Cycling is an awesome way to get around, and it’s a great sport too. Regardless if you’re new to cycling, or if you’ve cycled for years, trying out these tips will undoubtedly help you become a better cyclist!
1. Do Some Resistance Training
Resistance training can help to improve your balance and coordination, boost your metabolism, and prevent injury.
Strength training is any exercise that requires the body’s muscles to contract against an external resistance with the expectation of increases in strength, endurance, and size of muscles.
It’s a good idea to do regular resistance training as it will help you develop strong bones and muscles which also improves your muscular strength, power, and endurance. These benefits will make you a better cyclist by improving your stamina, helping you stay motivated for longer on the bike, and reducing risk of injuries caused by muscle weakness.
You don’t have to leave home or spend money at a gym to do resistance training – some simple exercises like squats or sit-ups can be done at home with no equipment required.
2. Improve Your Core Strength
Your core includes the abdominal and lower back muscles. These muscles are crucial because they help to keep your body balanced on the bike.
Improving your core strength will also help you to improve your technique and make you more stable when cycling uphill or in a sprint, as well as in other areas of fitness.
Core exercises can be done almost anywhere and every exercise that works the abs also works the lower back muscles as well. Examples of some basic exercises include sit-ups, crunches, planks, and leg raises.
These exercises can easily be done in short bursts throughout the day — even at work!
3. Set Goals
Setting goals is important in any area you aim to improve. For cycling, it’s especially imperative, as you gain skills and get better at the sport. If you don’t set goals and keep track of your progress, how will you know if what you’re doing is working?
There are many ways to set goals in cycling, including things like:
- Routinely challenging yourself by riding a certain route that has a typically tough hill or increasing the elevation of your route.
- Losing weight or putting on muscle (in a healthy way) so that you can pedal more efficiently.
- Working out how much time or effort it would take to do an event like a century ride, training rides with friends, and/or using heart rate monitors and power meters to track data (like average speed) during your workouts.
4. Train With a Friend
Training with a friend is great for several reasons, particularly the social and accountability aspects. You’ll have another person to talk to, which can make the time pass more quickly. You’ll also be less likely to skip out on your training sessions if you know someone is relying on you to show up.
Having a training partner will force both of you to work harder than either of you would work alone. Instead of quitting or slowing down when you’re tired, like you might when you’re alone, having a buddy to ride with will push you to hold yourself to a higher standard.
5. Get Adequate Rest
Getting enough sleep is important. Sleep is a crucial part of your training, because it provides time to recover from hard workouts and the stresses of daily life. By getting enough sleep, you will have more energy for your next workout and be able to train more effectively over time.
A very important step in getting better at cycling is to make sure that you’re starting each ride with plenty of rest and energy. This means knowing when to stop riding for the day, even if you’re not tired yet or are having fun. It can also mean planning ahead so that you can get a full night’s sleep before a long ride or race—and scheduling regular “rest days” throughout your training plan where you don’t do any exercise at all.
Quality matters just as much as quantity. Your quality of sleep also matters as much as how long you spend in bed: Studies show that athletes who get better quality sleep perform better on the field (or bike). Taking simple steps like blocking out noise and regulating room temperature can help improve both quantity and quality of sleep, which makes it easier for athletes to perform at their best during competition day.
6. Use a Performance Tracking App
Using a performance tracking app is key to improving your cycling. It will help you quantify and keep track of your progress so that you can monitor whether you are seeing any improvements. You will also be able to set goals for yourself based on the data that the application provides. More importantly, using a performance tracking app gives you access to valuable statistics and insightful graphs that show how far, fast, and long you ride.
There are plenty of apps out there for cyclists so, to save you time and effort, we have compiled a list of our top recommendations for best cycling apps: Cadence, Strava, Cyclemeter, and MapMyRide are all great options that provide crucial data on your cycling activities. Check out our highest recommended cycling apps for more details.
If you want to get better at cycling, then you’ll want to do all of these things.
To get better at cycling you need to do a lot of riding. But that’s not all you have to do, and the type of riding you have to do depends on what kind of cyclist you are or want to be.
This may seem obvious, but there is a lot more involved in becoming really good at something than most people realize. It takes a tremendous amount of effort over an extended period of time. You need dedication and tenacity because your progress will be made up largely of small incremental improvements, which means it won’t always be obvious how much progress you’re making.
That’s why it can help to have a guide telling you how to become better at cycling—and if this is your goal then the 6 steps above should help point you in the right direction and keep motivation levels high when progress seems slow or non-existent.
