days: at least one or two a week with no riding. A walk or some stretching is fine.
• Easier weeks: every third or fourth week, cut every ride by about a third. You’ll come back stronger.
• Sleep: it’s the most effective recovery there is, and it’s free.

Signs you need more rest: legs that still feel heavy after a day off, struggling to sleep, feeling flat and grumpy about rides you’d normally enjoy, or an easy pace that suddenly feels hard. Take two or three easy days and see how you feel.

How many days a week should you ride?

• Two days: enough to get fitter, more slowly. Make one of them the long ride.
• Three days: the sweet spot for most beginners. Two shorter rides and one longer one, with a rest day between each.
• Four or five days: fine once three feels easy, as long as the extra rides are easy and short. A commute counts.

Three to five hours a week is plenty to get ready for a first 50 or 100 km ride. Consistency matters far more than the number: three rides a week every week beats five rides one week and none the next.

A sample week

Here’s a week for someone who can already ride for about an hour and has three or four slots to ride in. Move the days around to fit your life; the order matters more than the days.

That’s about three and a half hours of riding, nearly all of it easy. If you can only ride twice, keep Saturday and Thursday.

How to build on it, week by week

Progress comes from adding a little, often, and changing one thing at a time.

1. Grow the long ride first. Add 10 to 15 minutes a week. It’s the ride that does the most for your endurance.
2. Keep the short rides short. They’re there for consistency and recovery, not to prove anything.
3. Add to the harder ride slowly. One more effort, or a minute longer each, every week or two. Don’t make them harder and longer at the same time.
4. Take an easier week every third or fourth week. Same rides, about a third shorter, and the harder efforts dropped or halved.
5. Don’t chase a good week. Felt great and doubled the long ride? That’s how people get injured or burnt out. Stick to small steps.

Follow that for eight to ten weeks and the long ride that started at 90 minutes will be close to three hours: well on the way to a first 100 km sportive. Keep going, and the same structure carries you all the way to the century plan. If you’d rather not work out the weeks yourself, every one of the training plans lays them out for you.

What about strength and stretching?

Not essential to start, but useful. Twenty minutes of squats, lunges, glute bridges and planks once or twice a week helps your knees, hips and back cope with longer rides. Do it on an easy day or after a short ride, not the day before your long one.

Questions people ask