Minimum Durations for Effective Zone 2 Rides, Based On Your Fitness and Experience? (#225)

OVERVIEW
In a recent episode (#220), Coach Adam Pulford covered how much Zone 2 training is too much or no longer productive. At the other end of the spectrum, there were questions about the minimum dose of Zone 2 training necessary to achieve positive adaptations. The minimums depend on whether athletes are beginners, intermediates, or advanced riders, along with other factors. Coach Adam explains how to categorize yourself and how to find the appropriate minimum ride length to make Zone 2 sessions effective.

TOPICS COVERED

• Classifications of athletes for Zone 2 work
• Minimum doses of Zone 2 for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced riders
• Why different athletes have different minimum doses of Zone 2

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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. Now onto our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, getting to the heart of a Time Crunch cyclist.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Today's question will be exploring what is the shortest Zone 2 ride you can do and still benefit from it. I got an email from Jerome a few weeks ago asking well, tons of questions about zone two training sweet spot, how to focus during endurance rides, how best to weave in sprints with endurance rides and some other stuff too. In another podcast I'll do my best to answer all of these questions. But one of the questions that he asked was essentially do I get any real benefit from a 45 minute endurance session and what is the lowest amount of zone two that will still be worthwhile? It's actually an excellent question and I don't think I've answered it on the show before. So what's the real answer? Do you really want to know, jerome? It depends, and of course that's the answer, because that's the answer any good coach would give you on such a broad but interesting question dealing with a broad thing like oxidative phosphorylation, aka the aerobic energy system. So let's frame this up and nail down some answers. I think everyone would agree that the endurance ride which benefits a newbie cyclist would not provide Damien Vollerine or Matthew Vanderpoel the same benefit when it comes to aerobic development.

Speaker 1: 2:22

For a beginner, a two-hour ride is a long ride. For somebody like Damien, it could just be an easy ride between races, even though it's still the same zone two intensity. For each individual athlete there's a dosage of total time per session. That's important when deciding or prescribing a training program. In order to determine that dosage of time, it's important to identify what classification of a cyclist you are based on, how long you've been doing this riding training thing and at what level.

Speaker 1: 2:58

I'll simplify into three different classifications of athletes. For this Number one, we have the beginner. So this would be somebody who just got a bike. Maybe they just started to get into cycling for training. Maybe you've been doing workouts on a Peloton for a bit, but you're still within that first one to two years of endurance training to two years of endurance training. You have little or no formal training or racing just yet, and your maximum number of hours of training per week is maybe three to seven hours total. That's what I would classify as a beginner.

Speaker 1: 3:37

The second classification is intermediate or regional masters athletes. Here, typical athletes have been training for two to four years in an organized way. You have some racing, but you're hitting eight to 12 hours of your highest volume weeks, and maybe you've had years of doing this and maybe some years that were higher than that and then some that have been lower than that, but on average that's kind of the norm for you. Finally, the third classification of athlete is our advanced elite or master's elite athletes. Now, athletes like this have been training seriously for five years or longer. You're racing at a national or world level sort of event and you're pursuing your maximum potential as the goal. The highest level or the highest hours that you could be hitting is somewhere between 15 and 25 hours per week, depending on what your actual event is, and that's a lot of hours, right, but at that level that's what it takes. Many listening to this show are beginners and intermediate riders, and if you are time crunched, I'd say that still puts you in that intermediate bin. No matter how long you've been doing this, at some point you just need more volume of endurance training to fully maximize your aerobic potential. So when determining who you are on this spectrum or in the classifications, keep that in mind. For my elite and junior elite riders out there, much of what I'm saying here is not too shocking for you, but hopefully what I'm saying and what I'm covering confirms what you're already doing and gives you confidence moving forward. So to Jerome and those other curious listeners, I hope that this helps describe the types of athletes that I'm talking about when I determine the minimum dosage of Zone 2 riding to prescribe for any athlete out there.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Now let's get to the good stuff. What are the minimal dosages for each rider type? For beginners, as little as 30 to 45 minutes, that's right, jerome, you are getting benefit from as little as 45 minutes. 45 minutes, that's right, jerome, you are getting benefit from as little as 45 minutes of zone two riding. And then for beginners, consistency is key here because you can get so much from so little. That's great. 30 to 45 minutes and do it a lot of days per week. If you can do it four days per week, do it. If you can do five days, great, stretch that out, okay. Consistency is key for beginners. It develops really good habits for training and you rack up time with more sessions over the course of a year.

