How to Build a Cycling Training Plan that Matches Your Skill Level and Goals

Improving as a cyclist doesn’t have to be complicated. At its essence, a good training plan consists of progressively riding more, adding some intensity, and allowing your body to recover and repair itself.

While you can create a training plan yourself, there are many great resources out there that take the guesswork out of the process. Plus, many training plans can also sync with a modern cycling computer like the Hammerhead Karoo 2 to make following the workouts a snap.

TrainingPeaks is a popular platform used by many coaching companies, pro athletes and recreational riders. It is a great resource to not only find a good plan for you, but also to track your progress and drive your daily workouts by syncing with your bike computer so every day’s workout automatically pops up on your screen.

Another option is to hire a coach who can create a training plan just for you. Many companies like CTS and FasCat Coaching offer various levels of coaching to guide you along the way.

Here’s how you can get started.

How should you set goals and a timeline for your cycling training plan?

Training is a lot more fun when you are training for something. That something could be a formal event, a big ride, or a number like a threshold power output.

The best way to pick a training plan is to pick your goal. What is something that piques your curiosity? Something that would be challenge, but would be a realistic goal to strive for? Put that on the calendar, and then work backwards from there.

There’s a relationship between how much time you have to train and what challenge is realistic. For instance, if you give yourself a year to prepare, a whole world of events opens up to you. Conversely, if you have four weeks to prepare, then your target event needs to be doable with a fitness level that is close to what you have now.

One great option is to pick an event that is four or five months away. That will give you adequate time to progressively build yourself up.

Another option is to pick a number. Newer cyclists may find it rewarding to set a personal best for a given duration or a local climb — anything that can serve as a repeatable benchmark to measure yourself against works great. More advanced cyclists who train with a power meter benefit from training to raise their power output.

The best option is to pick an event that inspires you, select a training plan that will get you prepared, and periodically test yourself against your benchmark numbers to see if you are improving.

What is a good training plan for beginner cyclists?

The best training plan for a beginner cyclist is simply to commit to consistency. If you have recently got into cycling, just getting out on the bike four to five times a week and having fun will yield results.

If you want to follow a plan, using TrainingPeaks’ Cycling Training Plans resource is a great place to start. There, you can filter first by level (Beginner, Intermediate, Competitive), then filter by duration based on how far out you are from your target event, and also filter by how many hours a week you have to train.

You can also filter training plans by sub discipline, such as time trial, mountain bike, century, and so forth.

Once you have picked out a plan and set the start date, you’re in business: each day’s workout - or rest day - will be laid out for you. Most plans are set to have a longer ride or rides on the weekend, and shorter rides and rest days during the week.

If you like the idea of following a workout on your bike computer, you go to your Account Settings page in TrainingPeaks then select Apps & Devices and then Manage Connections. This is a one-time step to connect your training plan to your bike computer. After that is done, all your workouts will automatically sync to your computer so you can follow them, and all your rides will automatically upload for analysis.

What is a good training plan for intermediate cyclists?

A good training plan for intermediate cyclists is one that meshes well with your available time to train, and is inline with your cycling goals. Whether beginner, intermediate, or expert, it is also more motivating and more to train for something than simply train. So, selecting a target goal is step one for picking a training plan.

Want to tackle a new event this year? Or perhaps beat your time (or your buddy’s time) at an event you’ve done before? Then pick a plan that aligns with that goal. TrainingPeaks has a clearing house of more than 6,400 plans that you can filter by event type, your skill level, your available time to train, and the duration until your target event.

The more time before your event, the more nuanced you can be with your training. Typically riders will start with a base phase that includes a lot of endurance work (read: longer, fun rides), and then starts to progressively add in intensity through interval workouts. Many training plans include a taper that leads into your event, which means that your volume will come down so you can come into your big day fresh.

What is a good training plan for expert cyclists?

As with beginner and intermediate training plans, the best training plan for an expert cyclist is one that is targeted to the rider’s personal goals. Specificity is key for training, and the demands of a 100-mile mountain bike race at altitude like the Leadville Trail 100 are different than a 45-minute criterium.

As with beginners and intermediate riders, experts can benefit from picking a plan from TrainingPeaks, or by working with a coach to custom build a training plan.

The best training plan takes into account not only the plan on paper, but the work and the recovery that is actually being achieved. The best training plans for expert cyclists are power-based, so riders can modulate and measure their efforts with a power meter, and also measure improvement.

Other cycling training plan FAQs

How many days a week should a cyclist train?

Training volume varies greatly among cyclists. Professional riders get on the bike five to six days a week, most weeks. Some recreational cyclists — even very enthusiastic ones — can only get out for a couple of days as week. Real-life demands dictate what is feasible.

If you have the luxury of a relatively open schedule, however, then riding five days a week is excellent. In broad strokes, doing a short but relatively intense workout on Tuesday and Thursday mixed with easy rides on Wednesday and Sunday and a longer ride on Saturday is a good recipe for success.

How many hours should a cyclist train?

Again, real life dictates total hours more than anything else. Professional riders’ weekly hours will range anywhere from 10 hours to 30 hours, depending on where they are in their training cycle.

For recreational cyclists, effective training hours can be defined by a training plan. Most plans start by ascertaining how much total time you have to train, and then breaking weekly hours down from there.

If you can dedicate four to eight hours a week, for instance, you can absolutely make measurable improvements as a cyclist.

How can I help with recovery between rides?

There are two key ingredients in the receipt for getting faster on the bike: training, and recovery.

One common mistake cyclists make is simply not recovering enough. Because cycling is so fun, many riders will squeeze in rides on what was supposed to be a day off, or ride hard on days that were supposed to be easy workouts. Just sticking to the plan is step one for good recovery.

To recover between rides, healthy living habits help considerably. Getting quality sleep is paramount, and going to bed at a regular time and reducing or cutting out alcohol definitely improves the quality of sleep.

Wearable devices now allow us to quantify our recovery, both in terms of total hours of sleep (and not just total hours in bed) and with HRV, or heart rate variability. The more fatigued you are, the lower your HRV will be. The more rested and ready for training you are, the higher your HRV will be.

You do not need to use a wearable to recover well for cycling; they are simply tools that allow you to quantify your recovery much in the way that a power meter allows you to quantify your output on the bike.

Related reading: What is VO2 Max? What is FTP? And how can I improve them? 

How can Hammerhead help you reach your training goals?

Hammerhead can help with your training by making it easy to follow a plan in both the big picture and in the minute details.

Achieving your training goals starts with setting a goal, then finding a complementary plan to reach that goal. That is the ‘forest’ view of training. The ‘tree’ view of training, which is just as important, is the daily details of training: what workout are you doing today? How long are your workout intervals, and in what training zones? How long is your recovery period between intervals? It is here that Hammerhead can help you every step of the way, with a daily workout overview and then on-screen prompts for each workout step, as well as automatic syncing of your data so you can track your progress as you go.

And of course all of the workout features work right alongside the best-in-class navigation and other helpful features of the Hammerhead Karoo 2.