How often should I ride my bike to get fit?

Congratulations – you've discovered, or maybe rediscovered, bike riding. We might be a tiny bit biased but we reckon there is no better way of getting from A to B, or seeing beautiful places, or keeping fit than on two wheels.

It's inexpensive to start (though eventually you can choose to spend as much as your bank manager will let you), it's accessible, and it's fast enough to really get places while at the same time slow enough to enjoy the scenery.

There are plenty of reasons to take up cycling, but one that is high up for many is the pursuit of fitness – whether that's getting fit after a lapse or holding on to hard-won fitness that you've built up away from the bike.

That, of course, leads to the question of how often you should be saddling up if fitness is your goal. To some extent this will depend on your personal situation, such as family and other commitments or working arrangements. There is also the fitness level at which you are starting from, and other activities you might be doing alongside riding your bike.

There are no hard and fast rules as such, but there is a sweet spot that makes a great starting point, and which you can ultimately tailor to your own circumstances.

Go on then, what's the magic number?

According to Andy Turner of ATP Performance Cycle Coaching, three times a week is the magic number.

"Everyone's quite individual in terms of what they can build up fitness-wise with the amount of hours they have," he tells Cycling Weekly. "But I think for beginner riders who are wanting to improve fitness, then starting off just with getting out for an hour or so, or an hour on the indoor bike – probably twice during midweek and then one at the weekends."

If you are brand new to bike riding – or even if you were once a regular rider but you haven't ridden for a long time – then even three hours per week spread across three rides might be a fair bit to conjure with. In which case you can make them less – half an hour each is fine, says Turner.

"Even just half an hour of exercise a couple of times a week is a way to get started. Even doing that level of work will help improve cardiovascular fitness and they can progress from there.

"That's the thing," he adds, "when starting from zero anything additional is going to improve things. Quite a lot of people have a reasonable level of NEAT activity [non-exercise activity thermogenesis] such as doing household chores or walking around. But adding 30 minutes of focused exercise on top of that will often be beneficial."

What if I feel I could do more?

Assuming you're a new or returning rider, it's worth being cautious about taking on too great a workload too soon. The usual recommendation for an established rider increasing weekly volume is not to add more than around 10%. Thus even going from zero to three hours is off the scale.

"It's quite easy to start full of motivation, all guns blazing, and do too much too soon and find it's not really sustainable," Turner says. "So it's good to start small and build up."

How do I add structure to my riding?

When it comes to adding some structure to your riding, Turner's message is 'don't overthink it'. As a beginner you don't necessarily need an expensive personalised plan, because just riding the bike full stop will bring your cycling ability along in leaps and bounds.

"As a beginner, it doesn't matter so much what you do as long as you're doing something," he says. "I've had beginners approach me for coaching, and for the most part, honestly, at that point, things like Zwift or Trainer Road or even AI training plans, they work pretty well just for giving people a structure based on what they have time available for."

Another way of adding value to your usual rides, Turner advises, is to join a cycling club

"Find some that have different paced group rides, because that keeps it nice and social as well. And you can learn bike handling skills and get advice from people who've been doing it for a long time. It's a good way of getting free advice, basically."

If you would rather not join a club, he says, finding a group of friends to ride with can also work well.

Where do I go from here?

Turner suggests slowly lengthening your weekend ride, if you have the time available. Of course, it's not essential to ride for the same duration every weekend, so if you can only add time on once a fortnight or once a month, you will still benefit.

"Extending the weekend ride is probably the first port of call, because you get the benefit from the longer duration, and if you keep it at a nice low intensity it shouldn't leave you feeling wiped out."

That low intensity is quite important, Turner says, because if you end up making lots of moderate to hard efforts in your long ride, it can make your routine unsustainable if you're unused to it.

"A [hard] one-hour session you can recover from alright," he says, "but when get to two-and-a-half-hours it can leave you feeling wiped out for the next day, and then that can make it difficult to adhere to what you're doing."

When it comes to your weekday rides, you could use either or both of those to add some 'sweetspot' recommends Turner – an intensity of riding that feels sustainable but not easy.

"It's always known as the best bang for your buck intensity," he says. "You get quite a good session that is building into higher intensity, but with quite a limited amount of fatigue from it. It's really useful for fitting into busy schedules as well.

"It's that kind of intensity where you could do 10 to 15 minutes, and it feels hard, but not so much that you can't do another one after five or 10 minutes. You're not coming to the end of it out of breath and thinking, Oh, thank God that's over."

Measuring effort

You might be wondering how on earth you measure 'intensity' as a beginner, but it's not difficult and it doesn't require any special equipment if you follow Turner's advice and use 'Rate of Perceived Exertion' (RPE). It sounds fancy but it basically means 'how hard it feels', on a scale of one to 10.

"I'd go off Rate of Perceived Exertion," he says. "Sweetspot probably feels seven and then eight towards the end of the effort, or the last effort of the day. So it's not obscenely tough, you don't feel wiped out afterwards. You feel like you've worked hard, but you don't feel out of breath."

If you want to go even further, both literally and figuratively perhaps, the next thing to try could be to add another ride, Turner says, and that can be during the week or at the weekend – whichever suits your life best.

In summary

So that's three rides a week, starting from as little as half an hour each to begin with, but then building up to around an hour each. Done consistently this will get you some very useful base fitness.

After that you can lengthen the weekend ride – build it out slowly; and after that you could add some sweetspot to your weekday riding, starting with a single 10-minute effort or 'block'.

Beyond that, time and legs permitting, you can add a fourth ride to your week.

Taking it as far as it will go, this is a framework that will garner you almost as much or as little fitness as you'll ever need. Be sure to remember that the journey is as important as the destination, and to enjoy all miles as you go, be they crisp winter days, life affirming rainy ones, or summertime epics. Have fun!