All about training intentionally
There is definitely a cult of volume within the cycling community. If some riding is good, more is better right?
For many athletes on their cycling journey, this can be true. Adding in six hours of riding a week for an athlete that usually rides once or twice a week socially is usually enough stimulus to elicit a training response. And this is what this article is about, the crunchy nuts and bolts. What even is training?
Well, at the core of endurance sport training we have a bunch of principles:
Specificity: in order to get better at something we must do the thing. We must not expect to become an elite level cyclist by spending 8 hours a week powerlifting.
Progressive overload: we must do more in order to improve, but this must be measured and progressive.
Recovery: We can’t just overload into infinity, recovery is important and is the time when the body becomes stronger. Failure to plan adequate recovery leads to staleness, plateau and burnout.
Variety: is the spice of life
Reversibility: you take time off the bike, your cycling fitness will wane. Reversibility is important to keep in mind for season-on-season growth, as a period of reversibility allows for a reset and greater success the following season.
So we have all these principles which are good in theory, but what do we do with these in order to build a better athlete?
Firstly, we take a history and find out what the athletes goals are and ideally assess where they’re at. We use a SMART goal setting technique to set goals and revisit throughout the season.
For that new rider, progressive overload can take place by increasing frequency, duration and intensity of their rides. And during different time of their ‘season’ we will manipulate all of these.
For a more advanced rider, we test and retest. We look at physiology and their own strengths and weaknesses and we look at the demands of the sport. For example, if the athlete is a cross-country marathon rider, their requirement for fatigue resistance >2000kj is much greater than that of an Olympic distance mountain biker, and the power-durations that you are testing would also likely differ between these two: can the marathon racer produce a race-winning maximal aerobic effort four hours into their race? Can the cross country rider repeatedly dip into their critical power bucket and produce strong anaerobic surges after riding above and below threshold for 90mins?
BEING INTENTIONAL
So here’s the thing, I had had riders on 10hour/week crush some competitors that are out there with their teeth out for 18+ hours on the bike because we train intentionally.
Sometimes that can be very boring, like doing the same session every Tuesday for a few months, and watching power changes. Sometimes, being intentional means just going out to ride trails or work on skills and nothing else. Being intentionally….unintentional.
What ‘being intentional’ almost never means, is riding reasonably hard (instead of endurance pace) for several hours because it feels good. I mean, feeling good is important, but refusing to follow an intentional plan very often leads to unintentional outcomes (fatigue, sickness or burnout, and in the case where there is non-compliance, it just leads to poor performance). It also doesn’t mean Strava racing every session. Sorry.
Being intentional sometimes takes some trial and error. Sometimes while we are learning how to understand intensity and our bodies, we may f*** up. We may under, or over pace when it comes to efforts.
If you have ever done a 20min test, you have probably experienced this. It takes time and really honing your feelings to be able to ride the knife edge of what’s physically possible and what’s too hard.
Here is an example of an athlete doing a key session for the first time, the FTP dotted line was based on a ramp test and not validated with longer protocols, so the key on this one was to go on maximal repeatable feel. The athlete did a great job for a first try, but slightly overpaced which lead to a very sad fourth and slightly less sad fifth rep.
Here we have completed a power profile, and you see 9/10-star execution here. While the athlete fades slightly towards the end, the goal of the workout: time in zone and threshold stimulus, has been reached. It’s also apparent he’s become much better at pacing these. We can assess cardiovascular changes by looking at his heart rate within and between efforts, and power from averaging the effort output across each session each week.
And so here’s the rub: we are looking for intentional effort execution, but we also are looking at overall performance, and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater if it’s not perfect.
Here are some power stats (watts) from a rider completing these sessions over a 6 week period:
1st attempt: 256, 258, 259, 257, 262: average across efforts 258
3rd attempt: 260, 263, 267, 268, 265: average across efforts 264
5th attempt: 264, 266, 274, 276, 276: average across efforts 271
7th attempt*: 292, 285, 261, 274, 290: average across efforts 280
*7th attempt featured more variations between efforts due to terrain
By being intentional this athlete has increased their power across efforts by 8.5%. Their weekly volume doesn’t have a lot of room to move, so this comes in nestled inside 10-15hours a week of bike time.
Tips to make the most out of your time
Ask for clarification! I love to write small sagas on many workouts I prescribe but no coach is faultless. If you are in any way confused (where is this to be completed? What should it feel like? What time of day? What bike etc etc) ask your coach.
Think about what the goal of the workout is. If the goal of the workout is increase maximal aerobic power but you’re kind of half-committed doing them at a tempo/threshold 6/10 intensity, then the prescribed stimulus is not being elicited. You’re not asking your body to make the changes the coach intends. Once again, if you’re like ‘why do I have to do a 1min all out effort I am a marathon racer?’ You can actually ask your coach to explain. Sometimes just understanding what’s going on adds to buy in then you’ll be suffering happier, knowing that it’s targeting key physiology.
Different coaches have different approaches. Some studies say X is the best way to increase critical power but this study says X is. There are many, many ways to train and there is no one ‘miracle’ workout. You can often get to the same places with different approaches, so as long as you’re improving, keep the eyes on the prize rather than be worried about what old mate is doing.
Training is not the end goal. We train to perform, training itself isn’t the performance. Sure, it feels awesome to have process goals you can tick off in the daily training experience, but truly the racecourse is where it matters. If you have massively increased your threshold power and killing those 20min Strava climb sessions, but have no top end or skills because you’ve skipped those sessions, then you’re probably not going to perform as well as someone who has adequately addressed other factors that lead to performance. While it’s fun to banter about our peak power after a hard crit, yeah that’s cool but how did it play out were you sprinting for 14th from the back?
Do your recovery. That’s it. Permission to be lazy or go on a ridiculously easy ride has been granted. It’s good for you.