16-Week Cycling Training Program for Sustained and Punchy Power (#218)

OVERVIEW
Overview: Let's say you have cycling event coming up that requires both steady, sustained power and short, punchy accelerations or climbs? How do you train to optimize both? Coach Adam Pulford describes the structure of a 16-week training plan he would use for this scenario.

TOPICS COVERED

• Demands of training for long efforts vs. short efforts
• Training blocks to use across a 16-week program
• Workout details and weekly training structure
• Peak phase training with an effective taper

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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
• 12:36 Balancing Long and Short Cycling Training

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.

Speaker 1: 0:52

What are the best intervals to do? How best to do them? When should you do them? These are some classic questions from many athletes out there, and the answers are not always straightforward, as it depends on many factors. However, a recent audience member asked essentially these questions while providing really good context around her inquiry. So let me read you that question and I'll give my answer with a framework to support it. Here we go.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Here's the original question. I'm a masters 55 plus woman athlete who likes to compete at both time trial and gravel races. I typically ride five or six days a week. Two of those days are higher intensity or race to focus training, one long weekend ride over varying terrain for aerobic endurance and all the other days are essentially easy or recovery rides. How should I divide hard training days to prepare for both long LT intervals, like time trialing, as well as punchy and persistent climbs of gravel racing one of each per week? Or is there some other, better way to do this? And that's coming from Pam. Wonderful question, pam. This is a great question because many athletes typically want or need the diverse ability to do long LT efforts, along with the short punchy climbs to go faster, achieve their goals in a road race, stage race, long gravel race or, in Pam's case, a block of different types of racing. On top of that, if you are fit and good at both, it's really fun to rip your local group ride or your favorite segments that you've been chasing for a while.

Speaker 1: 2:38

The tricky part is having both at the same time and at the right time, and this gets into the heart of the art and science of coaching. And here's why Long LT efforts are overly aerobic, while short and punchy is more anaerobic in nature, and these two energy systems are essentially opposites when it comes to the energy they use to make the effort, the training needed to bring out. Each of them can essentially be a game of internal tug of war on your aerobic and anaerobic energy systems, bringing out each a little while the other one goes back down, and vice versa. As endurance athletes, we oftentimes are trying to find the right balance of both worlds for our events, because endurance cycling does require both hard starts, long climbs, sprint finishes or simply just keeping pace over the 30-second hill climb as well as the 30-minute hill climb in the Grand Fondo. Now, pam, thank you to really good background and info on your own training. This really helps in answering the question. For sure, your weeks sound like you already have good habits and good rhythm of training, and that's really important when it comes to building some peak form and performance. So I have two ways of answering this question for you, the first of which will be my go-to, should work pretty much every time, and my second pertains to the individuality of training.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Let's start with the foolproof answer of layering your intensity from aerobic to anaerobic through phases of training, or good old, boring periodization. Good old, boring periodization the reason why developing the aerobic base nice and wide, then building intensity throughout a season, with higher intensity closer to peak and race phases, is because the layers build upon themselves, meaning if you do it right you can have the long LT legs with short, punchy climbing ability. You can have your cake and eat it too, but only for a short window of time. We'll get there. But let me explain Periodization of specificity and intensity. What I want you to think about and this is a long kind of answer to the question, but what I want you to think about is plan out the number of weeks leading up to the main competition and then work backward from there to set the plan for the intervals, the intensity and training blocks.

Speaker 1: 5:12

Now, assuming you laid out a good foundation of that aerobic training and you maximized volume for several weeks throughout the base phase, you want to get good and organized right around 16 weeks out from your main event. And, simply put, I would think about it like this there's going to be a phase of training which I call like base two and that's going to be 16 weeks out from the competition. You then have build one which I would put about eight weeks out from competition and then you have your peaking phase, which will be about four weeks out from competition. That's essentially peaking into the race itself. So let's take each of those three and I'll talk about how and when to do which type of intervals throughout the week. So 16 weeks out from competition. I call this base two or late base phase. You want to break these eight weeks into two phases. First three weeks those are your long LT intervals.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Do them two times per week and this is what I call extensive FTP intervals. This could be your classic two by twenties, three by fifteens, and you're doing these at zone four threshold, but at the low end of that. So I'm going to prescribe the workouts as 91 to a hundred percent of FTP and work with probably a three to one work to rest period. So if you're doing 20 minute intervals, you are taking rest periods of six to seven minutes of easy spinning. You do that for around three weeks. Then you take a recovery week, just freshen up, recovery rides, easy endurance rides, lots of sleep.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Then you start in on the second three-week build. That's when I would up the power a little bit. I call this intensive FTP power. Example workouts here are short time trial intervals of five to 10 minutes. I'm going to target 100 to 110% of FTP. Now, in previous episodes I've called these climbing repeat intervals. You can do them on flat terrain or on the time trial bike and essentially they're hard time trial intervals. They should feel like an eight to nine out of 10. I think in your case, pam, I just go for that nine out of 10. Target that 110% of FTP. The work to rest ratio would be two to one. So if you're, if you're doing a 10 minute intervals, take at least five minutes of recovery. And I always tell the athlete too, on this phase we're starting to focus more on the power production. So, if anything, take a little bit more recovery in order to make really good power.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Now next is that build one phase, and this is eight weeks out from competition. This will be a four week block of training. The first three weeks will be focused on extensive anaerobic or VO2 max intervals I call this VO2 power personally and it's going to be focused on anything from about 90 seconds all the way out to about four minutes of interval duration. That power or that prescription will be anywhere between 106 to 125% of FTP. But this is when it starts to get individualized and kind of depends on how you make your power with what that actual percentage of FTP is. They're hard nine to 10 out of 10.

