Rethinking Your Winter Bike Training

As I’m writing this, many of you are probably battling the storms or grinding out virtual kilometers and will then, with these “base miles” in the bank, settle down to plan your training assault for the rest of the Winter which will no-doubt involve a focus of “getting the miles in” or mindlessly logging more distance than 2023.

I plead you to stop, re-evaluate your training and, for the sake of your fitness, health and sanity, to embrace more of a quality over quantity approach.

The winter base building myth

Strict steady winter base training can be effective for professional riders, who can log 30-hour plus weeks. The sheer volume they’re able to do provides the training stimulus and gives them the deep base of endurance fitness they require for the heavy racing load they have to contend with in-season. However, even for pros, the concept of just doing steady work over the winter has largely fallen out of favor.

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For us non-pro mortals, who are having to juggle work, family and other commitments and can only probably manage 3-10 hours weekly on the bike, sticking purely to low intensity is a waste of precious peddling time. Training load is a combination of volume and intensity and, if both are low, you’re not going to be giving your body any significant training stimulus to adapt to. The only way to create training load on limited time is by including some intensity.

Stay healthy

It’s not just about performance though, trying to manage high volume training spanks your immune system and a compromised ability to battle bugs and viruses is the last thing you want at this time of year. I remember talking to one rider a couple of winters ago who was constantly complaining about being ill and freezing cold on rides. It turned out he was trying to build a big endurance base and lose weight over winter - insanity! Even more so when his main goals were mid-summer sportives and club 10-mile time trials!

That’s before we even get onto the madness of heading out onto the roads in icy conditions - why?! That’s what an indoor trainer or a mountain bike is for. Risking a fractured collar bone or worse by riding in sub-zero conditions when you don’t have to or no-one is paying you to is lunacy.

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By not needlessly weakening your immune system or injuring yourself, I can guarantee you’ll emerge into spring far healthier and ready to ride that if you’d subjected yourself to a winter of cycling purgatory.

What should I be doing?

For the vast majority of riders, I’d recommend an extremely simple approach to see you through the rest of the winter.

The “cycling core” of this would be two higher intensity mid-week rides and a longer (but not epic) weekend ride. For me this tends to be a Zwift race/workout on a Tuesday or a night MTB if it’s dry and frosty. On Thursday evenings I’m on Zwift again for Hotchillee Gain Train - a paced Hare and Hounds ride that I often lead on and delivers a decent sweet-spot/threshold effort with a spicy race simulation finish.

At the weekend, I’ll then make a call on the weather, who’s about, what I feel like and what other commitments I’ve got. So, this could be a couple of hours indoors just to get it done, a few hours with my mates on the road or gravel or some fun on the MTB - especially if it has snowed. Nothing massive, nothing epic but plenty to keep things ticking over.

I’ve followed this lower volume approach through the winter for the last few years after a mile munching mindset led to illness and injury - including a really nasty infected saddle sore that required a Boxing Day visit to A&E! Despite riding less and knocking on the door of my fiftieth birthday, my cycling form hasn’t dropped through the floor - in fact my FTP has consistently crept up through the winter and I’ve definitely hit the spring healthier and with more enthusiasm for riding.

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Off the bike work

I’d also recommend that almost all riders should be doing regular off the bike training. The winter is a perfect time to prioritize this and will give you the strength and mobility foundations that’ll not only serve you well into next season but for the rest of your life.

Yoga, Pilates and/or focused strength/mobility work should be a regular part of all riders’ routine. I’ll try and lift weights for 2-3 sessions throughout the winter and I’ll talk more about the why and how of off the bike training for cycling in my next article