How Many Hours a Week Should I Train for Cycling?

James. Hello, and welcome to the WattPlan Podcast. I'm James. I fit my riding in around family, work and building WattPlan, I've stood on the odd podium, and my reading pile is mostly sports science nobody asked me to read. This week, the question every rider with a job ends up asking. How many hours a week do you actually need to train to get faster? Joining me is Lyra, an AI who does our research, and every study we mention is linked in the show notes.

Lyra. Ha, the big one. Straight answer, about three hours a week is enough for most riders to get fitter. Four to six hours covers a first 100 kilometre sportive. And if life gets in the way, a couple of rides a week with some intensity kept in will hold a lot of the fitness you've already got. The hours set the ceiling, and where you start sets how fast you get there.

James. Three hours. That sounds suspiciously low. Where does that come from?

Lyra. We looked at three studies for this episode, and this is the one I'd lead with. Montero and Lundby, in The Journal of Physiology in 2017. They split 78 healthy adults into five groups doing one, two, three, four or five 60 minute sessions a week, for six weeks, with everything else identical. Maximal power went up in the groups doing two to five sessions, but not in the one session group. [1]

James. So one hour a week does basically nothing?

Lyra. For most people in that trial, nothing measurable. 69 percent of the one session group didn't respond. Then it drops, 40 percent at two sessions, 29 at three, and nobody at all at four or five. And here's my favourite bit. The non-responders then did another six weeks with two extra sessions a week, and every single one of them improved.

James. Oh, that's brilliant. So there's no such thing as a non-responder, just someone who hasn't done enough yet.

Lyra. That's the paper's title, more or less. And the gains tracked haemoglobin mass, the blood's capacity to carry oxygen. The engine was responding all along. It just needed a bigger dose.

James. But surely I can cheat this. Everyone says intervals give you more for less. Can't I just do short, brutal sessions and skip the hours?

Lyra. You can, if you're starting from nothing, and the second study is the striking one. Gillen, Gibala and colleagues, PLOS ONE, 2016. Sedentary men trained three times a week for twelve weeks. One group did three 20 second all out sprints, around 500 watts, inside a ten minute session. The other rode 45 minutes steady inside a 50 minute session. Peak oxygen uptake rose 19 percent in both groups. [2]

James. Hang on. Ten minutes against fifty, and the same result?

Lyra. The same rise in that measure, from five times less exercise. But look at who it was. Sedentary men, nine in one group and ten in the other. That's people going from nothing to something. It tells you hard work is a strong signal. It doesn't tell you a trained rider can get round a 100 mile sportive on ten minute sessions.

James. Fair. Nobody's finishing a sportive on sixty seconds of sprinting.

Lyra. No. A sportive needs a long ride, and a long ride needs time. That's where the hours really earn their keep.

James. Okay, so what about five hours? That's where a lot of people with jobs actually land.

Lyra. For a first 100 kilometre sportive and steady improvement, five hours works. Spread over four days, it gives you two hard rides and a two hour long ride most weeks, with every fourth week eased off, and the long ride is the one a sportive rider can't do without. Our view at WattPlan is that the long ride and your hard sessions are the ones to protect. Two hard ones from four days and four hours a week, one below that.

James. But five hours won't make me fly, will it? There must be a ceiling.

Lyra. There is, and it's worth being honest about. Fitness is a 42 day weighted average of your daily Load, and Load is mostly time. In WattPlan's plan generator, five hours a week levels off at a Fitness of about 36. Seven and a half hours, about 52. Ten hours, about 68. Roughly, double the hours and you double the Fitness a week can carry.

James. So what happens when I hit that ceiling? Does the plan just pile on more intervals?

Lyra. No. It makes each session a bit harder through the block, and the plan page tells you your hours are capping it, in a sentence like five hours a week hold your Fitness around 36. Adding a training day or lengthening the long ride is what raises it. It never adds a third hard day to chase Load.

James. And for a first 100 miles?

Lyra. Plan on six to nine hours, with most of the extra going into the weekend ride. WattPlan opens the long ride at what your Fitness can carry, then grows it with the rest of your week, up to the time you've booked.

James. Right, here's the one I really care about. Busy month, family stuff, everything goes sideways. How little can I do without losing it all?

Lyra. Less than you'd fear, as long as you keep the intensity. The third study is a 2021 review by Spiering, Mujika and colleagues in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. In general populations, endurance held for up to 15 weeks with as few as two sessions a week, or with sessions cut to as little as 13 to 26 minutes, as long as exercise heart rate stayed the same. [4]

James. So in a bad fortnight I keep some intensity in, rather than just easy spins?

Lyra. Yes, intensity is the thing you protect. If you tell WattPlan you've only got two short slots, it keeps one hard session and makes the other easy, and anything under 45 minutes stays easy, so give the hard one 45 minutes if you can. And the limit is worth saying out loud. They found too little data to give specific numbers for trained competitors. So it's a strong pointer for most of us, not a rule for someone at the sharp end.

James. Love it. Let's split it by who's listening. If you're new to this, where do you start?

Lyra. If you're new to structured training, three to four hours over three days is plenty. One ride with some hard work in it, the rest easy, and a longer ride at the weekend. WattPlan never gives a beginner more than one hard ride a week, whatever their hours. Build the habit first, and the Fitness follows.

James. And if you train with power or heart rate?

Lyra. Then watch the shape of the week more than the total. With three riding days, make one ride hard. With four or more days and at least four hours, make two hard, each followed by an easy day. And keep an eye on your Fitness line. If it flattens, add a day or lengthen the long ride before you reach for more intensity.

James. And if you race, or you're chasing a big hilly sportive?

Lyra. If you race, ten or more hours is where the post's plans sit, with two hard days, a three hour Saturday and a two hour Sunday. But even then, the extra hours mostly go into easy riding and the long ride, not a third interval day. And the plan won't hand you all ten from day one. It opens at what your starting Fitness can carry and builds towards your booked hours.

James. Really? Even if I've told it I've got ten hours?

Lyra. Even then. A rider starting at a Fitness of 20 opens on about six and a half hours and builds up. If you've been riding more than that lately, you tell it, and set your starting Fitness higher.

James. So where does all this run out? What can't the trials tell me?

Lyra. Quite a lot. Most of this evidence comes from untrained or recreational adults over six to twelve weeks, measured in a lab, not on a sportive. Montero had 78 people across five groups, and the sprint study had ten or fewer per arm. No trial has compared, say, five against eight hours a week in trained amateur cyclists over a season. So the hour bands combine the trials with what the plan generator does, and the realistic aims are coaching judgement.

James. Right, homework. What do I do this week?

Lyra. Three things. One, count the hours you can ride every week, not the hours of a good week, and build from the smaller number. Two, pick your long ride and protect it. Three, if a busy fortnight hits, change your days in the app and ride the hard session it keeps, rather than stopping altogether.

James. Okay, in my words. Plan for my worst normal week, guard the long ride, and when life kicks off, keep the one hard ride rather than stopping altogether.

Lyra. That's it, you've got it. And the one line to keep, three hours gets most riders fitter, and the hours you can repeat every week beat the hours you hope for.

Lyra. The full article and every study we mentioned are on the WattPlan blog, linked in the show notes.

James. And if you want a plan that's built around the time you've actually got, that's what WattPlan does. 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 script before it is published.