I think a lot of people get caught up with not knowing what they need or what is important. They hear ISM talk about lab testing, lactate, bioenergetics, etc. and think that if they only had that they would bust out of their range and tack on another 30 watts to their FTP.
The same with Inscyd testing - if one only gets this magic test, it will tell me how to train my VLAmax and then the magic will happen.
Personally, I’m falling into the “all roads lead to Rome” camp*. Most amateurs could ride whatever volume they are going to ride, do 1-3 interval sessions per week, keep fatigue in check, and they will probably reach 95%+ of whatever potential they can reach. Maybe they can optimize that last 5% with a coach or more advanced training methods but if they do all the basics, they won’t be leaving a lot on the table.
This, to me, is my job as a coach: filter through the BS and get people on the right track as quickly as possible. Many of us spent years searching out the golden ticket, only to find it doesn’t exist. I have racers ranging from first-year racing, up to guys who raced at a high level in their 20s and 30s now in their 70s racing masters. The first-year (or two) people, I like to think I’m keeping them from going down the wrong paths and giving them a head start on people who go it alone. The problem you run into is they always have friends/family who tell them all kinds of bad advice, but they want to listen because friend/family is faster than they currently are. Never mind that friend/family plateaued on their “smash every group ride” plan several years ago.
Ugh dealing with this right now… got a friend who got this domestic pro as a coach!
His coach seems to be coaching for income, not for any other reason. And my friend listens to him like he is god himself… while in my eyes it feels like his coach is just doing the “what worked for me as a pro should work for the amateurs”
So here my friend is doing 3-4 interval sessions a week, doesn’t believe that volume is important enough to do more than 7-8 hours, etc etc.
Drives me nuts.
On the other side of this I have a coach which has the totally opposite approach.
Maximise endurance riding, 1-2 hard sessions a week, adapts to work stress etc. which has worked amazing for me. Never sick, never over trained, no rest weeks, just super consistent for the past 2.5 years.
It’s so hard or discuss training with someone who has been indoctrinated to believe that if you’re not doing 3-4 hard rides a week you’re not getting faster.
My friend also refers to “the pros” often. Saying that “now they’re only riding hard when racing so I should be doing hard rides all the time also, not noodling around with volume and Z2”
100% me. He struggles with fatigue, bad sleep, he fails workouts at least a couple of times a month, blames allergies etc.
The issue is that he is still pretty fast, so he has this issue where he doesn’t believe anything else can work, since he has done quite well so far (at least for the riding he does, super hard 45min group rides etc).
I rather be able to to 3x10min at threshold after 3-4 hours (just for fun, eh)
After I started riding with a coach (2.5 years), I have literally only been sick with COVID. Before when I was riding with TR (this was pre polarised plans) I was sick multiple times a year.
Absolute watts, around 315w for both of us (4.15w/kg for me and 3.5w/kg for him).
I am no beast on the bike, but I can get around just fine.
The cool thing is that my sub 5min power has shot through the roof recently, and I haven’t trained it at all. Just endurance riding and a few interval sessions here and there (probably average one a week now during summer when I am doing 13-14h a week)
This is the issue I battle with some of my club mates who I don’t coach when they’re talking to some that I do. As you said, those guys haven’t gotten any better since I’ve known them, they can only compete in one way (sit in and sprint) in one type of race (short crits). If there’s a hill or a breakaway or the race is longer than an hour, their race is over.
The point that my athletes understand is about stagnation. I also tell them when they ask that all those guys putting out the bro science in our chat don’t know how much better they could be if they trained properly because they have never tried it.
Most anyone who trains for races has enough anaerobic capacity to survive and potentially do well in a 45 min crit. Once you get above that or add other factors, you separate the wheat from the chaff.
Thanks for sharing. It interesting that your profile seems to be relative strong sub 5m and relative week above that. Have you always been like that? Or is a function of your recent training?. Old
Yeah I have more of a puncheur style maybe, so anything under 8min and I can go quite hard.
I just set a new 5min record the other day at 400w (5.26w/kg) and also did 3x8min intervals where the last one I managed to set a new record at 375w for 8 min (4.93w/kg).
I haven’t don’t anything above 8min for over a year I think, so I can probably put out a bit higher 20min or so than last year
But one thing that REALLY has worked for me this summer is volume
It may not really show but I’ve been doing around 13-16 hours a week for this whole summer pretty much, doing one hard session a week, the rest very strict zone 2.
I’m too scared to tell, people gonna say it’s junk miles
Jokes aside.
I just ride. Mostly with my girlfriend, and to keep her in her Z2 in the draft, I cannot go too hard
So some days it’s average 160w and some days it’s 190w.
Never aim for anything above 200w unless I am actively doing some “high Z2”, and then I’ll push into 210-240w and do longer intervals there. Mostly do this if I am abroad and climbing.
The stagnation discussion is very interesting to me.
Most of the people I began riding with are all more or less the same level.
I also went from very average, to stronger than most of my peers. Not a boast, just an observation. I’m not an exceptional cyclist by any metric.
I did this with lots of endurance/Z2 and a very small amount of intensity. It certainly wasn’t genetics. I probably had just a single slow twitch muscle fiber in my entire body when I began cycling.
Most amateurs do vastly too much intensity.
There’s a billion posts / articles / videos / podcasts endlessly explaining that a majority of endurance training needs to be low intensity. Yet, a huge proportion of amateur athletes still do endless intervals and smash every group ride etc.
It used to frustrate me. I’m not sure why…
Now I just smile as those same folk huff and puff up every incline on every ride. Always racing, always competing, but never improving.
Volume is empire.
The single most important aspect of endurance training.
I’ve done lots if volume, mostly easy, with a bit of intensity and stagnated. What I don’t think I was doing was taking enough rest. Hope to rectify that going forward.
