Episode 209: Super Time-Crunched - Cycling Training in 4 Hours Per Week

OVERVIEW
Time-Crunched Cyclist programs are typically 6-8 hours of training per week, but a listener asks. "What if I have only 4 hours per week?"

TOPICS COVERED

• Quick Answers to Listener Questions
• Benefits of short sessions of Zone 2 training
• Block training for Super Time-Crunched Cyclists
• Threshold workout example
• Training plans with 2-3 workouts per week
• Annual periodization plan for Super Time-Crunched Cyclists

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Chapters

• 0:07 Training Tips for Time-Crunched Cyclists
• 11:50 Optimizing Training for Time-Crunched Cyclists

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now on to our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford. Well, I hope you've had your fill of all the latest scientific cycling banter, like durability and fat oxidation. The past podcast series was a good one, for sure, but I think it's time to get back into some Q and a. For those just joining us for the first time, welcome on this podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:08

We try to take all the complicated training information on various topics and condense it down into short, actionable episodes. Many of the questions and topics from that come from our audience members, such as yourself. So, as you're out on a training ride or you're reading a book or an article on cycling, or you're listening to some other podcast and you think of a question to ask. Simply head on over to train rightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question. Those questions get sent directly to me and we do our best to answer it on future episodes and that is what we're going to do today. So here is uh, one of actually a latest question. I thought it was really. I thought it was an awesome question to ask because, uh, it definitely relates to the time crunched miss that I think a lot of uh uh cyclists out there experience. So let's hear the original question. Here it is Adam, thanks for the helpful training information in your podcast.

Speaker 1: 2:06

I have two related questions your focus on time crunch athletes who train seven to eight hours per week. Unfortunately, I usually have only about four hours or less to train, so that's three or four days for 30 to 60 minutes. I suspect that there are many cyclists who listen to your podcast who are like me and they wish they had eight hours to train. Yeah, they probably are. I mean, there's a ton of super time crunched athletes out there and that's what I'm going to call you. This is coming from Will, that's what I'm going to call you Super time crunched cyclist.

Speaker 1: 2:35

So question number one is there any benefit to doing zone two on a day where I only have 30 to 40 minutes to train? On a day where I only have 30 to 40 minutes to train, I am trying to follow the 80-20 zone 2 format that has been discussed, but I rarely have a lot of time any day of the week. Most of the conversation about zone 2 references benefits to rides that are two plus hours or longer. I almost never have that much time to ride. So that's question number one. Question number two I also try to follow the two hard days, intervals, et cetera, and the rest of the zone two format. But what do you recommend? If I only have two days to train total? What if I have three days? Do I prioritize the interval training on zone two days? Thank you Will and yes, thank you Will for submitting that question. Thank you Will and, yes, thank you Will for submitting that question.

Speaker 1: 3:29

So overall quick answers yes, there is still benefit in doing zone two endurance training, even when you're super time crunched, like yourself. Because you are a low volume athlete, you can incorporate more intensity more often and you'll benefit from it. Okay, that's one of your advantages of being a super time crunched athlete. Benefit from it. Okay, that's one of your advantages of being a super time crunched athlete. You can. You can have more days or more total um, increased frequency of intensity, and because your overall volume is so low, you're not going to get overly fatigued by that, assuming that you're going to be sleeping and eating properly. Okay so. But in the end, my best recommendation is to follow a program that will cycle through various intensities, or all of the intensities, throughout the year, so that you still develop your fitness, your performance, your energy systems and you're as complete of an athlete as possible.

Speaker 1: 4:16

So let's get specifically into the answer of question number one. You ask do you still get the benefits of zone two when you're even doing like shorter durations, when you do aerobic exercise, when you move, when you sweat, you are getting benefit. So don't let the perfection of what you hear about zone two and all the media sources that you're listening to and reading get in the way of you actually just exercising and being healthy. Move, sweat and enjoy the fact that you can move and sweat. If you can truly embrace that with no judgment, you're already going to be a very healthy person, you know mentally as well as physically. So will you get the benefits on longer rides? Yes, but if you can't do the longer rides, why are you even going to worry about it? So just know that you're burning calories, you're building aerobic fitness and you're being healthy when you move and you sweat. So, secondly, so again, there's benefits there on zone two training, and I don't think that you need to overcomplicate it with more than that Now, without seeing your exact training program or 80, 20 program that you've either set up for yourself or maybe you got something online.

