The Best Fall Training Strategies for Cyclists

By Jim Rutberg,
CTS Pro Coach, co-author of “Ride Inside“ and
“The Time-Crunched Cyclist”

As the summer cycling season winds down, cyclists face several options. With your biggest event goals in the rearview mirror, the next few months are full of opportunities! Rather than sitting on the couch and watching football, use this time to address aspects of health, fitness, and performance that were difficult to deal with during the height of your sport-specific training. Here is a list of common fall training strategies we recommend for cyclists of all ages.

Zone 2-3 Endurance Block

Most cyclists with summer goals reach September with tremendous conditioning. You spent the spring building your aerobic base, then raised your Functional Threshold Power, VO2 max, and anaerobic capacity with targeted intervals in the summer. That took a lot of focus and dedication, and now that the pressure is off you can leverage that fitness to further deepen your aerobic base with an unstructured or minimally structured endurance block.

During shorter weekday rides, tap into that elevated FTP by riding Tempo intensity (Zone 3) for 30-60 minutes during 90-minute rides. On the weekends, scope out some long adventure rides on the road, gravel, or MTB and bring the intensity down to a steady Zone 2 effort. Rack up the hours while the weather is nice and bank aerobic fitness before the impending Holiday Season (it’ll be here before you know it!) complicates your schedule.

Dial in Bike Fit and Equipment Changes

With a long runway until you need to engage in structured training with high power output again, this is a good time to update or experiment with your riding position. Want to get more aero? Curious about shorter cranks? Want to try a range of new saddles? Perhaps it’s time for a whole new bike? Now is the best time to figure all that out.

You want to make changes to your bike fit or equipment when you can direct training time specifically to adapting to the new gear or position. Many times there is a period of trial and error, micro adjustments, and establishing new neuromuscular patterns. It’s best to handle that when your training intensity is pretty low, rather than as you’re ramping up into your competition season.

Experiment with Nutrition

Successful athletes are creatures of habit when it comes to training and sports nutrition. If you’ve been training for a few years or a few decades, you probably have some deeply engrained nutrition habits. On one hand, that’s great because you know what works for you. But sports nutrition has evolved over the decades and maybe it’s time to see if new practices and products might work even better for you.

As with bike fit and equipment, you want to make changes to your nutrition strategies when there’s little to no risk of derailing focused training. That makes the fall, while you’re engaged in mostly generalized, unstructured training, the perfect opportunity to test out new nutrition strategies. You could experiment with high-carbohydrate intakes during long rides (e.g., 90-120 g/hr) to train your gut, see how you tolerate high calorie intakes, and see if you notice any performance improvement. You could try the opposite, too, and experiment with endurance training with low carbohydrate availability.

Many of the 50+ and 60+ athletes we work with are trying to shift their macronutrient composition to incorporate higher daily protein intakes. Athletes who have been carbohydrate-focused for many years often find their current protein intakes are at or below one gram of protein per kilogram body weight. Attempting to double protein intake to reach 1.5-2.0 g/kg body weight can be a challenge without significantly changing the ingredients in your daily diet.

Establish Strength Training Habits

A lot of cyclists like the idea of strength training but are hesitant to change their habits to actually incorporate more of it. This is a good time to direct focus to learning how to strength train. Your aerobic fitness and cycling-specific power are high. It doesn’t take much cycling training to maintain that fitness. You can afford to direct time and effort to learning the movements, adapting through the initial soreness, figuring out what movements and equipment you like, etc. That way, when it’s time for focused cycling training again, you have a dialed strength routine that you can continue with instead of dropping it.

Go see the Doctor and Physical Therapist

Now is a good time to have your annual physical and blood work. If you’ve just finished the most stressful training period of the year, give yourself a few weeks to recover normally before visiting the doctor for bloodwork. Ideally, this will result in more representative baseline values rather than reflecting acute fatigue and training stress. Take note of your iron levels to see if you are in any stage of iron deficiency or anemia. If you are, this is a good time to address iron consumption in your diet or work with your physician on iron supplementation.

If you got banged up in falls and crashes during the season or have nagging muscle/tendon issues, now is a great time to go see your physical therapist. A lot of athletes push through small injuries and discomforts during the season because they don’t want to derail event-specific training. But left unattended, those injuries lead to altered movement patterns, overuse injuries, and lingering pain. Use this time to prioritize self-care so you’re at your best when it’s time to ramp up into event-specific training again.

What About Time Off?

We have to redefine what “taking some time off” means for modern athletes. There is a benefit to reducing training intensity and overall workload, and a big psychological benefit to taking some time away from structured workouts. But most amateur, time-crunched, or aging athletes, a prolonged cessation of exercise is neither necessary nor beneficial. If anything, staying active preserves your daily routines and habits. Being active is part of your lifestyle and turning that off is more disruptive than it is physically or psychologically helpful.

What most athletes need is a mental break from the rigor and structure of goal-oriented training. The strategies described above are low-pressure, inquisitive, and opportunities for exploration – all while staying active and maintaining your athletic lifestyle.