My vote is to do lots of sweetspot. If you can work up to 2 hour workouts like Baird Peak on a weekend, that will work wonders for you! See the ‘More Sweetspot’ thread for SST progressions.
If you find extra time of a week, throw in a 2 hour Z2 ride. There are a load available now with relatively low IF, or if you feel reasonably fresh, knock out a Boarstone.
You’re asking why you’re not improving/bad at cycling when it seems as if you’re not really giving it any consistent effort? If you just put some more consistent time on the bike you’d improve, but if you’re going to keep stopping and starting for other things then you need to adjust your expectations. The main thing preventing most people from improving is that they simply aren’t consistent. They’ll jump on for a few months, see some improvement and then stop for a few months, completely negating any progress they’ve made.
Seriously, consistency is the absolute KEY to improving.
@splash and @4ibanez - thanks for the tips. I’ll checkout the sweetspot thread and will try to add some Z2 (indoor or out) as time permits in addition to LV.
Fair criticism @gotoadgo and I’m very guilty of this. The subject was a little tongue in cheek, I know why I’m not an elite cyclist with inconsistent training. But I guess it was more a general comment on my level of cycling fitness vs where I perceive I should be based on comparisons with other sports. I think it’s a testament to the commitment of people on this board that have worked hard to achieve solid results and that I need to adjust my expectations.
That said, this does raise one question. Is there a way to have a cycling “off season” to focus on other sports and not lose all cycling-specific fitness gains? I imagine this would need to involve some continued work on the bike, but could you bring it down to 1-2x per week and not lose too much?
You can try…
Back when I raced and work full time I’d run trails after work in the fall after the time change. I’d do that for a month or so until it was too dark after work. I’d ride the trainer 2-3x per week for 45min. I’d make up the endurance on the weekend with 5-6 hours of riding.
If you are consistently doing aerobic work like XC skiing or doing long hikes you can probably maintain fitness to some degree with a couple trainer rides. Three or four would be better.
Time off always results in fitness loss across the board. Loosing fitness isn’t a bad thing and some of the best times training are those middle weeks in a plan when you are making rapid gains and feeling fast again. Flogging yourself and jumping on the bike when you have other focuses in order to retain “fitness” is a sure fire way to loose the joy of cycling.
Cycling is a sport of time, consistency, and increasing stress requirements. Any two will take you a ways but you need all three to really make gains.
I think you should decide what you truly want: if you want to be rounded, athletic individual, proceed on your current course, do a low-volume TR plan — just don’t expect to reach super high levels of fitness, i. e. adjust your expectations. That may be hard, because you might be used to being “just good at sports”, but that doesn’t apply equally to all sports.
If you are serious about getting very fit on the bike, you need to shift your emphasis to it. Just be cognizant of the consequences: you’ll lose upper body muscle mass, because much of it is not useful while cycling. Building a good aerobic base is what takes the longest in terms of hours per week and hours in total. So this will take time.
Moreover, you should keep in mind how to measure ability. In the world of cycling people often focus too much on your FTP or your specific power (W/kg). But there are other aspects that are important. If you are good at hockey and the like, you might have more fast twitch muscle fibers and thus, a better sprint. So a “bad” FTP might not be an indication of bad fitness. When the world-renowned sprinter Marcel Kittel was active, he had a specific power of about 4.9 W/kg — which is really good for the average person, but really, really bad when compared to 5.8+ W/kg that most in the pro peloton have.
If you want to find out what kind of talents you have, you should test your abilities — sprint power, 1-minute power, 5-minute power and 20-minute power. There are tables that tell you how good or bad you are in comparison to others. Then figure out what you want to do while cycling and why. If you are good at sprinting and shorter efforts, crit racing might be your jam and you should stay clear of hill climb TTs (unless you like them, of course).
PS You mentioned you have small children in day care. That is my biggest limiter: my daughter is the cutest incubator of germs you have ever seen. So about once, twice a year I get sick, which results in a 2–4-week break in my training. That’s what costs me. That and sleep.
I can’t contribute to this thread other than to say it has been really informative for me. So thanks to the OP for asking the question and thanks to everyone who gave their opinion.
Reading this has made me realise where my goals should be considering my age and weight and available time.
To me, what’s missing is a goal. I’m very process driven, but I want to be stronger/ faster on the bike for racing, longer endurance events like audax etc. Unless I’m missing something, you just have an FTP target? Seems a bit irrelevant just in of itself?
