Make Best Use of the Winter Period (for BIG FTP Gains Next Summer)
Summary In this episode, RCA coach Ben Treble discusses the transition from off-season to on-season training for cyclists, focusing on strategies to maintain motivation during winter, the importance of setting winter goals, and the role of strength and conditioning in enhancing cycling performance. The conversation emphasizes the need for a balanced approach that includes aerobic base training, gym work, and experimentation with nutrition and taper strategies to prepare for the upcoming cycling season. Takeaways Take time off the bike for mental reset. Focus on aerobic base training during winter. Set specific winter goals for cycling. Incorporate strength and conditioning into training. Experiment with nutrition and taper strategies. Maintain motivation through outdoor rides. Strength training is crucial for cyclists. Something is always better than nothing in training. Prioritize gym work during the off-season. Reset goals to address injuries and bike fit issues. Chapters 00:00 Transitioning from Off-Season to On-Season Training 03:06 Maintaining Motivation Through Winter Training 05:58 Setting Winter Goals for Cyclists 09:05 The Importance of Aerobic Base Training 11:51 Incorporating Strength and Conditioning in Winter 14:51 Experimenting with Nutrition and Taper Strategies 17:50 The Role of Gym Work in Cycling Performance 20:50 Maintaining Strength During the Cycling Season 23:54 Key Takeaways for Off-Season Training  RCA Cycle Coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/ Cam Nicholls (00:00.046) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I am joined in studio by or with Ben Treble, RCA coach Ben Treble. Welcome to the studio, Ben. So today I wanted to talk about something that if you're an Australian, Kiwi or anyone sort of Southern hemisphere, is that how it works weather wise? Hopefully. And you're coming off a winter period because what is it? Just entered spring here. Thanks, Ken. Cam Nicholls (00:29.238) So if you're in Victoria, we know that they're gonna have winter for another five months. But for the rest of Australia, you're sort of coming into some nicer weather and you're just coming off an off season phase or what most people would treat as an off season phase being a winter. Or if you're like many of our Canadian, American, UK or European members, you you're just about to wrap up the summer. period, the nice weather and you're heading into an off season phase or at least a winter phase. So I wanted to talk about, you know, your approach as somebody who coaches a number of people for this period of time, assuming that we're talking about, you know, our American, Canadian, UK, European members who are going into a winter period. And maybe for those listening in Australia, Southern hemisphere, like, now that I've, you know, coming out of an off season phase. Did I do it right? Well, what can I do right for 2026? So, I'm gonna paint the picture for you here. I've been training super hard for the last five, six months during summer. I've done a couple of Fondo events. I've done a few races. I've peaked. I'm feeling good, but winter's about to hit. What would you recommend I do? That's a good question. mean, ultimately the two big ones come into mind really quickly is going to be taking some time off and putting a big focus on like aerobic base training and using that extra time with some reduced volume and intensity with the bike to focus on some strength and conditioning in the gym. Okay. They're the two headlines. Okay. Okay, so let's dig into those, playing Deadpool's advocate, what if I'm like, like we just spoke about in the previous podcast, Joshua, who's just throughing from the bit, you know, he's recently got into, not recently got on a road cycle, but recently found structured training and the benefits and had huge improvements and won his first crit race. And I know from the feeling, you know, 12 years ago when I first went and did my first race and I got that. Cam Nicholls (02:41.718) sensation and the group rides, the dopamine's going off and I didn't care that it was winter, I just wanted to go hard during winter because I was feeling good and I loved the training and I wanted to do well next year. So what if you like, not saying Joshua is going to do this, but what if you like Joshua in that scenario and you're so excited about what's next and you're loving the training and you just keep going. What if you do that? What's going to happen? Yeah, very likely you're going to peak in the middle of winter when there's no racing or races that you're not targeting and you're going to get to summer in a fairly fatigued state looking for a mental break. So, you know, I think it's tricky for riders like Josh, because if you've just sort of really found that itch this late in summer and you're about to hit winter, especially in North America, where it is going to be cold and snowy. Okay. Ben Treble (03:38.818) that's going to be hard to manage that motivation because one, you don't want to lose the motivation, but you want to maintain it and manage it through winter and hold onto it. So when you get towards spring and you get towards the summer crits, you're