Tips and Recipes
Do not waste your time. Train smart this winter.
December 14, 2022
It’s time to prepare for the upcoming season.
How should you train during the winter? The answer has changed radically in recent years.
When EF team coach Tejay van Garderen turned professional just over a decade ago, basic training still meant long, slow days in the saddle. He and his teammates would cover endless miles, through the rain and snow. It would be months before they did their first real intervals. So the idea was that slow endurance work would give them a base of aerobic fitness that they could use to get fast later on. Looking back, with his wealth of WorldTour knowledge and experience, Tejay now thinks many of those miles were a waste of time and effort.
“I started with that completely old school, just long base mile thinking,” Tejay says. “We would show up on the group tour and just hang in there for hours. Three hours into the trip, you would stop at a coffee shop and warm up, have a cake and coffee, and then make the other three hours home. We’d be bundled up in these ski masks and thick gloves and we’d be out for hours and hours on snowy days in Boulder. I look back and think, that probably wasn’t so smart. Now, the thinking has totally changed.”
“Focus on intensity first, then add volume.”
– Tejay van GarderenSign up for the Team EF Coaching Fundamentals training plan today
The pros now focus on building strength and power in early winter and adding bulk later. Tejay encourages his Team EF Coaching athletes to do the same. Ambitious fans should rest easy. You don’t have to spend months away from family and work working 30-hour weeks in warm-weather training camps to be competitive. Tejay points to world-class cyclocross riders making the switch to road racing in the spring and track racers who have become champions on the road.
“It’s not like the guys who race ‘cross are adding six hours on top of their cyclocross races,” he says. “They are just doing super short, high intensity, quality runs. Look at the Great Britain athletics programme. Those are all really short, very high intensity events. The guys that came out of there were the ones that ended up being good on the big tours.”
A winter of COVID lockdowns also changed a lot of minds.
“Everyone was trapped inside,” Tejay says. “Many runners couldn’t even ride their bikes outside. And they started doing these indoor competitions that were 45 minutes to an hour long and super high intensity. Once things were opened up and they were able to get out, they added the volume on top of that, and the speeds just skyrocketed. That was thanks to that different approach of intensity first and then volume.”
“That whole old-school mentality of long, long hours in the winter is terrible because you’re just flattening out, so when it’s time to do the intensity, you don’t have that snap anymore.”
-Tejay van Garderen
Tejay isn’t saying you should jump right into VO2 max intervals if you’ve taken time off the bike this fall. First, you need to take a couple of weeks to get used to pedaling again. Regular walks of an hour to two hours are sufficient. Hit the gym several times a week to work out any strength imbalances.
“You have to give yourself a couple of weeks just to get comfortable on the bike again and make sure that your ligaments and joints and everything is working properly and then you can add a little bit of pace and after a couple of weeks start. with intensity,” says Tejay. “If there’s a warm weather day, and it’s the weekend, and you want to go for a long walk, of course it won’t hurt you, but it’s not like you have to work hard in freezing temperatures. because you have to work the hours. Keep it short and sweet with quality.”
That principle—keep it short and sweet with high-intensity sessions—should guide you through the winter. A well thought out program with specific intervals will be much more effective and time efficient than just getting out and cycling for hours.
“If you only have 10 hours a week and you’re like, ‘Oh man, I don’t have time to do all these base miles, because I have a job,’ I think you can relax, because all those base miles aren’t really necessary.” Tejay says. “Quality is what will give you the most bang for your buck.”
High-quality training should be exciting.
“High-quality training should be exciting.”
-Tejay van Garderen
Tejay encourages you to try cyclocross yourself. It’s a ton of fun and just about the hardest workout you can do in an hour. It is also one of the best ways to improve your bike handling skills. He would add it to his program.
Or try indoor racing. Riding your home trainer doesn’t have to be boring anymore. Wahoo X offers immersive indoor training and gives you the opportunity to compete online against riders from around the world. You’ll finish each session full of adrenaline and excited to compete again, instead of dreading another day of exertion.
You don’t even have to ride a bike to get a high-quality workout. Some winter days are better suited to other sports. Cross-country ski or snowshoe. It will do your body good to get out of your crouched cycling position and into a fuller range of motion.
“Your internal engine will get the same benefit,” says Tejay. “Your heart and lungs don’t know the difference between riding a bike or going skiing or going for a run. Those are great ways to balance out some of those monotonous movements you put yourself through on the bike. When it comes to transferring muscle fibers, you have a lot of time throughout the season to dial them in.”
“Your heart and lungs don’t know the difference between riding a bike or going skiing or going for a run.”
-Tejay van Garderen
As the first races of spring approach, you’ll want to focus your efforts on the bike and add enough volume. He wants to be fresh for the long season ahead and ready to make the most of his first few races. That means being sharp enough to respond to attacks and stay in the game.
“If you’re just hanging around in the gruppetto and you can barely see the front, then you’re not really letting the race get to you,” says Tejay. “All that old-school mentality of long, long hours in the winter is terrible because you’re just flattening out, so when it comes time to turn up the intensity, you don’t have that snap anymore.”
That ‘click’ is what will determine if you get to the front group at the crux of the race, or if you can go with the accelerations. Perfect it this winter. Get a training plan from Team EF Coaching. Whatever your goals, Tejay van Garderen and his fellow coaches will use their WorldTour knowledge to help you get faster.
Sign up for the Team EF Coaching Foundations training plan today
Source: news.google.com