TRAINING CAMPS: WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHEN?
Why a Week at a Training Camp Can Achieve What Months of Regular Riding Cannot.
It’s currently February here in Girona, Spain – the home of Phases Cycling, and the city and the surrounding roads of the Costa Brava are alight with riders training on either their own personal training camp, or within clubs and teams from all across Europe. So it seemed the perfect opportunity to explore the role and reasons of a training camp and how it can benefit you as a rider!
Ask any cyclist who has done a training camp and they will tell you the same thing: they came back transformed. Not just fitter, but somehow different – more confident on the bike, more tuned in to their body, and with a renewed sense of what they are capable of. This is not a coincidence. Training camps work, and they work for reasons that go far deeper than simply riding more kilometres. Whether you are a weekend rider looking to step up your performance, a master rider wanting to recapture some of your earlier form, or a competitive amateur chasing a personal best or to gain points to move up Categories in racing, understanding how and why training camps deliver results is the first step to making one work for you.
The Science of Concentrated Training
At the heart of any training camp is a principle that exercise physiologists call overload and supercompensation. When you apply a greater training stimulus than your body is accustomed to, forcing physiological adaptation – rebuilding stronger, more efficient, and more resilient than before. The catch is that this adaptation requires a sufficient dose of stress followed by adequate recovery.
Most cyclists, training around work and family commitments, accumulate fitness gradually. A training camp changes the equation entirely. By compressing a high volume of quality riding into five to ten days, you apply a training stimulus that simply cannot be replicated through two or three sessions per week. The body has no choice but to respond, and respond dramatically.
The specific physiological adaptations include improved mitochondrial density (your muscles’ ability to produce energy aerobically), enhanced fat metabolism, increased plasma volume which improves cardiovascular efficiency, and for those training at altitude: elevated red blood cell production. These are the same adaptations professional teams chase when they head to Tenerife to train on Teide or Sierra Nevada, Spain each January.
More Than Just Miles: The Psychological Dimension
Physical adaptation is only part of the story. One of the most underrated benefits of a training camp is the advantages to your general mindset and motivation to think forward towards post- camp events and performance goals.
When you remove yourself from the daily routine of study, classes, emails, meetings, school runs, commuting, and replace it with a simple structure of ride, eat, recover, sleep and repeat, great things can start to happen. Cycling becomes your only job. Without the psychological demands of everyday life competing for your attention, you become much more aware of the many nuances of being on the bike. You start to notice your breathing, heart rate responses to efforts and the relationship of heart rate and RPE if at altitude, cadence, how your body responds on a long climb, when you are producing good power and your physiological responses to produce the good power. This heightened awareness accelerates learning in a way that sporadic training simply cannot match.
There is also a powerful confidence effect. Riding big days back-to-back teaches you that your body is more capable than you thought. By day three or four of a camp, many riders experience a kind of breakthrough, a moment when they realise they can push further, climb faster, or recover quicker than they believed possible. It can have the feeling of riding ´into´ the camp as the duration increases. That confidence can provide a huge psychological boost when they get home. It changes how they approach every ride for months afterwards.
The Group Effect
Training camps – whether organised or self-organised with a group of club mates or a team – carry a social dynamic that is one of their secret weapons. Riding with others of similar ability creates a natural motivation that is hard to manufacture alone. On a day when your legs are heavy and the climb ahead looks relentless, the rider next to you becomes your pacer, your encouragement, and your accountability partner, all at once.
Shared meals, shared fatigue, and shared achievements build a sense of camaraderie that reinforces commitment to training long after the camp ends. Many cyclists report that a group camp reignites their passion for the sport – a reminder of why they fell in love with cycling in the first place.
What Makes a Great Training Camp
Not all camps are created equal. The difference between a camp that transforms your fitness and one that leaves you exhausted and overtrained often comes down to structure. Here is what the best camps have in common:
- Progressive load: Days should build gradually rather than hitting maximum volume on day one. A common mistake is going too hard too soon, leaving riders depleted for the rest of the week. You essentially want to ride ´into´ the training camp by feeling stronger on day 3 – 4.
- Planned recovery: A good camp includes at least one lighter day mid-week to allow partial recovery before the final push. Active recovery – a short, easy spin – is far better than complete rest during a block of training. A 60 – 90 minute recovery paced coffee ride is perfect here!
- Body work: There is the perfect opportunity during a training camp to establish a good daily routine of mobility, flexibility and muscle work. All of which can help to promote faster recovery and to reduce the risk of overuse injuries materialising not just during the camp, but also throughout your season if you are able to maintain the routine after the training camp.
- Nutrition and sleep: Riding is only half the equation. Fuelling well on and off the bike, and prioritising eight to nine hours of sleep, is what allows adaptation to actually occur. Under-fuelled riders at camps are the ones who end up sick or injured.
