On Your Bike: A Solo Cycling Workout From Canyon

A complete body workout from the renowned German cycling manufacturer, Canyon.

With gyms closed for the time being due to the Coronavirus, lots of us are turning to cycling as a way to stay in shape.

There are tonnes of benefits to regular bike workouts. From improving your cardiovascular fitness, to toning your lower body and strengthening your core, everyone can gain.

If you’re new to cycling and need a bit of imagination, Canyon’s interval workout below is a great calorie burner that’s suitable for any level of cyclist.

If you’re a regular rider who’s recently switched to indoor turbo training, there are some tips below to make the session more challenging.

It was created by Personal Trainer and Coach, Kim Hartwell, who is supporting Canyon’s Ride Your Workout campaign this summer.

The workout

Warm-up

• Start with a small glute/core workout prior to getting on the bike (they’ll feel the muscles even more so on the bike).
• Follow this with a warm-up section on the bike for around 5-8 mins slow to a steady pace.

Raising the pace

• Start to build pace over the next 8-10 mins.
• If you’re training outside, find a safe path or section of road for sprints – push as hard as you can for 60-90 seconds (rest for 30-60 seconds), repeat five times.
• Continue at a steady for minutes 8-10 mins.
• Regular cyclists make the workout more challenging with timed sprints, e.g. 20 seconds fast / 10 seconds steady (Tabata style), or longer intervals 45 seconds sprint / 15 seconds recovery.

Cooldown

• Ride for a steady pace back to the start of the route.
• Don’t forget to stretch post-ride!

Kim’s bike workout tips

Work on your posture for a great core:

• To maximize the muscle-building benefits of cycling for your abs and core, remember to engage your core while cycling, allowing the navel to suck in towards the spine and engaging the pelvic floor to activate the transverse abdominals.
• You should feel a light squeezing in your lower abs, and this also helps you maintain proper posture while riding
• Try to maintain this throughout your cycling workout, and after a short time, it will come naturally.

Head for the hills to strengthen and tone your glutes:

• You can help to improve your muscle strength and tone by heading for the hills and getting out of the saddle. Steep hills force you to work harder to start each pedal stroke.
• Riding uphill is hard work and will place large amounts of stress on both your glutes and quadriceps, giving them a hard workout.
• It also stimulates muscle fibre damage: each time we train on our bike, we facilitate small tears in the muscle fibres of the body. These microscopic tears are how we build the muscles; as the body works to repair the muscle tears, it becomes stronger each time (given proper recovery).

Pedal faster or increase resistance for great legs:

When your legs work against resistance, they build muscle and help you get stronger and more toned so simply pedalling on your bike will do that, but you can also up the intensity in a few simple ways…

• The first and most obvious is to pedal faster
• Another way to add intensity is to increase the resistance when pedalling – and the best way to do that is by cycling up a hill
• You can also try a form of interval training in which you find multiple hills, or you do hill reps: cycling up the same hill five (or ten) times, with a rest on the downhill.

About Canyon

The Canyon brand is loved by cyclists of all levels for its direct-to-consumer proposition which cuts out the middle-man and passes the savings onto customers. Canyon produces a huge range of bikes, from the road to mountain to hybrid, and everything in between.

For more workout tips from Canyon, or to see their full range of bikes, go to www.canyon.com.

Read more health-related guides and articles in our dedicated section here.