going to peak. That's when you need to have that real energy. Okay, so for that person that wants to keep going, keep that in mind. What do you want 2026 to look like? There's a, there's a, there's a plan B for some athletes on this. I'm thinking of not Josh, but another athlete that I have. and the, I'll set the scene a little bit. I've worked with them for a while. They're a weekly athlete of mine. They do a lot of travel once a month between America and Europe. busy schedule, busy job, loves riding and We had the chat recently about winter goals. I've had this started this conversation with all my North American European athletes. I want you to think about your winter goals. Just think about it. And then in our next catch up, let's start to set the goals. Okay, so the goals can be beyond building base fitness and going to the gym. Ben Treble (04:49.858) gym. Definitely. Okay. Yeah. And for this athlete, the first comment was last winter. So before I was working with this athlete and they did a swift program through winter, it burned them out and they got to the end of winter and was ready to throw the bike in the bin. I think I'm going to relabel this, not just swift, but like high intensity indoor training. Yes. Yeah. Okay. We're really going hard after Zwift. Zwift. This was the last podcast we did. Cam Nicholls (05:16.43) Which is what Zwift programs are. But Zwift is, as we've said, just to preface, great platform, we love it, great for bunch rides, great for motivation, great for indoor racing, and it does have some good plans on them. But they can burn you out. Easy target. Yeah. So this athlete, you know, that was our conversation around winter goals and the way that we're going to manage that, cause we don't want to repeat it and equally doesn't want to just do indoor riding based training is one of the goals is let's try and ride outdoors three times a week. Not appropriate for everyone, but they're going to do some gravel riding and there's a gravel scene through winter. So we're flipping the focus a little bit. We're still going to do some indoor training, but the focus will be more around, Okay, nice. Ben Treble (06:02.082) getting him outdoors to maintain that motivation on the bike. And equally it's going to be around, he's got a little niggle in the knee and there's going to be a focus on strength and conditioning and rehabbing and addressing that injury. Like really taking the time to focus on stretching, go see the physio if he needs to see the physio. But like really let's address those small niggles so they don't become bigger problems when we want to hit full training again coming into summer. Okay, cool. And I think that's, you've raised a good point that, you know, cross training is a great opportunity as well. If you want to have like another goal, just to, if you've been cycling for a long time, like I have, you know, I've been doing it for 15 years now. Last year I did a triathlon, just coming out of, you know, winter. I know, yeah. Ben's dropped his jaw here. And no, no, not many people are impressed. And I'm doing it again this year because I'm like, it's just a bit of variation and, For me, it just changes the dynamic of what I'm doing. I hate swimming, but I still go to the pool. It makes me really respect cycling even more. Not a huge fan of running, but I do like the process of training for it. And there's different things that I'm doing and it's time away from the bike. It's a mental refresher. So when I do come back to cycling specifically, I'm more motivated. So that's another example of just taking your mind off things and some cross-training ideas. if we go back to, let's just say you are focused on having an epic 2026. on the bike, you're about to go into winter, you talk about focusing on endurance and focusing on the gym, which is really going to put you in a good position to have a solid 2026. So what would that look like? Yeah, to me it looks like you start with what I would call a call it a transition phase. So you get to the end of your race season, you go into a transition phase where you progressively reduce the volume and intensity. Might only be over two weeks, might be over four weeks. Depends how long you want to take the winter. And then I would probably try to plan to have at some point early in the winter, a significant complete break off the bike. Ben Treble (08:09.622) And depending on the rider, that might be one week. might be two weeks for a complete mental reset. And just, you know, if that means going on a holiday with the family, whatever it is, it's like a really, that's the time to have a proper break on the bike. Post that you move into a general preparation phase. So I would use the winter as like a long general preparation phase. And this would start with some aerobic based training. So that does involve. significantly reduced intensity, you might still, you'd go into some maintenance, right? That's often the main goal that writers would come to you with through winter is like, how do I maintain what I have? I don't want to lose. I don't want to lose what I've gained in the summer. And that requires a bit of resetting expectations that you've peaked in summer and you have to recognize