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BOOST YOUR CYCLING FITNESS IN 7 DAYS: COMPLETE TRAINING PLAN

12:29·24 February 2025

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If you missed our 30 day training plan video here it is https://youtu.be/_JhU47AxxBw

In this video we break down what a 7 day training plan would like look if you were trying to increase your fitness.

Take this plan, copy it and use it for yourself.

Key Takeaways

A well-structured 7-day training block should include 2 quality sessions (intervals or tempo), 2 easy endurance rides, 1 recovery spin, and 2 rest days — the ratio matters more than the total volume
Use your training zones correctly: easy days must genuinely be easy (zone 1-2) so your body can absorb the hard sessions — riding "medium" every day is the fastest path to stagnation
For time-crunched cyclists, shorter structured intervals (like 4x8min at threshold) deliver more fitness gains per hour than long, unfocused rides
Recovery is where fitness actually happens — without adequate sleep and rest days, the training stimulus goes to waste and fatigue accumulates rather than fitness
This plan is a repeatable template: run it for 3-4 consecutive weeks, then take a recovery week at 50-60% volume before starting again with slightly increased intensity or duration

To calculate your zones you can use our free calculator here https://www.roadmancycling.com/members

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

I'm going to make you a better bike rider in 7 Days that's the promise I'm in a privilege position on the podcast to be able to pick the brain of some of the world's best coaches and physiologists so I'm not the originator of these ideas merely a messenger passing along the wisdom of those who came before me to deliver you a rock rock solid 7-Day training plan informed by the greatest Minds in our sport now this plan will work using a heart rate monitor or a power meter but not rate of perceived effort alone so you're going to need one of the two now before I dive in this plan is a snapshot it's a moment in time designed to give you a look at what a structure training week looks like for one of our clients you can use it as inspiration but if you take this week and you rinse and repeat it do it over and over again back to back you will stagnate why have you ever seen one of those guys maybe have a friend everyone seems to have a friend like this one guy who goes to the gym twice a week and he's been going to the gym twice a week for about 10 years and he has seen absolutely zero change in his physique well there's a reason for that the reason it's something called the theory of progressive overload in simple terms Progressive overload it's the gradual increase in stress placed on the body during training the key idea here is that in order to get stronger and faster you need to continually push your limits you can't do the same thing every week the stimulus in week two needs to build on the previous stimulus we laid down in week one and the week three stimulus needs to build on the we week two stimulus you get the idea so you can't just do the same thing over and over and expect a different result you will stagnate like your friend gone to the gym with that caveat let's jump in our first mission is to set our training zones now there's a few ways you can do this but I find the most repeatable is a 20-minute feeli test this would be 25 minutes if you're setting your zones using heart rate and not power the important thing for the test is pacing you're looking to Pace the effort evenly like you're trying to cover the maximum amount of distance possible over 20 minutes what you're not trying to do is your best Mark cish impression for the first 60 seconds and then hanging on for dear life for the last 19 minutes I promise you I've tried this and it doesn't give good results and it's a miserable miserable place to be when I'm approaching the tester if I'm advising a client mentally I like to subdivide the 20 minute into quarters and I tried to push a little bit harder in each quarter you're looking what the time trist would call a negative split and that's all coming to a crescendo in the last one minute where you're leaving everything on the table now what does it mean to leave everything on the table I remember back when I was riding the bike fulltime Michael bar formerly of Team sky and T-Mobile he used to coach me back in the day and I asked him how deep am I going in that last minute just to try and get a frame of reference and he said to me go till you see Jesus now I think that's advice that still stands today so for this test I need you to go to you see Jesus in that last minute once you have the test done and you've wiped the vomit from your face and you've sufficiently recovered and not sold your bikes and you've got some composure you're going to take those test results you're going to average that 20 minute effort and you're going to plug it into our free zone calculator I'll link it down below there's loads of Zone calculators you can use but I know irn Works super it's roman.com members totally free I'm going to link it down below and that's going to spit out your individualized training zones that's what we're going to use to inform this training plan there's actually other really cool stuff on that member site that's worth checking out there's a par profile test which will show you your relative strengths and weaknesses compared to your peers I find this really useful for if you're planning out your racing calendar where you can plug in your results and you can say actually I'm a slightly better Sprinter on my peers and now you can go and Target races based on that well that's a little segue once you have those zones spot out you're set up and you're ready to go now we're going to jump into the plan so let's have a look at the overview of the week laid out Monday is normally a chill day now this has changed for me through the years I used to ride almost every Monday a recovery ride this changed when I had a conversation with Professor Steven sailor on the podcast one of the best physiologists in the world he talked to me about active recovery and it totally changed my opinion on this he informed for me that there's never once been a credible paper published on the benefits of recovery rids you're either training or you're resting active recovery is an oxymoron it doesn't exist oxymoron is a cool word isn't it it's like freshly Frozen in addition to this so you're taking the day off but in addition to taking the day off and chilling and mentally preparing for the week getting your kit ready I do like to do a small bit of stretching and Mobility work on a Monday and just is this is just to keep the body loose especially a little bit of hip mobility because we're very prone as py lists to tight hips and hip mobility it's crucial to prevent that tightness and imbalances which can lead to lower back pain which I've suffered for on Long rides and it helps with pedaling efficiency as well so that's Monday boxed off onto Tuesday now when you look at the overview of this plan you'll notice that