Why should I be concerned with training?

It’s often taken as a given that we should all train for cycling, seemingly irrespective of our own motivations, but why should we train? I feel that this often overlooked question is tied to greater issues within the cycling community and bike industry as a whole, and that left unanswered, can spoil people’s enjoyment of cycling.

I promise I’m not here just to pose empty existential questions but take a second to ask yourself, why do you cycle? If in some unlikely hypothetical scenario, you were banned from cycling for the rest of your life, what would you miss the most?

If your answer to either of the above is hill reps, FTP tests or turbo training then stop reading and seek urgent medical attention.

In my head, the answer looks something like the images below.

Secondly, if you do train for cycling, why do you train? And do you enjoy training?

Perhaps there’s some misalignment between the answers.

Ultimately, I think much of the passion people have for cycling is fuelled by the sense of freedom it provides.

For me, this same feeling can be found and enhanced through the process of training too. The ability to ride seemingly unhindered by fatigue, or unfazed by terrain and technicality feels like one of the greatest expressions of the freedom offered on a bike. For some, the focus required to complete a hard workout provides a meditative release from the stresses of daily life. For others, the process of training offers proof of what we can do when challenged.

Since many of the physical benefits that come with a structured training plan could equally be found by just riding your bike regularly, it’s important to make a distinction between the two: without well-considered goal setting, you’re not really training.

“without well-considered goal setting, you’re not really training.”

Irrespective of how hard you’re pushing on the pedals, riding your bike without a plan is just exercise - and that’s ok. If you’re not racing and don’t have any performance goals that motivate you, maybe you don’t need to have a training plan. Conversely, those following a structured training plan would do well to remember that sometimes, riding our bike doesn’t have to mean training. Similarly, it’s perfectly reasonable as part of a season of structured training to schedule rides where your only goal is to have fun.

Cycling - or any other sport for that matter - should be something that you chose to do because it brings you value. It’s detrimental to many people’s enjoyment of cycling that this value is often conflated with our speed, W/kg or recent race results. While objectives like power output are important indicators of performance, they shouldn’t be the sole metric by which we define the value of our time spent cycling.

If we are to make training meaningful then it’s vital to set measurable goals and to understand our own motivations for training in the first place.

For many of us, there’s a tendency to focus on outcome goals - power output, weight, race results and so on. While these focal points can be a source of motivation, it often comes at the expense of our enjoyment of cycling itself - especially when we don’t achieve these goals. Besides, you’re probably not going to find enlightenment with a 5W/kg FTP, so it’s important to understand your motivations for training.

Much has been said about the merit of process-based goal setting, so I’ll try to keep my explanation brief. Process goals help define how to approach our training, they define the things we need to do in order to achieve an outcome goal. A well-thought-out training plan should be informed by measurable, challenging but attainable process goals.

Most of us aren’t professional athletes, so training shouldn’t come at the expense of your enjoyment of cycling. Goal-setting in this way means that our success is determined by our effort and not our performance. Even if we achieve every process goal, it’s still possible that you might fail to achieve your outcome goals. What’s important is that we don’t use performance indicators to measure the value of our time spent cycling.

NB. I can’t tell you what should bring you meaning in your life, and I’m keen to avoid an existential debate on purpose, so I’ll just say this; do the things that make you happy, life’s too short to be miserable - even if you do have a 400W FTP!

Whether you’re going to follow a structured training plan or not, it’s important training doesn’t become another obligation in our lives.

Whilst it’s clear that most of us would benefit from more time spent being active, do we really need to follow a structured training plan? That’s for you to decide.