{"id":368441,"date":"2025-12-24T08:03:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T08:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/368441\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T08:03:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T08:03:16","slug":"the-boring-secrets-to-better-cycling-sleep-food-strength-smarts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/368441\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boring Secrets to Better Cycling: Sleep, Food, Strength & Smarts"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOOLBOX:\u00a0 Getting through the winter off-season offers a great time to reset and focus on the basic building blocks of better fitness. In this PEZ Toolbox, we strip away the shiny hacks and Instagram opinions to focus on the four brutally boring pillars that actually keep cyclists fast, healthy, and consistent deep into summer: sleep, nutrition, strength training, and smarter riding. No secret sauces, no miracle intervals\u2014just oatmeal-level fundamentals that work when everything else fades. Get these basics right now, and you\u2019ll be flying when the season takes flight rolls around, instead of wondering where your winter base form went.<\/p>\n

\"peaks\"
Sleep \u2013 Not difficult, but very important<\/p>\n

None of this is groundbreaking, or shiny, or sexy, or exciting. And that\u2019s the problem. It\u2019s boring. Like oatmeal. Or flossing every day, using your seatbelt, and making water your primary drink every day.<\/p>\n

But they work, and work extremely well if you do them consistently.<\/p>\n

Sleep
\u201cNothing good happens after 10pm\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d say this holds especially true for those of us getting up early to ride. Making sure you\u2019re doing everything in your control to get between 7-9 hours of sleep every night, and to have a regular bedtime, is absolutely instrumental in helping you recover and adapt to your training rides\u2026yet many of us bounce around our bedtimes as we try to balance work, family, and social commitments alongside our riding.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been my experience that we can only really do 3 of the following with quality:\u00a0Fitness, Social life, Work, Family, Sleep.<\/p>\n

And if Sleep isn\u2019t #1, all the others tend to suffer. (After all, who wants to hang out or do work with the cranky guy\/gal?).<\/p>\n

Consistent, regular quality sleep offers a whole host of benefits, too numerous to list here. A great read on the subject is Dr. Matthew Walker\u2019s \u201dWhy We Sleep\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: Go to bed at a regular (decent) time like a responsible adult if you want to improve your fitness and resiliency, or to function better as a human being.<\/p>\n

\"pasta\"
Diets \u2013 How do you know what\u2019s right?<\/p>\n

Nutrition
Open up your social media today and you are immediately blasted with a huge variety of diets, supplements, and other items touted to be \u201cresearch-based\u201d and a \u201csuperfood\u201d. How do you know what\u2019s right?<\/p>\n

Well, it can (and should) be extremely simple, but it ain\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

Start by learning if you\u2019re eating because you are actually hungry, or whether it is because you are stressed or lacking sleep.<\/p>\n

A simple way to do this is by keeping a food journal for 3 days in a single week: 2 weekdays + 1 weekend day.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t do all 3 in a row. Instead, alternate them to be one mid-week training day, your mid-week \u201cff day\u201d (you do have at least one of those, right?), and a weekend training day.<\/p>\n

When you write the journal we want to track 3 things:<\/p>\n

What did you eat
\nHow much
\nWhy?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the last one that can be tricky, as you\u2019ll really want to take a good 10-second pause before you eat to answer \u201cAm I eating this because I\u2019m hungry, bored, or stressed?\u201d.<\/p>\n

Most of us know exactly what we should be doing, but we just don\u2019t stick to it. This little journal is a great way to keep us honest and on target.<\/p>\n

I had a great conversation about sports nutrition for performance with Dr. Namrita Brooke, which you can listen to here<\/a>, where we go a little deeper.<\/p>\n

\"knetemann\"
Strength training throughout the season<\/p>\n

Strength Training
Our culture of cycling has (mostly) turned the corner on strength training, as these days a growing majority of cyclists do some kind of resistance training\u2026at least in the winter. However, if you want to reap the big rewards from your work pumping iron, you\u2019re going to need to do some kind of strength training throughout the season.<\/p>\n

Many mistakenly think this means light weight, high reps, and \u201ccore stability training\u201d, but most of which completely misses the mark of what you need in the heights of your riding season.<\/p>\n

Rather, what you need mid-season is to lift heavy things (relative to how it feels to you, not the actual weight), in small amounts, in a way that will help you not only keep your strength gains from the winter, but also help drive your in-sport recovery to new highs, and thus spinning your \u201cfitness flywheel\u201d even faster!<\/p>\n

All that for just a little work 1-2 days a week, no more than 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

For those curious, I dive deep into what TRUE \u201cCore Stability Training\u201d is, in this article I did for the TrainingPeaks Coaches website.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"gaerne\"
Quality, not quantity<\/p>\n

Riding: More is not Better, Higher Quality is Better
Quite possibly the biggest mistake I made as I \u201cgot serious\u201d about my riding fitness way back when, before the iPhone was invented, was thinking that more was better: more hours on the bike, more interval work, more intensity<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I rode myself right into true, proper overtraining. Yes, I was that bull-headed, and yes, I knew better. Mind you, this was before Strava became \u201ca thing\u201d, and before social media was plum-full of everyone\u2019s PR\u2019s and best ever rides\u2026It was all me and myself (Oh, to be young again!).<\/p>\n

While it took me a good 12-15 months to climb out of the massive hole I made for myself, it was an absolutely invaluable lesson to learn, and part of what pulled me into coaching cyclists, as I saw a number of my friends constantly walking that line. Thankfully none of them was as stupid or hard-headed as me, and when I opened up about how much of an idiot I was, and how I could help them see far better results doing less, many of them said yes to my coaching them.<\/p>\n

And the results were fantastic!<\/p>\n

But there was this constant conversation of \u201cshouldn\u2019t I be riding more?\u201d This is where my blatant disregard for common sense in my own training worked to help them, and instead of getting dragged into the \u201cmore is better\u201d, they fully bought into the \u201cTrain Smarter, Not Harder\u201d mantra. This not only brought them wonderful results on the bike, but also saw their social lives blossom moreso than other riders, since they weren\u2019t completely gobsmacked by their training each week.<\/p>\n

Instead of thinking \u201cmore time on the bike\u201d or \u201cmore interval work\u201d is better, aim for higher quality, which will present itself in the following ways:<\/p>\n

Smoother power through the entire ride
\nLow power\/ easy pedaling during rest intervals, riding better and more repeatable (or correct for the effort) power outputs for your higher intensity efforts
\nAdding another repetition (or two) on those (rare) days where everything is firing on all 8 cylinders
\nDoing the bare minimum of repetitions on those (rare) days where nothing is firing well
\nGoing home\/ staying home on the days your body is telling you to REST (doing chores\/house repairs\/yard work does not count!)<\/p>\n

Conclusion
Everyone is looking for the \u201clatest\u201d scientific research backed training approach, interval, or powder to help them improve their fitness\u2026but the answers so often lie in the very simple, bland, basics, which many of us foo-foo as being \u201cnot it\u201d.<\/p>\n

They are it, but they just won\u2019t wow your friends and fellow riders. In fact, you can tell them every single thing you do to get these fantastic fitness\/results, and their response will, more often than not, be: \u201cSeriously, what\u2019s the secret?\u201d.<\/p>\n

To which you can now answer: \u201cI\u2019m sorry, what was the question again?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n


\n Like PEZ? Why not subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive updates and reminders on what’s cool in road cycling? \n <\/p>\n

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