pre-made training plans

Mistakes Cyclists Make with Apps and Pre-Made Training Plans

Whether you are new to cycling or have been riding for decades, there are multiple ways to get started with a structured training plan. Personal coaching is rarely an athlete’s first experience with structured training, even though we wish it was. Rather, it’s more common to start with a pre-made training plan from a book, …

cyclists climbing uphill at low cadence and high torque

To Climb Faster, Start With This Low-Cadence High-Torque Cycling Workout

    By Jim Rutberg, CTS Pro Coach, co-author of “Ride Inside“ and “The Time-Crunched Cyclist” Just about every cyclist would like to climb faster, or at least make climbs less taxing at the same speed. Many cyclists focus on improving aerobic conditioning with Zone 2 endurance rides, and layer in lactate threshold and functional threshold …

training streak

Training Streaks: The Pros and Cons of Training Every Day

Behold, the Streakers. In virtually any athlete community, you can find someone who has ridden, run, climbed, swam, hiked, or something every day for the past 30 days, 6 months, or even multiple years. In an era when the value of recovery is more understood and accepted than ever, training streaks make little to no …

annual training plan

Cyclists’ Guide to Creating an Annual Training Plan 

  By Maddison Russell, CTS Senior Coach With the New Year rapidly approaching, many cyclists are wrapping up the Transition Period or “off-season” and getting ready to ramp up training in January. If you haven’t done so already, it is important to start the year with defined goals and an annual training plan to achieve …

6 Goal Setting Failures That Will Ruin Your Season

You would think setting goals would be one of the simpler components of being an athlete. What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? What does success look like if you accomplish it? But the truth is that many athletes are much better at stepping through a long series of …

Reggie Miller Trailblazers

Reggie Miller: 5 Questions for Trailblazing Cyclists

By Reggie Miller, NBA Hall of Fame, Olympian, MTB Racer, CTS Contributing Editor For my last article of the year, I reached out to 4 highly respected cyclists I admire to ask them 5 unique questions. It’s always interesting to know how champions find their inner drive. What motivates them to continually push the envelope …

Zone 2 cycling

How and Why to do Indoor Zone 2 Endurance Cycling Workouts

Indoor cycling has long been characterized by high-intensity interval workouts, because they are a good way to create a bigger training stimulus in a shorter period of time, they keep athletes engaged and focused, and they’re often safer and more convenient to complete on a trainer. CTS championed such workouts; they factor heavily into the …

off-season

Should cyclists train hard during the off-season?

  By Jim Rutberg, CTS Pro Coach, co-author of “The Time-Crunched Cyclist”, “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning”, and “Ride Inside“ Trends in endurance training come and go, and long and easy workouts for building aerobic endurance are back in fashion. We’re talking 2+ hours at Zone 2 or even Zone 1. Long easy rides work wonderfully if you …