How to Become a Better Cyclist, According to Experts
If you’re like most cyclists, you’d love to cover more ground in less time, recover from hard efforts more quickly, and sail to the top of every climb with ease. While you probably saw a ton of progress over your first few seasons of cycling, once you’ve advanced beyond the beginner phase, performance gains are harder to achieve.
But that doesn’t mean they’re out of reach. With focused attention to the details, it’s totally possible to uplevel your fitness, no matter where your fitness lies. We talked to experts to find out which strategies offer the highest return on investment when it comes to becoming a better cyclist. Here’s what they told us.
7 Ways to Become a Better Cyclist
1. Find Community
Can it be scary to show up to a group ride where you know absolutely no one? Yes. But is it potentially the best thing you can do for your fitness (not to mention your social life and mental health)? Also yes.
Community is key, says exercise physiologist and former cycling coach, Mollie Brewer. As cyclists, “we have a really good one and we take care of each other,” she tells Bicycling. “There’s a wide variety of abilities, so find your people and they will help you get better.”
Whether that means encouraging you when you’re flagging, offering a gel when you’re on the verge of bonking, or challenging you to navigate terrain or distance that’s beyond your comfort zone, support from fellow cyclists help us go a little farther and faster—while having more fun.
2. Prioritize Recovery
If you really want to optimize your training, don’t snooze on prioritizing sleep. “The time you spend sleeping is the longest time period you have to actually make gains as you recover from the work you did during the day,” says cycling coach, exercise physiologist, and former world champion Kim Geist.
Geist recommends catching as many zzz’s as possible and doing your best to maintain a consistent sleep/wake schedule. While cyclists in the youngest and oldest age groups should shoot for a minimum of eight hours per night (or ideally, nine to ten), eight hours is plenty for most cyclists in their 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s, according to Geist
If you can’t get in enough hours at night, consider napping.
And if you just can’t fall asleep, don’t freak out. Simply putting your feet up is a great recovery strategy. “Getting the blood flow back to the heart helps flush some of the byproducts of a hard workout, which promotes recovery,” says Geist.
3. Keep Showing Up
“Experience is one of the strongest predictors of success,” says Brewer, who notes this isn’t just something she’s seen in the lab or as a coach—she also has firsthand experience. Recalling her return to a cyclocross race a year after she first rode it, she says, “I was like, ‘the hills must have gotten smaller.’ But I had just gotten better and I knew how to ride that course.”
While there eventually comes a point where your performance declines due to age, accumulated experience over years (or decades) of cycling generally translates to better performance. “Cycling is really hard because your success is predicated on what other people are doing [in a race]. You’re not racing against just the clock. But strategy improves over time with experience,” says Brewer.
Strategy plays an outsized role in forms of cycling where technical skills come into play. “You see [the importance of experience] in road and crit racing, but it’s more pronounced in mountain biking, cyclocross, and gravel, where you can become faster without getting stronger just by improving your technical skills,” Brewer adds.
4. Ride Longer or More Often
For most of us, “the best way to get better at riding your bike is riding your bike,” says Brewer. And while this probably comes as no shock, the unfortunate truth is, things like jobs, families, and, well, life, can make it hard to squeeze in any extra miles.
There are, however, quite a few sneaky ways to up your volume, if you’re willing to think outside the box. One of Brewer’s favorite strategies “tricking herself into” destination rides or get-togethers. A few of her most memorable destination rides include pedaling to a natural spring and a 125-mile route featuring a mom-and-pop donut shop.
There’s also the option to ride your bike to work or school if that feels like a safe option. If you go that route, set yourself up for success by riding a well-maintained bike and keeping a towel and a change of clothes at your destination, says Brewer.
No matter how you squeeze in the extra miles, focusing on getting somewhere, whether that’s a fun or novel attraction or the office, can make it easier to carve out the time to log some non-traditional miles.
5. Be Prepared for Races
Showing up prepared is a matter of not just putting in the miles but also making sure you’re mentally prepared. That means knowing the route, including where the turns, climbs, descents, and aid stations are. And particularly if you’re in a competitive situation, research how the race was won in previous years so you can approach the course strategically. “Use the past to influence the present,” says Brewer.
For example, if you go in knowing the race was historically won on the climbs, but hills aren’t your strength, you can put yourself in a strategic position by the time you reach the base of each ascent. “If you start the climb in the front, as you start to slow down, other people have to get around you,” which gives a better chance of ending up in the middle of the pack rather than the back by the time you reach the crest, says Brewer.
6. Fuel Up
If you’re focused on body composition at the expense of sufficient nourishment, you could be leaving some serious performance gains on the table. “It’s crucial to make sure you’re well-fueled before, during, and after every ride, especially if you’re riding back-to-back days,” says Geist.
While individual needs vary, the “vast majority” of cyclists will benefit from eating plenty of carbs, particularly if your workout includes threshold efforts or higher or if you’re doing an endurance or tempo ride of two hours or more, according to Geist.
While most of your sports nutrition should come from carbs, Geist also suggests including some protein. “Protein slows your digestion a bit, which keeps your energy more stable. This way, you don’t have a spike in energy, followed by a crash,” she says. This macronutrient can come in the form of a bar, nuts, granola, or even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If you’re throwing down an intense effort, the most important time to consume protein is following your workout, to help with recovery, says Geist.
7. Maintain Good Form
Riding with good form is a reliable way to boost your output without spiking your heart rate. That means focusing on keeping your upper body as “quiet” as possible and “not thrashing the bike around,” on climbs, says Geist. No matter what kind of terrain you’re on, she suggests maintaining a relaxed grip on the handlebars. “A death grip means you’re spending energy being tense and making the front end of the bike twitchy, which compromises your balance and steadiness,” she says.
It’s also important to keep your back, core, and hips stable to optimize power transfer from your legs to the pedals. “Imagine your legs are pistons. If they’re driving straight up and down, all of the force is devoted to that movement,” says Geist. To build the core strength you need to optimize your form, she suggests anti-rotation core exercises like side planks and Pallof presses.
Signs You’re Becoming a Better Cyclist
→ Heart Rate / Power Decoupling
This might sound fancy and technical, but trust us, it’s not. It just means “your heart rate stays the same but your power increases,” says Brewer.
On a more general level, you’ll know your fitness is improving “when you can keep one metric stable and then notice how everything else adapts around it,” she says. For example, Brewer has been doing the same route for years, and over time, although her heart rate remained stable, she was able to finish in less time.
→ Lower Resting Heart Rate
If looking at your cycling metrics sucks too much of the joy out of your workout, consider paying attention to your resting heart rate. If you find it getting lower over time, that’s a sign your fitness is improving, says Geist. And if you don’t mind tracking your cycling metrics, if your heart rate settles down more quickly and/or dips lower between hard efforts, those are also signs you’re becoming fitter.
→ Confidence to Try New Things
If metrics just aren’t your thing, focus on trying something new. “Complete a goal mileage or event that might have been inconceivable in the past,” says Brewer. That could mean going farther than you’ve ever gone, climbing an intimidating hill, or returning to a technical section of your favorite route and riding just a little more of it than you normally would, rather than walking.
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