Rev Up Your Fitness Levels with Indoor Cycling

© 2003 by Aubrey M. Bryce

Five days after you end a training program, you begin losing cardiovascular and muscular endurance fitness. Each consecutive day of inactivity makes it worse. Your metabolism slows, your resting heart rate escalates, you gain weight and your clothes don’t fit.

Don’t despair -- start an indoor cycling ™ training program.

You can do this at home, using your own bike and an indoor trainer, which is a resistance device ranging in price from $250 to as much as $2500. Start with a basic unit and upgrade only if usage, fitness and aspirations warrant. You’ll also need a heart rate monitor that will help you stay focused, avoid boredom and be your on-bike coach.

If you can’t do this at home or don’t like training alone, consider an indoor training facility. Instructors know about bike fit, positioning and pedaling technique. Most are also experienced cyclists and can help you translate the indoor experience so you feel more like you’re on the road.

Indoor cycling can help with the problem that while some athletes improve their performance each year, others stay the same or regress. Sometimes, low performance is due to just doing “volume” – the same boring rides on the same course.

Often, no training benefit results. One reason is that there is no element of “overload” associated with this type of training. Overload is a prerequisite to a training benefit, which is realized when the body adapts (recovers stronger) to overload stimulation.

Another reason is lack of diversity. Volume training provides basic physical conditioning but nothing in terms of all the other physical attributes which are critical to overall performance gains and that can make you a better cyclist.

Successful cyclists always strive to achieve the “overload effect” with each successive ride. They manipulate distance, intensity and duration to develop all of the body’s physical attributes so that speed, strength and endurance are improved.

If the athlete does not possess the know-how to create this type of program, then a knowledgeable coach with a proven track record in beneficial training effects should be consulted.

Indoor training has a role to play. It guards against weather and traffic risks. It is easier to control performance and focus on a particular physical attribute, it encourages perfect position, style and form, and it allows for analysis and correction of pedal stroke deformations.

Aubrey Bryce is a NCCP certified coach, an Olympian, in the sport of track cycling, and is successful as a Master’s racing cyclist in Canada and the USA. He is president of Enduro Training Systems Inc/, and owner of Le Cycletique, an indoor cycling center in Toronto.

You can contact Aubrey by visiting: www.lecycletique.com.