The bigger the base, the bigger the V02Max. Like the pyramid: large base, larger top.
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Then how do you explain the Steinway Tower? 
VO2 is about volume and that slender tower has a lot less volume than sky scrapers not as tall.
It’s still not Mount Everest, isn’t it?
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whats the base made of?
I really disagree with this. I’m not a coach, nor am do I have any research basis for my opinion. But any effort over ~20 seconds is considered aerobic, right? So wouldn’t it stand to reason that aerobic conditioning would help?
There is a cycling coach (who is referenced in this thread and on this board) who has used these principals to coach elite women’s lacrosse, which probably has the same energy profile at soccer/football, I would think.
Myself, having played American football at the collegiate level, if I could go back 30 years to when I played I would have absolutely applied these principals to my training. American football is the ultimate “explosive” sport — max efforts of 10-15 seconds followed by 30-45s of rest over and over and over and over, et al. Even in the off-season, the only aerobic conditioning we would do was explosive … 100m/200m repeats. MAYBE 400m sets. And then during the season … it was all sprint conditioning.
The result?? All of us, every year, were much functionally stiffer and slower (and injured) at the end of the season. I always wondered how it would have been different by building a big aerobic base in the off season while servicing the speed once a week … of course all of this would have to be balance with the intense weight room demands of the sport. Also, the variety of athlete/body type is HUGE in American football … so I guess now I’m just pontificating 
My point, I think, is that a big base of aerobic conditioning would help with fatigue resistance and repeatability over the course of a match and/or season.
I’m not here for an argument, by the way, just thinking out loud… I couldn’t defend any of this, except anecdotally.
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Yea, you can add a lot to your 60s power by just riding a lot. This last 3 months ive put 125w on my 5s power but since its off season i am 150w under my best 1min power from the summer.
From complete rest and during all-out exercise, the “crossover point” between predominantly non-aerobic to predominantly aerobic energy provision is about 70 s.
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Sorry for going off topic @sryke
This comes close to what i mean for team sports like football etc - (7) No Conditioning or Tempo Running | A Sprint-Based Approach - YouTube
If you want an intelligent dissection summary of ISM’s training model that led to his gains, this post by Tom Bell of Highnorth Coaching is the best that I’ve found: Zone 2 Training and Lactate: Dissecting Inigo San Millan's Advice — High North Performance. Highly recommended.
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Great summary of ISM - let me put it in one phrase:
Do a lot of endurance riding!
ISM never gives specifics about anything else.
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Don’t have to go much beyond your local group ride with a shorter steep climb, say 5 min, to see this 70s phenomenon. Lots of guys can drop you at the start… 90s later, you see them again. I have a younger athlete of mine that I harp on this with. He loves to smash the start of a climb, and I always yell at him, “90s man!” It’s taken four or five times of me doing this on local rides and he seems like he’s finally getting it. 
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I really don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, but FWIW, “repeatability” is just another indicator of your muscular metabolic fitness.*
*I belatedly learned that behind my back my 40+ teammates called me “The Energizer Bunny” due to my incessant attacks.
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You’ve seen people overcook the first 70-90s of a 5 min hill (e.g.) and then blow up and fall back. Like a kid goes off at 450W for ~90s then struggles to maintain 200W for the last 2/3 of the climb. Not talking about repeatability, just the transition from anaerobic to aerobic energy provision, particularly in more novice riders who don’t understand pacing and have underdeveloped aerobic capacity. Watching that occur time and time again is instructive in where that transition takes place when you know what you’re seeing. “See you in 90s!” 
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Totally agree. I ride with a social ride group with some friends who aree leisure cyclists . This is what everyone did on the hills. Go at it like a bat out of hell then die at around a minute or so gasping for air as they struggle to the top. They’ve all got e-bikes now so they just turn the power up.
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what is your take on the zwift racer machines? they barely do volume and hammer it all the time … ?
I think it’s like really talented 800m runners competing in the 3200m race, and racing it as if it were several 800m races strung together. They aren’t going to do bad, and they will make less talented racers second guess their training choices. A proper 3200m runner with solid training will smoke them, just not out of the gate.
If I’m reading the context right, what you’re asking is about doing a bunch of small but powerful surges over a duration that would otherwise be considered medium distance?
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Do they?
Fast Zwift racers I know of are also fast riders IRL and train as such, volume wise.
However, I see reduced overall volume during “indoor season”, but that is upon a massive base.
Yeah my experience with Zwift racing is it’s one of two things: straight up power for a relatively long effort 20+ min; or repeated surges. Either one of those takes a high level of aerobic fitness, even considering that Zwift e-racing seems even more heavily tilted toward raw watts than real-world racing. You might need 400W to win that A race, but doing that for a minute or two once or twice ain’t gonna cut it. A local athlete with a 380-405W FTP did a Zwift race a while back and got dropped in the As. This is a guy who can sustain that wattage on a track for nearly an hour. You’re not getting by doing stuff like that on sugar.
If you have access to their Strava I’d keep an eye on their take on specificity. But this is the opposite of ground breaking insight - it’s lex parsimoniae applied with century old principles of training. So I guess it’s 6 centuries of common sense rather than believing that a few guys are doing weird stuff only a few other guys profess.
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