The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
How to Find Hidden Training Hours in Your Busy Life
OVERVIEW
Time-Crunched Cyclists have to get creative to integrate training into their busy lives. We get plenty of listener questions about various options for adding training hours to a busy schedule. In Episode 257 of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast", Coach Adam Pulford and co-author of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist" book, coach Jim Rutberg, discuss how and whether to integrate bicycle commutes and indoor cycling desks into your training.
TOPICS COVERED
- Question 1: How can I use my 30-60 minute commutes to improve my cycling training?
- Question 2: I can potentially add about 5 hours of low intensity training to my program by pedaling at a cycling desk in my office. Are these hours beneficial and worth the effort?
ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST
Guest
Jim Rutberg has been an athlete, coach, and content creator in the outdoor sports, endurance coaching, and event industries for more than 20 years. He is the Media Director and a coach for CTS and co-author of several training and sports nutrition books, including Training Essentials for Ultrarunning with Jason Koop, Ride Inside with Joe Friel, and The Time-Crunched Cyclist with Chris Carmichael. He writes for trainright.com and his work has appeared in Bicycling, Outside, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Velonews, Inside Triathlon, and on numerous websites. A graduate of Wake Forest University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Exercise Physiology, Jim resides in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his two sons, Oliver and Elliot. He can be reached at jrutberg@trainright.com or @rutty_rides on Instagram.
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
GET FREE TRAINING CONTENT
Join our weekly newsletter
CONNECT WITH CTS
Website: trainright.com
Instagram: @cts_trainright
Twitter: @trainright
Facebook: @CTSAthlete
From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now onto our show.
Speaker 1:For most of us listening and speaking on this podcast, our greatest challenge is figuring out how to integrate training with a busy lifestyle while still having some fun while we do it. So, while we're living this time crunch life, can you use commutes and or an in-office cycling desk to enhance your fitness? We'll answer all of that and more on today's episode. I'm Coach Adam Pulford, and alongside me is special guest and host, jim Rudberg. He'll be here to ask me some of the questions and add in some of his own expertise on these subjects. If you recall from past podcast, jim, or Ruddy as we all like to call him, is the editor and producer of this podcast. He's also a content creator for all things at CTS. He's a coauthor of the Time Crunch, cyclist and Training Essentials for Ultra Running Ruddy, I'll stop there with all the accolades. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, adam, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I thought it would be kind of a fun little uh twist of things If you could ask me the questions this time and I will do my best to answer uh with some of the tips that I have. But because you have expertise in this area, I thought you could chime in too. So this will be a kind of a fun change of pace for listeners here, even though the whole goal is to still rifle through all these Q and A's that we're having from our audience members.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I think you just wanted me to have to edit my own voice in the editing booth.
Speaker 1:That's it. Just give you a piece of your own action, exactly.
Speaker 2:Well, let's get started. The first question for today comes from Denmark. The question is around utilizing commuting as training. I usually ride around one hour each way to and from work when it's not raining. So up to 10 hours a week bike commuting and a lot of split days meaning riding both directions. When I bike commute, that becomes my training for the day. I gravitate toward morning zone to an afternoon tempo or sweet spot. Do you think it would be better to keep all commuting easier and instead reserve energy for harder or an uninterrupted structured training sessions? And that comes from Andreas in Denmark.
Speaker 1:Well, I love some commuting on the bike whenever possible. So the fact that you're already doing that is awesome. I wouldn't change it, as least right now. And kind of depending on your goals, anything that you do change on that really depends on your specific goals timing of training relative to say goal events or something like that, and then also the weather. So I would say like high level from a general fitness standpoint and let's just say you don't have any races or kind of specifics. I'd say, just keep on commuting, because what you're doing right now is is a very good combination of endurance like tempo, sweet spot or you know, or medium intensity training where you can rack up volume, tss and fitness pretty rapidly and you're making good use of your time that you'd be sitting in a car or transit or something like that not getting that fitness no-transcript and TSS, um, the trying to keep hard days hard and easy days easy.
