Pavel Sivakov and Egan Bernal
Riding lots of minutes at very low cadence and low watts/endurance.
Wonder what it is for?
Changing fiber-types, training muscular endurance of slow-twitch fibers maybe?
I know Kwiatkowsky used to do this also.
In Z3, low rpm = training fast twitch for aerobic, lowering VLamax, muscular endurance (Weber, Lorang)
but in Z1/Z2?
Preparing the tendons/joints for the low cadence work at higher intensities later in the training cycle?
To avoid a situation such as this? 
end of December review, pros slowly gear up.
Jack Haig, Sepp Kuss, E Bernal, Mike Woods
high level summary: ride a lot. Often longer. Always include mountains. Sometimes do some stuff along the ride. And in December they did not as much “stuff” as in spring/summer.
Mitchelton-Scott rider, nice example how a pro gets into swing. Simple progression of tempo and threshold work (FTP ~375W)
what a nice block those last 4 days:
Since all elites train polarized he will be doing only below LT1 rides for the next 16 days 
+12!!! 
It is easy to spot intensity in the pros’ training. But what about their base? How intense do they ride it? I’m quite interested in this question.
An interesting comparision can be made with input from this paper:
San-Millan is a consultant for UAE team. I do not know if the pros in this study were from this team. However, still worthwile looking at T Pogocar. In comparision to all the other pros I “follow” he does more “base riding”. Which is pretty much in line with what San-Millan is preaching.
Let’s compare this week (typical for his training) with the fatox curve from the study:
With the exception of some shorter excursions into tempo or slightly above threshold, most of his riding is Zone 2. And this at the outer edge, not at fatoxmax.
Of course, we can’t be certain if this comparision of an individual with a population mean holds up, but it is still interesting to note. And it is in line with most/all of the other pros I follow. Their base riding appears to be at the outer edge of this curve above, not at fatoxmax. The only exception are clear recovery days.
and since I have them already open, a few more:
Nick Schultz, last Sunday were Aussie Nationals.
Mo: Recovery
Tu: Easy Endurance
Threshold intervals
SST intervals
Recovery
or R Gesink
*** Warning – Not fully formed thoughts being typed in real time. Factual and theoretical errors likely ***
I wonder about comparing across sports and even within sports as different riders have different jobs (goals) and that will be reflected in training modalities.
A modern day cycling World Tour Pro, with some exceptions, needs to be “pretty darn good” for a very long season. I would imagine that a cross country skier or competitive rower has a different time period (shorter) where top performance is needed. Top long distance runners are not doing a marathon every month going for the win. Particularly in sports where performance in the Olympics are a prime earning priority, you have a four year macrocycle to work with.
Using specificity for demand of the job as a basis for training, for a world tour rider might we expect training in the high tempo zone (or SST) along with enough VO2max to achieve that always good fitness status? Where as in other sports, or for a GT specialist targeting the Tour Dey France for example, a different approach may be indicated as one is looking for a big peak and the rest of the year doesn’t matter at all.
Meaning when an academic investigator looks at a very small number of specific athletes and draws a conclusion from a very small dataset, they might well come up with an interesting observation that only holds true for that sub-set. If that is then taken as a generality it leads to interesting debate but also some confusion (*)
When I look at these Pro Tour riders training they do not appear to be going “easy” 80% of the time.
@sryke - these data downloads are fascinating. Thanks again for doing them and sharing them.
-Mark
(*) By confusion, a year plus on from the 80:20 revelation people are still debating 80:20 of what, how to count it and if they wanted to, how to put it into practice.
As a blanket statement, is it worth noting that elite/pro athletes most likely respond much more positively to volume and/or intensity than the average age grouper/weekend warrior? Would the greater responsiveness further obscure the pro-to-amateur training translation? 
To be honest, I don’t there is any 80:20 revelation, certainly not from a year or so ago. It seems some of the cycling community have grasped this erroneously from other research. I realize Seiler has been hawking it, but cycling training has always been more pyramidal in nature at the top of the sport vis a vis cross country skiing and such.
My experience watching relatively average amateur bike racing friends (cat 3 level, 3 or 4 individuals total), everyone seems to respond well to volume as long as they don’t increase volume and intensity together. It takes a while, 12-18 months, but I’ve seen pretty average guys retire or just dedicate an extra 8-10 hours a week to bike riding and these guys make big gains. 8-10 extra hours is about doubling the time.
FTP gains may not be huge, say 4 w/kg to 4.5 as a guesstimate based on time trial results. ,But their durability and ability to go longer and repeat efforts with lower recovery times is the big change.
I think this is what we see, in part, with young riders moving up to world tour. They increase volume significantly from neo pro to full pro (2-3 years) and then the extra intensity of racing at that level and training with superior riders has an additive effect.
I can confirm that I’ve been able to handle almost double the volume I did last off-season by being lot more careful about intensity. Then again, I haven’t done an FTP test or a second 5’ test so who knows if it actually worked yet 
Insanity
Yeah…but how much of that was spent going downhill?? 