Speaker 1: 6:12

For my intermediate and master's athletes out there, this is your 60 to 90 minutes for the minimum. Again, consistency is king for our master's athletes, especially over the years. Okay, since typical master's athletes are time crunched athletes, the 60 to 90 minute window works really good for a lot of people for a reason, okay, and that is because that duration at zone two is still moving the needle for you. Now for our advanced and elite or master's elite athletes, the minimum there that is actually going to move the needle forward somewhere between two and four hours. And that's because you've been riding at a high level. You've achieved a big CTL kind of at some point in your, in your really kind of trained your body to need more in order to go up to the next level. Consistency is baked into life for these athletes and at some point they need to detrain before they can move on and go up further.

Speaker 1: 7:19

And I've talked about these concepts on other podcasts in the past, especially detraining and training for master's level athletes. But remember, this is all a minimum duration at zone two that I would use to induce a training effect, or what I call an internal screen for the aerobic energy system for each classification of rider. That doesn't mean I won't prescribe a one-hour ride for an elite athlete or have a beginner build up to two hours at some point. But this should help answer some of the questions, jerome, and help everyone here listening get started down the right path in understanding how endurance training works and what kind of training load will actually move the needle forward for each class of athlete. Now finally, my favorite part why move the needle forward for each class of athlete? Now finally, my favorite part why? Why can as little as 30 minutes of zone two which, as you recall, is defined as an intensity of 60 to 76% of your FTP, in a six zone system? Why can that be an effective dose of training for one human and it takes two to four hours for another.

Speaker 1: 8:28

Much of this has to do with training, history, adaptation and genetics. To keep it as simple as possible, if someone hasn't trained aerobically ever, they don't have the hardware or the plumbing to be aerobically efficient for several hours of training. That goes for the recruitment of muscle fibers, the intensity of mitochondria in your cells, adaptations in the blood, heart and lungs that keep you going for the long haul, and that's not even mentioning the adaptation to the brain required to focus for five hours while doing the same thing day after day and not get bored, let alone try to do that for 50 weeks per year and multiply that for 10 years in a row. On the psychological side of things, I don't know if I can speak to all of that fully, but I do know the ability to focus for long periods of time is real different from a beginner or an intermediate rider compared to an elite level rider. But I also know it's trainable. We'll leave that for another time in another podcast, but for right now let's wrap this thing up.

Speaker 1: 9:35

I think it's awesome that we're getting so many questions about Zone 2 training, and that's because it's not super straightforward for everyone. A big reason for this is that the dose of exercise changes over time as you, the athlete adapts to it, as you, the athlete adapts to it, as you improve and develop, not only will the power that you produce go up, but the time required to keep progression will change. So, with that said, keep these questions coming, but I hope that the framework I provided today will help you identify what athlete classification you fit in, then start dosing yourself with confidence when it comes to your zone two training. Not every ride has to be epic to get the benefit, and the newer you are to the sport, the less amount of time it actually takes to improve. For the time crunched athlete, the secret is consistency, so that you can rack up miles and build good habits over time. And for those of you who have been at this thing for a while, this is a reminder to keep that long ride in the program when you want to build your aerobic system. But even a few hours will keep things nice and maintained. So that's it. That's our show for today Nice, short and sweet.

Speaker 1: 10:47

Thank you again for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. That is the best way to grow the show and ensure we keep on pumping out great content for you. And if you're like Jerome from today's episode and you have a question, please head over to trainwrightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question. You could submit any question on over to me about all things endurance sport and I'll do my best to answer it on a future episode. Be sure to tune in next week and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode. Thanks again. 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.