by Jo McRae
While circuit training offers so many potential positives, it can also be problematic for cyclists for a number of reasons. Firstly, good technique in some of the body-weight and core exercises listed here are a prerequisite to being able to maintain your form for prolonged sets and multiple circuits. For example, if you cannot perform a good press-up in its own right, you certainly won’t be able to maintain a good press-up for a minute or two at a time, as you might be asked to in a group session. Secondly, some of the running and jumping elements designed to raise the heart rate may be cause for potential injury for cyclists who are deconditioned in dealing with ground forces and can’t handle running without problems.
As with any group class, alternative levels of the exercise can be offered and suggested by an experienced instructor so that you can maintain good form throughout, or alternatively you will be encouraged to switch to an easier version of the exercise as you fatigue. If you continue the exercises with poor form, the template that your body will remember as a movement pattern for that exercise will become ‘bad habit’, which can be much harder to break than starting from scratch with a new exercise.
Once again, the responsibility falls to the coach or instructor leading the circuit to ensure that while motivating and pushing the participants, he or she ensures that form does not suffer to the extent that either injury risk increases, or that a poor pattern may become learned. In some cases, this may mean the intensity of the workout may be required to drop off in order to ensure that movement technique is not compromised. Patience and a longer-term view might be required by both participants and coach in order for cyclists to develop the condition needed to get both the aerobic and muscular benefits available with a circuit training class.
In spite of these difficulties, I believe instructor-led circuit training is one of the best ‘old school’ methods for maintaining, or even improving fitness in a cyclist’s off season, and if combined with an individual essential conditioning programme comprising the exercises in this book, you could find that year on year your ability to perform the body-weight basics that make up a traditional circuit improves dramatically.
Benefits of circuit training
•Traditional circuit training potentially offers the biggest cross-training benefits of all the activities discussed here, including body-weight strength through many of the primal patterns, focused core-strength exercises, and running elements that raise the heart rate
•The running and jumping drills that are often included have a positive impact on bone density, strengthening bones and helping to prevent osteoporosis
•The core elements can help improve and maintain alignment and posture
•Rapidly moving from one exercise to the next can improve agility, balance and athleticism
•The potential anaerobic element of a traditional circuit can be enjoyable and motivating in the off season, when most cyclists will be working at lower intensities or more steady-state types of training
•Combining the cardiovascular fitness, body-weight and core-strength benefits, a traditional circuit can be a big bang activity, giving you lots of gains in the minimal time
Risks of circuit training
•Performing many of the exercises included in a traditional circuit requires mastery of certain body-weight basics as a prerequisite
•The fatigue that is induced by the prolonged sets and repeated circuits can lead to poor form, which may in turn lead to bad movement habits if left unchecked by an instructor
•To get the most out of a circuit and achieve its big bang benefits may require some patience and a longer-term approach to your cross-training, including season-on-season progression through the conditioning essentials in this book in order that you reach a level of competency where circuits are all that they can be
6. Periodization and planning
Overview of this chapter
•What is periodization?
•Separating your training into cycles
•Why is planning so important, even for keen amateurs?
•Dovetailing your conditioning plan with your cycling training to progress with both
»Problems associated with a lack of periodization and planning
»The benefits of developing a plan
GENERAL PLANNING GUIDELINES
•Motivational factors
»Writing something down and being accountable
»Sticking to the plan
MAKING A YEARLY PLAN
»The basic variables of time and intensity
»Prioritizing conditioning time
»Intensity in relation to conditioning
»Reviewing your yearly plan
MAKING A SEASONAL PLAN
»Autumn (post-season)
»Winter (off season)
»Spring (preseason)
»Summer (in season)
»Typical seasonal schedule and adaptations
»Remembering the success formula – personalizing your approach
»Reviewing your seasonal plan
MAKING A WEEKLY PLAN
»Example weekly review
»Your typical week of cycling, life and conditioning time
»Where to place key cross-training activities
»Using time-based templates to design your own conditioning programme
»Using the conditioning templates
THE ESSENTIAL CONDITIONING TEMPLATES
»10-minute templates
»20-minute templates
»30-minute templates
»40-minute templates
What is periodization?
Periodization is the term given to the systematic planning of training in phases, the goal being to achieve optimal performance for your main events in a season. In physiological terms, a periodized training plan takes advantage of the body’s stress-response mechanisms, which allow for progressive improvements in performance by adapting to the changing demands of structured training.