Speaker 1: 5:35

I'm guessing that your intensity days are pretty hard and your zone two days are pretty easy, and I know I've kind of spoken on this in the podcast before. But for anyone who may not know, generally speaking, 80, 20 refers to 80% of your training will be easy, aerobic and or like zone two in a six zone system, and 20% will be hard, whatever hard means, according to the coach, um, or who's ever ready in the training program, but generally race pace, vo2 max or something higher. Okay, so if we take Will's example here of his longest week, which let's, let's say, four hours total, cause that's what he said and for the sake of some easy math, let's say four days of one hour per day. To get that four hours total the 80 20 would come out to three hours and 12 minutes at zone two or easy aerobic and 48 minutes at a hard intensity, whatever hard is. So this is good. This is good for a while Okay, especially with high intensity and when you want to bring out some race performance.

Speaker 1: 6:36

But in my opinion you need to change it up. Variety is a key training principle, which means you must add in variety at the right times and at the right times of the year for the body and energy systems to keep being stressed or stimulated and then rest and you adapt and you improve. If you just keep following the same method 80, 20, or whatever it is year round, you'll be missing out on one of the biggest bangs for the buck in my opinion, which is threshold training. So with a super time crunched athlete such as yourself, I would at the very least have a month where you focus on threshold training as the main focus. Then the next month maybe you go back to 80, 20. You could simply go back and forth like this for several months. Just take a recovery block of five to seven days in there before switching over.

Speaker 1: 7:30

So what this could look like is up to three days per week with as much threshold or zone four training, which is 91 to 105% of FTP, as you can tolerate. Then you cool down and that's it. That's your workout, okay. So to get there, okay, here's a starting workout for uh, for you will, or for anybody who's in a similar position. You start with a short warmup, seven to eight minutes of zone two riding, then you do three by eight minutes at threshold and I'm going to put it at 91 to 101% of your FTP and then I'll encourage you to take three minutes recovery in between. Let that be anywhere between zero and 50% of your FTP. You cool down for three or four minutes and that's a 45 minute workout. What I want you to do is work up to 30 to 40 minutes straight through of low threshold work, simply by progressing the interval durations, such as two by 12, two by 15, and then or decreasing and minimizing or getting rid of the recovery periods, so that now we're just 30 minutes straight of threshold, and that's going to be a great bang for the buck. So, yeah, what that would then look like is eight to 10 minutes for a warmup, 30 minutes straight threshold, five minute cool down and there's a 45 minute workout. You can do a workout like that at least two days a week, if not three, and sometimes even four for my super time crunched athletes. I have them doing four days a week of intensity like that If we're focused on threshold training, and that will definitely move the needle forward because, keep in mind, like I said before, one of your unique opportunities as a super time crunched athlete is your training volume is not so much that you need to worry about an over training aspect.

