Think cycling training needs to be complicated? It doesn’t. According to Trevor Connor, there are really only three types of rides most cyclists need: endurance rides, high-intensity rides, and easy recovery or preparation rides.
In this video, we break down how to simplify your training plan, avoid overly complex interval workouts, and focus on the rides that actually move the needle. You’ll learn why long endurance rides should make up the bulk of your training, how to structure high-intensity work without overcomplicating it, and why easy rides are essential for setting up your next hard workout.
We also cover common mistakes cyclists make with Zone 2 training, why “moderato” rides can hold back your progress, how often you should really do intervals, and what a simple weekly cycling training structure can look like.
Whether you’re training for a race, trying to improve your FTP, building endurance, or just looking for a simpler way to get faster on the bike, these three ride types can help you train smarter and more consistently.
RELATED: The Big Picture—The Three Types of Rides You Should Do
Video Transcript
There’s only three rides you need to do, none of this complex interval sessions, none of these elaborate training plans. There’s only three rides, right, Trevor? But real simple. Real simple. Tell us more about what real simple means. Okay. Well, let’s start with the first one, your endurance ride.
So, key thing here is get some volume,
can’t do it in 30 minutes, you can’t do it in an hour. We’ve been asked, are there shortcuts of this? There aren’t. You need that, depending on your level. Two to six hour ride,
you should be doing it in zone one, zone two.
This is not something that you should be doing hard, and I’m a big believer you do this by heart rate, you want a steady heart rate, because if you’re going out and actually doing a ride that’s going to stress you, and you’re stressing yourself with the volume,
you’re going to see your power drop a little bit. You want to see that. Don’t try to keep the power up, try to keep that heart rate steady.
Sometimes people refer to these as LSD rides. We’ve heard a lot about zone two. Yes, it can be a zone two ride.
Any other names that just long slow, that’s what LSD stands for. Long slow distance was zone two is too many people do that too hard. You have zone two as a range and they go, okay, I’m going to ride right here. Yeah, and if you’re doing that long ride in zone two, if you’re going right here, you’re going to be doing half the ride outside of zone two. Your body is going to be saying, “Now this is actually more zone three ride. So just be careful when you’re doing that zone two ride. It is a range target that middle. This is ride number one, type one. The bulk of your training is in this falls into this category. So most of us, because we have jobs, we’re going to do one long endurance ride a week, that’s usually your weekend ride, hopefully two, be honest too. Let’s be honest, hopefully two, you might get four or five in a week. No, I do, definitely don’t, not anymore. Used to, I used to, yes, yeah, I more, but this is the once or twice a week, yep,
next ride number two, number two, yeah, high intensity, high intensity, and the biggest mistake I see here is complexity,
I see all the time on training peaks on different platforms people have this 80 step workout where they go on, okay, I’m going to do 30 seconds of this intensity, and then 10 and a half seconds of this intensity, and then 36 seconds of that intensity. And right, you need an owner’s manual to be able to do the workout. You’re not going to execute it well. Your body doesn’t sit there and go, “Oh, you did 36 seconds, as opposed to 32 therefore I’m going to respond this way. You’re just trying to hit your body with some hard work, a lot of ways to do that. Frankly, you can go out and do just a good training race and get a lot of the benefits right. But my recommendation is, keep it simple, figure out, do I want to be doing threshold work, and that’s maybe you’re doing five minute intervals or eight minute intervals, up to 15 minute intervals, right around that threshold zone, with short, shorter recoveries,
or you say, “I want to hit that higher intensity kind of VO to max range. That’s anything from 30 seconds to five minutes with kind of equal rest, so 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, five minutes on, five minutes off, get into that higher intensity, more anaerobic type work, that’s when you’re hitting your Tabata, so it’s short efforts, but even shorter recoveries, like 2010s 4020s
things like that. But keep it simple, just do a few set of those, and you don’t need to be dragging your feet going home. It’s not about getting that giant 200 plus TSS right, it’s about doing enough work to say, yeah, I stress the system, now I can go home. Yeah, and you said don’t create complex interval sessions. I would also say
you don’t need to have 20 different types of interval sessions that you turn to.