there's two hard days today Tuesday and then Thursday there are a few skills of taught on how we should introduce intensity like what should we be doing on these hard days initially the theory was that we introduce intensity in a standard periodization model so that means we're starting off with intensity like Tempo work and we're typically doing if we work on a like a a three- we on one week off structure which is kind of advocated by a lot of leading coaches like you know Hunter Allen Joe fril we'll call that block one three weeks on one week off standard would lead us to believe that we should add in Tempo in Block one we should add in threshold in Block two V2 in the next block and then moving on to a Sprint block now there's a contrary opinion to this and that is reverse periodization where instead of starting with Tempo we start in Reverse we start by on in Sprint work then V2 work then threshold work and then finally back to Tempo work I was chatting with Steven Syler and he talked me again about this and he said there's no research that shows that standard periodization reverse periodization or randomly assigned intensity makes any difference to the outcome of an athlete randomly assigned intensity meaning I use those two days Tuesday and Thursday and I pick a Tempo session a Sprint session a Sprint session a V2 Max session it doesn't matter what way that intensity isn't assigned that has no bearing on your overall outcome as an athlete that was really interesting for me and when I experimented on this with clients to see what was better standard reverse or random what I found was clients seem to be more compliant when we randomly assigned intensity I think just keeps things a little fresher I know for me I always got super bored if I had four weeks of just focusing on one thing say threshold so for this session we've opted for a supera threshold session it's 4 by 8 minutes upper Zone 4 now there are two ways to improve threshold you can work below threshold like sweet spot training that's like 88 to 91% of threshold the idea of working here it's if you think about it as a ceiling threshold being a ceiling and we use that analogy sweet spot is working below the ceiling and we're looking to push the ceiling up to improve our threshold that's option one what we're opting for here with the super threshold is we're looking to work just above the ceiling and to pull that ceiling up now this session it is going to be a hard session it will demand your focus and I think best performed for me either indoors because it's very controlled or a quiet climb where you can just focus on the effort without interruption without knowing there's going to be close passes traffic red lights Etc onto Wednesday this is a Zone one ride no that's not a typo Zone one training has been a really recent addition to World horr Riders Weekly training schedule this can be a challenging session it's a bad day for the ego when you're out on a Zone one ride and there's a lady on a hybrid who's riding past you and you're on your 15,000 uh Euro aerodynamic bike with your Aeros socks and you're moving a literally 15 kilm an hour but these sessions do work trust me on this at this intensity the body primarily relies on fat oxidization as its main fuel source which helps improve metabolic efficiency and endurance this session also works on mitochondrial density and function increasing the muscle ability to produce energy aerobically it also boosts capillary density improving oxygen delivery to the muscle tissues and facilitating the removal of metabolic byproducts such as lactate so there's a lot of bang for the book in this easy session but you need to be disciplined and you need to kill the ego at the door because you're going to be going very very slow on the Thursday this is as I said we've two key breakr sessions for the week Tuesday are super threshold and Thursday we're electing to do a V2 Max session and this is a classic V2 Max session of 4minute efforts with six minute recoveries these sessions stimulate physiological adaptation such as increased stroke volume improved capillary density in muscles and greater mitochondrial efficiency you need to be switched on for this session because it will hurt and when it gets to that point of hurting don't look for reasons to quit don't look for a reason to cut it short by 30 seconds the moment that it start to hurt this is the entire purpose of the session it's why you got kitted it's why you made sacrifices to peel away this time from family and work it's why you're training embrace the pain and lean into it when it starts to suck Friday is a little bit of a rinse and repeat of Monday we're off the bike again as I said there's no such thing as active recovery so we're off the bike and we're preparing for the weekend and a gentle bit of core workor again so if you've reached this far into the video and you're thinking all this sounds complicated can you just do this for me yes we do work with a small number of clients oneon-one if you want to pop us an email on admin at romance.com maybe there's a spot to work with you okay so you're into the weekend the weekend is the most enjoyable part of being a bike rider Saturday we have a group ride please do not skip the group ride the Temptation at this point is to start viewing the group ride through a purely physiological lens what physical benefits can I get from the group ride that will shortsighted and it will be mistaken the group ride offers so much more than that you're going to learn bike handling you're going to learn cornering you're going to learn how to take your rain jacket on and off you're going to be connected to your community like we have a Roan group ride every Saturday morning in Dublin and honestly it's my favorite ride of the week I almost never miss it I can't say this enough times do not skip the group ride you've made it to Sunday to close out your week this session needs some discipline it's a zone two ride zone two seems to be everywhere you can look at the moment from petera podcast to Indigo s Milan everyone's talking about Zone 2 Zone 2 for me is best performed With Friends the miles just feel easier with friends conversation flows but those friends they do need to be on the same page as you because you don't want to get drawn into a half Wheeling contest for the duration of the session a useful exercise to ask yourself before heading out the door is what's the primary adaptation my coach is looking for in this session we can't ass simulate multiple adaptations from the one session if the goal is endurance right a lack of discipline will undermine that goal there you have it folks it's a 7day training plan to Kickstart your fitness journey I hope you found it helpful please let me know in the comments if you enjoy this type of content as it's our first Fay into it and maybe we'll make a little bit more and there's a video up here which I mentioned earlier from Steven CER which I think you'll absolutely love if you're attempting to build your own training plan and please do subscribe to the channel catch you soon

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