Speaker 1: 9:14

As long as you're sleeping seven to seven, eight hours, seven to eight hours per night, you're eating eating normally and you're keeping stress in check in your daily life, that much training is not going to cause a problem. Now, if you have two to three days of intensity like this in a threshold block and you have another day of riding that you can do that's where you do your zone two endurance right For 45 to 60 minutes. Now, during a threshold phase like this, um, if you're super, super time crunched and you only have three hours to train, you can also just skip that endurance day. Okay, and the reason for that is, if you are flipping back and forth or switching back and forth between like an 80, 20, and then this threshold phase, you're going to get plenty of endurance work in the 80-20 block of training or the month of training and so you'll still be getting in kind of the important aerobic training that will go in there. But if I'm super time crunched, such as yourself and I've got three days a week, I'm going to hit threshold every single day.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Now the glycolytic energy system is what we are training when we're doing zone for threshold training. It's the energy system that you can increase the most in a short amount of time. For example, you can increase for an amateur, um and a beginner. You can increase your FTP from 10 to 20% in six to eight weeks by using a program like this. I would probably do a little bit more volume overall, but 10 to 20% is a conservative estimate for beginners and amateur cyclists. Threshold training also provides more training stress score per minute than zone two training, without adding the strain and fatigue that sprints and VO2 max intervals do the following day. Therefore, you'll find that you can do much more of this training like overall back-to-back and week after week, and you get really fit from it and it'll not leave you totally wrecked or blown out like VO2 max will, especially if you're only doing, like I said, four hours total per week, sleeping and eating normally. So the zone two endurance day will still keep adding fitness and still keep adding benefit. But you'll also have a day in there too and this is super important where you don't have to perform Okay. So mentally as well as physically, it can be relaxing just to have a day where you're not focused on, you know, hitting the intervals hard and hitting some sort of performance achievement, staying in zone and all that kind of stuff. So just ride your bike and that's really healthy too.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Now let's get to specific answers on question number two Now. That is pertaining to if you're trying to um, hit that kind of that 80, 20 sort of prescription of two hard days per week and you only have two days, what if you have a third day? That's what we're talking about with Will. Now, if you're following that 80-20 training program, follow it Generally. I find that that modality that we're talking about so like a polarized training sort of modality. It is a very good training program so long as you're keeping your hard days hard and your easy days easy, and that means, if you only have two days per week with hard intensity, do that, don't sacrifice it, because that intensity, that's what's going to make you improve, that's what's going to cause the stress or the stimulus. Then you rest, then you're going to get better. So if you have a third, a third day, that's where I would do endurance. If you have a fourth day, uh, I mean again without seeing your actual training program, I might add in maybe a little bit more intensity because, again, total volume is low. However, two hard days and two endurance days, that's not a bad training program.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Now focus on your hard interval days First. If I were coaching you, I'd ensure that the hard days are VO two max or harder, and VO two max, that would refer to 106 to 121% of your FTP, and harder intensity. It gets pretty individualized, uh, the way that I work my coaching program and. But what that means is a perceived effort of nine or a 10 out of 10. So I'm going to maximize the total amount of time in zone to cause fatigue in order to make improvements with you. That's how I would do it. Still, do your zone two training. Like I said, you'll get benefits from that, both aerobically and metabolically and mentally. Okay. But remember, doing this all the time is not what I recommend. Change it up, cycle your intensity throughout the whole year and you'll have much better results overall, because you'll become a better overall rider and you'll become just physically more fit and well-developed.

Speaker 1: 14:08

Now I'll leave you with this final super time crunched training program idea, and it's very basic. I'm not going to get into the details, but you can start to think about cycling your intensities like this January focus on endurance and tempo Okay, so that would be perceived effort of four to six out of 10 for endurance and maybe six or seven for tempo. In February you could go into an 80, 20 phase right here where you're focused on VO two max. So really hard, okay, and this is super time crunch. We're talking four hours, maybe five hours, and you have those two days really hard and that's going to be a nine or a 10 out of 10 for the hard days and then endurance for the other come around March.

Speaker 1: 14:50

That's a threshold focus where you deploy everything that I just talked about in this podcast in April, cycle back to endurance and tempo and you just keep on cycling through, making sure that you hit the start of those of the next block fresh by taking four or five days super easy or off, or however you want to define your recovery block. That is how I recommend to keep on cycling through, keep it fresh, adding variety to a training program, and that's going to do enough of a dose for you to get an adaptation from and it's going to add in variety enough to create different stimulus throughout the year so that your body doesn't get used to any certain thing. So, in summary, I'll leave it there, will. That was a really good question and I think that, yeah, you know, on various podcasts we tend to speak to a lot of maybe time-rich athletes or even the time-crunched athletes which you know a lot of people are doing six to eight hours of training and for those who are doing less than that, you have some challenges. But, as I alluded to, you also have some unique opportunities where you can really get away with more days of intensity, especially at tempo sweet spot or threshold, and start to rack up fitness in that way. You just have to keep on cycling things through throughout the year so that your body doesn't get used to any one thing. So I hope that's really helpful to you and I hope that's helpful to the rest of our listeners.

Speaker 1: 16:19

There's more Q and A's here to come, but, uh, in the spirit of being time crunched, I'll leave it there right around 15 minutes. So thanks everyone. Keep the questions coming and, uh, come back and check us out next week. Thanks for joining us on the time crunch cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to train rightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in depth training content that goes beyond what we covered here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.