English – Page 17 – BKOOL Magazine

As we’ve seen in previous articles, there are several factors that determine a cyclist’s speed: from power (the force exerted on the pedals), to gravity, to rolling resistance, and even air resistance.

While the last three are forces that decrease your speed, the first one works against all of them to make you a faster cyclist. In simple terms, the more power you produce, the faster you’ll go.

That’s why becoming a faster cyclist depends primarily on two factors: reducing the forces that work against speed and increasing your power output. With this in mind, let’s look at three different tactics for gaining speed on the bike.

Investing in equipment

This is the preferred strategy of many cyclists, but its high potential cost means it’s not always possible.

High-end materials are generally lighter, more efficient and more aerodynamic. But they’re also more expensive. As cyclists, we invest in clothing, helmets, wheels, tires or even a whole new bike to make ourselves faster. But the upper limit here depends more on your wallet than your desire.

Among potential upgrades, your clothing and helmet are the most economical options. Hi-tech wheels are the next step, but at a significant cost. Then there’s your bike’s frame…

Sometimes it’s maintenance and gear setup that play a more important role in performance and speed – money has less to do with that than care and attention to bike care. The right combination of tires and pressure or a well-lubed and adjusted drivetrain can easily take a few seconds off the clock.

Try structured workouts

A few weeks ago, we talked about the need for structured training to optimize your time on the bike. This is essential if your goal is to be faster.

It’s not just about having the best equipment, the best bike, or the most expensive wheels. All that investment is useless if you can’t exert enough force on the pedals to generate more power.

That’s why improving your fitness is one of the best investments you can make as a cyclist. You’ll see returns very quickly if you do it right.

It’s not enough to just spend more time on the bike. It may seem so at first, but the day will come when your performance reaches a plateau. If you want to produce physiological adaptations that will make you fitter and faster, you need a structured training schedule.

You need to follow an individualized routine tailored to your current circumstances, your abilities and your goals. The BKOOL Workout Creator plays a key role here, allowing you to design custom sessions to improve specific performance metrics such as VO2Max, endurance, or anaerobic capacity.

Improving your technique

Improving your technique is another effective way to get faster. And unlike equipment, it’s not expensive (in fact, it’s free) and requires less effort than structured VO2Max training. It does, however, require time.

Improved riding technique will help you transmit more force and do it more efficiently, resulting in higher speeds for the same effort. It will also help you avoid injuries, essential to maintaining the consistent fitness needed to improve as an athlete.

The BKOOL virtual cycling simulator is an ideal tool to work on your pedaling technique, cadence, efficiency and strength. Improving these factors will make you faster.

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market – try it FREE for 30 days!

We are starting a new week and that means a new stage of CITROËN Ë-TOUR. The third stage of the event is starting and from the 21st to the 27th of March we will be driving on a special route through Vigo with special Group Rides during the whole week.

We have three Group Rides with special guests that you won’t want to miss. On Monday 21st March we will be joined by Jacob Skovsgaard at 20:00h (CEST) to join us on this 15 kilometre route. Can you see yourselves competing on the smart trainer with the Danish e-cycling champion?

On Wednesday at 18:00h (CEST) our special guest will be Joao, a Portuguese streamer who will make you feel like you are training with a friend.

On Thursday 24th, Siro López will be in charge of leading a Group Ride at 17:30h (CEST). The well-known sports journalist will be commenting the Group Ride live while training with you.

To motivate you to the fullest, we have prepared several spectacular raffles, the list of gifts seems endless!

4 Zycle ZDrive smart trainers to be raffled off, one for each stage, among all participants who complete the stage.
4 Citroën AG2R team jerseys to be raffled one for each stage, among all the participants who complete the stage.
A Zycle ZBike smartbike to be raffled among all participants who complete the four stages of the event.
A two-day BMC experience in Switzerland, including flights and accommodation to be raffled among the top 10 of the three categories (Men, Women and Smart Bikes).
3 Meet&Greet experiences with the professional Citröen AG2R team for the winners of each category (Men, Women and Smart Bikes) by adding up the total times of each stage at the end of the event.
3 Zycle Zdrive smart trainers for the winners of each category (Men, Women and Smart Bikes) adding the total times of each stage at the end of the event.
3 physical Citroën Ë-Tour jerseys for the winners of each category (Men, Women and Smart Bikes) by adding up the total times of each stage at the end of the event.
80 special virtual jerseys for the top 10 finishers of each stage in each category (Men, Women and Smart Bikes).
A virtual finisher’s jersey for all participants who complete at least one stage of the event.

