The Pro's Training Week Playbook for Cyclists

This playbook is for cyclists who train consistently but feel stuck. You ride a lot, you may lift a little, you stretch when you remember, and you aren't sure how the pieces fit into one week. Maybe your hard days aren't hard enough, your easy days aren't easy, or you've got a dozen things to fix and no clear priority. Inside are seven plays, each a repeatable tactic you can use on the bike, in the gym, or on the mat. You'll learn how to structure a training week with hard group rides, VO2 intervals, skills work, a long gravel day, and real rest. You'll see why 300 watts at 60 rpm is a different stimulus than 300 watts at 90 rpm, and how to use that for strength and fatigue resistance. You'll get a weight-training approach built for cyclists, a 10-minute daily stretching routine you can actually keep, and a simple method for narrowing your focus to one or two things when a race or a hard obstacle feels overwhelming. Each play tells you when to use it, how to run it step by step, and shows a worked example. I'm Hannah Rae Otto. I race professionally for Scott Sports USA, and I'm the 2025 XCM National Champion and 2022 Leadville champion. I'm also a certified athletic trainer and coach. I live the training I'm describing, I track it with real data, and I've seen how the athletic-training side keeps the racing side going. This is the system I use, laid out so you can adapt it to your own schedule.