I go everyday at lunchtime for an hour and do 25 minutes of cardio and 25 minutes of weights both free and machine. I then ride for maybe 5- 8 hours a week. Is that enough to get properly fit or am I just ticking over? Should I be looking to do more time at the gym? I feel loads better than I did when I started the gym 3 odd months ago but really want to get dead fit by the spring. Do I need to invest more time in it?

Difficult one to answer not knowing how fit you are now,age, what you consider to be ‘dead fit’ what you want to achieve etc.
Don’t forget though as well as training you need rest to allow your body to recover from training.

Are you progressing ?
Are you going further or faster with the cardio and lifting more weight ?

Fair enough. I am 40. Smoked for a long time until recently giving up. Have now lost three stone over the last 4 months so now 16 stone and 6 ft tall aiming to lost two more by march and in terms of how fit let’s say doing the wall climb at afan in a resonable time for someone my age, last time took around 45 odd minutes including stops (not all for me), I’m told 30 is more like it!

In terms of progress started cross training at level five for 15 minutes now doing 25 minutes at max without problems. Pushing lots more weight than when I started, around double the weight and reps. Am in a sedentary job so the gym and bike is as much as I can do.

An hour in the gym every day, plus regular riding? More than enough. As above concentrate on adding quality rather than volume in the gym. Look to extend your riding outdoors when we get into the new year and the weather’s a bit less rubbish.

You might want to focus your gym sessions a bit ie. more cardio one day, more weights the next, to let you push harder with a bit more effective recovery time.

Watch out for overtraining, if you start feeling too lethargic / knackered, back off for a week.

“Properly fit” is a bit of an empty term, I’m guessing that at 40 you’re not expecting Olympic levels of fitness, and with the weight you’ve already lost I’m guessing you’re already better than UK average…

I’d say yes, what you’re doing is enough, it’s more or less what I do and I completed a 165km MTB race this year without too much bother – nowhere near the winners, but just finishing is pretty much proof of good fitness to me 🙂

What you should do is set some goals – not just weight ones – and use them to measure if you’re really progressing or not. A decent nearby hillclimb, for example, and time it monthly. The Wall climb would be ideal if it’s not too far.

Edit: elliptic’s comment makes a lot of sense, 45min cardio one day and 45min weights the next would probably be more productive.

but really want to get dead fit by the spring

fitness is a sport specific though, what’s fit for cycling isn’t what ‘s fit for weightlifting. Work out your goal, and then work out a plan to help you get there. There are any number of on line resources or books that will lay out in weekly stages what your training should be. Quality over quantity. I do nothing like the hours you do, and I can get up the whites climb in 35mins

Without knowing to much of your details, Im the same age and height and weight under 12 stone, I roughly do between 9 and 12 hrs a week on the bike, no gym work. BUT have been doing this for over 20 years so I have FORM/HISTORY

Got several top tens in MTB events this year inc. 5th in Wiggle 6hr solo in elite/expert catagory and a 2nd cat rider on the road.

Your doing enough hours on the bike, just make them count.

WEIGHT IS YOUR ENEMY.

I will try mixing it up a bit between the cardio and weights, that sounds like a good idea. I tend to push heavy free weights one day and then back off a bit go onto the machines but do more reps the next. At the moment recovery is good no DOMS or anything like that. Although had proper thigh burn after the last very long ride! I’m working hard now in the hope that I can get to a point where I can maintain a decent level in the future. I have 10 years of bad living (or good living depending on viewpoint) to change.

+1 for regular benchmarks / goals.

Also – and this sounds dumb but is surprisingly easy to forget – don’t get too carried away with fitness as a goal in itself. Remember to go out into the big wide world and make some use of it 🙂

If you are genuinely pushing yourself in each session/ride, then that is plenty.

Be honest with yourself though. If you don’t push it hard, you won’t make much improvement.

