Paying a professional coach to provide a personal training plan can be a really good way of realising your potential and helping you achieve your cycling goals, whether it’s preparing for a big sportive or an attack on the local crit series.
Hiring a coach can be pricey. There are, however, now quite a few personal training and coaching apps that can provide structure to your riding, with personalised training schedules and workout plans tailored to your requirements. Some are free or require a small one-off or monthly fee.
There are many training apps (and we’ve listed the most popular here) that will track a range of data from a ride and help you chart your weekly and monthly mileage and time in the saddle. For many people, that is enough. But if you want to add more structure by way of a training plan to your time in the saddle, here are 10 apps that can provide workouts and specific goals that are designed to help you achieve the results you want.
- 10 of the best training apps
Some of the apps take into account your current fitness level and, just like a real coach, tailor the intensity and volume of the training plan. Some of the apps provide real-time feedback and are flexible when real-life throws a curve ball your way.
Motivo - £6.99/month
Motivo offers six workouts free of charge and then scales up to £6.99 a month on a pay-as-you-go scheme, or six months will cost you £32.99. The app lets you choose from a number of goal-specific training plans and offers the flexibility to into the free time you have available. It allows you to monitor your workout performance during and after a ride and provides workout analysis and uses rewards to keep your motivated.
Only available for iPhone
Strava Workouts - requires premium subscription £3.99/month
Strava is a hugely popular app that records and shares rides, but did you know it also offers a wide range of training plans? They’ve been developed by Carmichael Training Systems and include workouts aimed at the full spectrum of cycling fitness, from climbing to endurance and anaerobic sessions. They can be customised to suit your weekly training volume from just 5-hours. You need a premium subscription to Strava to access the plans.
CoachMyRide - £4.99
CoachMyRide, only available for the iPhone, lets you set goals and choose training sessions from a library of 105 included in the app. And for analysing sessions, Lionel Reynaurd is a professional cycling coach and offers feedback for you. The app smartly adapts the workouts to your improving fitness. The workouts featured in this app were developed by a professional coach.
The Sufferfest from $9.99
Sufferest is well-known for combining videos from actual professional road races with structured workouts and motivational messages to help you get the most out of your time on the turbo trainer. It also provides structured 3 to 10-week training plans developed by Dig Deep Coaching, aimed at time-crunched cyclists.
You don’t get the feedback from a coach so it’s down to you to follow the plan and chart your own progress. And there’s no app, the plans are delivered via a PDF, but you can view those on a phone or tablet of course. A 3-week training plan costs $9.99, with plans tailored to improving your climbing, speed or endurance.
BodBot - Free
This free app adapts workouts to suit your demands, goals and progress. It charts your progress and can adapt the workout to match how well your training is going, and can make a change if you are going really well, or struggling and hit a bad path. As well as workouts, it can also help you to keep track of your daily nutrition with a food diary. It’s also useful if you want to improve your core strength and general flexibility as there are lots of non-cycling workouts as well.
Available iOS, Android, Windows and Chrome here
TrainerRoad - $12/month
This app can connect to compatible training sensors (like a power metre or heart rate strap) and can provide workouts scaled to your fitness, determined by an FTP fitness test. It provides over 80 training plans with specific goals and offers training instruction and motivation while you’re doing a workout.
TrainingPeaks $19.95 with training plans costing from $24.95
A highly regarded app this one, TrainingPeaks offers a very comprehensive suite of tools for tracking your fitness and viewing time spent in training zones, using power or heart rate. The premium version of the app lets you choose a training plan created by some of the best coaches in the sport and delivers daily workouts to your email. You can also choose from a wide selection of workout plans, such as a Cat 1-2 Base Period for 12 weeks by Joe Friel, or a Cyclo-Cross plan by Hunter Allen.
You can read more about the coaching service. Download the Android or iOS app here.
Indoor Interval Cycling - Free
An app, as the name implies, designed for indoor cycling. If you’ve been using the turbo trainer a lot this winter, you’ll appreciate how useful it is to have a plan. Indoor Interval Cycling lets you choose a skill level and workout length and it provides intensity cues and a countdown timer for each stage of the workout.
Global Cycle Coach - Free with in-app purchases from £2.99
This is an app designed solely for indoor cycle training, ideal if you’re spending a lot of time on the turbo trainer this winter. The app offers instruction from a range of coaches, you choose the one that fits your needs, with workouts varying in level and intensity from short efforts to 60-minute endurance sessions. The app is free to download but it charges for different workouts, and they cost from £2.99 up to £7.99, but once purchased, you can use as much as you want,
Android and iOS versions available.
Workout Trainer - Free
This app offers a decent range of workouts, with some of them apparently based on Sir Chris Hoy’s own training regime, such as the VO2 Max Interval Training Workouts. Workouts are accompanied by photos and videos and as well as following one of the many workouts, you can also create your own workout. Also covers many other sports if you don’t just cycle as well.
It’s available for iOS and Android
Got a personal training and coach app you use that isn't on this list? Let's hear them below.