you can't stay at that peak all the time. And the way that we get you back to that peak or at a bigger peak next year, is you're going to have to come down first and you have to go through this period where you give your body a significant portion of time to rest, recover, reset. And then we go into this base block. So everybody likes to talk about this pyramid and the lowest, biggest base in the pyramid is this long, low endurance work. But that could also mean doing your strength and conditioning work. And you still want to do some maintenance, which could be some sprint interval training. Okay. So, therefore, if we just focus on the cycling specifically, let's just say, I know a lot of people in the off-season phase, now they're on the trainer, they're not outdoors, the volume reduces. So let's just say we're going from 10, 12 hours a week to maybe five or six. And we're doing four rides, maybe five rides. As a general blanket example, let's just call it five rides. Five one-hour rides. Are four of those rides Zone 2 and one of them's an intense workout that you do each week for some maintenance? Or are three base rides and two intense maintenance workouts? Ben Treble (10:23.382) Yeah, it depends. would periodize it again, just like you would normally. but in general, I would probably want to spend more time in a general weekly structure where if there's five sessions, one is recovery ride zone one. So even do a recovery ride. Okay. Even though you're not that fatigued and you know the training load isn't that high. I would still have a recovery rock. Ben Treble (10:45.014) Yeah, I'd still do a recovery ride. it's five days a week, you're still doing back to back days on the bike. Yeah, so the trainer is more difficult than on the road as well, generally. I would agree with that, you're probably going to have a bit of heat stress going on that you're not accounting for. Not in Canada. Or some of our Nordic country members as well. Future podcast topic, heat training. yeah, one recovery, two zone two rides. And then I would do, yeah, one or two, if you want to call them interval sessions and depending on where you're at in winter, that might start out. would do maintenance, which would be a sprint interval session, which is quite neuromuscularly taxing, but it shouldn't be too like energetically taxing externally. And then you might start to add in. Ben Treble (11:33.258) some efforts with your fifth session. And that might be starting smaller with some small tempo efforts and building up depending on really depends on what your goals and weaknesses and strengths are. If you've got a quick racer, you might focus on maintaining anaerobic capacity and do a bit more threshold work. If you've got someone who wants to focus on time trial or climbing and longer endurance events, you're probably going to do a bit more tempo work for your intervals. We're just coming out of an off-season phase, well I am, and what's worked really well for me depends on the week. I've averaged over the past 16 weeks 5.1 hours per week, so not huge, mostly on the trainer and I'm probably doing two or three zone two rides, then I'll do one sweet spot ride. For me it's about 300 watts, so I'll do 10 minute intervals with a five minute recovery and I'll do, depending on how much time I've got available, I might do three or four. five if I'm lucky, that's extending it to an hour and a half on the train though, so it's probably more like three or four. And the other session I've been doing, and we've made a video on the RCA YouTube channel about this recently, and I think this was a paper that you might have shared or Carter shared, the sprint interval training, which I've actually never done before, which is the warmup with some activation efforts and then 30 seconds all out. And when I say all out, it's like, and people ask on the video, what percentage of FTP are you doing? It's just like, yeah. just go all out, like, you know, as a rate of perceived exertion, if you're all out is a 10 out of 10, which is a 10 second sprint, for a 30 second sprint, you're probably doing a seven or a nine, I'm sorry, eight or a nine RPE. And what I found with those sprint intervals as well is that, you know, my first 10 seconds would peak and then I would drop off towards the last 20 seconds. And that's fine, you're depleting your anaerobic stores, but I've been doing that. So 30 seconds sprint, I think it's a four four and a half minute recovery, either way. I think that doesn't really matter in between and then I'll do that again and I'll do five or six of those depending on how much time. And that's all the intensity I've been doing. And I went and did the local bunch recently and I was really surprised at my ability to not only keep up and roll turns and not get dropped, but in the last, it's a 90 minute hit out and the last sort of 20 minutes, they push it pretty hard towards the end. And I was able to roll turns and had some durability as well, which was really surprising. So I think that blend that you talked about is actually kind of like what I'm doing now. Cam Nicholls (13:54.68) to great success. Yeah, no, that sounds about right. you know, think to me that that's the answer for nine out of 