Without knowing to much of your details, Im the same age and height and weight under 12 stone, I roughly do between 9 and 12 hrs a week on the bike, no gym work. BUT have been doing this for over 20 years so I have FORM/HISTORY

Got several top tens in MTB events this year inc. 5th in Wiggle 6hr solo in elite/expert catagory and a 2nd cat rider on the road.

Your doing enough hours on the bike, just make them count.

WEIGHT IS YOUR ENEMY.

I agree with all this. 9-12 hours a week of exercise is a lot, i’ve had good results in triathlons and running this year off 12 hours a week at most.

don’t get too carried away with fitness as a goal in itself

Reminds me of a conversation I saw somewhere that went something like…

“I’m training, doing a lot of cardio and weights, you know how it is”
“No, I don’t. I’m training to be good at my sport, I’m not training to be good at training”

I’ve also had good results with spinning classes, they’re a pretty good cardio workout, fairly applicable to off road cycling, and usually frecuented by fit members of the opposite sex. And the same sex, whatever.

2nd Spinning classes, about as close to MTB type riding as you can get on a turbo style bike, if anything its harder, more like doing a 1 hour XC race than riding at a trail center.

Gym work, no point doing cardio at the gym then replicating it on the bike, just go out on the bike or do spin classes. I’d say do 3 weeks cardio (say 2 spin classes and a few rides each week) 1 week low intensity cardio, 3 weeks cardio (say 3 spin classes and a few rides) , 1 weeks low intensity cardio. Then swap to weights in your lunch break (3weeks on 1 off, 3weeks on 1 off), but keep up the riding out of the gym at weekends and maybe do 1 spin class each week. The trick I found was to focus on one thign at a time e.g on 8 week period on endurance, one on sprinting (so including weights), one on climbing (so eating fek and doing lots of climbs, all to lose weight/retain power).

haha mid life crisis

I would definately reccomend alternating weights and cardio sessions, give yourself 48hrs between weight sessions to recover.

Spin classes are also very good for bike fitness.

I do an hour in the gym Monday, Wednesday and Friday straight after work, with a rest day on Tuesday, circuit training and spin on Thursday and a bike ride at the weekend. Been doing this for a month or so now and already seeing good results – did 15 miles on Saturday, and was having to stop for a rest/breather far less often than a few weeks ago.

haha mid life crisis

Is there a better time to have a crisis then 😉

You hit forty and have to figure, fix it or die young! The real motivator is to hit those climbs without getting off. My rocky moment will be getting to Leith tower from the bottom of Summer lightning without walking the last 50 yards of steep from the gate!

When you say you are trying to get ‘dead fit’, what are you trying to achieve?

If it’s just cycling, then I’d question the point in doing weights. Your time would be better spent doing more (and longer) cardio, IMO. 25 minutes isn’t really enough for cardio – 20-25 minutes constitutes the time you should be spending on warming-up and warming-down.

When you’ve only got limited time in the gym, it’s tempting to go in there and blast away for an hour. Ensure that you don’t spend all your sessions at your absolute limit, else you’ll end up knackered / burnt-out / injured.

Don’t forget to concentrate on diet and nutrition too. It’s no good spending all that time exercising if you’re eating crap.

There’s always one cynic!

another thing is power to weight. just think; however fit you are now, just imagine how much faster you’d be if you weren’t as heavy.

Drop the weights and do a Pliometrics session.

Unstead of static strength, it’ll give you power.

Thanks all

J

If it’s just cycling, then I’d question the point in doing weights.

No, keep the weights.

a) good for weight loss (perhaps more so than short blasts of cardio)
b) general good “healthy” feeling
c) core stability
d) upper body strength doesn’t add much on the bike when you’re sitting and spinning, but if you want to be better at short, steep, technical climbs like Leith Tower it actually does help you muscle the bike around.

Now I know all of this is subjective as all of our bodies react differently and you know yours better than all of us and what works for you.

