What's this About?

This site is all about contributing something back to the cycling community, so be kind! Its origins lie with when I was riding as a youth; I was often given a turbo based interval session by my coach to complete. This was often challenging to execute and complete! 

Tracking time based intervals was often difficult, using a stopwatch and a print out of the session, resulting in me often spending more time tracking the timer intervals than completing them. I looked for a simple way of creating the interval sessions without subscribing to one of the many commercial online training platforms. I created a timer app and began creating sessions, merging the timer app with my interest in cycling and creative music technology to produce an engaging way of training. 

This site aims to provide a library of these sessions to the cycling community, I hope you enjoy them and if you have any ideas for sessions, please get in touch

Why Use It? Well because Community Matters!

The service is completely FREE and relies on the good will of the cycling community to share links to training sessions,resources, guidance and support.

Although te web contains a vast array of traiing content for cyclists, its often in lots of different places. At VeloFreak we've built a community platform to share training content and most importantly navigate through it easily, saving you valuable time when looking for a training session - so you can spend your time training! 

So if you're looking for something specific you'll be able to find it fast, and if its not there, why not collect the address of a resource and share a link to it via the session directory. 

Let's not all reinvent the wheel (parden the pun) - share your training session by getting in touch

We also provide a mechanism for the promotion of  training sessions from third-party providers. Why not contact us to discuss how we can include a link to your training content in our community training session directory.

Training and Music

With the rise in cycling, the indoor cycling market has experienced considerable growth. The market has responded to this with the development of virtual training and the 'gamification' of cycling , which continues to increase in popularity. A recent study carried out by Les Mills Fitness Centres investigated the growth of indoor cycling an why people enjoy it so much as well as the barriers to engagement. 

The Research

"With more than a quarter of respondents (26%) regularly taking part in Virtual indoor cycling classes. However Females were less likely to attend Virtual classes, with 82% only attending Instructor-led classes compared to 63% of males. 

Among those who do not engage with  Virtual cycling sessions, 46% said this was because they deem the presence of an Instructor in the room a key part of the indoor cycle experience. More than a third (35%) said not having access to Virtual classes was the main reason stopping them, while 15% don’t find Virtual classes motivating enough, and 12% simply considered these virtual services to be simply too expensive.

So how else can we motivate the wave of indoor cyclists? It is clear for many participants 'Music Still Matters', whilst they engage with almost a gaming experience to their training, it is music which matters most to many.

The research supports  the quality of music was ranked as the second most important factor influencing their engagement with  indoor cycling, notching an average score of 4.3 out of five. This varied significantly between gender and demographics: females ranked the significance of the music far higher than males, while riders aged 16-34 deemed it far more important than riders aged 55-74. This suggests that fresh beats are a key component for clubs seeking to attract younger females to their cycle classes.

Welcome to VeloFreak Training... 

Although music is used across most indoor training platforms, it is often used in the background simply to fill the space between the session's visual content and the user. At VeloFreak we have created unique beats to accompany our training sessions. What makes us different from other providers, is our music is written for and synchronised to training visual content. When you ride slower perhaps during a recovery phase of the session, the music matches this and encourages recovery, when you need to ride harder the music will match the effort. The integration and synchronisation of our bespoke music provides a richer training experience where music can help users to get the most out of their training time resulting in real improvements in performance. 