Speaker 1: 8:45

Meanwhile, getting in that punchy group ride one time per week is going to be a really good thing and this is going to be moderate to high volume here. The phases before I forgot to mention that, but that's the late base phase. We should still be high volume during that time. We can do high volume and still do extensive FTP work. But now we're going to start to bring down the volume a little bit, and that's average volume each week. The reason for that is, as we start to intensify the training, we want to manage the total stress by bringing down volume to allow you to recover from the high intensity work. Now this will be three weeks of intervals and again you can do them two times per week.

Speaker 1: 9:29

My suggestion, pam, is Tuesday and Thursday, especially if that long ride's coming on Saturday. Keep it easy, endurance in between, and that should be the rhythm or the modality, like a polarized sort of modality, for each of these phases leading into the competition. Now we're sitting around four weeks out and this is the peak phase. This is where the art and science meet. For a peaking phase I'm also going to depends on the athlete. Okay, depends on a lot of factors. I usually have a three to five week target for a peak phase, but for the sake of this let's use a four week example, because it fits nicely into our 16 week progression here. So this peak phase is going to focus on really, really high intensity Okay, intensive anaerobic development. I call the.

Speaker 1: 10:20

In previous episodes I've referred to workouts like this, such as FRC intervals or speed intervals, which can be on off, sort of things. You can combine the two as well. You can do FRCs on Tuesday and speed intervals on Thursday, or just speed intervals both days of the week, something like that. The way I think about FRC intervals would be anywhere between 30 and 60 seconds long. Max effort Percentage of FTP doesn't even apply. It's individualized to my athletes, but they're 10 out of 10 long recovery periods. So if you go for one minute, you're probably going to have at least six minutes of recovery and then another four minutes or five minutes of endurance. Riding just like getting back up and power is the main thing. So take full recovery, give me max effort Okay, six by one minute. That's a pretty classic FRC workout for my athletes.

Speaker 1: 11:14

Speed intervals, on-offs. These are really popular. People love these, I was about to say but they do them wrong. I don't think there's a wrong way of doing them, but oftentimes the way I prescribe them is to intensify training. I want high power. I think people really love the engagement of them or the entertainment aspect of on-off on-off. It chops it into small bits and it makes it entertaining and I can get away with it. But people oftentimes do it at lower power production.

Speaker 1: 11:46

So if you're going to do speed intervals, do them hard, nine out of 10 for each one and I know that sounds really bad, especially if we're going to do six minute intervals of 30 on 30 off, 30 on 30 off. The way I work this is again, it's very individualized, but I'm usually prescribing anywhere between 130 to 170% of FTP power for 30 seconds on and then endurance prescription for the 30 seconds off, which is 60 to 75%. So it's not even true recovery in between. That that's in in. Some coaches will do it differently, but I'll do that for six minutes. Then I take recovery for around five or six minutes and then I come back to another interval set. So they're very hard.

Speaker 1: 12:36

Minimal recovery in between on off, on off really intensifying the training, and those speed intervals work great for bringing out peak form. Okay, um, so four by six, with five to six minute recovery in between, that's a that's a really good one. You can do five by five if you want. I think you need to be over five minutes when I'm trying to get the most out of an athlete on this, and I try to keep them under 10 minutes if I'm trying to intensify the training effect right now. So somewhere between five and 10 minutes of on off, and I also you can do the ons as 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off, repeat that for six minutes. That's like more of a Tabata style. You can do 20 and 40, change it up, but good old 30 thirties, that'll get her done.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Now, remember I said this is where the art and science meet, and you notice how I haven't even mentioned the time trial as much. Okay, and in all of these phases, but especially this one, you got to ride that time trial bike once a week and that can be with effort or it can just be an endurance. My, if I were coaching you, um, I would. I would dial it in for your own life and things like this, but especially during this peak phase, I would make sure that you're still actually doing one workout per week of like a 1x20 at race pace on the time trial bike after a good long warmup, and that's to keep the feel and some of the adaptation of the long LT effort. And so, as we're focusing on one energy system over the other, we don't want to lose the other. Okay, so really, pam, what I'm trying to tell you is get organized with the training, really push the adaptation of either the FTP power or high aerobic or the anaerobic FRC speed interval sort of work and really push like that, and that's where you'll make the best development. But you still need to bring balance to it by not overlooking the time trial, the feel of it being in the skis, doing time and effort, doing time under tension on the time trial bike, and that's where it gets a little nuanced. But as long as you're touching that time trial bike once a week, I think you'll have a lot of success. And during this peak phase, make sure to get and again, this is about four weeks make sure to get on that time trial bike at least once and probably do two of those time trial specific efforts just to keep that adaptation of high aerobic going in the skis. So now to round off that peak time period where we're coming into race phase.