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market – try it FREE for 30 days!

Body fat can be a great fuel for your body, but first you must teach your body to use it, and in this “education” process, “fasted” cycling plays a key role.

More cyclists and trainers are opting for fasted training these days. Don’t be surprised: training on an empty stomach not only teaches your body to burn fat as an energy source while preserving glycogen, but it can also help you lose weight and become more efficient on the bike.

What is fasted cycling?

Although common sense says that you should recharge before, during and after a workout, fasted cycling has become one of the most popular ways to improve performance. It is simply to work out first thing in the morning, without having consumed carbohydrates in the last eight to twelve hours. Coffee and water can be consumed, in fact it’s recommended.

The main objective is to deprive your body of glycogen, and improve your ability to metabolize fat. Your body learns to burn fat as fuel instead of glycogen.

What happens when we train with “empty” stores?

When you train with low glycogen stores, the body is forced to turn to fat to keep going. For this to happen, carbohydrate restriction has to be severe for a considerable period of time. It is normal to fast from dinner the night before in order to perform a session without consuming carbohydrates first thing in the morning.

The body becomes more efficient the more you use this type of training. Why? Because fat reserves are much greater than glycogen reserves (the other major fuel our body uses), so an athlete who learns to use fat becomes much more efficient.

Benefits of fasted cycling

As you can see, fasted cycling teaches your body to burn more fat. This translates into two key benefits:

First, weight loss: by training on an empty stomach, with your body’s reserves at a minimum, you’re burning more calories than you’ve consumed. This means you’re in a caloric deficit, the fundamental basis of weight loss. So not only does it help you lose weight, but it also helps you get rid of that part of fat that no one wants on their body.

Second, performance enhancement: teaching your body to burn more fat makes you a better cyclist. Cycling is an endurance sport and that takes many hours of effort. The problem is that glycogen stores are limited, and there comes a time when they run out. If you teach your body to use fat first, you will be able to extend the time you have energy, increasing your endurance and overall performance.

How to train by cycling on an empty stomach

Beyond simply not eating, there are other aspects that you should take into account for fasted cycling. First, it is very important that these workouts are done at low intensity (Z1 or Z2).

You probably couldn’t complete a demanding session with your tanks empty, and training like this depletes nitrogen and amino acid levels, making post-ride recovery difficult. The more demanding you make it, the more complicated your recovery will be. That’s why it’s important that you take care of your post-training nutrition.

Another issue is that the role of fat as fuel increases over time. That is, the body burns more fat as a percentage after two hours of exercise than during the first one. And even more from the third hour onwards.

In this context, indoor training and the BKOOL virtual cycling simulator become ideal tools that allow you to start training early in the day and adjust intensity without any interference from traffic or terrain.

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market – try it FREE for 30 days!

If you want to improve your performance, it’s not enough to just add miles and hours on the bike. You need a plan. When you start a training session, it should have a specific goal: for example, improving your FTP, your VO2Max or extending your endurance.

For that to happen, your sessions should follow a specific plan – one guided by the principle of individualization. Designing your own individualized training plan is essential to get the most out of your time on the bike.

Among the many advantages of indoor cycling is the ability to optimize your workouts – and that’s made easier with our BKOOL Workout Creator, an incredibly efficient way to use your smart trainer to improve performance.

In this article, we’re going to explain how the BKOOL Workout Creator works so that you can get the most out of your BKOOL sessions.

What is the BKOOL Workout Creator?

It allows you to easily design your own workouts based on time, work zones and cadence targets. You can carry out very specific sessions tailored to your own goals. And setup is a breeze.

When you set intervals by work zones, you can do it based on either power or heart rate. In both cases, you can set the different ranges manually if you know them or choose the fitness tests built into the BKOOL simulator to determine them automatically.

On BKOOL, choose either a 20 minute or 5 minutes FTP fitness test. At the end of each, BKOOL calculates your power and heart rate zones automatically, from the easiest (Z1) to the most demanding (Z6), depending on your test results.

How do I use the BKOOL Workouts Creator?

To use the BKOOL Workout Creator, access your BKOOL user profile on Bkool.com and click on the Sessions option. That’s where you’ll find the Workout Creator, where you design sessions tailored to your needs.

Once inside Workouts Creator, you will find three options:

Create Workout from scratch
Create Workout from a previous one
Create Workout from .MRC file (TrainingPeaks format)

When you create a workout from scratch, the first thing to do is name the session and choose the type of training you’re doing (recovery, endurance, pace, threshold, VO2 Max or anaerobic capacity) to classify your workout. You can also add a description of the workout.

