Master’s Cycling Training

Master’s Cycling is an awesome group of athletes. Massive kudos to everyone raising families and running businesses yet still carving the time out each week to train.

Whether you are completing your first Gran Fondo or going for a Master’s National Championship, YOU ARE AN ATHLETE and that’s awesome.

While we often view the P/1/2 race as the big race of the day, Master’s 35+ and 40+ are a different beast. Not only do you have skilled racers that oftentimes are competitive in P/1/2 cycling races, but you have a pool of experience that sometimes doesn’t exist in the Elite races.

Old dudes shredding with young dudes. Let’s GO!

This is obviously not always the case, but I first experienced this while attending the Southeast Regional Road Championships outside of Atlanta, GA.

It was an amazing weekend because there were so many “adults” out there absolutely shredding, with really good race craft, and a respect for each other that we all had lives to go back to when the race was over.

I was one of the babies, at 37 years of age then, and it’s so inspiring to see guys 5-10 years older dropping watt bombs and you’re feverishly throwing grenades back at their camp. FULL ON BATTLE ENSUED.

While master’s cyclists often come to me and say, “Oh I won’t beat that PR from 7 years ago”, I laugh, and more times than not, we absolutely destroy it.

How? Because we’re able to create better cycling training plans. The tools, cycling training techniques and computer algorithms that we have today are so much more effective that what was used 10 years ago, or when this cyclist was in their “hayday”.

There’s also this idea that we are supposed to get slower. I’m not picking fun at the non-athletes, but look at our society. Many adults get slower because we add weight through poor dieting, we consume a lot of sugar and alcohol, and our lives our solely focused on our children; we forget to take care of our bodies and get fatter instead of faster.

I truly believe you can be your Fastest Right Now.

Here are my tips for all of us aging cyclists that still want to be fast!

Master’s Training: Periodize and Rest

This sounds counterintuitive. I just got done telling you how much experience master’s cycling athletes have, but the first tip is then to train properly? We already know that!

You’d be surprised how many master’s cyclists have their kid’s leave the house and find themselves with a LOT of spare time, and decide that they just want to ride 20 hours a week because “that’s what pro’s” do.

They’ve never really trained this much before, so it can lead to non-functional overreaching, aka: doing too much where your body isn’t absorbing the stimulus; you’re just getting tired, not faster.

The other part of this equation is their buddy down the street also has 20 hours to train, so now they’re creating a group ride every Tuesday and Thursday AM.

But there’s also the city’s group ride every Saturday that has the young guns and hitters, so we have to be at that one too!

Very quickly, they aren’t training, they’re just riding a lot. They don’t get faster, but just sort of fitter than before.

Don’t be this master’s cyclist on a poor training program.

Periodize your training, where you are progressing each week. Use the group rides as one intense session each week. Week 1 you go on Tuesday; Week 2 you go on Thursday; Week 3 you smash the young guns.

This way the group ride route and rider selection rotates, eliminating the effect where people are just good at the group ride they do over and over and over again, but then struggle at a different ride or event.

This brings us to our second point. If you’re riding 20 hours a week, you might not have time for lifting heavy weights!

Lift Heavy

This doesn’t go for just Master’s Cyclists, but every cyclist. But it’s extra important for the master’s riders.

While losing muscle mass has been shown time and time again as we age, even if we lift, lifting heavy weights slows this process down.

More importantly, as a cyclist, you’ll continue to generate more force on the pedals. You’ll be able to turn a bigger gear, and for a longer duration. This is a huge benefit to your performance. The stronger you are as a cyclist, the lower the perceived exertion is, which not only helps physically, but mentally, when things get tough.

Lifting heavy boosts testosterone production and IGF-1, which will boost your brain power!. Do your partner a favor and don’t be wiped out from just pedaling for 20 hours on the bike; lifting heavy weights will improve your sex life.

Master’s Cycling Weekly Training Plan: High Intensity

This is another reason that the hours don’t have to be off the wall for Master’s Cyclists, as some ride too much and then don’t have the watts to GO HARD.

Yes, this was the one thing I agreed with in regards to Polarized Training. Make the easy days easy, BUT THE HARD DAYS SHOULD BE VERY HARD.

You want to still be able to hit 100% FTP efforts and VO2Max efforts with gusto, and not just explode every time the pace surges.

But what about the group ride?? Remember, a lot of group rides have town line sprints that last 20 seconds or less. There are a few hot spots where you go hard for a minute or two. Do NOT ignore 3m, 4m, and 5 minute VO2Max work!

Time trial! Even if you only do truly hard FTP work at 100-105%, work up to 10, 15, and 20 minutes.

While VO2Max might suffer as we age, the studies has varied opinions on what a “trained athlete” is in their study, and it just may be the lack of training intensity that creates the VO2Max decline as opposed to a genetic decrease.

You can be 55 years old and still kick butt. I sure plan on doing that! I keep telling Walle that our 50+ team is going to enter some P/1/2 races!

Get Personal With Your Recovery Routine

Every masters athlete is obviously different, but it’s easy to forget this when we read things like, “The optimal cycling training calendar is 3 weeks on, 1 week off”.

This might not work for you! You might need two weeks on and one week off. I have an athlete that loves to ride, but every third week, he just didn’t feel good. We started experimenting with 2 weeks on and 1 week off. We kept the training load high and incorporated a couple longer rides at the end of the second week; his body not only bounces back stronger with the extra rest, but he realized the mental side of training was zapping him a bit as a business owner.

