Cycling is not just taking your bike out for long smooth rides. If you want to boost your stamina and increase your speed, you need more than just riding practice. You need regular workouts and cycling exercises. Biking tones your muscles and keeps you fit. But to help boost your speed and balance, you need to work out with your bike. This helps improve your speed at a faster rate than just riding your regular trial every day for long hours. Here are nine cycling exercises or workouts that you can try out.
Top 9 Cycling Exercises and Their Benefits:
1. The Triple Threat:
First, warm up for fifteen minutes. Then boost up your intensity and hold it for at least three minutes. This means you work very hard for those three minutes. Take the next three minutes to recuperate. Repeat the entire procedure at least twice. Then finish your trail at your regular pace. This helps improve your VO2 capacity, i.e. it helps force your body to find better methods to utilize more oxygen when your body demands it.
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2. Spin Ups:
Warm up for five minutes and then spin up to the fastest motion with smooth pedal strokes, keeping your upper body quiet for one minute. Rest for the next three minutes. Repeat the entire procedure six to eight times. After some time, increase the duration of the fast spins and rest for less time. Spin-ups like these help make you more efficient by moving the effort from your leg muscles to your cardiovascular muscles.
3. The Meander:
Sometimes all you need to do is forget about all the technological trash with gears and equipment and just ride a bike like a kid. Grad hold of a ride any cycle available and just ride your heart out. Look around you, feel the breeze, ride through your old trail and enjoy riding for the sake of riding.
4. Hill Attacks:
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5. Tempo Training:
Tempo training helps boost your sustainable race pace. It also helps improve your threshold by forcing your cells to produce more energy. Warm up for at least ten minutes and start riding a hard pace that could carry you over a 40km race. Ride on for fifteen minutes. Then take three minutes to recover. Repeat the procedure twice. As your fitness improves, increase the tempo time and reduce recovery.
6. Cross The Threshold:
This exercise helps push your legs to their breaking point and then helps extend that limit. You warm up for ten to fifteen minutes and then make your effort high enough that you feel your legs scream. Hold it for five minutes at least, then relax and ride just below your comfort zone. Do at least three sets of this exercise. It will prove to be a great help in increasing your threshold.
7. Thirty Second Blasts:
First, you need to warm up for at least ten minutes, then sprint all out for thirty seconds. These are called the thirty second blasts. After the thirty second sprint, spin easily for two and a half minutes. Then repeat the procedure at least twelve times. Spin easy to cool down. This is an effective method to improve your body’s ability to use more oxygen in stressful situations. However, it is not advisable to carry out this workout more than twice every week.
8. Adult Recess:
Find a group of other avid cyclists who are willing to help you train. Then practice different formations of paceline, like a single file, then a double or rotating paceline. Race each other to the mountaintop or across the town line. This will help you improve your balancing skills. It will also help you learn how to read other riders, and most importantly, it will take some pressure off and let you enjoy.
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9. Steady-State:
Start your ride at a moderate intensity, not too below your comfort zone, and then hold it for the next hour. Maintain your breathing, and your legs shouldn’t be burning. This exercise helps train your body to tap into your stored fat and utilize that energy.
Performing these top cycling exercises into your daily plan can greatly enhance your cycling performance and overall fitness. Get ready to take your cycling to new targets and enjoy the numerous benefits these exercises bring. Happy cycling!
