ASK GCN: HOW TO STAY FIT AND IMPROVE MY FITNESS FOR OUTDOOR RIDING
ZWIFT COMMUNITY | on November 19, 2018 by Daniel Park
Question: I ride with mates weekends and put in a couple of hours training during the week on the turbo. Since I don’t have a lot of time, would my time on the turbo be the best spent following an interval training plan, or am I better just having fun chasing PRs on Zwift segments? My goal is to both stay fit and also increase my FTP, so I can climb hills and sprint faster. Thank you.
With limited time to train during the week, it is essential that any training completed during the week is high intensity. Zwift is the perfect platform to train effectively and efficiently.
With 2 hours available to train during the week, let’s assume you can break this down to two, 1-hour workouts.
To improve your fitness and make outdoor riding more enjoyable, we need 1 session to be a structured interval workout. This will give you an opportunity to focus specifically on your threshold, climbing, and sprinting.
In Zwift there is a wide range of workouts available, either as group workouts or individual sessions. These workouts will provide you with structure and specific intervals.
The second Zwift session needs to provide high intensity, but less structure. We suggest racing on Zwift.
The racing available on Zwift is for all levels of fitness. The racing is challenging and provides the opportunity to extend your fitness in a fun and motivating environment. You will complete a range of hard efforts with little recovery. This is a great way to improve fitness without a structured workout.
These 2 Zwift sessions will make you faster in the real world in no time at all.
DOWNLOAD AND IMPORT THE WORKOUT
You can download the recommended workout here. Next, you’ll want to import the workout into Zwift and get training. This article explains how to import.