Having the extra week of rest to mentally and physically recharge, while spending extra time at work, had him coming back from the rest week ready to CRUSH for two weeks straight.

When he recovers from long weekend rides, we sometimes take two days easy before the next hard session.

You need to listen to YOUR body. Yes, you still want to push yourself and overreach so that you reap those gains that periodizing creates, but if you’re just TOAST, take a break.

More rest is better than too much training, which is why I’m adamant about having athletes only complete 3 hard sessions a week at the maximum.

Many athletes, myself included, can perform just fine with 2, high quality, intense sessions, per week. I ride easier than most cyclists do in terms of % of FTP, but when I go hard, I’m all in.

Eat Like An Athlete

Kids are out of the house, going out to eat is a social activity on your schedule, your friend’s are having a few beers, the holidays roll around...the list of reasons to let the belt loop get a little bigger goes on and on.

Don’t do it if you want to be at YOUR BEST. Do you want to be YOUR #FastestNow?

You need to continue to eat like an athlete, because we all know that it is much harder to take off the weight than it is to put it on, and this fact is even more true as we age and have our metabolism slow.

The older athlete’s body naturally starts to carry a higher body fat percentage as we lose muscle, but don’t make the natural issue a problem by adding more body fat.

Check out our nutrition blog to help you find the lean proteins, healthy fats, and CARB UP with whole carbs.

Range of Motion and Stretching, Queue Yoga!

It was Dave Zabriskie that first got me tuned into the idea of yoga for cycling. While I don’t attend yoga classes on the regular, stretching has always been an important part of my morning routine.

Making coffee? Triangle pose.

Feeding the dog? Downward Facing Dog. Or Cow Pose.

Waiting on hold? Idk, maybe a cobra pose?

When I had an inflamed piriformis that almost took me off that bike, I was convinced that I needed to start paying more attention in the gym to my range of motion and stretching.

This all started once I was, funny enough, a baby master’s cyclist at the age of 35.

You don’t need to stretch things so hard that you “feel” the stretch; that can actually be a sign of stretching too much. But keep the blood flowing to parts of the body that we don’t activate on a regular basis as a cyclist is really important.

Sometimes those tweaked areas don’t need stretching at all; they need strengthening. Tight or sore back? Sometimes planking actually helps that!

Getting a well rounded strength routine that is full body and incorporates your heavy lifting protocol above is phenomenal. Some of my favorite off the bike exercises are listed below.

Be Competitive

Riding with your friends is a blast, one of the best parts, if not THE BEST part of cycling. I love just riding more than racing. You make your own course, your own rules, middle of nowhere pitstops for a Coca Cola when deep into a ride, it’s just amazing.

But just riding around makes you dull, and as we talked about above, you still need some high intensity. But when should you dose it?

If you stay competitive with events like races or gran fondos or big group rides, you can dose the high intensity at times that will be beneficial to your big event race day!

Staying competitive will continue to give you your thirst for learning new training techniques and ways to get faster.

Staying competitive will inspire younger athletes and show them how far they can go in their life with cycling. When I came in 11th place in one of my first races at the age of 26, I was SHOCKED that I was beat by people twice my age!

Who wants to dwell on the good old days? Don’t tell stories of when you were 30, tell stories of the century ride that you JUST CRUSHED LAST WEEKEND!

Staying competitive continually shows us how to have a positive attitude in life. Overcoming obstacles in cycling and getting those little wins, whether at a workout or group ride, will surely carry over into day to day life.

Challenge yourself...TO WIN, not just ride.

Crosstrain In The Non Race Season

Common question from Master’s cycling athletes: What should I do during the cycle off season?

Coming full circle with the idea that we need to more than just ride a bike, crosstraining is a great way to stay active and give the body a little break from pedaling circles.

You don’t need to completely give up riding when the race season ends, but if you live in a snowy region, try snow shoeing or skiing. If you live in the desert, some trail hiking is a great change of pace.

Any active sport or activity that uses some different motions and muscles is a great way to clear the mind and take care of any muscle imbalances that have developed over time from all of the cycling.

Yoga and lifting weights are our number 1 choice, as your mobility and strength will increase while putting some load on the skeletal system.

Have Fun

You might not win the group ride and you might be middle of the pack, but show up and compete!

Don’t worry about what others are going to think of you; this isn’t high school. If it feels like it, find a new group of masters cycling athletes to be around.

It’s amazing how many master’s athletes have made a comment of, “Well I don’t want to show up and embarrass myself; I better wait a few months before I try that event.”

There is no better way to get faster and learn that by jumping in the ring. I give the utmost praise and credit to ANY athlete that puts their toes on the starting line. We all start somewhere, and it’s never at our best fitness, but our best fitness will come the more we try.

You may be comparing yourself to yourself from 20 years ago. Or even just 5 years ago when you were “so much faster….” Guess what, no one cares! RESTART THE PROCESS. LET’S FREAKING GOOOOO.

Masters Training Tips

I’m a baby master, what are your tips that you’d like to share? Please email, or contact online, me and let me know, and I’ll update the blog with some recommendations.

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Masters Weekly Cycling Programs & Bike Training Plans | EVOQ.BIKE