I’d hazard a guess that you’re already stronger and able to hold your own with non-race focussed/ recreational cyclists. That means getting around fondo’s/ centuries/ group rides (in the right group) no bother. From my own club, if the social groups are doing inside rides, it’s noodling on zwift rather than “Training”.
*I’m not in anyway disparaging of this group - if anything I’m a little jealous.
A) You’re not bad given your history and lack of consistent cycling
B) You’re probably 10-20 watts higher than you think. Neo 2ts report low in my experience
To the OP - How are you so time limited? I know you mentioned wife, 2 kids, job etc but there really is a lot of freeable time in the average week. If you look at Ironman training and threads you’ll see that it is very possible to put in sufficient time for 3 different sports, (5 if you include eating and sleeping) and still be able to do the normal human stuff. What is wrong with getting up at 5am and knocking out an hour on the trainer before the family breakfast? Getting up early is great, it’s only a problem if you go to bed late and there is almost never a good reason to stay up past 10pm. TV is a waste of time. What about a run in lunchtime? What about an hour in the evenings once the kids are in bed?
I speak as someone who managed an IM with a busy, senior job, 3.5 hours a day of commuting, wife and 3 young kids.
Don’t worry too much about squatting big weights - this doesn’t make you a faster cyclist. If it is taking up time which you could otherwise be using pedalling then it’s a no-brainer to drop it. Also running won’t make you a faster cyclist but it is still a worthwhile endeavour on its own account.
1 thing that does leap out is that a lot of the talk is about FTP and endurance but at a more basic level cycling fast is about moving your legs fairly quickly. A 23 minute 5km is not very fast. What sort of cadence do you usually ride at? I remember seeing a friend’s strava feed onetime as “FTP test” and he was doing 75rpm and then died on his arse after 10 minutes.
You’re fairly tall and light so you could think of doing 95rpm as a good benchmark. It’s a lot easier to go fast (and get a high FTP reading) if you’re spinning at 100rpm than 80rpm.
Don’t obsess about FTP, obsess about getting faster, better, whatever: - Learn to do everything better: training, pedalling, eating, sleeping, time efficiency, family time optimisation. The FTP will come once the other stuff falls into place…
I am just pushing back a little bit as I’ve seen this sentiment expressed elsewhere on this forum. Some people don’t need a goal like a race / fondo / audax to motivate training to be a stronger / faster cyclist. The goal is to be a stronger / faster cyclist.
FTP goals are arbitrary. So is completing a century or a race or whatever. Or completing an event in a certain amount of time. My concern with FTP goals is you can control many of the inputs, but not all, and even experienced cyclists don’t know what is really achievable based on time / training / genetics, etc.
I second this. I would like to race someday but its not the goal, its something I may do at some point to play with any success I may have already found. That said, I am in the same boat as the OP with pretty crappy cycling numbers and often wondering why I suck at this but I have gotten better at putting it in perspective.
My main goal is to win the US crit championship in the soon to be created 110-115 year old category. I have 70 years left to train for it. This helps make all the other goals strategy or tactic.
Running is suddenly not something that takes away from cycling its bone density, foot strength, zone 2 work, heat/cold adaptation. If you cant walk or break something, game over.
Lifting is not cross training, its central. You have to build as much muscle as you can when you can to be at a better starting point when the decline begins. Its like having enough in your 401k to make it past 100, you gotta make the deposits.
Weight control and diet are not just to improve, you gotta beat atherosclerosis over the long term hunting us all down.
Finally, cycling itself. I am slow, frustratingly slow. 220 ftp at 5’8" and coming up on a year of structure but I have to remind myself my primary goal this year has been bodycomp and metabolic health not ftp.
The 2 things I have to remind myself:
There wasn’t one mention of cycling? Just FTP. I get just wanting to be faster. Like I said I am process driven myself. But me being faster is the goal, not just an inside FTP target.
It helps to have goals and events but you have to know what to do when the event is over.
Personally, I don’t think you always have to be in a plan or be doing structured intervals. At certain times of year you can just ride outside and smell the roses or get on the trainer and watch a movie.
We moved last summer, in the middle of covid. I no longer had my bike club, group rides, or any events on the horizon. I just rode an easy hour on the trainer all winter - 4 to 6 days per week. I rode outside when weather permitted. It’s all about keeping the endurance fitness in tact.
In the spring I did a three week SS/Threshold block and got a 15 point bump in FTP. I took a rest and then did a 2 week VO2max block and got another 15 point bump. In between, I keep riding endurance to maintain.