- Route selection: Varied terrain keeps sessions interesting and delivers different training stimuli. A mix of long steady climbing, rolling tempo work, and flat recovery rides makes for a well-rounded week.
- A purpose: The best camps are structured around a specific goal – building base fitness, improving climbing, preparing for a sportive or race. Having a clear purpose shapes every decision from volume to intensity to route choice.
Where to Go: Location Matters
For European and UK-based cyclists, a handful of destinations have become synonymous with quality winter and spring training. Girona and Costa Brava in Catalonia have become a true cyclists’ paradise, with endless routes on superb roads from flat to easy access to the mountains. Girona also offers excellent opportunities for Gravel and MTB training camps. Mallorca offers great road quality, varied terrain, and reliable February sunshine. Tenerife offers altitude training opportunities alongside warmth. Calpe on the Costa Blanca remains a perennial favourite for its combination of accessibility and excellent riding conditions from January through April.
For those on the opposite side of the Atlantic, the warmer climate and roads of Arizona can offer the perfect conditions for a winter training camp along with perfect long climbs especially around Tucson. Tucson also hosts one of the most revered – or feared – group rides, known as the ´The Shootout´. Worth checking it out for a good intensity ride!
That said, a training camp does not have to involve a flight. A domestic camp based in a hilly region, organised around good accommodation and solid routes, can deliver many of the same benefits. The key ingredients are quality riding, good food, and the freedom to focus on nothing but cycling. But if there is a good opportunity for warmer temperatures that involve a flight, then we can only highly recommend it!
Who Benefits Most and When
Training camps are not exclusively for elite riders. In fact, in many ways, amateur and recreational cyclists stand to gain the most. Here is how different rider profiles benefit:
The Time-Crunched Rider
If you train on limited hours during the week and struggle to build real fitness between commitments, a camp is enormously effective. A single well-structured week can deliver the equivalent physiological stimulus of four to six weeks of normal training. For riders who are stuck in a fitness plateau, a camp is often the circuit-breaker they need to bring a good boost to fitness after some post-camp recovery.
The Masters Rider
Older riders respond extremely well to training camps, provided the volume and intensity are appropriate to their recovery capacity. Masters riders often find that daily riding in a supportive environment helps them rediscover a rhythm and level of fitness they had assumed was behind them. The key for this group is ensuring the camp is structured around adequate rest and that they resist the temptation to match the pace of younger riders in the group.
The Competitive Amateur
For riders targeting specific events — a sportive, a gran fondo, or a local race series — a camp timed correctly in the training calendar can be transformative. Placed approximately eight to twelve weeks before a target event, a camp provides the aerobic foundation upon which more specific preparation can then be built.
The Newer Cyclist
For those relatively new to structured training, a camp accelerates the learning curve. Riding large volumes in a short time develops bike-handling confidence, teaches riders to pace themselves, and reveals their strengths and weaknesses far faster than months of solo training. Can is also a great opportunity to become familiar with training aids such as heart rate monitors and power meters, and their effectiveness for assisting in training and recovery.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Having coached riders through many training camps, I see the same pitfalls come up repeatedly. Awareness of them can ensure you maintain control and achieve maximum gains from your training camp:
- Going too hard too fast: Day one excitement leads to day three misery. Discipline in the first two days is what allows you to finish the week strong.
- Under-fuelling on the bike: When you are riding four to six hours per day, you need significantly more carbohydrate than your body is telling you to eat. Aim for 60–90 grams of carbohydrate per hour of riding. Hydration is also absolutely crucial, especially in warmer temperatures! Ensuring a balance of water alongside electrolyte mix during training rides will help your body maintain homeostasis.
- Neglecting recovery: Sleep, protein intake, and body work after riding are not optional extras — they are where the adaptation happens. Treat them as training.
- Diving straight back into hard training at home: The real gains from a camp arrive in the one to three weeks afterwards, during rest and recovery. Riders who jump back into full training immediately lose much of the benefit.
- Training without a plan: Turning up to a camp and just riding whatever takes your fancy each day is a missed opportunity. Even a simple plan – knowing your daily targets, key sessions, and recovery windows – transforms the results.
Making It Work for You
The most powerful training camps I have seen are not the most expensive or the most glamorous. They are the ones with a clear purpose, calculated structure, and a rider who arrives prepared – physically and physiologically, with a good understanding of what they are trying to achieve.
If you have never done a training camp before, I would encourage you to consider it seriously – not as an indulgence, but as one of the most efficient investments you can make in your cycling.
A great camp does not just make you fitter. It sets a solid foundation to work from to help you build into your upcoming season!