Gaining fitness fast or slow?

Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast
1

Dear TrainerRoad,

I was just wondering. Is it any way better to gain fitness quickly? Or can you better build it up slowly?

Can you compare it to people who want to lose weight? They can crash diet, but they gain weight fast when they eat unhealthy for a few days. Or that you lose weight the “correct” way. Work-out, eat healthy and watch the quantities. This way you won’t notice it that badly when you have a week(s) with unhealthy food.

Just wondering…

Keep up the great work!

Regards,

2

You can do both, however, a more important question would be how long do you want that fitness to last?

You can spend a few weeks doing VO2max workouts and get pretty fit pretty quickly but once you stop those workouts, your fitness drops incredibly fast. Or, you could spend months doing slower and longer endurance/threshold workouts to reach the same level but the fitness will have a much more significant foundation.

3

That’s what I wanted to know.