Foster Your Cycling Confidence For Racing Success

It is no surprise that cycling confidence plays a critical role in cycling performance. Fostering cycling confidence is sometimes easier said than done. Cycling can be an intimidating, and sometimes dangerous sport. Crashes can, and will happen in bicycle racing. How do you overcome your fear of crashing to achieve cycling success?

Let’s begin with with the question. What is cycling confidence? Cycling confidence means that you are able to ADAPT to a situation, and BELIEVE in yourself when it matters most. Your cycling confidence allows you to exercise your personal freedom to eliminate anxiety, self-doubt, and indecision during a criterium, road race or time trial.

Second, where does cycling confidence come from? Simply put, cycling confidence comes from how you choose to PERCEIVE yourself as a bicycle racer.

Let’s breakdown the definition to the ABCs of Cycling Confidence. A is for Adaptability. B is for Believe in Yourself. And C is for Competitiveness.

A: Adaptability: Cycling confidence comes from your ability to adapt. Why is this important? Imagine for a minute, you narrowly escaped a crash with four laps to go in a criterium. What are you feeling in the final laps to the finish of the race? It is likely that your perceived pressure to perform, and to stay upright will be greater as your near the final turns to the finish. The key is to adapt, and to race aggressively (and, safely) to the best of your ability regardless of outside expectations or obstacles.

B: Believe in Yourself: Cycling confidence comes from your ability to have faith, and to believe in yourself. This unquestioned faith provides the inspiration to follow through on your short and long-term goals in bicycle racing.

C: Competitiveness: Cycling confidence comes from the ability to tap into competitiveness. Competitiveness is the drive within. One of my colleagues in sport psychology, Dr. Ani Chroni tells us, “competitiveness provides the energy, strength, intensity, and persistence to improve and work hard.” Competitiveness is the fire inside of you–it is the spark of creativity.

So, go ahead light the fire inside of you, and unleash your fears, and climb to cycling success.

Sport Psychology Consultant, Wenzel Coaching

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kathryn_C._Wilder,_Ph.D.

Five Tips For Faster Cycling

Tip 1: Get on your bike

It’s easy to spend time reading books and training manuals, and looking at pictures of bikes in glossy magazines. Unfortunately none of these will help improve your cycling as much as actually getting out on your bike! No nutritional advice or super-light carbon-fibre bike is any use at all unless you also spend time out on the road.

Try and get out two or three times a week – perhaps two evenings a week after work for a short trip (an hour or so) and once at the weekend for a longer ride (perhaps two hours, slowly increasing to three hours).

Tip 2: Ignore your average speed

Most cyclists have a small computer on the bike that reports average speed, distances travelled and so on. This is great information to have, but your goal is not to travel as far as possible, or to have an average speed as high as possible.

The goal is (a) to have fun and (b) to increase your overall level of cycling ability. Sometimes you will feel great and other times be a bit tired. You will need to start each ride with a slow few miles of ‘warm-up’.

If you set out simply to increase overall average speed, you will be tempted to ride too fast immediately you set off, without adequate warm-up, and this will lead to muscle pains and other injuries.

Tip 3: Cycling uphill

Cycling on the flat is fine, but the sure way to improve your strength on a bike is to cycle up hills. At first even a small hill can seem very difficult, but after a few times you will find they get easier. You won’t notice small hills, and big hills won’t seem so bad. Yes they will still hurt, but the sense of achievement outweighs the suffering.

It’s not about the bike! Just because hills are difficult doesn’t mean you need a lighter bike, it probably just means you need more practice on hills.

Believe it or not you will even reach a point where you enjoy cycling up hills!

Tip 4: Cycle intervals

Modern thinking is that the best way to improve your level of ability is to spend 90 % of the time cycling at a reasonably leisurely pace (not too leisurely, though) with great exertion the remaining 10% of the time.

This is usually achieved using so-called intervals. The general idea is that you cycle very hard for a short time, then spend a few minutes cycling gently while you recover, then cycle hard again…and so on.

The length of each exertion varies, but one minute of very hard work followed by five minutes of recovery would be a good starting point.

Don’t forget though, you need to do fifteen minutes warm-up cycling before you start the hard intervals.

