Many times cyclist get stick in a plateau or want to know how to improve their cycling. It is the tiny changes you make that can lead to huge breakthroughs and results in your cycling.
I stumbled upon an Anthony Robbins video that applies to all aspects of life and can be applied to cycling and training.
Watch the video below on how “Tiny Changes Could Mean Huge Results” in your cycling.
What small changes could you make that could lead to huge results in your life and cycling? Below is a list of 10 small changes that can lead to huge results:
Looking for an ideal place to train during the winter months? If so, you need to take a serious look at Tucson, Arizona.
Tucson, Arizona is the place to train during the winter months. Many top cyclist and triathletes come to Tucson, Arizona to train during their winter training preparation. An average winter day in Tucson is sunny and 65 to 75 degrees. The mornings can be a little chilly but nothing to stop you from getting out on the road.
Lance Armstrong used Tucson as his base training camp. He rented a cabin on the top of Mt. Lemon. He would spend his day riding the back roads of Tucson and then finish his ride off with a 30 mile climb to the top of Mt. Lemon which gains a total of about 5,000 feet in 26 to 28 miles.
Tucson has one of the best group rides in the country called the ‘Shoot Out’ according to Bicycling Magazine. The 60 mile loop cuts south from Tucson into desolate, mountainous desert toward Green Valley, Arizona almost to the Mexico boarder. During January, February and March the Shoot Out is loaded with professional cyclist from all over the world. The pack ranges from 100 to 175 fit riders. You can often see local pro riders like Phil Zajicek, Gord Fraser and Curtis Gunn gracing the peloton along with pro triathlete Jimmy Riccitello.
For the triathletes out there, Tucson has one of the best masters swimming programs in the country. The program is called Tucson Ford Aquatics which is at the University of Arizona pool.
There are 3 daily workout times to choose from: 6 AM, 12 PM, and 6:30 PM. You can often see many top professional triathletes at the pool. The noon workout is the favorite time among the triathletes.
If Yogi Berra were a cyclist, here’s what he’d say: cycling is 90% mental, and the other half is physical. Yet with enough self-confidence, our minds tend to stay out of the way, and we have the freedom to perform to our potential. The mentally fit cyclist knows how to assess, maintain, and build self-confidence to improve fun and performance on the bike.
By Marvin Zauderer
The building blocks of the mentally fit cyclist’s five core skills, by describing how managing your will to succeed can play an important role in your mental fitness and cycling performance. This month, I explore Self-Confidence, perhaps the most important element of every athlete’s mental fitness.
“Confidence. It’s a huge thing in cycling. I was even told by some people,‘consider a career change.’ You can improve so much by believing in yourself. You can say, ‘I should be at the front of the race, I should be top 5.’ You don’t have to be cocky, but if you’re not confident, you don’t stand a chance. You’ve got to believe in yourself.”
Confidence. Some of us seem born with it. Some of us are lucky enough to grow up among family, friends, and mentors who help develop it in us. But for many of us, at least in certain aspects of our lives, it’s an ongoing challenge.
As I noted in the article on Goal-Setting, much of what we’ve learned about self-confidence in sport builds on the work of psychologist Albert Bandura of Stanford University (home of the current national champion road cycling team — defending their title this week!). Bandura defined self-efficacy as your belief in your “capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.” Roughly translated: Your belief that you can achieve your goals.
You see it in small towns and big cities all over the world, from teenagers to 70-year-old men, the twitchiness and sideways glances as the city-limit sprint draws near. Sprinting is one of the primary components of cycling, for racers and recreational riders alike, but it’s often neglected in training programs.
Even Lance had to work on sprinting. When he was a young rider, he had a strong finish–he won his first Tour de France stage in 1993, at age 21, in a sprint from a breakaway group. But when his post-cancer focus shifted to winning the yellow jersey, sprinting took a back seat to climbing and time-trial training, and by 2003 I was worried about his explosive power. During his preparation for the 2004 Tour de France, the sixth he would win, I reintroduced sprint workouts into his training program. There are two primary components to a powerful sprint–acceleration and top-end speed–and after working on both that winter, Lance sprinted to victories in three of the five stages he won in that year’s Tour de France.
But don’t think of sprint training as useful only at the finish line. It’s also critical for bridging gaps, initiating breakaways, attacking on short climbs and accelerating out of turns during criteriums. It can also save your hide: In my 30-plus years on a bike, a quick sprint has saved me from being caught by dogs and hit by drivers running red lights at least as many times as it helped me win races. Here are two simple workouts you can use to power up your sprint.
Transition-There needs to be clear separation between racing seasons. The goal of this phase is to allow all systems of the body to recover and rejuvenate from a long season of training and racing. An additional benefit of this phase is mental revitalization, which will enable the athlete to approach the New Year refreshed and enthusiastic. Most athletes are reluctant to let go of fitness even temporarily. This is detrimental to long term gain and nobody can maintain peak fitness for years without interruption. In fact, training at high intensities for long periods of time can and will result in detraining of the aerobic system, inability to recovery from workouts, inability to go hard, injury, illness, and an overall lack of motivation.
The solution is allowing for periodization in your training. Periodization sounds like a complex concept but it is simply a process of organizing the year into different phases or cycles (macro,meso,micro) which will stress the various energy production systems and allow for systematic recovery and resulting peak fitness. The western insistence on not using periodizing training and continued “harder is better” approach has caused many, if not most US athletes to never realize their full potential. How many one-speed wonders do you know?
If you don’t allow for adequate recovery it will be forced on you and quite possibly, at a point in time that compromises your entire season. During this phase it is important to allow for recovery of cartilage, ligaments, tendons, muscles, skeleton, the cardio vascular/respiratory system and the mind. You must have something to build on if you wish progress and improve. As with any foundation the broader the base the higher the peak.
The basic premise behind making gains in virtually any training scenario is that the body adapts to stress during periods of rest. This is one of the miracles of the human organism. We are adaptable due to our innately programmed survival response. Humans on a cellular level are designed to survive. When we incur an injury or illness, our immune system kicks in to heal us. When we are subjected to a workload, as long as we have access to adequate nutrition and sleep, we will become stronger. If this were not the case, the stresses that humans have undergone leading up to the post-industrial era would have been devastating. Read the rest of this entry »
While it may seem that the upcoming racing season is light years away, it’s sure to arrive faster than you expected. If you don’t start preparing now, your first race will be here before you even dust off the indoor trainer!
So if you don’t want to get dropped on the first spring ride, start doing these five things today!
1. Rest and Recover
If you do one thing this winter to prepare for next season, it should be rest. Sit, lie down, take a cat nap, sleep all day, whatever you want.
Everyone focuses on their intervals, training rides, and/or strict diets, and then they forget about resting properly! You need to take some time away from the bike and away from the gym, and you should even take a break from thinking about cycling so your mind can get a rest, too.
There are a few reasons for this. First, the rest gives your muscles a chance to recuperate and rebuild themselves. Second, it allows some time for your body to recover from overuse injuries (being hunched over on a bike, spinning your legs at 90 rpm all summer long takes a toll.) Third, and possibly most important, is that some time away from the bike will let you come back with renewed excitement for riding!