Below this data you’ll find information about the total time of the workout, the time in each zone, the TSS and the IF. This will serve as a guide to design your workout, since this data should be within a certain range depending on the intent of the workout.

Below all this is the workout graph. This is a screen divided into four sections (each corresponding to an interval). Each of these parts has a menu that can be accessed from the three dots in the upper right corner. This menu includes three options: copy, edit or delete.

From the edit option, you can select the time, intensity and cadence for each interval. For example, you can create a 20-minute warm-up in Z1 at a cadence of 90 rpm or a 10-minute interval in Z4 at 85 rpm.

Another way to set the time and other options is by dragging the different lines that separate each block to determine the time or power. For this you can be guided by the power zones on the right side of the graph or by the FTP percentage on the left side.

The information you assign to each of the segments or intervals is what you’ll see at the bottom of the screen during training.

You can add, delete or duplicate as many intervals as you want, and you can consult the summary of the total time, time in zones, the TSS and the IF at the top of the graph, below the name and type of workout.

Once you’ve designed your session, just click on Publish to display it in Sessions, where you can program it or clone it to create and edit a new one based on it. You also get a summary of the zones, the IF, the TSS, and you can visualize each of the segments and its ranges.

Workout creator tools

Duplicate: in the context menu in the segment header, you can make a COPY of the segment you’ve selected. When a segment is duplicated, the new one is placed immediately to the right of the duplicate.
Delete: in the context menu in the segment header, you can DELETE the segment you’ve selected. When making a selection of more than one segment, you can also DELETE all of the selected segments.
Move: by clicking on a segment header, you can drag it to change its position.
Scale: whenever the cursor is over a segment, you’ll be able to scale the time by selecting the handle on the right edge of the segment. You’ll see your modification in the time tool tips and your total time will be updated.
Select: by clicking and dragging over several segments, you can make a selection of several segments. Segments are always selected contiguously. Segments you have selected can be REMOVED, REPEATED and moved. When you REPEAT, you create a series.

BKOOL and TrainingPeaks Workouts

Another advantage of the BKOOL Workout Creator is that if you are a TrainingPeaks user, your workouts will be automatically uploaded to BKOOL’s platform so you can ride them on your smart trainer with no setup required.

BKOOL is compatible with Strava, Garmin, and the TrainingPeaks planning platform, giving you the advantage of riding all of your planned sessions precisely, all from within the BKOOL virtual cycling simulator.

BKOOL Workouts with the ERG system

If your smart trainer is equipped with ERG mode and you’ve activated it during a workout session, the smart trainer’s resistance is automatically adjusted to keep you at the set watts regardless of your pace.

If you want to control your own speed/cadence and the bike’s gears to keep you in the training zone, you can deactivate ERG mode by pressing the P key.

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market – try it FREE for 30 days!

March 8th is International Women’s Day. At BKOOL, we want to celebrate this and help enhance visibility to the women in the world of cycling. It’s a perfect opportunity to enjoy riding while we support all our female colleagues.

In order to celebrate together, we invite you to take part in some very special BKOOL Group Rides between March 8th and 13th. We want to see pelotons full of women! Invite your friends and your squad or team mates and let it be known that the number of female Bkoolers around here is growing!

Here are the dates and times (CET) of the special Group Rides:

Tuesday March 8th: 10 am, 11am, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 2am, 3am, 5am.

Friday March 11th: 10 am, 11am, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 2am, 3am, 5am.

Sunday March 13th: 10 am, 11am, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 2am, 3am, 5am.

If you can’t join the BKOOL Group Rides at the scheduled time, don’t worry. You can do this route at any other time between Tuesday, March 8th and Sunday, March 13th to add your name to the rankings.

This is not a girls-only event – all Bkooler who want to join in are more than welcome to do so!

However, these prizes will only be on offer for the women who take part. Women who complete the selected route during March 8th will be automatically entered in the drawing for:

An official BKOOL hoodie.
A Muc-off bicycle maintenance kit.
A one-year voucher to use BKOOL for free.

In addition, among all participating Bkoolers regardless of gender, we’ll raffle off a coupon for 3 months of BKOOL Premium and a cycling training book.

It’s time to celebrate women’s cycling! Join this event and show the world that women are capable of riding anywhere!

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market, try it FREE for 7 days!

This week, we tour through the scenic coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.

On Monday we are starting with a trip to Cap de Formentor, a cape with beautiful views on the Spanish Balearic Islands. We recommend you ride with the video view to get the most out of the island landscape. Don’t let the short distance fool you, this route is more difficult than it looks!

