Episode 210: How and when to intensify cycling training to gain speed and power

OVERVIEW
Overview: After a long period of developing base aerobic fitness, how and when should Time-Crunched Cyclists add intensity for greater speed and power?

TOPICS COVERED

•  Intro
• Intensifying training to add speed and power
• Key workouts for aerobic glycolysis
• Progression of workouts for improving aerobic glycolysis

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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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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. Welcome back Time Crunch fans, coach Adam here answering more of your Time Crunch questions. And you know what? No fancy intro or anything like that today. Let's just get right down to it.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Here is the original question submitted by Rodolfo Hello Coach, love the podcast. Always listen, rodolfo. Hello coach, love the podcast. Always listen to it while doing my strength training. My question is do you think you can improve LT1 threshold while keeping LT2 roughly at the same level? The reason I'm asking is because this year I did two training camps one week each with high zone two volume, and I noticed that afterward my endurance improved a lot. I can keep long intervals like 40 minutes around 90% FTP, with lower heart rate and perceived effort now than before. But when I do VO2 efforts I feel like they're very tough to overcome, although they are more sustainable. Do you think that it's a sign of improvement on FTP because I can keep the power longer on 90% efforts, or did I just become more efficient at sub-LT2 efforts? So again, great question and good explanation there, rodolfo, and overall I'm glad that you're working in some longer training camps too, because as a time crunched athlete, that is one of the most effective ways in a condensed time to build base and improve aerobic capacity. So to answer your question directly yes, you can improve LT1 without super influencing LT2. Now, there's some nuance there, as by increasing your volume, even in zone two endurance, you'll still influence both. But if you're really focused and disciplined on just riding at endurance the whole time and you don't really touch the higher intensity zones at all, you'll find that your first turn point of lactate, which is the LT1 that we're talking about, will improve without super drastic improvements or increases in your LT2 or a marker that's closely related to FTP. Now, more broadly is that you built up your aerobic system nicely and now you should work on your glycolytic system, starting to intensify your training if your goal is to add speed and power to your portfolio of performance. And you know what, hitting extensive sub-LT efforts with decreased RPE and likely decreased heart rate is a great indicator that you have improved the aerobic system and it's time to move on in training.

Speaker 1: 3:30

So, rodolfo, I know you didn't specifically ask about this, but I'm I'm just going to go ahead and assume that you wrote in to ask what's next and how to do that. So here we go. I'd advise that you start doing intervals which are at least a hundred percent and two in upwards of 110% of your FTP in the interval. Duration should be between six and 10 minutes for each interval, aiming for at least 15 minutes of total time in zone per workout and up to 30 or even 35 minutes of time in zone for that. Okay, to explain my rationale, I want to give you a quick reminder of the energy systems in our body that are trainable, and I'm going to do this as simple as possible. So, for any of those like super intense physiology nerds out there, I am going to make some generalities here, so please forgive me, but this is the best simple way I can put it, here are the energy systems, but here are also substrates or fuels that we're using for these energy systems.

Speaker 1: 4:39

Okay, so first you got the aerobic fat burning system. These are workouts in your zone two endurance rides that are so popular right now, targeting 60% to 76% of your FTP. I feel like I've done a crap ton of episodes about this recently. Basically, just listen to anything over the past few months, especially interviews with coach Renee Eastman about this. These are efforts that are low intensity and longer in duration 45 to 60 minute endurance rides for time crunched cyclists or long base mile rides for all cyclists, really as long as the training program calls for. On the day, you're using oxygen and fat as your primary fuel sources to power the ride, so we call this aerobic fat oxidation or aerobic fat burning system, okay.

Speaker 1: 5:30

Second is the aerobic glycogen burning system. The glycolytic energy system is one of the most trainable systems that we have. I just said those exact words on the podcast before this, and when we're talking about aerobic glycolysis, we're talking about efforts fueled by oxygen, muscle glycogen and exogenous carbohydrate that will get absorbed and broken down the body and be used as glucose for fuel. These are efforts that are fairly hard to really hard. So maybe like RPE, rate of perceived efforts of seven, eight, nine and 10 out of a 10 point system here, and we're talking about percentages of FTP that are starting around 90% and upwards of max efforts for about a 70 or 75 second duration. So we're really talking about low threshold up to anaerobic capacity, efforts that are as short as maybe 70 seconds for some riders and up to 70 minutes for some riders, and it's a hard effort.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Now this is the system I want you to focus on, rodolfo more on this in a minute anaerobic glycogen system. These are efforts that we're training, your sprint efforts. So things like 10 seconds and maybe upward of 60 seconds, and you're using stored muscle glycogen to fuel the effort, but the amount of oxygen used is minimal compared to the amount of muscle glycogen. So we call this anaerobic, even though you're technically still breathing air while you do it. Now, the nomenclature here is confusing, obviously, but this is just how we roll in physiology these days. These are really hard efforts that are high-end anaerobic capacity, so RPEs of 9 or 10 out of 10, and percentages of FTP that are individualized to the rider. If you want to do it right Now, finally, hang in there with me.

Speaker 1: 7:31

We have anaerobic ATP or phosphocreatine system. These are super short max efforts fueled by a tiny little molecule called adenosine triphosphate, and that's your primary fuel source for these efforts. Sure, we have some muscle glycogen at play and you're still breathing air, but the movements are so fast that ATP is the main fuel source here. Pmax efforts, or reactionary efforts, that are three seconds and less, and very fast and very hard. These are extremely high intensity efforts is really what we're talking about Now.

