The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

How to Verify Your Field Test Result and Training Zones (#239)

• CTS • Season 5 • Episode 239

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OVERVIEW
How do you know if your threshold value or FTP or the training zones you calculated from your field test or lab test are correct? The best way is to conduct a Verification Workout! Coach Adam Pulford walks you through his go-to verification workout and reveals how it can tell you if your training zones are set too low, too high, or just right.

TOPICS COVERED

  • How to tell if your threshold test was any good
  • Coach tips on training zones
  • The FTP Verification Workout
  • What to look for from a verification workout
  • How to adjust training zones if necessary
  • Scaling the Verification Workout for beginners
  • When in doubt, here's what to do

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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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Speaker 1:

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. How do you ensure that your training zones are set up properly for your current fitness thresholds and ability? How do you know when you had a good field test and what are some of the best pro tips out there to make sure that your zones and FTP are indeed accurate? Welcome back, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford.

Speaker 1:

Today we'll build off of last week's discussion, where I went over some common field testing procedures and how to use them to establish FTP and threshold heart rate. If you missed that one, be sure to go back and listen to it. This episode will explain how to take that information and customize it to your current physiology and get you training right. I'll answer all of these questions and more today, but first let me recap one thing Field test pacing. I went over general pacing guidelines in last week's episode, but the crucial part is making sure that you don't blow up or finish too strong on your field test. In other words, you want an evenly paced hard effort to achieve your best and highest average power, heart rate and effort in these field tests, like the 20-minute test developed by Andy Coggin, or the two-by-eight time trial field test developed by Chris Carmichael and the team at CTS, or some of those power duration testing procedures that we do in model-based approaches. If you do a ramp test, pacing isn't as important, but it's kind of baked into the test itself. It's both a pro and a con. Again, I cover all of this last week and much more so be sure to listen to that if you haven't already. But here's a couple kind of juicy pro tips, if you will, that I didn't cover in detail last week, but it applies today when it comes to ensuring that you had a good field test.

Speaker 1:

So a couple examples of maybe when you didn't have a good field test. So a couple examples of maybe when you didn't have a good field test is probably a good way to describe knowing when you had a good one or not. So first one if your power spiked up hard at the very front end and then fell off on the back end of the effort, no matter how long that duration is, but just kind of like this implosion and the power just drastically goes down and you blew up, simply do the test again when you're fresh and you evenly pace for the given effort. Okay, now if you started a little lighter and you finished super strong in that final, you know, minute or two with like a big power spike up at the very end, minute or two with like a big power spike up at the very end, simply do the test again when you're fresh and, yep, you want to pace more evenly throughout. Pacing is key here. Okay, you should start pretty much any field test at that nine to 10 out of 10 and finish at a 10 out of 10. If 10 is a max effort, right, that's the scale that I use, scale of one to 10, one being super light, 10 being max effort. Now for sprints in anything less than a minute, which you know in most field testing, you won't encounter too much. But if you do power profile testing or power duration testing in model-based approaches, you'll have some sprints like 10, 20 and 60 second efforts. So if it's less than a minute, there's not much pacing. That goes on. Simply go full tilt, full gas, don't worry about pacing. But for the longer power durations, like the 20 minutes, the eight minutes and even maybe even a three minute, there's there's pacing to it. Get good at pacing and you'll get good at testing. Then you'll get good results. Now let's assume I drilled that into your head enough and you paced well over the duration. You gave a max effort.

Speaker 1:

It's time to calculate your thresholds and set up your training zones. Okay, I went into some pretty good detail about this and how the goal of really any good field test out there is to get you a threshold power and a threshold heart rate that you can use and apply to really any method out there. So in setting up your training zones you use that FTP and threshold heart rate from the cycling field test. You plug it into the training zone calculator on training peaks or whatever platform you're using, and so long as the platform even things like Wahoo and Zwift and intervals to ICU. You know if, if they're calling for some sort of threshold to generate zones, use FTP, use your highest average heart rate from the 20-minute test, use 93% of the percentage of the highest average heart rate from the CTS test. Again, all those little details were all last week. But you want to use those thresholds, plug it in, calculate and voila, you have training zones.