@OreoCookie - this was a very informative and helpful post, thank you. You’re right, I do need to determine how deeply committed I want to become to cycling (at least for the moment) vs other sports. But in the interim I will take a look into my entire power curve rather than just FTP. Any suggestions on how to test these? Just make some targeted efforts on the trainer and let some software build my curve? And yes, daycare is a killer. I’m getting constantly derailed with what I call a “daycare cold” (low level sickness). Only way to fight back is healthy habits, nutrition, sleep, balancing stress and recovery, but it’s not easy.
@Andy_Girvan - glad it has helped others and I just want to say as my first experience posting on this forum it’s been a breath of fresh air. A friendly, helpful, informative and well-mannered corner of the internet. Who knew?
I think context is helpful here. As mentioned I’ve been an enthusiastic but completely unstructured cyclist for the last 10+ years. Basically a few weekend rides here and there when I felt like it. Started commuting to work on my fixed gear a few years ago, 40 min total per day 5 days a week so a good way to sneak in 3+ hours of Z2ish work.
When the first COVID lockdown hit and all team sports (especially hockey) stopped (and haven’t yet re-started) I needed something to do so bought a Neo 2T and went to town. Found TR and the only real measurable indoors on a trainer without a long history of cycling is FTP. That’s why it’s my focus. I’d love to join a club and ride with others to test my real-world skill/speed, but that’s not realistic at the moment, so my focus is on improving what I can measure. Is there something else I could measure/focus on? I could race on Zwift, but not sure that’s an efficient use of training time?
Will be interesting to see - haven’t ramp tested since I started using Rally pedals, but do notice they read a bit higher than the Neo. Hoping I bought some easy watts to pad my ego!
Good question and I’m not sure I have a solid rebuttal especially as you see to have balanced a lot in your training history. I find that between work (which with WFH is non-stop), kids, getting jobs/chores done around the house, spending time with my wife, some personal time to read/relax, etc. it doesn’t leave much time left over. My wife also works an extremely stressful/time intensive job, so it’s a lot of work to support each other and I need to give her time to exercise as well.
It’s probably just a unique time in my life, but I always wonder when I see people training 10-15 hours a week. What kind of strategies do people use to accomplish this if they have other mid-life responsibilities? @RCC given your background any suggestions? Is the hour before breakfast something you can realistically stick to everyday? Even with that, we’re only at 7 hours a day? When most people put in a 12 hour week, is there a 4-5 hour weekend ride involved? Maybe that’s what I’m missing in my accounting for time? (This is one reason powerlifting/weightlifting is great - you really only need 3-5 hours a week total, depending on your level of adaptation.)
And average cadence is always around 90 or so. Maybe I’ll try to push that up a little and see what happens. You’re right about a 23 min 5k not being fast, but I don’t have an extensive running background so this is more like an “off the couch” metric. Hoping to get closer to 20 min, still not super fast as far as fast running goes.
@mattonabike - your post was awesome, I couldn’t have articulated my fulsome training/life goals better. I’ve always had a goal of being the fittest old person. Hoping to dominate the over 80 men’s league hockey in few years. Your takeaways are probably correct in that focusing on improving one thing at a time is about the best we can do, but it would be great to not have the others deteriorate markedly. I know I’ll lose some squatting strength if I focus on cycling, but I’d prefer not to atrophy to the point of losing everything I’ve gained. Maybe not possible for my genetic makeup, we’ll see.
You can keep all your squat strength, the secret just sucks… 3x10-15 twice per week superset with sortof heavy (5rm ish) touch and go deadlifts.
You are going to lose your 1rm top end, but it comes back fast if/when you make power lifting a focus again. You can hold onto the size and strength pretty ‘easily’ though.
Do 3 sets of the highest reps you can do without losing your mind and do them twice per week. I do sets of 10 with the computed 10 rep max from my 1rm when i was focused on powerlifting. I have not lost (or gained) anything in a year of lots of running and cycling. The thing is is has to be fairly light to save you the warmup time. Sets of 12 or 15 would be even better but mentally I just cant do them. High rep squats suck sooo much. You dont need much if any warm up for your 15rep max so you can just get them done and move on. I superset these with deadlifts because I cant afford the extra days where my legs are heavy. Dont cut them down to once per week or the DOMS will return and ruin your cycling.
I leave the weights on the safety squat bar and deadlift bar in the basement. Walk down grab the bar and rip; done in 20 minutes. Do it early, run later that same day. As long as you stick to twice per week and this is a long term thing not a new lifter learning to squat your legs wont be too bad for riding the next day.
