Training on the CompuTrainer is just like training on the road, and the workouts should reflect that similarity. The basic principles governing your training remain the same: specificity, progress, and overload.
Specificity means training differently for different events. Getting ready for a time trial requires different training than getting ready for a criterium - training specific to the demands of that event. This manual includes specific CompuTrainer programs designed to meet the needs of road racers, mountain bikers, thriathletes, duathletes, century riders, and fitness riders.
Regardless of your type of cycling, there are three workload elements to consider when deciding on a specific trainig program:
The frequency of exercise is determined by your goals. The higher your fitness goals or the more competitive you'd like to be, the more often you need to ride. While exercising three times a week may help you improve or maintain your fitness at the most basic level, it won't get you onto an Olympic team.
Exercise intensity is a measure of how hard your body is working. Training at levels from low to high stresses different body systems and produces different benefits. University studies have shown that high intensity training is the most effective way to gain maximal fitness, but this is also the area where errors of excess prevent many athletes from reaching their potential. The section on "Workout Heart Rates" will discuss intensity in greater detail.
The duration of exercise is better measured in minutes than miles. The body understands time, not distance. A twenty-mile ride for one person may take less than an hour, while another rider could take two hours on the same course. Regardless of t he distance, they didn't do the same workout.
Progressive Overload
Progressive overload is the notion that some aspect of the workload must be gradually increased to improve fitness. You must elevate either the frequency, intensity, or the duration of exercise. Racers with fewer than three years of expe rience should first expand thir aerobic base and general fitness with greater duration and frequency before making signifiacant increases in intensity. Fitness riders increase duration before intensity or frequency.
The workload must be increased in very small increments, usually of five to ten percent, in order to avoid overtraining and injury, and to allow for adaptation.
The most often neglected aspect of training for serious athletes is adaptation- what occurs in the body at the cellular level during recovery. It is during recovery that the body adapts to the stress of exercise and grows stronger and mor e fit. Without rest, a rider will soon be overtrained and his or her fitness will deteriorate.
The day after a stressful workout is usually a day completely off from exercise, or a day of very light activity. The higher the stress of the preceding hard workout, the longer the adaptation period needed. The shortest is 48 hours, but 72 hours is som etimes necessary, especially in the later stages of the training year, or when a rider has very low tolerance to physical stress. Reintroducing new stress too soon will interrupt the process of adaptation and soon result in reduced fitness.
Workout Heart Rates
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