Effectief Wielrennen Trainingsschema

Building a Cycling Training Schedule That Works

I spent years training randomly – hard when I felt good, easy when I didn’t. Progress was inconsistent. Then I started following actual structure and everything changed. Here’s what I learned about building a training plan that produces results.

The Basic Principle

Your body adapts to stress, then recovers stronger. Training provides the stress; rest provides the adaptation. Too much stress without recovery leads to overtraining. Too much rest without stress leads to fitness loss.

A good training week includes hard days, easy days, and rest days. You can’t go hard every day – you’ll break down.

A Simple Weekly Structure

For most recreational cyclists looking to improve:

Monday: Rest or very easy spin (30 minutes, conversational pace)
Tuesday: Intervals – 45-60 minutes including harder efforts
Wednesday: Moderate endurance ride, 60-90 minutes
Thursday: Rest or easy recovery ride
Friday: Tempo ride – 60 minutes at a challenging but sustainable pace
Weekend: Long ride – 2-4 hours at an easy to moderate pace

That’s 5-7 hours of riding per week. More than most casual riders, less than racers. Adjust based on your available time and goals.

What the Different Rides Do

Easy endurance rides: Build your aerobic base. You should be able to hold a conversation. These feel “too easy” but they’re crucial – they train your body to burn fat efficiently and build the foundation for harder work.

Interval training: Short hard efforts followed by recovery. Might be 4×4 minutes hard with 4 minutes easy between, or 8×1 minute all-out with 2 minutes rest. Improves your power and VO2max.

Tempo rides: Sustained effort at a “comfortably hard” pace – you can talk in short sentences but wouldn’t want to. Builds your threshold – the intensity you can maintain for about an hour.

Long rides: Build endurance, mental toughness, and your body’s ability to process fuel over many hours. Keep the pace easy – the duration is the training stimulus.

Rest Is Training

Your body doesn’t get stronger while you’re riding. It gets stronger while you’re recovering from riding. Sleep 7-8 hours minimum. Take rest days seriously – sitting on the couch is productive.

If you feel constantly tired, irritable, or your performances are declining, you’re probably training too much or recovering too little.

The 10% Rule

Don’t increase total weekly volume by more than 10% per week. Your cardiovascular system adapts faster than your muscles and connective tissue. Ramping up too quickly leads to overuse injuries.

If you’re starting from very low volume, you might increase faster initially. But be patient – consistency over months matters more than big weeks.

Periodization

Train in blocks: 3-4 weeks of progressive loading followed by an easier recovery week. During loading weeks, gradually increase volume or intensity. During recovery weeks, cut back by 30-40% to let your body consolidate gains.

This prevents the plateau that happens when you do the same thing endlessly.

Nutrition and Training

Fuel your hard sessions. Showing up glycogen-depleted to an interval workout means you can’t hit the intensities needed to trigger adaptation.

Easy rides can be done fasted if you’re trying to improve fat burning, but don’t skip eating before or during anything intense or long.

Recover with protein and carbs within an hour after hard efforts. Your muscles are primed to rebuild – give them the materials.

Listen to Your Body

A training plan is a guide, not a contract. If you’re exhausted, take an extra rest day. If you feel great, maybe push a bit harder. Rigid adherence to a plan when your body is telling you something’s wrong leads to injury and burnout.

Track how you feel, not just your numbers. Over time, you’ll learn your patterns – when you can push through and when you need to back off.