10 cases for people. don't think there's much else to it. I think there's a lot more that you can do in winter and use winter for like, that's the training, you know, like you get the training done, but winter is also this really good opportunity to experiment and test different things. That's the time if you are focused on say an event that looks at watts per kilo and you want to look at trying to get to race weight, you can try and drop a little bit of weight through winter. It's not a lot, but you can just really do small incremental stuff. It's a really good time to look at your nutrition. If you want to experiment or do gut training, if you want to try different gels or foods, find out what works with your stomach. If you want to test a taper strategy, that's also a good time to really just test different things out before you hit the season. So with a taper strategy, if you're not doing much training though that wouldn't be possible would it? Because a taper is about peaking and maybe you could do that at the end of the season, at the very end. Ben Treble (15:12.622) Yeah, I still think you could do it in winter. Like you could, uh, to keep it interesting. have some athletes where we might throughout the winter break it up and do say, you know, after two months of base training, if you want to call it that, might do, uh, we would call it a training camp where you actually, you add quite a bit of load and intensity for one week. and then you might try a taper strategy the week after. So you just build up a bunch of fatigue. You're also really breaking that winter up. And you just, okay, now we're to do, try and do some longer rides, whether it's on Zwift or outdoors. You find a point in the winter that suits the athlete to their schedule, lock it in. You get through that week and then the week after, cause they're depleted. It's kind of a good time to test how a taper might work. How they respond to it. Cause there's different taper strategies out there. And I do think people respond differently to them. And often you find yourself in the middle of, you start with a new athlete and you maybe coming. Ben Treble (16:11.446) the first time you're doing a taper is to a race that they care about. So you have to be quite conservative. And of course, know, bike position is another big one I know. And during winter periods and years gone by, I've tested and spent thousands of dollars on many, many different bike seats. Turned out back in the day, just, my saddle was probably 10, 20 mil too high, which was the issue, which is very common. People have their saddle too high and they don't sit on the saddle properly. And now I've ended up with, as you can see over there on that wall, the ugly SMP. But testing, you know, different positions as well is a great thing to do during that. winter period. So while you're testing these different things and you're doing your bass training with a little bit of intensity sprinkled in, Jim was the other big one that you mentioned at start of the conversation. So what does that look like? And let's not specifically go into reps and sets and that, because that's probably a conversation for another day. But like... How are you looking at gym? Is this a phase where you're building strength in the gym? And how many sessions a week are required? How are you placing it amongst your cycling training? What does that look like? Yeah, great question. Look, I'll caveat this and say, I'm not an accredited strength and conditioning coach. I'm a sports scientist and a cycling coach. Cam is so Cam can tell me if I mess this up or not. but you do do a lot of S and C work as a sports scientist in reference to winter, you know, I mean, the basic stuff, if we just looked at S and C in terms of cycling, Cam Nicholls (17:52.928) S &C strength and conditioning just for those out there that wondering what that might be. Thanks, Ken. My bad. No, no, it's alright. Sometimes we get these questions and we use acronyms all the time. Yeah, that's good. I'll keep that in mind. You know, you would say, okay, you want to do twice a week to build power and strength, whatever it is. And then if you're in a race season, you back it off to maybe once a week for maintenance. And typically you're going to prioritize the bike work over the gym work. So if you're going to do gym and a high intensity bike work in the same day, you're probably doing the bike in the morning and the gym in the afternoon. When we hit winter, it's to me, it's a point where you can prioritize the gym. You might even go two or three times a week and you might do that in the morning and do the bike in the afternoon. So you're to make the gym the priority. That's the time that you could do it. And just like on the bike where we periodize, you have, you know, training where you're to do base training. You might do building blocks on VO2 like capacity. And then you go into your, you know, really focused sharpening work that's race specific with S and C you have different Ben Treble (19:04.11) periods where you can periodize it, right? Like you can have hypertrophy phases, there's strength and then there's speed and power phases. And so if you, yeah, we won't go into reps and sets, but I would say