Tip 5: Stay motivated on your bike rides

Initial enthusiasm and rapid improvements in your speed and ability might make you want to cycle all the time. This is good, but can be very harmful to your body, especially if you have spent several years without doing much exercise. Aches and pains can turn up that at first you don’t even associate with cycling.

It’s better to cycle three or four times a week and want to do more, than to cycle every day and get fed up with it. If you want a few days off from cycling – no problem!

There are numerous ways to improve your cycling speed and fitness. Read some of our articles about road bike cycling and in no time at all you’ll be joining your local cycling club!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marcus_Smith

Review of Cycle Training Programs

Over the last several months we have been compiling and comparing cycle training programs that are available online. We were amazed at just how many there were and even more amazed at the quality of many of those that we investigated. Here are some of the best cycle training programs that we came across. We have reviewed the top 3.

1. Mycycle.com
The low down:
This is the best online cycle training program that we have found by far. It is a completely web based training program that incorporates training plans and schedules, advice from professional riders, online tracking charts and system, interactive coaching, and more all under one easy to use, attractive website.

The Highlights:
Multiple training programs to fit any cyclist.
Specializing in cycle training plans for “time poor people”.
Personal progress tracking system with charts and graphs.
Exclusive tips & advice from REAL experts.
Estimated 10-30% Improvement in cycling performance.
100% Money back guarantee.

Cost: $97 one-time membership fee grants full access. No hidden costs.

2. Advanced Guide to Base Cycling Training
The low down:
A series of e-books each touching on a different aspect of cycling training. The books are written by Samuel Mascarell, a professional triathlon and cyclist trainer. The offer includes a total of 4 information packed (instant download) e-books including:

“Advanced Guide to Base Cycling Training”
“How to Customize your Own Cycling Training Plan”
“The 5 Minute Guide For Cycling Beginners”
“7 Ideas To Improve Your Cycling Training Plan”

Cost: $34 for all 4 e-books

3. Bicycle Century Training Book
The low down:
This training program is very specific in that it focuses on the goal of riding a Century (100 mile ride). This challenging goal is something that any moderately serious cyclist will have on the list of road biking goals. The unique thing about this e-book is that it covers a wide variety of important fitness topics that are often times overlooked in other cycle training manuals. This is a good product for the price and can be downloaded instantly.

The Highlights:
A good section on the mental aspect of distance training and cycling.
How to manage nutrition during training and on the ride.
Tips on equipment that is critical during long rides.
How to integrate this training with weight loss.
How to monitor and manage heart rate during long distance rides.
FREE BONUS of a 16 Week Training Program.
Free BONUS of a Century Training Log.

Cost: $19.98

Cycle Training that works

Whether you are a category 2 road bike racer or a weekend warrior, we all want to be the best road cyclist that we can be when the season starts. That is why dedicated training and regular workouts are critical. But not just any old workout will do. How many times have you felt that your training regimen has gone flat? It feels the same every time and you know deep down that you really aren’t improving. We all have had this problem. Or maybe you are a new cyclist who simply wants to get into shape for the upcoming season. Or maybe you want to keep up with those friends that have been riding longer than you have. This is why it is soooo important to get hooked up with a training program that will add variety and force us out of our hum drum training regimens into something more fun that will actually make us better riders.

We at roadbicycles.org are recommending the mycycling.com training program. This program is the best online road cycling program we have ever come across……See Explosive Results in just Weeks!

It includes everything from a beginners training program to secret pro sessions that will push you to higher levels of cycling and endurance. This system includes not only great training tips and tricks, but full training schedules, a tracking system with graphs and charts, and professional cyclists who can answer questions and help you along. It really is a fantastic service that puts the fun back into cycling training and one that we highly recommend.

Here is some of what you get for a relatively small one time membership fee:

1.  Multiple training programs for all aspects of road cycling.

2. Training and riding tips from professional cyclists who know what it takes to succeed.

3. A personal progress training system complete with charts and graphs.

4. A comprehensive resource section that includes video tutorials.

5. Online cycle training blog with regular updates.

6. An iron clad 100% money back guarantee.

And much more!

DON’T PUT IT OFF! START YOUR NEW TRAINING REGIMEN AND TRACKING SYSTEM TODAY!