This week I’ve been onboarding one of my new clients, Danny.

He’s just joined Cycle Lean coaching, and like we do with every new client, we started with an assessment week.

The goal of this week is simple:

To understand his current fitness level, training history, nutrition habits, and where we need to focus first so we can build a plan around him.

Not a generic plan.

Not a copy-and-paste programme.

A plan based on where he is right now.

And one of the big conversations we had this week was around how to structure training using power, heart rate, and RPE.

Danny had never followed a structured training plan before, so naturally, he had questions.

At first, he thought he didn’t have a power meter.

Then it turned out he did.

But we also spoke about how to structure sessions using RPE, which stands for rate of perceived exertion.

In simple terms, RPE is how hard a session feels.

And this is something I think a lot of cyclists overlook.

Because it’s easy to get obsessed with the numbers.

Power.

Heart rate.

Speed.

Cadence.

Whoop data.

Recovery scores.

And while all of those things can be useful, they don’t always tell the full story.

For example, you might go out and ride a Zone 2 session.

Your power looks right.

Your heart rate looks right.

Everything on paper says you’re doing the correct session.

But normally, that effort might feel like a 3 or 4 out of 10.

Then one day, the exact same session feels like a 6 or 7 out of 10.

Same power.

Similar heart rate.

Completely different feeling.

That could be because you slept badly.

Maybe you didn’t fuel properly.

Maybe work has been stressful.

Maybe you’re carrying fatigue from previous training.

And this is where RPE becomes so important.

Because if you only focus on hitting the numbers, you can miss what your body is trying to tell you.

You can end up blindly following the plan, pushing through every session, and ignoring the warning signs that your body needs a rest.

And that’s often where burnout starts.

The training itself is only one part of the picture.

You also have to account for everything happening outside of training.

Work stress.

Poor sleep.

Nutrition.

Recovery.

Family commitments.

Mental fatigue.

Because how well you look after yourself off the bike will always affect how well you perform on the bike.

That’s why in Cycle Lean Coaching, we don’t just give cyclists over 40 a training plan and tell them to get on with it.

We look at the full picture.

Your training.

Your nutrition.

Your recovery.

Your lifestyle.

Your stress.

And then we build a plan that helps you move forward without running yourself into the ground.

So if you’ve been following a plan but you’re still not seeing progress…

Or you feel like every ride is taking more out of you than it should…

It might not be because you need to train harder.

It might be because you need a better structure that actually accounts for how your body is responding.

Because the goal isn’t just to collect better data.

The goal is to understand what that data means alongside how you actually feel.

And when you can do that, you’ll make better decisions, recover better, and train in a way that helps you get leaner, stronger, and faster on the bike.

If you want help building a cycling plan that accounts for your fitness, nutrition, recovery, and lifestyle, click the link below to find out more about Cycle Lean Coaching.

Cycle Lean Coaching

Neil