the start of winter, typically I avoid hypertrophy, but a lot of our members are, you know, 30 plus years old or, you know, 50 years old and 65 is probably the key demographic. Like loss of lean muscle is a big issue, particularly in males at that age. And one of the things that we know about longevity and just general health is that we, we need muscle mass. And so this to me would actually be a great time in the year that you could do some hypertrophy. So I would probably consider doing some hypertrophy work, which is often, you know, a little bit lower weights, but higher reps and sets often involves a lot more doms, which would be delayed onset muscle soreness for those who don't know what that term is. And that's just that, you know, if you hit the weights in the gym and a day later, you feel like you can't walk down the stairs. That's a second day for me. The dreaded doms. Um, that's the period for that type of work. And then you're going to move in towards the latter part of winter. would go into a strength phase. So just building, and then you're going to jump into sick. Ben Treble (20:25.024) lower volume of strength work the priority goes back to the bike when you get closer to summer and you would peak with doing your power and speed work in the gym. And this is a big one for a lot of people that it's like a low hanging fruit item for a lot of recreational and amateurs that don't do it. And I know lot that don't do it. There's some research out there and look, this is probably the most optimistic research paper, but I'll link it in the description. know, a group of cyclists doing weight training over a period versus those that didn't on FTP, they had a 14 % increase in their FTP, those that actually went to the gym, which is significant. So, but I think it's a general blanket. You're probably looking at at least a 5 % increase. I know FTP isn't everything as we've talked about in previous discussions, but it's one that obviously a lot of people look at. But as well as, you know, durability is a huge one and bone density, which is not the sexy one, but you know, we know from the research that cycling isn't good for bone density. Unfortunately, you're according to research, you're better off being a sedentary individual. watching Netflix, then you are cycling from a bone density perspective. you know, get in the gym purely for the risk of that you could fall and you know, you don't want to break a bone because, you know, breaking a bone is a potentially, you know, a full season time off the bike versus, you know, just scratching some skin, which might be a week. Yeah. They often say that at a certain age and an injury that stops you from training for more than a few months, it's the domino stack and then everything fails from there and you might never get back on the bike. And that's, that's when you get a lot of big problems at a certain age. So I'm a very, very big advocate for strength training at all ages, but in particular in your like 30 plus, I think it should be a really big part of your program. and Ben Treble (22:20.824) bone density, should make it a sexy word because that's probably more important to most males who are like 55, 60 plus. Cause if you have a small fall down some stairs and you land on your hip, you very well likely going to snap off your neck of femur. And that's going to be like a horrific, you know, injury to overcome, which is highly avoidable in my eyes. Like it shouldn't snap from a small fall, but it does for a lot of cyclists. So easy to avoid like, Strength training once a week would probably avoid that. Twice a week is going to give you a lot of strength on top of that. I think that's, you know, the once a week is the one where people struggle with after they've done what we've just described here, this off-season phase where they've reduced volume on the bike and the IRM getting in the gym. So Wayne, who's up here at the moment, we're gonna go ride with the Moro RCA member and he's just coming out of his winter period and he's just started to do some intensity because he's training for the Worlds, UCI Worlds. And he was telling me a couple of days ago on the bike, Yeah, I've stopped doing the gym now because the training's ramped up and I'm struggling to find the time and nowhere to place it. And I was like, Wayne, you've just spent four to five months in the gym building up all this strength. And now you're, which is great, big tick, but now you're coming into the on-season phase and you just think, and I think a lot of people think, yeah, exactly. People think this way. The science is pretty clear on this. know, you lose the majority of those gains within like four weeks. If you just drop the strength full stop, like all that work you did in the winter is from a strength point of view was only good for the winter. That's it. Four weeks you stop. That's, that's kind of like, why did you bother almost? which I hate to say, but it's kind of, that's the truth. The good news is the science is pretty strong that the work required to maintain the strength that you built is low. Cam Nicholls (24:07.948) Why did you bother exactly? Ben Treble (24:20.556) Like I would say once a week should be the target, but the science