For Tuesday, we head to Italy to ride around Lago d’Idro. We’ll take an easy 20 kilometer tour under the Lombardy sun, the perfect route to disconnect after a hard day.

We continue the week in Greece, with a route from Sitia to Via. The island of Crete welcomes you on this medium-difficulty route, with a distance that will make you sweat.

We’re back on the Balearic Islands on Thursday with a route in Port de Pollença. This route has a video view that really shows the charm of the area, as you pass through both traditional villages and natural landscapes.

On Friday, it’s time to ride along the Italian coast, specifically in Palermo. Both the video view and the 3D view will make you feel part of the Bkoolers squad.

Saturday and Sunday, we’ll be riding together on the velodrome, where you’ll face 20 kilometers on the track to see who can get the best time. What better way to end the week?

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market – try it FREE for 30 days!

The great Alberto Contador joins the BKOOL family and arrives ready to continue adding titles to his name, this time competing together with all of you. Start the hunt for the best “pistolero” in the history of cycling…

This is not just any signing, Contador carries on its shoulders 2 Giros d’Italia, 2 Tour de France, 3 Vueltas a España, 2 Paris – Nice, 1 Tirreno Adriático and 4 Vueltas al País Vasco.

Group Ride with Alberto Contador in BKOOL

It has come to our attention that the well-known “pistolero” Alberto Contador will be riding in BKOOL this evening at 19:30 (CET). The latest information we have received indicates that it will be on the Torino stage of the Giro d’Italia Virtual. This stage is open to any user, so we call on all Bkoolers to join the hunt.

Rumour has it that it won’t be the last time he is seen in BKOOL this year… Remember, Wednesday 23rd February at 19:30 (CET) in Torino. Be warned, he comes loaded with a large number of watts!

In order to ride the Italian track with the two times winner of the maglia rosa, all you have to do is join the Group Ride at 19:30 (CET) to start the warm-up. At 19:40 (CET) the real thrill of the race will begin. You will be able to check your place in the rankings on Thursday 24th.

How to join a Group Ride in BKOOL?

If you can’t join this Group Ride, don’t worry, this won’t be the last time he will be seen at BKOOL this year. You can also follow the event through an Instagram Live that will be shared by Contador himself.

If this is your first time using the Giro d’Italia Virtual hosted by BKOOL we have an article explaining how you can join. Also, in the following video you will find a guide on how you to join this Group Ride:

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market – try it FREE for 30 days!

The Italian cycling team will lead a virtual group ride every month at BKOOL, sharing their training with cyclists from all over the world

Virtual cycling platform BKOOL and UCI Pro team Tour EOLO Kometa have reached a collaboration agreement for the new racing season, making BKOOL the official technological partner of the team for 2022.

The BKOOL indoor cycling simulator lets their subscribers ride any route in the world (many with video and computer rendered 3D views) without leaving home. This gives the EOLO Kometa riders the chance to pre-ride any stage they plan to race throughout the season, whenever they want. In addition to offering detailed and realistic course reconnaissance from home, BKOOL also allows the team’s coaches to design custom indoor training plans for each rider and carry out more complete and detailed monitoring of their progress.

Beyond improving the team’s race preparation, this collaboration will also bring team members closer to their fans, with opportunities to share virtual training sessions with the wider community. These BKOOL Group Rides will be integrated into a virtual event called EOLO Kometa Tour by BKOOL and will be held the last week of each month throughout 2022.

In the words of Fran Contador General Manager for the EOLO Kometa team:

We are very happy with this adventure that we are starting together with the BKOOL platform. This is undoubtedly a very useful tool for the riders in our team as, in addition to helping them in their training, it will serve as a tool to start learning about the stages that will then be contested in the races. Moreover, thanks to the event “EOLO KOMETA Tour by BKOOL”, we will be able to share a very pleasant moment with our fans, through which they will be able to ride next to the team members, enjoying a unique experience with them”.

BKOOL is also excited to join forces with this young, pro team packed with potential stars. According to Ángel Luis Fernández, Marketing Director of BKOOL:

“We are very excited to start working with the EOLO Kometa. We feel very in sync with their team spirit and we hope to continue growing with them. We’re sure that this collaboration will be very productive for the team at a sporting level, as well as helping to bring its cyclists closer to their fans”.

BKOOL is a leading indoor cycling platform for virtual sports simulation. Its cycling simulator offers a complete, realistic training experience, with a wide variety of content that includes millions of real routes, fitness classes, velodrome training/racing, and customizable structured workouts.

Its user community brings together cyclists from more than 130 countries.