A good training plan will allow enough time for the body to adapt to the training load of any given session or set of sessions, and then change the training stimulus before the body becomes exhausted from overexposure to that same training.
Physical fitness of any kind is developed by way of this stress-response mechanism, which was first outlined by endocrinologist Hans Selye in the 1950s. His general adaption syndrome (GAS) model was subsequently developed further by exercise physiologists and sports coaches in the 1950s and 1960s to form the foundation of the science of periodization that sport scientists use today.
The science behind periodization and planning can be quite complex, but by simplifying the main elements and working to a basic plan you will find that you progress from one month to the next with purpose and clarity, and from season to season with more consistency than working without a time-scaled plan.
General Adaptation Syndrome
Separating your training into cycles
In addition to understanding the basic tenets of the stress response, the other key aspect of periodization that will help you the most is breaking your plan down into separate training cycles. Traditionally, a training plan is split into blocks so that you work backwards from your main goal event. For most cyclists the biggest ‘chunk’ of time to consider in planning terms would be the forthcoming year, which would be called the macro cycle. For Olympians the macrocycle might be even bigger, representing the four-year cycle between Olympic games.
In this chapter I will be encouraging you to think big first, taking a view of your next year of exercise in the context of what you did last year, and what you hope to do the year after that. Although you are (probably) not an Olympic athlete, one of the main reasons for lack of progress from one season to the next is this lack of perspective. Taking your sport and fitness goals and placing them in the context of your life in general can also give your training longevity, ensuring the consistency that is needed to maintain your health and fitness for the longer term so that you maximize your performanc
e potential.
For most sports people, the intermediate amount of time to consider in your training plan would be a month or six weeks, and this would be called a mesocycle. In this chapter I will encourage you to develop your own mesocycle plan based on the four seasons so that each plan will be three months (or 12 weeks), with room for a slight change or progression at the halfway stage.
The smallest chunk of time to consider in your training plan is called a microcycle, and for most people this would be a week. Towards the end of this chapter I will encourage you to get specific about what a week’s training should look like for the current phase that you are in. For most people who work a 9–5 job, a weekly plan can be consistent and fairly structured. For others who have more varied work patterns, a weekly plan may consist of a menu of training options that can be fitted into the schedule with a little more flexibility. A plan does not have to be completely rigid to work, but needs to have some overarching goals and structure.
Why is planning so important, even for keen amateurs?
You might be thinking at this point that this all sounds a bit serious and technical for you and what you are looking to achieve, but I assure you it’s not.
Most of you have probably heard the cliché ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’, but like many sayings that have stuck, there is a lot of truth in this statement.
If you expect to get better at cycling just by riding your bike more, you are likely to plateau very quickly. It’s true that if you are unfit you will see a steep improvement at the beginning, but it won’t be long before you find that your fitness seems to be staying the same at best, or in some cases actually starting to get worse. If anything, your conditioning plan is more complicated than your cycling training, since you are looking to correct and balance for the time you spend on the bike, as well as ensure you are working through the elements of flexibility, strength and core detailed in Chapters 2–4.
Taking time out to plan your training, even in the simplest way, can make an enormous difference to how you feel about your cycling as well as your conditioning programme. Deciding what you want from your sport and making a plan to go after it can be a very empowering experience, and the learning that goes with getting to know what your body wants and needs can put you in a strong position to coach yourself on your journey towards better performance as well as health and fitness.
In my view, the time you spend on planning your programme is the most important of all, since once you have a plan, you simply have to get on with it, without needing to think about it for several months at a time.
Furthermore, if you take a more medium- to long-term view of planning your training, it makes it easier for you to factor in changes that accommodate whatever else is going on in your life, such as career or family commitments, moving house or any other personal matters that need to take priority at any given time. Rather than ignore these more holistic aspects relating to your performance, by planning to allow for that change and structuring your training to accommodate it you can often come back to full fitness with renewed vigour when the time comes.
Dovetailing your conditioning plan with your cycling training to progress with both
In this chapter I will be focused on helping you develop the detail of your essential conditioning plan off the bike using the exercises in this book. The periodization of your conditioning should be connected to and balanced by your training on the bike, so I will be offering some very broad ideas about your cycling plan too.
It is outside the scope of this book to look in any detail at the periodization and planning of your sport-specific cycling training. Much has been written about cycling training and if you don’t already have some broad ideas about what aspects of your cycling fitness you should be developing and when, I would urge you to look out some resources that will help you, or seek out a cycling coach.
