hey TR, I used to ride regularly outdoors and some trainer too. About 3-6 hours a week. About 3 years ago, I had to stop riding because of some health issues, and the procedures that had to be done made riding not possible. I’m better now and want to get back into things but still cannot ride outside at all for at least another year or so. Tried to do some riding but damn it’s hard.
Any suggestions on how to get back on the wagon? My fitness has gone down the gutter since, even a slow jog is challenging.
One thing that occurs to me is to forget about where you want to get to and just focus on the ride you’re doing.
Myself I find overly long-term and daunting goals tend to shut me down but once I’ve finally started the momentum can build and build and build and before I know it I’m underway and excited as I see the progress.
Don’t worry about where you’re headed, just enjoy each ride. Its a bit simplistic but then sometimes the best advice really is
that’s good advice, thank you. In terms of any kind of plan, are there ones on TR that start out super easy and short and progress slowly? i think 30mins is already a challenge target at this point and my health means i can’t really push that hard for now
It doesn’t sound like you really need any structure right now. I would start with your own simple time based goal. Even if that is starting out with 3 x 15 min rides a week. And just build that up slowly. Maybe on week 2 you do one ride at 20 min. On week 3, 2 rides at 20 min. etc.
Maybe to clarify something: do you have an indoor riding setup you want to use until you can ride outside confidently again or are you looking for alternatives to riding which will help you to get back to cycling eventually again?
Coming from a similar situation I found that doing it every day helped me get back to a point where I could build . Lost 90% of a thigh muscle due to a back problem. Could not lift my leg . Put a bike on the hated mag trainer . After 10 min I was done. Did this every day. Every day. Just spinning, very little resistance. After a few weeks, or months (hahaha), I could now do 30 min. Many months later and I could now ride outside. Was very happy doing 10 miles a day. Very easy miles.
I think setting up a plan in TR that has you riding a lot of short easy workouts is where you should start. If 30 min is hard do 15. But do it every day.
Next thing you know , that $15,000.00 race bike will be sitting in your living room .
See you at the top of that mountain.
If you can I’d just link up the trainer to something like MyWhoosh and just do unstructured ‘free rides’ (no pressure) for a bit until things start to flow for you again. Then you can think about structure.
Yeah. Free rides in MyWhoosh, Zwift, or Rouvy. Rouvy would be my choice because I don’t like the cartoon worlds in the other apps. Another thing I like is watching cycling POVs (youtube) while riding the trainer in level mode.
thank you for sharing your experience friend! this really helps. In an environment where everyone seems to be crushing it all day every day, it can be hard to take the smaller steps to get there. Thank you for your kind words and ideas. See you at the top you champ.
This approach worked for me after a year off the bike. I started with easy 30 minute workouts from the TR library, 3x a week. My first workout was Gray Crag (30 min, endurance 0.9, 18 TSS). I marked it as moderate. I eventually progressed to 45 minutes then 60 minutes.
I eventually progressed to 45 minutes then 60 minutes.