Speaker 2:It gets a little complicated when you're riding twice a day, so sometimes that separation can also be something difficult on the morning of one day and the afternoon of the following, so that you are getting more separation between those hard efforts. And then the other piece that we actually have a commuter training plan in the Time Crunch Cyclist book and one of the things that we incorporated into that are exercises like power starts, over geared riding, where you just take one of those commutes and are just riding in a bigger gear with a very low cadence and just muscling it all the way to work, kind of a thing.
Speaker 2:Or standing start sprints kind of an idea, even high speed sprints, depending on whether what the terrain is like. So things that are very short effort related can also work into commutes relatively well.
Speaker 1:Yep, agree with that, and I think some of that the shorter, bigger, geared stuff, everything that Ruddy just described I'll incorporate that into anybody, anybody's training where we're just logging a bunch of miles. And I want to change it up and add some spice or add some neuromuscular power to the mix. Because one thing, andreas, if you're just riding endurance and kind of tempo sweet spot for eight weeks, you just you kind of get some stale legs. You'll be fit, but you'll have some stale legs. And that leads me into if you have specific performance goals. You want to bring the contrast into the training and riding that Ruddy's talking about.
Speaker 1:So here's where you could, um, you know, sacrifice a few of the days of commuting and do indoor training or just rest or something like that. Um, or, as Ruddy said, you know, put the hard effort in the morning, super chill in the afternoon or evening. Or maybe you just take the train home, you know, wheel the, the bike on the train and hitch, ride home, that kind of thing. And the reason for it is, you know, intensified and specific training means that you'll typically you'll need a reduction of overall volume, increased intensity and that increased specificity of which commuting there's so many other variables you can't control for, and usually when you're doing hard efforts or power intervals or something like that, if you're carrying a backpack may not always work. So in that case, when you get really specific and maybe you're four to six weeks out from a race or a main competition, maybe you limit the commutes and do more individualized training, either indoors or separate from the commutes. That's my general recommendation.
Speaker 2:You know one of the things that you know. It's been a very big topic recently and again, I'm not really sure what Andreas is training for, but heat training is a huge issue. We've covered it on a recent podcast. Mornings obviously are probably going to be cooler. So if you're going to be doing some focused work, probably doing it in the morning when you have less heat stress to deal with. But a 30-minute type or one-hour type ride in the heat of the day, sort of towards the end of a day in through the middle of the summer, could of towards the end of a day in, uh uh, through the middle of the summer, could be a nice heat adaptation kind of ride and you just have to keep the intensity low, um, because there's no reason to cook yourself and also go hard at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it. So you play the weather game in that way of um, if, if you need to keep the training intensity or some sort of like quality specific, do it when it's cooler, get that in. But then, yeah, get those heat exposures Now if it's if it's cold or rainy or icy or something like that, you know, or we're talking about into the winter months, at least in North America, northern hemisphere, you know, I think that there's still really good options for commuting and I would say I would encourage people to do it, so long as you have the proper uh lights and and equipment and and uh gear for it. Um, it's also just fun. I think I'm a huge fan of riding outside. I'm not going to poo-poo on indoor riding, but I think it makes you a very good overall rider as well. So, huge fan of commuting, stay safe in the weather, whether it is heat or ice or cold or something like that. But in general, I'm a huge promoter of using the commute to get some fitness going, to get some fitness going.
Speaker 1:So, andreas, love hearing from you. Thank you for that. Uh and and let me know if that helps. Uh, bring some contrast or bring some new ideas on how to shape up, uh, your commutes toward your goals, and if you have any specific goals right in and maybe we'll talk more about how to weave um uh, uh commutes into that, some some sort of like specificity of training, so ready? I think we got one more question to answer today, can you?
Speaker 2:uh, so um time crunched. Amateur cyclist active within our local gravel riding club in Collingwood, ontario, typically I can put in seven hours a week of cycling. I work Monday to Wednesday, have a cycling work desk which I possibly could put in an additional five hours per week. While responding to low priority items during the work day, I really can only get my heart rate up to about 100 beats per minute before I can't really focus or be productive.
Speaker 2:I know that feeling, but it does feel like my legs are working pushing on the pedals. My question is would this additional five hours per week have any training effect at all, or am I just getting a bit sweaty at work for nothing? Thanks again for the consideration from Denver.
