How do I get stronger in 2026?

While this is a very specific question, it raises the more general issue of how does year-to-year improvement happen?

The simple answer is that there is really only 2 ways it happens:

• Impose more absolute training load year-over-year (i.e., achieving more fitness gains each subsequent year)
• Impose about the same relative training load year-over-year, but start each subsequent year from a higher baseline than you started the previous year

Many cyclists adopt a seasonal approach to their riding and training. Following a heavy schedule of riding during the summer, volume and frequency drops off in the fall and winter months and fitness gradually deteriorates. While a certain amount of de-training is ok in the so-called offseason, maybe even necessary, too much can undermine your year-to-year improvement. If you always drop back to the same fitness level by the time you begin again in the spring/summer, you will most likely just train back to the peak fitness level from the previous year. You end up in a cycle of simply oscillating between the same troughs and peaks year after year.

If we were to assign some numbers to it, let's say your baseline fitness is a 0 and your peak fitness is a 100. In simple terms, if you always drop back to 0 in the off-season, you'll only ever push back up to 100 unless you train more or harder than the previous year (more absolute training load). However, if you maintained your fitness at 25 during the off-season, you might be able to push up to 125 for a summer peak. This is especially likely if your experience is that you keep getting fitter and fitter through the summer without hitting a plateau (if you do experience an extended plateau during the summer, you probably need more training load to achieve more fitness) .

This is certainly very simplified, but you get the point.

Note if you are using Training Peaks, this gets confusing. The metric "Fitness (CTL)" is a relative metric and doesn't describe absolute fitness changes. It is possible to peak at 100 CTL over multiple years and see absolute fitness increasing (let's say by the FTP metric). Because your training load (TSS) is calculated relative to your FTP, a 1 hour effort at your FTP always equals 100 TSS whether your FTP is 300W or 400W. As such, TSS and CTL are just telling you about relative training load, not absolute fitness.

Although I've never seen a study support this basic explanation directly, it does follow from what we know from the scientific literature. We do know that the body is very good at adapting to the load placed upon it. It gets better at doing the things you ask it to do frequently. In the case of aerobic fitness, the process of adaptation is complex and slow. There are many complicated physical processes at work that make you able to generate more power on the bike. Some of these changes take months to years to achieve as the body remakes itself to be better at responding to the demands of cycling.

Here's what I am doing to build a foundation for a stronger 2026:

• keep riding volume up with outside rides until the weather or daylight intervenes
• I am making sure some of my rides are challenging and I either include some fast group rides or challenge myself to go full-blast on Strava segments during some (but not all) rides.
• be ready to get good indoor rides in when the winter weather comes; because length of rides will probably decrease I plan to do fast group rides/races on Zwift through the winter
• limit my extended off-the-bike breaks (probably only 1 or 2 breaks of 1-2 weeks each)

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