Winter cycling training plans

Tracking Winter Cycling Progress with Garmin Training Plans

Winter is the perfect time to create a solid base for the upcoming cycling season. Whether you’re going to ride a Grand Fondo this year, joining some races or just want to break your yearly mileage record, there is one simple rule: You need to train for this. At Garmin we’ve got you covered with Training Plans, Daily Suggested Workouts and more.

Why should I follow a Training Plan?

With the help of a structured Training Plan, achieving specific goals becomes a lot easier. You’ll know exactly when and what kind of workouts you have to perform to be at your peak level.

Want to train for a specific goal? Selecting one of our cycling Training Plans in Garmin Connect™ will help you to get directly from point A to point B, whether those milestones happen to be indoors or outdoors. Each plan has a series of workouts that build upon each other in order to reach your ultimate goal. Whether you want to train for a Century, Grand Fondo, time trial, MTB trail or your first race, we’ve got a plan that’s tailor-made for you. Expect tested workouts and expert advice from the world’s top coaches, for everyone from beginners to advanced riders.

Just select how many hours per week you want to spend training, what days of the week suit you best and when you want to be ready for your goal. Garmin Connect will then automatically build a schedule for you, divided in different phases. If you select the training plan for a race, for example, it will start with a base phase and then a build phase, and it will end with a peak phase to prepare you for your first race. All these workouts can be sent to your compatible Garmin device and used as your virtual coach. The best part? These plans are all free to use and can be done outdoors with your Garmin Edge® or indoors with your Tacx® Smart trainer.

Click here to activate your training plan.

Daily Suggested Workouts
No more wondering which workouts to do each day. With the help of the Daily Suggested Workout feature, your Garmin Edge® 1030 Plus device gives a balanced schedule of workouts, helps you improve your fitness and builds a foundation for future performances. These personalized suggestions are created by the Firstbeat Analytics engine. It interprets your performance data and understands the intensity and impact of your efforts. It also looks into your training history, current fitness level, sleep data, training load, load focus and recovery state to determine what workout suits you best in the moment.

For example, do you need to recover from a hard week of training or work on your endurance base? You don’t have to think about this any longer because it’s all done for you automatically in order to improve your performance over time. If you use this feature on a regular basis, you will reap the rewards. All you need is a heart rate monitor and power meter (both sold separately). When you start up your device, your Daily Suggested Workout will pop up. You can review it and when you tap on “Ride,” off you go! It’s that easy.

Click here to learn more about Daily Suggested Workouts.

Connecting with third-party apps

Some of you might want to follow a training plan from a third-party application like TrainingPeaks® or TrainerRoad. But what if you want the output of these workouts to be viewable alongside your outdoor cycling activities? No problem — many of these apps can be linked to your Garmin Connect account. All of your workout activities will be automatically imported to Garmin Connect so you’ve got all your data stored in one place. This also counts for other popular training apps like Zwift and the Tacx® Training app.

Read more about linking to third-party apps here.

Advanced physiological measurements
Following a training plan is one thing, but tracking your improvement is another. Want to dive deeper into your stats and performance? Select Garmin devices monitor the key aspects of your cycling and fitness progress. You’ll want to pay special attention to:

• Training Status
  Wonder if you’re peaking, productive or overreaching? Training status considers changes in fitness level (your VO2 max), your current acute (7-day) training load and any change in training load, giving you guidance to help you improve your training decisions.
  
  
• VO2 Max
  Shows your current fitness level and how it changed over time. VO2 max helps you to evaluate progress, set appropriate goals and determine the effectiveness of your training.

• Recovery Time
  How long does your body need to recover from your workout? Find out if your next workout should be hard or if it’s better to do an easy ride.
  
  
• Training Load
  Gives you a detailed insight of the immediate impact of each activity and your overall training load over the last week.
  
  
• Training Load Focus
  In order to improve your fitness level, you need an optimal and balanced training load. This feature shows the impact of your training session between the three major training categories: anaerobic training load, high aerobic training load and low aerobic training load.
  
  
• Functional Threshold Power (FTP)
  The holy grail of cyclists and nothing more than the maximum power output you can sustain for one hour. Your Garmin Edge can detect your FTP through a guided workout or automatically during a normal ride.

Never Stop Cycling

There’s no reason for holding back this winter. Start your training plan today, whether it’s indoors or outdoors, if you’re serious about achieving those goals. With a little guidance from Garmin, it’s never been easier.

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