Ready To Race, ep. 4: Race training explained by Olympic gold medalist coach Benjamin Sharp

Periodization is a foundation concept for maximizing the time you spend training to improve your power, efficiency, and overall performance on the bike.

Ready to Race is a series of five videos that explain, in turn, the overall concept of periodization, and then the four main training periods: Base, Build, Race, and Transition.

Coach Benjamin Sharp explains the what, the why, and the how for cyclists of any level who are interested in improving.

This is the fourth video in the series that explains Race training.

For each of the four periods, Coach Sharp has written four-week training plans that Outside+ members can access in their My Perks section under Training.

By connecting your Garmin, Wahoo, or Stages account one time, you can get Coach Sharp’s daily workouts automatically and wirelessly loaded onto your bike computer so you can simply hop on your bike and follow the steps to better fitness.

Following his own career as a bike racer, Benjamin Sharp has been a professional coach for two decades, working with everyone from weekend warriors to Olympic gold medalists. He has served as a Team USA coach, and coached athletes to medals at the last three Olympic Games in Tokyo, Rio, and London.