Sep 04, 2012

A part of every year of cycling is the usual pre-season training that is followed by the ‘Race Season’ which is were you want to show all that hard work has paid off and see the effects of the previous development gains brought by the last training phases.  But the bit between race season and pre-season training is a time were you either loose all the developments made during the training and race phases that you have worked hard in or it can be a phase that can be of major influence that will help you again raise up another ‘step’ or ‘level’ in your fitness comparative to years gone by.

This is often a time that motivation is lost to train and the effort of the previous months has taken it’s toll on your mental and physical ability to go out and do structured training.  The key here is that you don’t need to have the same discipline or forethought into your training as in previous phases nor do you need to have the intensity or duration. This is a phase of MAINTENANCE and continued unstructured training that will help you find that new higher ‘peak’ fitness when race season comes back round again.

So why do this?

Well a lot of people will come to the Summer/Autumn and leave there bike in the garage for 6 weeks or longer sometimes before dusting off the winter bike to get back in training again, what this does is start your build up in fitness again at a lower level that will take you longer to reach fitness than if you had done the ‘Maintaince’ phase and also your peak come race season may not be any different to last year, why is that? The reason is that long lay off you had losing many of the benefits built up over the past 6-8mth of dedication and sacrifice. What I am proposing is not overly scientific or structured but a basic continuation of exercise or training during this down time after the season is over.

Basic steps include:

• Maintain aerobic exercise 3-4 times a week

• Continue a healthy lifestyle without it being obsessive- excess weight gain and lowering of immune system can be detrimental come pre-season training phase

• Stay injury free with new activities

• Any exercise or training should be fun and without stress

• Intensity can be continued to maintain fitness, but this must be controlled and not at an effort that will bring round large physiological or psychological strain to the athlete

So your objective at this time is to maintain a basic fitness that will help your body continue a year round development and help you reach new heights in fitness come race time again, keeping exercise fun, unstructured and maintainable.

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