Sven Vee is a young youtuber who decided one fine morning to embark on his own little tour of France… on an indoor bike.
The goal of the challenge is simple (on paper), to transform your body and your cardio into pedaling every day for 30 days.
A bit of context
We are at the beginning of 2021, the end of year celebrations have passed and Sven is not in his best shape, he has accumulated a little belly and the gyms are closed due to…COVID (to the good memory) .
Many challenge videos assail the youtubeur, so that he sees through the algorithm a message: he too will launch a challenge.
And why not pedal every day to try to make 2000 km of cycling in one month!
For comparison, the Tour de France is about 3,500 km in 23 days…
Small difficulty for our young man, he doesn’t really have professional equipment. Forget the smart trainer + Zwift combo, all it holds is a heavy, rickety 50 year old exercise bike!
Never mind, let’s pedal as much as possible for a month and see what happens.
The game’s rules”
The rules are childish, no rest for these 30 days of pedaling.
No special diet either, the youtuber will continue to eat as usual to isolate the effects of exercise alone, which is great for us viewers to judge the outcome.
Beyond the physical objective, Sven is committed to improving his performance to become more enduring/fast/powerful.
He is aiming for at least 2000 km, which he represents as a route Berlin Madrid.
2000 km in 30 days is 66 km per day, so 2 hours at 33 km/h (which represents an excellent pace).
On a side note, this method of visualizing goals is very powerful for motivation. Rather than set yourself walking X thousand steps per day, set yourself a weekly distance in kilometers that separates you from a loved one, for example.
Here is a great example on the subject: In 2023 aim (literally) for the moon with this creative walking challenge
A complicated sealing
On day 1, the youtuber is content with weighing 78.8 kg and a little bit of cycling to get his legs, it’s a good approach…
Unfortunately, on day 2, he is greedy and goes on with 100 km divided into two sessions during the day… sturdy for the start of the adventure!
A very bad idea will he confirm in front of the camera…
If you are also embarking on a challenge, remember not to let yourself be taken in by your desire to do well and not to do too much, too soon.
His body is not used to so much effort, his legs will suffer, of course, but especially his hindquarters.
So that on days 3 and 4, he is forced to drastically reduce the mileage to recover (luckily for him, the bike is a great mode of active recovery, provided he does not push too much resistance).
The following days will serve him to gradually increase his efforts this time, for a total of 495 km in week one.
Week 2-3…boriiiiiiing
Big monotony in the program, what we want to believe!
Sven says after 10 days it’s hell on this bike (we feel like after 10 minutes).
It takes the mental strength of Marines to spend more than an hour with your buttocks screwed on this kind of equipment!
So the youngster kills time watching Netflix, listening to music or by learning Swedish!
Podcasts and learning a new language are really good ideas if you too want to mix business with pleasure.
However, there is even better: do a physical activity that you like… we say that…
Read also: He hated cardio before asking ChatGPT to design this intriguing running program for him, -12 kg later, here he is addicted
On day 16, he is 1150 km in total and reports heavy legs after a day at 130 km!
The food point
At the start of the video, he tells us that he kept the same diet so as not to distort the results.
That being said, he is not very rigorous in his logbook.
Thus, we know that:
- In the morning, he swallows a bowl of milk with cornflakes or porridge,
- This is followed by 2 “classic” meals during the day with a 40%/30%/30% distribution in favor of proteins,
- A few snacks whose content is unknown and 3 times where there was alcohol in the month.
Finally, Sven estimates his calorie consumption between 2000 and 3000 kcal, depending on how many kilometers he has “covered” and how he has cycled during the day.
On this point, the challenge could have been better documented, by establishing its maintenance calories beforehand (and not just by making an estimate).
He says nothing changed, but on the other hand, he says his calorie quota depends on his daily effort…
Loss of motivation…
Morale at half mast as the 20th day approaches for the young man.
It was then that he remembered a saying:
True discipline and commitment is only known on the days where you’re not feeling up to it
In other words, you should see each day of non-motivation as an opportunity to strengthen your mind and your discipline, only then will you develop your regularity.
Suddenly, Sven does not let go, as much pain as his muscles and his sore buttocks do to him.
Time to take stock, calmly
At 28 days, here is the results of the 4 weeks:
- 495 km,
- 540 km,
- 550 km,
- 565 km.
For the last two days and while he is already at an impressive total of 2150 km, our protagonist wants to push himself to his limits to reach 2500 km and a nice round count.
He will succeed with a final day of 200 km in the mind… solid!
After 2500 km traveled for approximately 655 hours of effort (phew), i.e. more than two hours a day, the balance sheet stands:
- Increased running speed from 32-35 km/h to 40-45 km/h,
- Loss of 3 kilos without any effort on the plate,
- Tighter discipline, although Sven admits he won’t be touching his bike for a long time.
His best advice for the end, if you too want to get into it, buy padded shorts!
In addition to that, you could:
- Vary the pleasures with road cycling and indoor cycling,
- Vary experiences and sessions, spinning classes, recumbent bike for recovery the next day, homemade HIIT on a stationary bike, etc.
- Invest in a set up with smart trainer and SWIFT software for increased motivation,
- Take the opportunity to make some adjustments to your plates, while providing your body with the energy it needs for these cycling sessions (while remaining in the caloric deficit if the objective is to lose weight).
At the end of the day, the challenge is funcycling is a super sport (which shouldn’t be done exclusively locked up at home for obvious mental well-being reasons) on which it can be easy to add volume gradually.
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