Speaker 1:Pool, denver Pool and Collinwood, ontario, with a gravel club led by Jody Wilson. Yes, so shout out to Jody. Absolutely love that guy, one of my favorite people, one of my favorite Canadians as well. So great mention, and thank you, denver, for writing this one in. Yeah, riding while you work should be a song in there.
Speaker 2:I think there is one.
Speaker 1:There is, there's got to be one. Uh, my advice if you have flexibility, do it. Definitely do it, cause there's a ton of value in, in, in, not only like gaining fitness, but like just moving, exercising, sweating, and there's some I'm just a lowly coach, but there's also some like psychology that goes into it. So, rather than just sitting there riding your chair for eight to 10 hours a day, if you can take a break, a movement break, and incorporate some work while you do that, absolutely do it.
Speaker 1:I do this personally when I need to watch, say, catch up on my continuing education units, right, or watch a video or listen to a thing or jump on a Zoom call. We're pretty casual at CTS, so people can sweat with their muted uh mic in the back and and get work done. But I also take athlete calls when I'm just doing like zone two rides. But I take those zone two calls, uh, with my athletes, yeah, and they kind of like it, because it's like it kind of it shows that you're kind of walking the the talk, and so in that way, I think that, depending on your culture at work and, and, yeah, how you weave it in, I think it can make you more effective as a person, because those movement breaks you usually come back from that more fresh to work on a problem or or whatever you're working on, and I think too, from a health standpoint, it's unlimited potential in the way of utilizing those, those five hours of which we'll talk about kind of more specifically, but I don't ready any any hacks.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean.
Speaker 2:So the the nice thing or the interesting thing there is the idea of 10,000 steps a day gets a you know, a lot of attention in kind of the general health and wellness space, and cyclists particularly don't walk a lot because a lot of them have office jobs or something else and then they spend their time exercising on a bicycle instead of doing anything. That's weight-bearing. Now, it's not necessarily there are some benefits to specifically walking and weight-bearing but, but mostly it's the fact that you're moving and you're exercising. So 10,000 steps a day or riding in your office are somewhat similar in the sense that you're at least doing something other than sitting. So I think there are some health benefits from that standpoint. So I think there are some health benefits from that standpoint.
Speaker 2:There's also the idea that moving your legs in the cycling-specific motion consistently and frequently just makes every ride outdoors or every purposeful ride, training ride, easier to get into and everything.
Speaker 2:You're just less stiff. So if you don't ride for a couple of days, where the folks who maybe ride three times a week and it's a couple of days between each ride every time they do it, yeah, those first 10 miles are kind of clunky and they've got to get their legs back underneath them and everything but people who either ride every day, like the commuter that we were just talking about before, or someone who's going to ride a little bit, just keeping their legs moving in an office situation. It means that when you do get out for a purposeful ride to do some hard efforts, you get into those hard efforts more quickly. You're just used to that pedaling motion. The neuromuscular components are ready to go. So, yeah, I think that training, availability and frequency and repetition are pretty important for people, especially time current cyclists, who, if you can only ride infrequently, it just each one of those rides gets a little bit stiffer.
Speaker 1:Definitely agree with that. But part of the let's just say, devil's advocate here is a typical athlete that I would work with and if they would come to me with this question, like I have an extra five hours, should I use them? And then they'll just use them. They'll get six right and they'll do that year round. I think the problem there, denver, is don't think that you have to use those five hours every single week and maximize your time at the you know the office bike, because you don't.