was it has to be at least once every 10 days. That's the real minimal dose. those gym sessions only need to be like, you can do it in 30, 45 minutes. I feel like you should be able to fit that in or your coach should be able to help you fit that into your program. the example that I got given was there are some pro cyclists who go to grand tours and they will in the middle of a grand tour, it's three weeks long. They will do. two gym sessions in the space of that three weeks. Wow. That is, that is how strong the evidence is. And they will, so you will find them doing a strength session. It's not going to be a crazy strength session. Yes. I think that people also, when they think about going to the gym and doing weights, they do way too much and they have to feel that doms delayed onset muscle soreness. Otherwise it wasn't a good session. I think that's a very big mistake people make in the gym. I think they don't realize how little work you need to do. It doesn't have to be so crazy. No exactly, yeah and that's what I speaking to Wayne about and I threw some ideas and he's like, I hadn't really thought about it like that because I think when you do start coming out of an off season and you know, you're like, oh I also have to do the gym now and I'm, you know, my training volume's gone up from six hours, you know, five, six hours a week to 10, 12 hours. I'm feeling a bit more fatigued. It's like, I just don't, I don't know where to put it. And Aaron Turner, who's a certified strength and conditioning coach and done our programs at the RCA, has always said, and I know you've said this as well, Ben, that you wanna still keep your rest days as rest days, which includes your base aerobic days. You don't wanna be doing intensity on those days. So I was like, well, where do I put the gym when I'm doing two to three hard sessions a week? Well, you actually, and as you said at the start, you put them on the days you're doing your intense sessions, but in the on-season phase, you're prioritizing the bike. So you do... your high intensity session in the morning and then you find time throughout that day to go to the gym for 45 minutes and you just reduce the weight slightly by maybe 10, 20 % because you're a little bit fatigued from the training sessions but you're maintaining the strength you've developed in the off-season phase. And I think the research, this was a Ronnestad research that Aaron's referenced a number of times, they actually did some research on how long they were able to maintain that level of strength they've developed in the off-season and it was up to 13 weeks. Cam Nicholls (26:41.154) which is a long time and pretty much a whole season of cycling, you know what I mean? I think the key message with this is something is always better than nothing. If you can only go to the gym for 20 minutes and do one key exercise and one set of it with a warmup, that is better than not going. Doing some body weight exercises at home if you can't get to the gym is also better than not doing anything that will help you go through this maintenance period a lot better. I think that has to be the key takeaway is that something in terms of the gym, we talk about getting specific with Hmm. Ben Treble (27:17.292) reps sets or, you know, hypertrophy and strength and speed. But at the end of the day, go to the gym and lift some weights or if you can just lift something at home, including your body weight, that is better than nothing. kettlebell and just move it around. Just get the dog. Have you got kids? Do some squats with your kid on your back. So I'm just going to summarize this discussion once again Ben and you can add to it or tell me if I'm wrong. So the ideal sequence in an off-season period is for people to at least up front take a bit of time off the bike completely just as a refresher. Just get away from it. A week, sort of two weeks max. Then when you're coming back, really dial back the intensity and probably the volume. Focus more on aerobic work with a couple of maintenance sessions in there and then, you know, assuming that you don't have other cross-training goals that you're looking at, look at the gym and look at the gym two to three times a week to develop and prioritize the gym over the cycling to develop strength in that off-season phase. So when you do hit the new season, you've got greater capacity on the bike. Ben Treble (28:30.616) That's good. Yeah. I'll add just a few sub points. Use that time for some reset your goals. Yep. Create goals that are specific to winter. And that might be addressing some injuries, addressing some bite fit issues, or doing some experimentation on taper strategies, nutrition, that sort of thing. Cool. That's great. Well, thanks for your time, Ben. If you're out there listening and you're keen to get some support during the off-season phase, believe it or not, we work with a lot of RCA members in the off-season phase to help them through this process, both in the gym and with their cycling and how to marry them both together. So make sure you check out the RCA's website, www.roadcyclingacademy.com. Check out Hire a Coach and we hope to catch you on the other side. Â
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