Four-Week Hill-Climbing Cycling Training Plan – Fitbit Fifty Reader Challenge

Sprinters are cool and time-trial specialists get the glory, but if you’re going to hit the open roads of the UK or further afield, there’s one skill you’ll have to master: climbing hills.

For the Fitbit Fifty participants, getting good on gradients is a necessity. But even if you just want to hang with the pack on a Sunday ride, the uphills are make-or-break time. Not quite there yet? Challenge yourself to spend four weeks improving on one of your local routes.

“When it comes to climbing hills faster, there are two key elements that will determine how quickly you reach the summit: power and weight,” says Matt Jones, former pro rider for Team IG-Sigma Sport. “It goes without saying that the less mass you have to drag up the hill, the easier it’s going to be. So pay attention to your diet – over four weeks it should be possible to lose a kilo or two by eating sensibly.”

By using the Fitbit Surge and app to keep track of your activity levels on and off the bike, as well as your calorie intake, you’ll be able to plan your daily food intake to drop a manageable amount of weight, while still getting enough calories to fuel your efforts.

“With weight loss taken care of, you need to increase your power,” says Jones. “Firstly, identify the type of climbs you want to improve on and base your training around that.” Are your target climbs long and relatively shallow, or short bursts of a few minutes? You’ll use a fast cadence to tackle these types of inclines, so threshold and “sweet-spot” efforts are your friend – use the Surge to hit peak heart rate efforts.

For ultra-steep grades, where you’re forced to push a heavy gear, you’ll need low-cadence strength training, which is about hitting a big gear and grinding it out. The plan below mixes both types of sessions to make sure you improve on your nearest big climb, whatever type it is.

Stick it out for four weeks and you’ll see improvements. “Wind can be a factor, but if the weather’s similar, you’ll definitely improve your time,” says Jones. If you don’t have a favourite hill, head for one of these iconic UK climbs:

Entry Level – Box Hill, Dorking, Surrey

Box Hill is just 2,480m long with 120m of elevation gain, and was made famous when it was included in the 2012 London Olympics road race course. A nice steady gradient with a pair of hairpin bends close to the top make this a solid starter hill that’s always busy. There’s a café at the top for refuelling.

Getting Tougher – Cheddar Gorge, Cheddar, Somerset

This one starts out nasty – the gradient hits 16% in the early going – but then levels out slightly, with 150m of climbing over 3,540m, taking you past some of some of the UK’s most stunning rock faces.

Head for Heights – Glencoe, Highlands

Don’t let the start deceive you. Stunning scenery and fractional increases in gradients mean you’ll barely notice you’re climbing as you leave the banks of Loch Leven, but the difficulty ratchets up as the road starts to wind through the rock formations on either side. You’ll even pass a waterfall before finishing at a huge plateau. It’s a long climb – 304m of elevation gain in total – but it ought to be on every British cyclist’s bucket list.

This is Hardcore – Rosedale Chimney, North Yorkshire

One of the UK’s most infamous climbs combines tricky road surfaces with brutal gradients that max out at 33%. It eases off a bit near the top, but considering that it’s a mere 1.4km long with 179m of climbing, this is a stern test of any rider’s mettle.

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Four-Week Training Plan

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4