If you already have a cycling training plan, or have a coach who helps you with your training, the planning of your conditioning programme to complement that should be even easier. The more awareness you have about what you will be doing on your bike and when, the easier it will be to slot in some appropriate conditioning.
Many of the problems associated with a lack of cross-training or conditioning in your programme are inherently connected with a lack of planning and periodization, so you will see many similarities here to the ‘problems and benefits’ list in Chapter 5 on cross-training.
I believe that for many cyclists a periodized conditioning plan is the missing piece in the puzzle that strings seasons together, giving you sustainable and improved performance and a better sense of health and well-being all round.
Problems associated with a lack of planning and periodization
•Lack of consistency in cycling performance from season to season
•A progressive decline in your overall condition off the bike, leading to niggles and injuries and issues that sometimes take years to develop
•Prolonged periods without regular training or exercise, either through low motivation or because of chronic injuries and progressive muscle imbalances
•Boredom, apathy, depression and poor lifestyle habits (such as overeating) at certain times of the year associated with a lack of structure and purpose
Benefits of developing a plan
•Consistency in training all year round, and from one year to the next
•A robust body, both on and off the bike, that allows you to do what you want to do
•Plenty of variety due to seasonal variations, and the dovetailing of cycling training with off-the-bike conditioning and cross-training
•Good motivation and positive mood in relation to your exercise all year round
•Balanced lifestyle habits that support health as well as fitness
•Progression in performance both on and off the bike, year on year
General planning guidelines
Motivational factors
Much has been written about goal setting that you can find with an easy google search, so I need not go into great detail here. The SMART acronym is a good summary of where to start with your goals before we broaden the discussion further.
Smart goals are:
Specific • Measurable • Attainable • Recorded • Time bound
Many recreational sports people believe that a legitimate goal to be working towards has to be a performance goal, such as achieving a particular time in a time trial, or a certain placing in a given event. But in the broader context of cycling for fitness, or conditioning for health, process goals are very important, and may even be the only type of goal that you need to use to structure your training. I have found that goals relating to being more consistent with training of any kind are extremely important in building momentum that leads to better performance. You may simply set yourself a target of cycling four times a week, or for two hours on both days at the weekend, or of stretching for 10 minutes every evening, and then log your progress for a given period so that you can evaluate how you have done at the end of it.
A process goal is one that deals with the training detail that leads to better performance by default, rather than focusing on the desired performance itself. For many cyclists I have worked with of all abilities, a focus on processes can maintain motivation by way of seeing clear and direct achievements in a particular skill or ability to consistently perform an exercise.
In the context of conditioning examples, if you know that you are stiff and would like to be more flexible, then you probably realize that regular stretching will get you to that desired goal. You can make that goal SMART quite easily by using the exercises in this book and by simply putting a stretching plan together.
For example:
•You can set the goal to become more flexible in your hamstrings at the knee (that’s specific – S).
•You can measure the improvement in your flexibility by working through the supine hamstring stretch as shown in Chapter 2 (the higher you are able to raise your
leg, the more flexible you are becoming – M).
•You can be confident that the goal is attainable (because I have selected stretches here that I know are effective for cyclists – A).
•Commit to the conditioning exercises that relate to your flexibility goals, and write them down as part of your exercise plan (that’s recorded – R)
•And you will work on the same programme for a period of three months, to allow your body time to adapt and change (that’s time bound – T).
That wasn’t too complicated, was it. That’s SMART conditioning.
If you are unclear what your cycling goals are at this stage, don’t panic. Even if all you know is roughly the amount of cycling you want to do at different stages of the year, you can dovetail some conditioning around that riding to develop your functional fitness and cycling potential. You can use the natural cycles of the seasons to ensure that you are working through a range of stretch, strength and core work to support your bike riding, and allow for that better cycling performance when you are ready to commit in more detail.
Writing something down and being accountable
Perhaps the most important letter of the SMART acronym for me is the R, Recorded. In SMART goals the R usually stands for Realistic, and for me that’s about making a record to stick to. There is something about writing down your plan, or even sketching out some ideas that takes it into the action stage by committing it to paper.
In this chapter I have included various planning templates that you can photocopy and scribble over as many times as you like as you create and change your plan through the seasons. I’m going to walk you through the stages of your plan here, so don’t hesitate to make a start now, even if you’re not 100 per cent clear of what you want to achieve. Doing something is always better than doing nothing, and doing something with some structure often helps you find your way by trial and error.