Cycling Training Plan for Beginners, 8 Weeks at 3 Rides a Week

James. Hello, and welcome to the WattPlan Podcast. I'm James. I juggle a family, a day job, the odd podium and building WattPlan, and whatever's left goes on an unreasonable amount of sports science. Today's for anyone just starting out. You've got three evenings and a bike, so what should a beginner's plan actually look like? Lyra, our AI research voice, has the studies, and they're all linked in the show notes.

Lyra. Smaller than most people expect. Three rides a week. One comfortably hard sweet spot session, one easy hour and one steady longer ride, with the other four days off. That's about three and a half hours, with a lighter week every month, and it's the week WattPlan builds for a rider who picks Beginner.

James. Three and a half hours. Really? That sounds like almost nothing. Is it genuinely enough to get fitter?

Lyra. When you're starting out, yes. The best evidence is a 2015 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine by Zoran Milanović and colleagues, which pooled 28 controlled trials with over seven hundred healthy adults, aged eighteen to forty-five. Compared with people who didn't train, both steady riding and intervals raised VO2max, the most oxygen your body can use in a minute. Intervals did a little better. [1]

James. So the steady rides are just the warm-up act. Bin them and do intervals.

Lyra. No, and the most interesting result points somewhere else. People who started less fit got the most out of intervals. So the newer you are, the more a bit of intensity seems to pay. That's the case for one harder ride in the week, not for throwing out the easy ones.

James. But if beginners respond best to intervals, surely they should be doing two or three hard sessions, not one?

Lyra. That's the leap the study doesn't make. It compared training with not training, and intervals with steady riding. It never tested how many hard days a new rider can absorb, and some of its trials lasted just two weeks. So WattPlan keeps a beginner to one harder session a week, however many hours they have. When you're new, everything is still a fresh stress, and hard days need recovery.

James. Fine. So what is the one hard ride?

Lyra. Sweet spot, which is 88 to 94 percent of your FTP, FTP being roughly the power you could hold for an hour. In the first week it's two fifteen minute blocks inside an hour on Tuesday, and the blocks change shape from week to week. Thursday is an easy hour, sometimes with cadence drills, and Saturday is ninety minutes steady. Then every fourth week drops the hard ride altogether and shortens the other two.

James. Every fourth week. Is that science, or just how coaches have always done it?

Lyra. Mostly the second, to be fair. Three on and one off is a coaching convention more than a tested number. But the lighter week gives the first three time to sink in, so when it comes, ride it light rather than sneaking a hard session back in.

James. Here's the bit I think scares people off, though. No power meter, no heart rate strap. How on earth do they know they're in sweet spot?

Lyra. The talk test, and it's better than it sounds. A 2008 study in the Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and Prevention ran four series of experiments in healthy young adults. The last point where people could still talk comfortably lined up with their ventilatory threshold, where breathing starts to climb steeply. And when training raised that threshold, the talk test moved with it. [4]

James. I'd honestly have put money on that being a fudge. So my breathing is a decent gauge.

Lyra. A decent one, and it keeps up as you get fitter, which is the part that matters. Ride a WattPlan workout by feel and each step gives you an effort out of ten and a talk test instead of watts. Easy spinning is a one or two, chat freely. Endurance is full sentences. Sweet spot is a six, a few words at a time.

James. And when do they get an actual FTP? Because everyone wants a number on day one.

Lyra. Not on day one. Ride the first block by feel. Without an event, the plan runs twelve weeks, and the last week keeps the load and ends on a test. With a power meter that's a twenty minute FTP test, and with only a heart rate strap it's a thirty minute heart rate test.

James. I've always had my doubts about that twenty minute test, though. Knocking five percent off feels a bit arbitrary.

Lyra. It's a working number, and the best study on it says so. Fernando Borszcz and colleagues tested 23 trained male cyclists, in the International Journal of Sports Medicine in 2018. Ninety-five percent of the twenty minute average matched their hour power on average. But when they rode at that number, they lasted about fifty minutes, and it varied a lot from rider to rider. The authors said the two shouldn't be swapped for an individual. [5]

James. Fifty minutes, not sixty. So the test gets you close, and the sessions tell you whether it's right.

Lyra. That's the way to treat it. Which is also why, if you're new to this, you don't wait for the number. Start with the three days you can actually keep, and choose the long ride day first, because it's the hardest one to move. The point of week one is to finish all three rides and want to come back.

James. And somebody who already trains with power or heart rate? Where do they go wrong?

Lyra. On the easy days. Endurance is 56 to 75 percent of FTP, or 69 to 83 percent of your threshold heart rate. The classic mistake is riding Thursday nearer sweet spot because it feels productive. One hard ride means one hard ride.

James. But an easy hour on a Thursday evening feels like a wasted evening. Is it really doing anything?

Lyra. That feeling is exactly the trap. Remember what the study backed, a bit of intensity, not intensity every time you ride. Keep Thursday easy so that Tuesday can actually be hard, because the hard day is the one that needs the recovery.

James. Fair enough. I think every rider I know has fallen into that one. And a first sportive? That's where people start to panic.

Lyra. If you're racing, or you've got a sportive in the diary, give WattPlan the date. Your long ride fills the time you've said you have that day, and gets steady tempo blocks as the event gets closer. So if Saturday is ninety minutes, that's the ceiling, and a hundred kilometre sportive is several hours. Give Saturday more time as the date gets closer.

James. So where does the evidence actually give out?

Lyra. Sooner than you'd like. Milanović included trials as short as two weeks, and VO2max is a lab number, not a sportive time. Borszcz tested only trained men. And nobody has tested a three and a half hour, three day week head to head against other ways for a beginner to start. It's a sensible default, and how you respond week to week matters more than the exact sessions.

James. Then give me week one.

Lyra. Pick Beginner when you set up the app, then choose your three days and put them in your calendar, long ride first. Ride the week as the plan gives it, judging effort by the talk test if you've no power meter. And after each ride, tell the app how hard it was, so the Coach can see how the training is landing.

James. Three days in the diary, Saturday first. And if I can only get a few words out, that had better be Tuesday, not Thursday.

Lyra. Three rides you'll actually keep are worth more than a perfect plan you won't. Finish the first week wanting a fourth.

Lyra. The full article and every study we mentioned are on the WattPlan blog, linked in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed this, follow the WattPlan Podcast wherever you're listening, so you don't miss the next one.

James. And if you want a plan built around the time you've actually got, get WattPlan on the App Store or Google Play. Thanks for listening.

Voices produced with ElevenLabs. James's voice is a clone of his own, Lyra is an AI voice, and James reviews every episode.