How Much Training Do You Need to Maintain Fitness Over the Holidays?

The minimal amount of exercise needed to preserve endurance

For any seasoned cyclist, it’s very clear that maintaining fitness from one season to the next is key if you want to keep progressing. And research confirms that it’s much easier to maintain fitness than to rebuild it. But the question is: how to maintain fitness when there’s a lot less time to train? How little is enough?

A study from 2021 looked at the minimum effective dose of exercise that will ensure just that. The good news is, that you can get away with a lot less training compared to your usual schedule during the main season without losing much of your fitness.

But it all depends on how you do it, and what aspects of your training regimen you reduce or preserve. This research looked at the effects of reduced training on two types of fitness: short-term endurance (time to exhaustion at 100% of VO2 max, 4-8 minutes) and long-term endurance (time to exhaustion at 80% of VO2 max, 1-3 hours). Here is what they found.

Can you reduce how often you train?

For regular active people, reducing training frequency, for example, from 6 sessions per week to 2 sessions per week (no change in duration or intensity) doesn’t significantly reduce VO2 max after 5 weeks. However, people who are highly trained can only reduce frequency by 20%-50% to maintain fitness, so they would need to stick with 3-5 days per week. Still, it’s clear that fewer training sessions can be OK.

Can you reduce the training duration?

Training duration is also something where reductions can be OK. Let’s say, for example, you spend 9 hours per week on the bike. The study shows that after a 15-week period, short-term endurance is unaffected, even if you go as low as 3 hours of training per week. To maintain long-term endurance, you have to do at least 6 hours per week, 3 hours wouldn’t be enough. So, this would be a 33% or even a 66% reduction from your usual weekly time spent on the bike.

Can you reduce the intensity of your training?

The bad news is that you can’t really get away with reducing intensity. Research shows that if you reduce intensity even a little bit, to around 85% of your normal, you won’t be able to sustain your long-term endurance. And if you further reduce intensity to about 65% of your normal, you will start losing even your short-term endurance.

Aim for two 60-minute interval rides per week

Putting it all together, it’s clear that you have to maintain intensity but can reduce the frequency and duration of your training rides. This is very similar to tapering before a race, you just have to do it for longer – the whole holiday season.

For most fit cyclists, the minimal amount of exercise needed is estimated at around 2-3 training sessions per week, lasting about 60 minutes each, with intervals included to maintain intensity. If you can stick to that, you’ll set yourself up well for the next season.