Building Your Fitness Foundation

If you’re a beginning cyclist, or you’re working to establish a baseline level of physical fitness, start here. The workout plans in this article are designed to ease you into a regular cycling routine that you can build on as your skills and fitness improve.

General Guidelines

Before you get started, here are a few guidelines that will help ensure the time you spend on your bike gives you the best results possible:

• To improve your fitness, you need to ride your bike at least 3-5 times per week.
• Each workout should last at least 30-60 minutes.
• Your workout plan needs to include at least 1 recovery day per week, during which you do not ride.
• Begin each workout with a warm-up consisting of some stretching followed by at least 5 minutes of light pedaling.
• End each workout with a cool down period—shoot for at least 5 minutes of easy riding at a slow and easy pace before getting off your bike for the day.
• As you work your way into a regular cycling routine, begin by focusing on volume—how often you ride and how long your rides are—rather than intensity. At this early stage, your rides should be primarily in Zones 1-3 (see Bicycling for Fitness: Fundamental Concepts).
• During the first three months of cycling, scale up the amount of time you spend pedaling by roughly 10% each week.

Beginner’s Workout 1: An Open-Ended Plan

If you want a more open-ended approach to getting into shape, this plan gives you plenty of flexibility to explore different possibilities and discover the type of cycling you like best.33 This plan is designed to squeeze the most out of just three rides per week—the minimum required to see steady improvements in skill and fitness.

In this routine, you’ll do three rides per week. You choose which days to ride and which specific ride to complete on each day. Just be sure you hit each of the rides once per week. Increase the length of your rides by 10% every week and after 4-6 six weeks you should be ready to move into more intense workouts.

Here are the rides you must complete each week:

• Long Ride: Your weekly long ride needs to be at least 60 minutes long. Maintain a steady and easy pace—you should be able to carry on a conversation throughout the entire ride. This ride is designed to help you build up your endurance.
• Ride on Hilly Terrain: This ride should be between 30-60 minutes long. The idea is to build cardio and lung health, as well as muscle strength, by pedaling against resistance. It’s best to find terrain with gentle rolling hills. If hills are hard to find in your area, bump up the intensity of your ride by pedaling on flat terrain in a harder gear.

Begin with a 10 minute warm-up at a slow and easy pace. Then pedal a little bit harder for 5 minutes in Zone 2. At this point, you should be breathing hard enough that you can only speak in single sentences. After 5 minutes, take it easy with 1 minute of recovery. Repeat this cycle until you’ve hit the 30-60 minute mark. In the beginning, you’ll probably need to end the ride closer to 30 minutes. But as you improve, push yourself to complete a full 60 minutes.

• Hard Ride: Every week, you need to complete one hard, 25-50 minute ride. Start out with an easy 10 minute warm-up. Then alternate between pedaling as hard as you can for 30 seconds and pedaling lightly or coasting for 1 minute. Repeat the cycle 5 times then pedal slowly for 10 minutes of cool down and recovery. As you improve and get stronger, increase the number of cycles.

This plan is based on: Reynolds, Hannah. “How often should I cycle to get fit?” Cycling Weekly. January 19, 2018

Beginner’s Workout 2: A 12-Week Plan

Like the previous plan, this one is designed to get you accustomed to riding your bike several times per week and will help you build a strong foundation of physical fitness no matter where you’re at now. Here’s how it works:

Phase 1

WEEK 1

WEEK 2

 
This workout is based on a plan designed by cycling and triathlon coach Oliver Roberts, published at Cycling Weekly: Arthurs-Brennan, Michelle. “Cycling training plan for beginners.” Cycling Weekly. May 2, 2019.

WEEK 3

WEEK 4

Phase 2

WEEK 5

WEEK 6

WEEK 7

WEEK 8

Phase 3

WEEK 9

WEEK 10

WEEK 11

WEEK 12