“If its worth doing, its worth doing properly”. This applies to many aspects if not all in our lives, but certainly applies to our training.
Lately we have had many conversations with athletes who are training extremely hard, yet they are being hamstrung by old and very outdated training methods, and its just not fair to them. One of the biggest mistakes we see is people either training simply by feel or by heart rate alone. Now heart rate training has a place, and in 1995 that would be cutting edge, but we have come a long way since then.
Without doubt the current standard should be still using your Heart Rate monitor for sure, but also in conjunction with a Power Meter. And on top of that knowing exactly what your zones are currently, emphasis on currently as they change.
The standard now has gone even further than that and should now include testing of Blood Lactate on the roadside, and then frequent lab testing. These are in the ideal world for sure, but they can be done easily and fairy inexpensive.
There is a very simple science behind lactate levels and for something like and Ironman or Half Ironman you should know with certainty what your power numbers should be on the bike, and heart rate numbers on the run, based of your most current test and also blood lactate if you have it. If your coach does not know the numbers for you then its time to find a new one.
If you ride to numbers within a power zone for example, you know that you can safely hold that number without burning matches for later in the event. If you are riding to heart rate only that will be pretty close but there are just many variables in that, sleep, caffeine, nerves and so on.
For Road Cycling testing plays a huge role. Knowing what zones, you should be training in, doing your efforts, and racing in and being aware that they will change as you gain or loose fitness. Zwift has an excellent FTP test, there are 3 options there, the Ramp Test full is the best to get started with. That will give you an excellent start to work out your zones based on the FTP (Functional Threshold Power) assessment it produces.
Bear in mind to that the whole purpose of training is to increase our fitness, so the only way to know if this is working is to retest every few weeks. Testing once a year is pointless. And if we don’t retest then how do we know the training we are doing is working? That’s where the 12 week one size fits all training programmes fall short. The athlete is sent away todo their own work for 12 weeks or more, yet could well be going backwards.
Also, we need to touch on “Zone 2” as this term is getting flogged to death. Zone 2 or Endurance training absolutely has its place and it is fundamental in build base aerobic fitness, that’s not in question. The problem we see most often is in 2 parts. 1- Zone 2 training being prescribed for nearly all or everyone’s training, with no intervals, efforts, or anything else factored in. And 2 - everyone’s Zone 2 is different. Problem 1 is an easy fix, good programming, and structure. So, let’s dive into problem 2.
If you have a 4-hour zone 2 ride for example and head out on a group ride and the group has the same intentions that every single persons Zone 2 is going to vary substantially.
Example, a rider with an FTP of 250 watts, their zone 2 will be for example 162-205 watts, the rider next to them may have an FTP of 350watts, meaning their zone 2 is going to be 227-290. So, there’s virtually no way for the whole group to ride together in Zone 2.
Another example is the drafting effect, and I tested this theory yesterday before writing this. For example, my FTP is hovering around 360-380 watts, so if we calculate based on 360, my zone 2 is approx. 240-300. On a flat road yesterday, that was 32-38kph. When I went in behind a rider that wattage dropped to 150-170 for the same speed, which put me in the recovery zone which has very little aerobic benefit.
My point here is to be careful of everyone doing one persons workout, if you need to go alone then go alone, if you need to be at the front holding wattage then take longer turns and likewise if you get a zone 2 workout in the draft of anther rider then that’s ok to. But you have to be disciplined otherwise you could be wasting valuable training time.
In general, training is very specific, but the role of a good coach is to translate that data for you so you can just go about your training.
This is a very brief article of a topic that we could spend weeks writing about, so please reach out if you have specific questions and we can help.
Cheers,
John