The other secret to the hours per week stuff… You know those meeting you dont really have to talk in and can leave the camera off. That is actually when I usually lift, cause its easier than early in the morning.
@mattonabike - really interesting advice and strategy. I typically train in the 5 rep range. I expected that this was probably still the optimal rep range to hold on to a decent amount of strength by lifting 1-2x a week while focusing on other things (running, cycling, etc.).
I do see the benefit from a time perspective, as working up to 3x5 requires a fair number of warm up sets. Shortening the strength workouts would be helpful and lead to better adherence. And likely 2x per week and shorter is better than 1 big session a week. Unfortunately my pain cave is a small basement and my trainer goes on the lifting platform when in use, but no way around that.
Do you not see increased DOMS in the higher rep range (10-15) vs 5s? That would be my only concern as DOMS can be a killer. The 2x per week would help with that. Maybe I’ll try it. My wife hadn’t lifted in a month+ and I told her to back off to <50% of her last top set weight. She didn’t listen and went with ~70%. Couldn’t walk for days - DOMS is a killer!
The only lifts I really care about are squat/deadlift. I can maintain some upper body strength with grease the groove pushups/pullups. Maybe I’ll try to see how quick I can make a squat/deadlift workout so I can fit it into my next MS Teams call.
Cheers!
Yes, and the most important thing is fun. If all you think about “Boy, I‘m pretty mediocre at this even though I think I shouldn‘t be, that‘d zap my motivation pretty quickly. Get to know the sport, find things you enjoy about it and focus on those.
Yes, but you need to adjust the resistance manually. It‘ll be pretty grueling, but give you a better idea of what you are capable of. Typically, you‘d test sprint (about 15 seconds), 1-minute, 5-minute and 20-minute efforts. The longer it gets the more you‘ll have to pace, so if you are not experienced, you might flame out early.
There is also another factor that is way harder to measure, and that is how quickly you recover from an effort. What I mean is this: imagine you do interval work, say, a sweet spot effort. When I am super fit, I notice my heart rate decreases from my on heart rate (say, 160 bpm) to below 130 bpm within a minute. Currently it takes about two minutes or so as I have just restarted training two weeks ago after a 5-week break.
Oh yeah, I started washing hands as if I had a mild case of OCD. And sleep is my achilles heel. I think if I could improve my sleep and avoid getting daycare colds, I‘d be significantly quicker.
Overall, I’d take a more humble approach, at least initially. Doing strength training and other sports is likely going to benefit you as a person, because you train different muscle groups in different way over your entire body. Getting more aerobic fitness is overall a good thing, too, and even doing 4 hours per week will put you kilometers ahead of other people.
I have 2 kids, 50hr/wk job, I avg 10-12hrs a week on the bike and I’m over 4w/kg. I am lucky that i work from home full time (have since 2017) so commute time is 0. Its certainly doable, but only you can decide if its worth it for you.
I am up at 4am 5 times a week to ride, I have my Sunday long ride, but the other 4 days I’m home before the kids are awake. I dont really “train” as such, 95% of my riding is 5am group rides. The rest is races or the odd 105-110% session. Group riding is higher priority for me, as full time working from home lacks social interaction. Group rides and coffee stops keep me sane.
Riding in general keeps me sane. My wife tells me I need to get out if I miss a few rides, Im a happier dad and husband when Ive been riding my bikes 
Its a big stress reliever for me
This question makes sense and is one of the reasons I asked about cycling goals outside of increasing FTP. It’s not that a racing goal is inherently more valuable than a fitness goal like increasing your FTP but it adds specificity that can be useful. Building that aerobic engine takes time/consistency and taking any time off of the bike will decrease your FTP. Using FTP as the only measure for success seems really discouraging for a extremely time crunched person who is interested in doing other sports as well.
If you had a goal like racing competitively in your age group at the local CX series, you would know that you need to build fitness for a specific race season. Focusing on other sports outside of that timeframe will affect your cycling performance but not necessarily your goal.
A discipline like CX can favor riders who are good at running and have more powerful bodies overall, less focus on w/kg to be competitive. Spending an hour a week working on CX specific skills can have a huge impact on your race results in the lower categories and being skilled within the discipline can help you race against guys with more w/kg and have fun doing it.
Crit racing is another discipline that can favor bigger riders with explosive power. Hitting the squat rack, developing a monster sprint, and learning how to race smart are process goals that can help achieve success on the bike with fewer training hours.
FTP is an important metric and increasing your w/kg is an objective way to measure an important component of your fitness but I think it is a mistake to see that as the only measure of being good at cycling.