I know there are a bunch of threads out there on heat training but couldn’t find one on my specific question. Any one feel free to put me in my place if this is redundant.
I got an early Christmas present in the form of the Core Body Temp sensor and I want to try incorporating heat training into my training plan for funsies. For context while I am training for road races none of my A events are in a particularly hot location (think NE and Mid Atlantic US during the summer holiday weekends).
With that being said I would like to experiment with heat training to see how much it helps (or doesn’t). And other than performance gains I think heat training could potentially help with my temperature control as I am a heavy sweater in moderate weather and lose a lot of electrolytes in longer rides so it would be nice to try to mitigate that a bit.
For context I am doing TR’s polarized base/build with ~12 hours of volume weekly. Where Monday is recovery, Tuesday/Thursday are high intensity (Threshold/VO2), and the other days are Zone 2. I am thinking I would implement heat training on my Zone 2 days but I am not sure what that cadence should look like since I am still several months away from any meaningful event. Reading Core’s documentation I know that you can build and maintain heat adaptation so I want pace it sensibly.
I would approach this with caution as when done properly heat training has a significant fatigue impact. Probably replace one z2 day with a shorter easier ride and do that at most once per week and see how that impacts the rest of your training.
Heat training really has the potential to interfere with your actual training. Riding in the heat limits your ability to do more intense efforts, and causes more fatigue independent of training stress. Together these mean that your weekly TSS often drops during the period of heat training… which if you’re not very careful, may cancel out the potential benefits.
I’ve tried it a few ways over the past couple years, but have not had super useful results.
The first time I did it was out of necessity due to a heat wave. That was during early build and I do not recommend that as I lost fitness lol.
I also tried it in base before. It worked a noticeable amount… but slowly completely disappeared over ~4-6wk. Which is not surprising as the adaptions you get from heat training go away within a few weeks.
It’s these two things - it interfering with your aerobic training, and not lasting very long once you remove the heat stimulus - that really limit how I can think of using it.
If you’re going to do it, doing it on your easy days is the right approach I think. Just know that it’s going to increase fatigue still.
And maybe if you maintain one or two heat sessions a week you’ll make the adaptations last a touch longer.
But the heat “dose” that caused the noticeable improvement for me was when I was living somewhere very hot and was outside for 10+ hours a day, and sleeping warm at night. Not just an hour or two a week while on the bike.
I think I’ve given up and deliberately trying it for performance effects; but if I did try that again, it might actually be during a taper. You’d need to be pretty careful with fatigue management though.
The TLDR is the most important time is the 2-3 weeks before the target event. Prioritizing build this time of year, and then working in heat during your specialty phase as the adaptations don’t just hang around…
How about this @patricksudol, you wear your core monitor during your typical rides for a couple of weeks and collect some data. You do not mention if your training is indoors, outdoors, or a mix of both. Perhaps you are already heat training without knowing it, perhaps not. But once you figure that out, then you can start by slowly incorporating some intentional heat training by adjusting your environment. Be that turning off the fan, putting a paint suit, or getting suited up in you cold weather gear while riding indoors. The good thing is you have time to figure out how you get to that higher core body temp with the device that actually measures it. You have plenty of time to heat adapt and I don’t know if there’s any advantage to trying to accomplish it in a shorter or longer period of time. I do know that heat adaptation works, and it was worth the effort for myself.
I’m not personally an expert on heat training, but, as @BCM mentioned, we’ve covered the topic before in the podcast – the info there might be helpful for you!
Thanks for all the great responses! Just to answer a quick question:
I train primarily indoors in my basement with a fan so it’s pretty cool down there.
After a couple training session in my typical training spot I can say I very seldom leave CORE’s heat zone 1 (base line) so my environment is doing a good job of cooling.
With that being said I might slowly introduce it once or twice a week to see how it feels and go from there. I think being so far out from an event I do not want it to interfere with my adaptations from base training.