Speaker 1: 8:11

This is not what you should focus on here, rodolfo, but for the sake of my explanation to everyone here, just to give a lay of the land of all the things that we can train and influence, I wanted to include it. So let's leave it there on the whole human physiology stuff for now and bring it back to the practical application side of things. Okay, so let's talk about key workouts for aerobic glycolysis. Rodolfo, I'm really saying that you just need some upper end threshold training. Specifically, I'm advising that this should be at, or slightly above FTP, as it seems that you're pretty solid at sub-LT efforts right now. Here's some starting workouts for you Three by six minute climbing, repeats at 100 to 110% FTP, with four to five minute recovery in between intervals.

Speaker 1: 8:57

Do that for a 45 or 60 minute workout with warmup and cool down. There's your workout. You can scale this up to four by six, or three by eight, or even three by 10, or if you're hitting three by 10 and that's comfortable and you still have another week to go in your build talk about that here in a second you can go up to about four by 10. That would probably be the most I would see an athlete be able to do, assuming that your FTPs are set appropriately. Now you notice my recovery periods. I'm advising that you should still do a little over two to one work to rest ratio. What I mean by that is, let's just say, if you're doing a 10 minute interval, you should have at least five minute recovery, if not more, like six or seven.

Speaker 1: 9:45

And this is because the intensity or the higher power production is the key aspect of this workout. It's not. Can you repeat it on the low end? Even though that's not bad, you don't want to really skimp on the recovery for this one. Now why? Why climbing repeats? Why do we call it that?

Speaker 1: 10:01

Well, here at CTS we call intervals like this at 100% to 110% FTP and these specific interval durations we call them climbing repeats because they are done well, on a hill climb, and many cyclists can produce higher power outputs, naturally on a hill, because gravity is pulling on you and you need to produce higher power to get up the hill. Now, if you're not a self-identified climber phenotype, or if you don't have hills to climb, or if you just hate hill climbing, right, if you live in Florida or you're like, oh my gosh, I just hate climbing hills, don't worry, you can still do these intervals on flat terrain or on the indoor trainer, even without having to elevate your bike or anything crazy like that. We call them climbing repeats for the specific workout type, but you don't have to super influence your bike or the terrain or anything like that. Use what you got, get after it, do some hard work. Now we're simply focused on the steady power production at, or slightly over FTP, like I said, in order to stimulate all the good fatigue that happens when you go over threshold, which is increased lactate production, muscle acidosis, inorganic phosphate molecules ratcheting up, etc. Etc. Blah, blah, blah. Now why do I choose this level of aerobic glycolysis? If I, if I talked about aerobic glycolysis happening anywhere between like 70 seconds up to 70 minutes? Good question. It's a good starting point for Rodolfo here and it's a good starting point for a lot of cyclists who have trained themselves aerobically Okay, and it's a good starting point to start to intensify the training, to increase FTP and the tolerance of hard efforts over FTP. Like I said my last podcast this is the most you know the glycolytic energy system is the most influential um of all the energy systems we have. Part of that is because it's so expansive. Another part of it is because our group rides and our races and the things that we do to go fast kind of gets covered in that. 70 seconds to 70 minutes, okay. So it's a very applicable and very trainable energy system. So I'm going to encourage Rodolfo to do this.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Now, finally, back to these workouts like the three by six, three by eight, doing these workouts. Finally, back to these workouts like the three by six, three by eight, doing these workouts. I'd spend about three weeks here and I would progressively increase your time and zone per workout. So if the first week you just you do three by six on Tuesday and three by six on Thursday, the next week you do three by eight, on Tuesday, three by six, or maybe four by six on Thursday, and you just keep on progressing yourself of ratcheting up time in zone there. I would do these hard workouts two times per week and you can add a third day of intensity in If you're feeling really good, if you're holding up and you're like man, like I, have good energy. I really want to get after it. So if you're feeling that and you're training less than 12 hours per week, add in another third day.

Speaker 1: 13:21

Now, if you're doing higher volume than that right now, if you're in a high volume training block, I would group rides or do a hilly ride or something like that. That's beyond a zone two to three, which I'm all about. But you have to consider that a day of intensity as well, and that's why I say keep it to a around two. Do those super high quality um on par with what I'm talking about, and you'll be good to go. Now for you, rodolfo, focus on these two really good days per week. That's what I would say at these higher intensities. Separate them with a rest day or a recovery ride in between. So call it Tuesday and Thursday, wednesday's, easy. Then add in some volume on the weekend. That can be your zone two rides.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Do this for three weeks and then what you want to do is take a week easy where you don't do any intervals, just ride zone one, zone two. Take a couple of days off during that week and then you move on. When you do move on, you can then move up to power intervals or VO2 max intervals, which are interval durations of 90 seconds up to five minutes respectively. Do that to keep intensifying your training program and once you're there, go ahead and write back in with another good question of how best to do it. So that's it.

Speaker 1: 14:36

That's our show. Be sure to come back next week for more and if you have your own question floating around in your head, simply head over to train rightcom backslash podcast. Click on ask a training question, fill out the form and submit it over to us here at CTS. Those questions get sent directly to me and I'll do my best to answer it on future episodes. Thanks again for listening and keep those questions coming in. 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 trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover 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.