You can have favorites, and you can use those because they are effective, but also you know how to execute them well. And the third thing is you actually like doing them. I think that that is a key component here. If you hate doing a certain type of interval, the execution might not be that great. So, if there’s three or four or five go like your go to interval sessions. It’s okay to do those quite often, and forget the complex stuff. I’ve seen this several times in the research.
The consistency can actually produce better gains in the specific type of intervals, meaning pick a particular type of intervals that you want to do, and then keep doing them for a period of time, because as you said, you learn how to do them, you learn how to execute them, your body starts to adapt to them, and you’re going to see better games. They’ve done studies where they have people do a different type of interval every single time they go and do intervals versus somebody who just does the same interval workout for four weeks in a.
Zero, and those people who do the same tend to see the greater gains. Thing to keep in mind, the higher intensity,
the quicker you plateau. So, when you do sprint intervals, you see the gains in a couple weeks, but after three, four weeks, you don’t see too many more gains. The really high intensity stuff, like Tabatas, VO two max work intervals,
you see your gains takes a little longer, but not much longer, but you tend to plateau after about six weeks, and then you stop seeing benefits. Threshold works, so right around that FTP, it actually takes 10 to 14 weeks to see the gains, so you need to do those longer, but you will also see gains for a much longer period of time. Yep. All right. Type three. What is the third ride that people should do? Easy ride, recovery ride, and people hate this. This is the one where I see people make the most mistakes, because most of us have a job, we have a family, to be able to get out on the bike for an hour is a luxury, and to go and noodle for an hour, you just feel like, oh, why am I doing this? I’m wasting time. Sure, and you want to go hard, you want to go hit a hill really hard, or race your friends.
You need these easy rides,
and by easy, I mean easy. You talk to a pro when they do these rides, they’re averaging 120 140 watts. It is true, true, just noodle long, go easy. Why do you do these? Because obviously, if that’s all you did, you’re not going to be a very strong rider. It’s because those other two rides that we talked about are the important ones.
These are the ones you do in between, and I forgot to mention that high intensity, twice a week at most, right? Often just once a week, 20% ish, of your total time. Yeah, so you want to be careful about doing too much of that, like I said. Most of us can only do that endurance ride once or twice a week, so the rest of the time are these easy recovery rides. What you’re doing is getting your legs set up for the next high-quality session, and what I see too often with athletes, I love Neil Henderson, he calls
it training in motorato, right? They do these too hard, so when they get to their high intensity interval work, they’re tired and they don’t do that hard enough, and they all end up looking the same. So you want your high intensity to be really high quality, and you want to come into it fresh and ready, and then you want the rides in between to be easy. Yeah,
I resist the temptation to call them recovery rides personally, because I feel like they’re more a preparation for going hard rather than recovering from having gone hard personally,
but I understand what you’re saying.
The bulk of your training
is the type one that we talked about, endurance rides, that’s the bulk type two
high intensity, all about execution, all about quality rather than quantity, and then the third type is this prep ride, or recovery ride, that sets you up for success in the high intensity rides by
accumulating volume, but also at a super light workload, so that your body is prepared to go hard to go deep on those really hard days. Yep, so what this might look like. Let’s give you an average week. Monday, I love to have my athletes take the day completely off, just rest. Tuesday, do some intervals.
Wednesday, Thursday, those are the days when you go and do this noodling easy type ride. Friday, you are rested and ready to go, hit it again hard with intervals. Yep, and then I love to give my athletes a long ride on Saturday, because their legs are a little tired from the interval work. I think they get a little more benefit, but you could also do the long ride on Sunday, and then the other ride on the weekend might be a little bit longer, but again, it’s that easy noodling type ride. That’s a great week, perfect.
Do you agree? Are there four types of rides or five types of rides, or are we right? Is it just three types of rides? Let us know in the comments. Leave us a like, hit subscribe. Thanks for watching.
Bye.