Speaker 1:I think in general it kind of comes back a little bit to our advice with Andreas, where there's a certain time in the season where you're building fitness and it's just like a general training plan. We're incorporating these lower intensity rides into, you know, increased frequency of exercise. Get more total time in. That's going to be good. If you need something specific or some, or you're coming into a race season or something like that, use these as recovery rides and don't stress about it if you don't get them in, because you know, once you've built your CTL up pretty high and you and you're fit and that fitness is established, now you need freshness and you need performance. And, yeah, riding for 45 minutes at a hundred beats per minute, not knowing your threshold heart rate or anything, but it's not going to add to your fitness. It's going to help with some mental stuff, it's going to help for staying loose, like Jim said, but like it's not going to contribute a ton to your fitness said, but like it's not going to contribute a ton to your fitness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I guess you know. One question for you, adam too, is this you know, granted the idea of hard days hard, easy days, easy, um, and you've done a podcast before on the idea of total rest day versus active recovery. In some cases, would it be advisable to sit as opposed to pedal, um, just because you're not doing enough work to be really all that productive from a fitness standpoint. And you know, energy expenditures, energy expenditure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely there. There are days where just sitting, resting or laying down uh is is way better than getting in that recovery ride. And I think, in that way, when would that be applicable? Well, let's just say you had a hard Sunday gravel race and you died a thousand deaths. I'm wearing a t-shirt right now where that happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1:No recovery ride is going to be better than just resting. So when you're absolutely destroyed, just rest. When you're stressed out from work or like you have so much work to do and you just like need to get it in, maybe just like stand up, walk around and then come back. So you're just taking these little movement breaks, but in terms of like kidding up and thinking that you need to like get that done, there's a lot of examples where a recovery ride I said in the podcast before it's more for your head than your legs. So don't don't think you're missing out on any secret recovery modality by skipping a recovery ride. When you can do it and when total life stress is not so high, then do the recovery ride. When life stress is high, when training stress was high and you just need to fully recover, then yeah, just lay down, get more sleep. Don't worry about the recovery man.
Speaker 2:So I guess, in the grand scheme of things, when you put these two questions together, the overarching question is should a time-current cyclist do whatever they can, or whatever they are capable of doing, in order to squeeze in a couple extra hours of doing, in order to squeeze in a couple extra hours? Do the extra hours matter enough that they should really always try to get them, or is it okay to keep the number of hours a little bit lower, focus on quality instead and maybe not take every opportunity to just add a couple an hour here or there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really great question and I would say it's the game I'm playing with my athletes and the question I'm trying to solve with my own athletes on a weekly basis. But the direct answer and broad answer for our audience and all of our time crunch athletes out there is it truly depends and I think it depends on if you're, you know, building fitness and if the plan calls for, hey, let's get more hours in and for maybe half the season, that that pretty much applies and that's where you don't like, uh, sacrifice sleep or family time or anything like this to get the hours. It's. It's look at your schedule and get creative with where you could potentially fit some more time in, just like Andreas in Denver wrote in and say, hey, I, I have this unique thing going on. Is it helpful to incorporate that? And when you're building fitness and when you're building CTL?
Speaker 2:yes.
Speaker 1:When you need to intensify training and contrast your training to have hard days hard and easy days easy. That's where you can now reduce some of this time of, or extra time of, commutes or, um, you know the work desk, bike ride or something like that, and put the focus more on you know body recovery, but also just getting your work done, so maybe you can get the out of the office sooner and get back home to your kids and everything else that you have going on in your life.
Speaker 2:You know. And then we've also talked about, uh, people who are training or exercising not just for the fitness components but because it's part of their lifestyle, mental health, uh, management, all of those kinds of things, and so we're not going to tell anybody to. You know, quit riding, don't ride, skip these things. If you're doing maintaining that structure or that frequency for other reasons, you just have to be, you know, realistic and acknowledge that that's why you're doing those things, as opposed to thinking that those rides are all training related.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and I, and I think my biggest um hesitation of of the advice of yeah, do the commutes and yeah, do the uh, you know, office bike desk thing is because most, most people listening are going to just hear that and want to fully maximize it all the time and really have to think about um, you know, that is a strategy for part of the year and then that is not a strategy for the other part of the year. And if you're adding in mental stress or shaming yourself because you could be writing right now, you're getting it wrong. You did not hear our advice. So get creative with your time. See when that applies to when you build fitness and then intellectually, unemotionally, put your ego aside and realize when you want to develop performance, focus on keeping your hard days hard, easy days easy. Read one of Jim's books and you'll be set up properly. So that's it.
Speaker 1:That's our show for today. We have a ton of athlete Q and A, so uh, ruddy's going to be back with me next week to rip through a few more of those. If you have a question for your own, head over to train rightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question. Send them over and we'll answer them here. Thanks for joining us on the time crunch cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to train rightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.
