Do you prefer training before work or after work? Plan your training days and times accordingly. You will need to make time for 3 - 4 cycling sessions per week and 2 sessions of resistance training. This means that you need at least 4 days of exercising per week.

You can either do you resistance training and cycling on the same days, or on the "rest" days for cycling. We suggest the following training principles:

• Wednesday and Saturday are the main sessions when you must be prepared to work hard.
• The other sessions are fillers where you do what you feel you can sustain. You should feel fresh for Monday.
• On Saturday, ride according to how your legs and body feel generally. You should feel tired at the end of the session, but able to recover for Monday. You should be fully recovered for Wednesday.
• On Friday, rest for Saturday's ride.
• The training programme will work under the principal of progression. Thus the same sessions will be completed, but they will get slightly harder with the addition of more hills or speed, but this will be partly determined by your body.
• You must always listen to your body and let it dictate how much it can manage.

How would you know which programme to choose?
These guidelines should help you: