You could fill shelves and shelves with the books that have been written on specific training for cycling, so what’s included here will necessarily be brief. The following covers some basic principles.

Base Training

The majority of the time spent on your bike should be steady, relatively easy tempo, base training miles. These are done to build the cardiovascular and circulatory systems. 

There are many analogies which can be used to describe base training, whether the roots of a tree, or the foundation of a building. Each analogy is meant to describe the fact that the more base training you have to build upon, the higher your fitness can reach. And the opposite is true as well—hard training which is done with few base miles will not last long.

For most recreational riders and racers, the trick is to make sure that the first part of every season is spent doing mellow miles. Then once prime riding season is in full swing, it’s important to do hard rides only a couple of times a week with easier base/recovery rides still making up the majority of miles.

The mistake that many, even experienced, cyclists make when they are doing base training miles is that they ride too hard. These miles should be done at an intensity that allows breathing through your nose. 

Tempo Riding

After a good base, the next piece of the training puzzle is Tempo Riding. This consists of longer efforts of up to 20 minutes at a higher level of intensity separated by rest sessions at least half as long as the efforts.

Tempo sessions are the first step in teaching your body how to function at higher lactate and effort levels and they are an important intermediate step between base miles and full-on interval sessions. For many riders, particularly tourists and recreational riders, Tempo sessions will be all the intensity that is ever needed to put a little more pop into your legs during long rides.

Tempo riding should again be done at a steady pace which is somewhat uncomfortable—say a 7/10 on the pain scale—but which doesn’t leave you gasping and wrecked at the end of each repeat. Tempo should be done at most twice a week and with at least 48 hours between sessions.

Recovery

And now a message from our friend Recovery.

Typically, recovery is the most ignored and abused element of training for cycling. Since Cycling produces less muscle damage than sports which involve running, it is much easier to jump back onto the bike and start working out again soon after a hard ride.

However, improvements in fitness don’t occur when you are riding your bike and training, they occur during the rest which follows. Essentially your body reacts to the training by saying “wow, that sucked, I am going to be ready for that next time!” This process is called Supercompensation, but the “getting ready” changes to your body can only occur if you get adequate rest after hard workouts.

This means putting your feet up, drinking water, getting lots of rest and either taking time off the bike or else going out for nice short spins to keep the legs loose.

Intervals

Intervals . . . maybe the worst word in training.

The basic principle of Intervals is to link short periods of exceptionally hard work with specific amounts of rest. There are two primary goals for this work, to increase maximum usable power and to decrease recovery time after near-maximal efforts. How you set your priorities for these is dependant upon whether your cycling requires short, repeated efforts as in criterium racing, downhill and XC mountain biking; or longer threshold efforts that are most relevant to time trialing, epic XC racing or non-drafting triathlons.

If you are to the point in your cycling that you’re considering intervals, it’s worth investing in a good training guide or even talking to a coach who can guide you through the process of goal and program setting. 

Climbing

Perhaps more so than any other part of cycling, natural talent and genetics predetermines much of how good a climber you will become . . .

The first thing to do is to learn to enjoy climbing. It sounds silly but most people undo themselves by dreading climbs when a positive attitude would make the climbs seem a little shorter and a little less steep. The second thing to do is to practice as much as you can. If you have a limited amount of time to ride, it’s better to ride a shorter hill a few times and ride it harder than to ride one long climb at an easier pace.

One of the most important climbing tricks is to start in an easier gear than you can ride and spin the pedals a little faster to save you legs for later in the climb.

But the number one secret of hills is to accelerate over the top. As the hill moderates at the peak, you only need to maintain your effort for another few seconds to quickly reach top speed on the descent. Most riders ease off at the top and slow down. This is a skill that you can practice every time you ride until it is second nature ...

In the end, there’s no mystery to climbing: attitude and practice.

Technique Drills

A study was done on riders in the Tour de France several years ago, and its conclusions were surprising. While the riders actually lost  power and muscle mass during the three weeks, they were faster at the end of the race as they became more efficient on the bike.

A couple of good and popular drills are listed below.

Spin-ups.  Most people have a cadence sweet spot and when they try to spin a little more quickly; their mechanics often fall apart as the pedals turn faster. One simple drill to improve your pedal stroke is to find a gentle downhill and start pedalling at the top at your comfortable cadence. As the bike speeds up, try to shift as little as possible and instead keep up with the speed of the bike by spinning faster. You’ll find that you start to bounce on the saddle as you pedal faster than you are used to. Do this once a week in the early riding season with four-six repeats per workout and you should begin to see a smoother spin and you’ll be able to postpone the bounce until much higher rpms.

One-legged pedalling. Most people have dead spots in their pedal stroke where one leg is a passenger being carried by the other. One way to start to learn how to use both legs through as much of the stroke as possible is to spend some time pedalling with one leg at a time. This is easiest to do on an indoor trainer, but you can also do it on a flat smooth road. You’ll quickly feel the dead parts of your stroke and learn to apply power all the way around. Again, there is no need to do this more than once a week, but you’ll certainly see results quickly. 

Conclusion

So that’s a quick primer to some ways to improve your cycling technique and fitness. There’s no substitute for miles in the saddle, but being smart in the way you spend those miles will allow you to improve more quickly and get more out of each ride.