Post Number 3: Macrocycle, Mesocycle 1 and an Iphone Tip!

So then, the Master Plan! Macrocycle Jan Cycling endurance / Leg strength Feb Cycling endurance / Leg strength March Cycling specific strength + endurance April Cycling specific strength + speed work May Cycling speed work June Competition July Competition Aug Cycling specific strength + speed work Sept Competition A bit more detail on the first phase of this programme... Mesocycle One Cycling Training January’s cycling training will be trying to fit in as many hours as life allows on the bike in order to build up my endurance. I start back at work on 13th Jan so will aim to get five big rides of 5 hours or more in over, during and after Christmas. There are also group evening rides on a Tues and Thurs night which I will try to ride to add in some extra hours. I actually started this mesocycle* of training 2 days ago (the day of my last blog). The ride was also significant for two other reasons – Firstly, it showed how much fitness I have lost since the Summer and also because on it, I discovered that when wearing gloves, Iphone cameras can be operated with your tongue! With a bit of luck, my monthly total of time on the bike will be around 30 hours (not much by most people’s standards, but realistic for me (Think SMART goals – better to under promise and over deliver to keep motivation high!). The intensity of these rides will be low – as much because my legs will be sore from the strength training I’ll be doing as from the requirement to keep intensity low so that I can ride more frequently. There are certain variables that you can change in training to adapt your training to suit you. These are Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type (of exercise). Generally, if one goes up, another must come down to compensate –though if you’re not doing much training then perhaps all of them could be upped! Of course, I’ll add in a small amount of harder stuff every so often (in the form of Strava KOM’s!), purely so that my body doesn’t fall into a ‘lazy state’ due to it not being challenged very much! *A Mesocycle is a period of training time that has a specific goal attached to it. They usually are 5-6 weeks in duration (the average time it takes to see an adaptation in the body), but could be shorter or longer depending on what you're doing. This mesocycle for me will be a bit longer as endurance takes a while to acquire! Strength Training I love strength training almost as much as cycling itself – it’s frustrating though that the two don’t always work in synergy with one another! I tend to gain a fair bit of upper body bulk, which isn’t ideal for lugging up hills on a bike. However, I do like the fact that I’m not the average weedy cyclist! There are many benefits to strength training that you won’t get by riding a bike and for me, these offset the downsides… I'm lucky enough to have my own mini gym in my garage... the Olympic bar and squat rack are definitely going to be important to me this winter! My strength training actually started back in October – doing endurance based stuff. This general conditioning phase has strengthened the muscles around my back and also added flexibility to my joints. Therefore January’s strength programme can be fairly advanced. So in January, I’ll mainly be doing 5 sets of 5 reps of each exercise with a heavy load on (close to my maximum lift). In a nutshell, this means that I’ll gain strength through increased muscular coordination, rather than by building bigger muscles (muscles tend to grow most - hypertrophy, with slightly higher rep ranges and lighter loads). The overall effect of this training should be increased strength but no extra bodyweight (I hope!). High resistance / low rep training has been shown to cause ‘neural fatigue’ after a few weeks – this causes you to start losing strength, so I’ll be sure to look out for the tell-tale signs (no improvement or even reduction in amount lifted). My next blog will have the exact strength programme I’m doing contained in it. (I toyed with the idea of not giving my ‘secret recipe’ away, but figure that’s probably not the point of writing a blog like this!). January Goals To keep me entertained and because you only live once, I’m making more of an effort to get ‘out and about’. Every month I’m trying to ride somewhere I don’t normally visit. In January I’m aiming for North Wales and the Peak District. Another goal in this period is for me to improve my diet and lose an inch or so from my waistline! I’ll be focusing on eating less refined food and more fruit and veg. I’ll also be aiming to feel hungry a little more often than I currently do! Let’s face it, unless I feel hungry at some point, I’m not going to lose the ‘back butter’ and ‘belly jelly’ that I’ve been slowly gaining since Harry came along 2.5 yrs ago! I’m actually going to go the lengths of weighing and measuring bodyfat (skinfold calliper method). I’ll also take some circumferential measurements as a record. By the way, first impressions on how this blog writing is working for me are good... I've already done 2 workouts I wouldn't have bothered doing normally! Paul