5 days a week in the gym will result in burnout or worse injury that much is a guarantee, rest is as important for the body as training so try 3 days in the gym monday, wednesday and friday scrap cardio as has been said already your weekend rides give you this. Personally I would also cut back on the weight you lift and go for more reps with each exercise, and this is perhaps the most important part make sure your actually form is spot on (check with one of the instructors),

Lifting, pressing, pushing with the correct form will gain far better results than just using brute force and also avoid any injuries / strains. Diet (god I hate that word) for want of a better word is also important when the wife gets home I will get the link to her aunt’s website and post that up here for you to look at. Don’t worry it’s not one of those all food is bad sites it’s all about replacing certain ingredients for more healthy options without losing flavour.

What’s the point doing weights if your goal is to cycle faster?
focus your efforts into what you want to be good at.

No, keep the weights.

a) good for weight loss (perhaps more so than short blasts of cardio)

So building muscle makes you lighter?

The more muscle you build the more calories you burn which can help lose weight if you are overweight. Don’t focus on this strategy too much though as you’ll be kidding yourself in reality.

5 days in the gym isn’t a problem, my hosuemate was a bodybuilder,

5 x 25minute sessions a week, he just trageted a specific area each day, did it, went home and concentraded on his diet (and drungs). He was huge!

Jsut make sure you get the most out of it. Pick a long term goal like a race at the end of next summer. And then subdivide the intermediate time into 8 week portions. Each 8 weeks should have a specific target. eg:

Weight loss – aim to loose an average 1kg/week for 8 weeks.

Climbing – aim to lose 0.5kg/week and work on power at your threshold.

Endurance – aim to loose 0.5kg/week and do lots of miles

Sprints – aim to no lose any weight, but work on leg strength at the gym and sprinting intrvals on your rides.

Thats 8 months roughed out already. Just do it in periods of 3 weeks increacingly hard work, then 1 weeks rest doing light work (then repeat to make it 8 weeks, so week 5 is somewhere between week 2 and 3 in terms of effort and it goes up from there).

Training is not a generic thing. You have to do the right things to get the result you want. Otherwise it’d be like walking into a library to find something out and just pulling random books off the shelves and reading them from cover to cover.

And on the subject of books, get a training one. Far better than asking on here.

You are certainly allocating enough time though.

I’m sure there are people far more qualified than me to comment on this but surely it partly depends upon the intensity with which you train in the gym. If you’re pushing yourself to the limit with every aerobic session then you’re overtraining. Do you use a HR monitor to gauge intensity? Also with weights are you training separate body parts each session or whole body? If its whole body then youre overtraining. You’re better off weight training 3 times a week whole body, with a day between and the weekend off. You can keep the cardio 5 times a week but vary the intensity. Also every 4-6weeks take a break. However, you need to have a goal and work out exactly what you need to train and how…..find a decent book on strength-training and endurance training and devise something that suits you. Good luck.

Wow brilliant answers and lots of food for thought…However slightly confusing and conflicting!!

Thanks again.

However slightly confusing and conflicting!!

Not just here, but in the fitness industry and even among scientists. The only thing I can suggest is work out what you want to achieve, read around the subject and take what works for you.

Sounds like you’re spending a lot of time doing it, and getting some results which is good.
But ‘fit’ is relative and subjective.
I would recommend spending a couple of sessions with a personal trainer. Tell them what you want to achieve, ask them to assess whether your current program is effective and get them to suggest a good program and then you can carry on on your own until such time you want a new program. Cheaper than paying a personal trainer for every session but likely to be much more effective is improving your overall fitness.
From experience I can highly recommend a session or 2 on core strength each week. Makes a massive differnece to your feeling of feeling good, and your effectiveness on the bike
And don’t forget to enjoy feeling fit, don’t obsess over it 🙂

If it’s just cycling, then I’d question the point in doing weights.

Cycling is not just about riding a bike fast.
It’s looking good in lycra, too.