Any cycling fan will be able to take part in these EOLO Kometa BKOOL Group Rides, riding alongside the team’s pros. Participation will be free thanks to the 30-day trial available on bkool.com

IDOVEN: an innovative solution to take care of your heart

IDOVEN offers you the opportunity to monitor your heart through a professional medical study from home, in the most comfortable and simple way.

Thanks to INDOVEN’s home cardiology solutions, you can monitor your heart health for 24 hours or even a whole week. IDOVEN can help detect possible anomalies and make it easy to participate in sports in a safer, more responsible way.

This is very important to help prevent health issues, especially if you exercise regularly.

Exclusive discount with the BKOOL coupon.

Exclusive discount with the BKOOL coupon

How does it work?

To get your 10% discount for being a Premium BKOOL subscriber, just start your purchase by using the buttons in this post. During the purchase process, the “bkool” discount coupon should be automatically activated. If for some reason it doesn’t, you can enter it manually to get your exclusive offer.

Once you purchase your monitoring and diagnostic service, you’ll receive your kit at home with detailed instructions to carry out your study. At the end of your monitoring period, a courier will come to your home to pick up the device, and in less than 7 days, you’ll receive a detailed cardiological diagnosis with medical recommendations.

Exclusive discount with your BKOOL coupon

Cycling more safely

Knowing the state of your heart health is essential for anyone participating in sports. IDOVEN’s professional studies not only detect possible arrhythmias or heart abnormalities, but they are also a fantastic preventative measure, since they can detect possible heart problems in their early stages so you can avoid more serious conditions in the future. It could even help you prevent a heart attack.

More than 10,000 people have already placed their trust in IDOVEN’s state of the art monitoring and diagnostic services.

Exclusive discount with your BKOOL coupon

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market – try it FREE for 30 day s !

At first glance, the possibility of combining gravel and trainers may seem a bit strange. It’s difficult to imagine how to maximize the performance of such a characteristic discipline with indoor training, despite the many advantages of riding the trainer.

However, smart trainers and virtual cycling simulators such as BKOOL offer a wide range of tools to help you become a better gravel rider, without the need to get dirty.

Obviously, the smart trainer doesn’t allow you to work on many of the technical skills of gravel riding – for that, there’s nothing like a good trail – but you can work on your cardiovascular system, improve your cadence, efficiency and strength. All of these characteristics are essential to being a good gravel rider.

Here are a couple quick tips that can help you improve your gravel performance without going outside.

Choose the right route

Although BKOOL doesn’t have inherently gravel-specific routes, among the huge catalog offered by the platform there are endless route possibilities that can help you hone your skills.

Gravel competitions can vary greatly in terms of distance, conditions or terrain. However, most gravel races share some common characteristics.

For example, a single long loop, a long point-to-point or an out-and-back course; or a considerable amount of accumulated elevation gain, either with many short, repetitive climbs or several long, sustained climbs. These types of races are also often very long.

The key is to choose a route where you can best simulate the conditions you’ll be racing against.

Training on routes that require a lot of changes in pace or cadence, or on especially long routes with these same characteristics, can simulate the experience well and help improve your fitness for the gravel discipline.

BKOOL has thousands of trail videos that are synced with their corresponding GPX tracks, so if you have a smart trainer, you can enjoy the view while climbing a hill to get you in shape for your next gravel ride.

Use the workout creator

The distance, structure and variable terrain of gravel racing demand a solid aerobic base, the ability to sustain power and varied anaerobic and neuromuscular capabilities.

One of BKOOL’s best tools is its workout creator, which gives you the ability to create your own sessions by time, power zones and cadence targets. With it, you can design different workouts with different objectives depending on where you are in your preparation.

You can perform an FTP test to define your training zones – or add them to your profile manually if you already know them – and from there start to develop your gravel-focused workouts. You already know that among the many advantages of indoor cycling is workout optimization. On the smart trainer, there is no traffic or weather or other impediments to getting on the bike, so it’s much easier to stick to your schedule and execute your training plan in detail.

Take advantage of the workout creator to design workouts with changes of pace, short and intense intervals or long and prolonged climbs to emulate your efforts in a gravel race. You can tackle long workouts with threshold work that help improve your ability to resist fatigue at high power or use short, more intense, VO2max workouts to improve aerobic power, pain tolerance, muscle recruitment and muscular endurance.

If you have a trainer and use TrainingPeaks, you can have your programmed cycling workouts synced into the BKOOL simulator to perform right at home.

BKOOL is the most complete cycling simulator on the market – try it FREE for 30 days!