Cycling Knowledge

How Often You Should Ride For Fitness and Health?

by Souke Sports on Aug 25, 2022

How Often You Should Ride For Fitness and Health?

Cycling stimulates and improves your heart, lungs, and circulation, reducing your risk of cardiovascular diseases. It also strengthens your heart muscles, lowers your resting pulse, and reduces blood fat levels.

But do you know how often you should ride? And what is the frequency of cycling that suits you?  SoukeSports hopes this article can help you find the right and suitable cycling frequency.


For Beginner To Start Cycling:

Frequent short training sessions are more effective than infrequent long sessions. We recommend that you ride your bike every two to three days to keep progressing and improving your fitness, even if it's just a short turbo trainer workout.

If you really don't know how to begin, you can try following 'Eight Week Plan', which allows you to quickly adapt to cycling without pain.

Before you start, select which days are best for you to cycle(We recommend Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays)

Week 1:Begin with two 10-minute cycles on the first two outings, followed by a 20-minute cycle on the weekend.
Week 2:  Repeat Week 1
Week 3:For your first two cycle days, cycle for 15 to 20 minutes. On weekends, cycle for 30 minutes.
Week 4:We’re going to remove one of the days, and cycle for longer on the remaining two days. We would recommend cycling for 25 minutes on Wednesday and 35 minutes on the weekend.
Week 5: Back to three times a week again. Cycle for 30 minutes on your first two days, with a 45-minute cycle on the weekend.
Week 6:Repeat Week 5.
Week 7:Cycle for 30 minutes on your first day, reduce it to 20 for your second and finish the week with a 60-minute cycle on the weekend.
Final Week:You're going to ride for an extra day. On your first day, ride for 45 minutes. Cycle for an hour on your second day, then do a 20-minute ride the next day (Friday, if you're using our suggested dates). Ride for 10 miles on your final cycle of the plan.


For Seniors To Be Better:

I believe that you are already a senior cycling enthusiast and have your own plans in terms of exercise frequency and time.
We recommend that you try various types of riding, such as Long Ride, Hilly Ride, and Hard Ride.

Long ride:
Long rides at a steady pace are the bedrock for improving your endurance. At this pace your breathing is deep, rhythmic and regular, and should never feel strained. This ride will train your body to get used to burning fuel efficiently. It will also help you to improve your riding posture and help you to get used to sitting on the saddle for extended periods of time.

Hilly ride:
Long gradual climbs are ideal for this session, or they can be done on the flat in a big gear or with high resistance on a turbo trainer. After a good 10-minute warm-up, pedal for five minutes at a pace that feels hard but controllable. You should be breathing deeply and only able to say one or two words at a time. Recover for one minute and then repeat.
Aim for a minimum of 20 minutes at the hard pace per session. If you have more time, aim for 10 minutes at the hard pace before your one-minute recovery.
These sessions will help you improve your muscular efficiency and make climbing more enjoyable.

Hard Ride:
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) has been shown to boost endurance, increase calorie burn and improve cardiovascular fitness. During the intervals you have to work very hard – it needs 100 per cent effort – but the intervals are very short. After a good 10-minute warm-up, spend five minutes alternating between 30-seconds' all-out effort and 30-seconds' recovery. Pedal easily for five minutes and then repeat.
If you are very limited on time then just three sessions of HIIT training a week is the best way to improve your overall fitness.

Finally, because everyone's age, fitness habits, and physical conditions differ, the above plan can be adjusted and modified to their own rhythm, resulting in a unique riding plan that suits them.

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