Speaker 1: 15:23

This is very nuanced too of how I bring somebody into a race. Essentially I'm going to recover them and then I'm going to have a week of normal training that will have good intensity in it but lower volume. And what I've been finding over the years is, rather than recover into the race, the athlete just gets too stale right. So recovering before and then normalized going in, whether that's a week or 10 days kind of depends on the athlete and their kind of style of response to training. But I would say first and foremost is make sure you are recovered and fresh going into the event, even if you're a little stale. That's fine by me, because for busy people that have a lot of variability to their life I would rather err on the side of under-training you by 10% versus over-training you by 2%. I just get a better result that way. But you can play around with this peaking time period. In general I would say rest two weeks out, normal training the week, kind of like leading in, but just low volume and low volume at intensity, but keep high intensity in there. So play around with that peak and overall that should bring you really good success. Now again, the reason I layer all that is because we can keep the both the adaptations, like I talked about. We can intensify training and keep on building the aerobic base and the FTP power all the way up through and you'll have the ability for the punchy hill climbs and that long threshold ability for a time trial bike. If we do that and you layer it progressively like that man I mean all the books are written to progress like that. That's the way I coached the majority of my athletes and I think you'll have a lot of success by organizing your training in that way.

Speaker 1: 17:14

Now my sec cause. I said I had two ways of answering that. My second answer here is shorter, but it speaks to the strengths and weaknesses as a consideration. So if I were coaching you, pam, I would ask you directly which do you think that you're best at, long LT efforts or short punchy efforts? I would then also look at as much historical data as possible, both in training and racing, to see if your answer aligns with the data Now, if you were better at the punchy stuff or equally as good at punchy and long stuff, or you even said I don't know and we don't have data I would still progress with my general periodization that I just went through.

Speaker 1: 17:56

However, if you were best at the long stuff meaning you just like super time trialer and really good at the long stuff and if we had enough time, I would do punchy stuff earlier in training, like even into the base period and maybe even a little bit into the late late base period, about 20 weeks out probably. And the reason I would develop some of that anaerobic capacity early is so that it's not a hindrance later on, meaning if you're like just one of the super fit girls out there that can just grind away and you're usually, um, you know, catching people on the gravel race. You know, in a 200 mile gravel race you're catching them in the final 50 miles or something like that. It's because you couldn't keep up in the first hour and that's a limiter when and that's anaerobic capacity and that's a limiter. So what I would want to do is develop that earlier and then bring it out later so that it doesn't hold us back as much. Sometimes all you got to do is be durable enough to go punch and punch and punch and stick on that wheel. Then you make the front group or the lead group or whatever group you want to be in, and you can then capitalize on your strength of high endurance and threshold and have a big day up there and be competitive and threshold and have a big day up there and be competitive. So that's the one difference I would make, depending on your unique individuality of strengths and weaknesses.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Okay, so to wrap this up with some final thoughts, you know what's fun about training and racing for performance is that there's so many ways of doing it, especially when we're trying to balance the needs for long threshold efforts with short punchy anaerobic requirements. And to you, pam, even if you did training blocks of long LT work on Tuesday and short punchy stuff on Thursdays and then did a long ride the weekend and you had enough in adequate recovery, you would improve. I do think that there's a better way to organize it all and what I suggested on today's show is what I find to bring the best results in performance while keeping the athlete fresh and engaged to do the training ready to perform at the races. So, pam, give that a try in the coming weeks leading into your race or, if this is getting to you after your main event of the year. You and your fellow listeners here can now get organized about 16 weeks out from a big race next year and have a proper lead into it. Best of luck, let her rip and let us know how it all goes.

Speaker 1: 20:29

That's it. That's our show for today. Thank you for joining us once again For our first time listeners welcome. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend. That's the best way to grow the show and keep providing quick training advice in these short episodes. If you have a question from today's content or anything training related, head over to trainrightcom backslash podcast. Click on aska training question and submit your inquiry there. I'll do my best to answer it on future episodes. Thanks again for listening and be sure to come back next week for more advice. 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 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.