Speaker 1:

Here's a couple of pro tips on your training zones for power round your zones to the nearest five. Why? Because, as I've said in this podcast before, human physiology is not as precise or accurate as the devices that we're using to measure it, ie power meters. So what I tend to find is, when I round off to the nearest five, it's five and zero at the end. So 286 would go to 290, for example, and 311 would go to 310. I tend to find that myself, as well as my athletes, have an easier time remembering their training zones when I round to that nearest five. It's just much easier to remember. And the goal really of of, uh, the training that I prescribe and deploy to my athletes is to get them to look at that title of the workout and get familiar with their training zones and look at, say like a three by 10 threshold and 90 minute total ride time, say like a three by 10 threshold and 90 minute total ride time. What I want them to do is be able to know their zone for their threshold zones over time, cause it's not going to change once we get it established, especially like over the course of an eight week training blockers or something like that. You get comfortable with it, you remember it, you go out, you do it, boom, super easy, super effective.

Speaker 1:

Now with heart rate zones it's a little different. You want to keep those pretty when you calculate them. You don't want to round off on that heart rate. It's a little bit tighter on that. So plug those in, calculate them. Good to go. Most on the upper end for the heart rate zones, most will just automatically put it at 255. What I would do is I'd look at the maximum heart rate that you've achieved over the past 90 days or maybe a year and I would just put my max heart rate in for that upper end there, because 250, I mean no one's going to be hitting 255 and be around to talk about it afterwards. So for the heart rate zones don't don't need a roundup, but for the max heart rate. You can just put that a little bit more accurate to yourself and then you have good, accurate and also realistically deployable and memorable zones when you're out there training. So hope that helps on the pro tip on zones.

Speaker 1:

Now let's talk about ensuring that the training zones that you get from your field test are actually realistic and doable. We want to make sure that they're achievable with your current fitness, your current physiology, and you know the best way I can describe this is I use something called a verification workout, or sometimes verification workouts. Okay, so multiple workouts to kind of suss this out. Now, if you were to give me like just one workout to ensure that the field test and the numbers and the training zones are set accurately, I would tell you that the key workout I use is a four by 10 minutes at threshold, and the reason I use a workout like this is it's it's testing zone four and it's testing the aerobic glycolytic energy system. More on that in a minute. But if we, if we can suss out any issues on that system which is the system that we use the most for training, racing, riding and all things bikes if we can verify that everything else takes care of itself. All things bikes. If we can verify that, everything else takes care of itself. Okay, so my workout is warm up and then get into four by 10 minutes, at threshold, like I said before 91 to 105% of FTP. You want to take five minutes recovery in between.

Speaker 1:

I tell my athlete to aim for the middle of the power range, so right around, call it a hundred percent of FTP, okay, and simply record the power, record the heart rate, record the cadence, okay, and they choose their own cadence. By the way, I'm not prescribing any of that too, and I tell them that I want you to tell me the rate of perceived effort, okay, so I'm not prescribing an RPE on this. Keep in mind, I use a scale of one to 10, 10 being a maximum effort, one being super light effort, okay, so I'm not prescribing an RPE on this. Keep in mind, I use a scale of one to 10, 10 being a maximum effort, one being super light effort. So I make sure to give them that scale and calibrate our brains accordingly to that. And I don't tell them the RPE because I want to observe. I just want them to hit the power number, okay, to verify the data. And then we observe heart rate, we observe cadence and we observe perceived effort, record it afterwards and then, for the perceived effort, I tell them to. We either talk right on the phone or, better yet, you put it in the comment section on Training Peaks so that we have that data for future and retroactively use. Okay Now, in general, here's what I'm looking for.

Speaker 1:

I'm looking for power in zone on each of the four intervals. I'm looking for heart rate in zone on each of the four intervals at zone four threshold RPE. Generally I want threshold to be around seven or eight out of 10. Okay, but I I encourage the athlete to go in open-minded and just record whatever you feel. Okay, think about that and be able. And sometimes people just write it down after they get done with their efforts. So it's like written down right away, unfiltered uh during the workout itself. Okay, if you're doing this inside, for example, or put it in your brain notes uh when you're out there on the road. So if we hit these three parameters powers in zone, heart rates in zone, rpe is between seven and eight. I would say zones are calculated appropriately and we're G to G for training.

Speaker 1:

If one or more of these are off, we can adjust training zones slightly to get you training right without having to do another field test again, cause if you're like many of my athletes, uh, you don't enjoy field testing. Maybe a lot of anxiety. You don't want to, you know. Uh, go eyes bleeding on a multiple basis, okay, no, no one that I have met really enjoys field testing. However, there's a time place to test again to uh verify ranges if you really have to Okay. So there's a time place to test again to verify ranges if you really have to Okay. So let's not talk about testing again, let's talk about how to adjust.

Speaker 1:

Here's a couple of scenarios that I would typically see in my athletes and when people are asking me questions about doing a verification workout like this. So the first scenario is they couldn't hit the power, okay. One classic example is not being able to hit the minimum power. So we're talking about 91% of that threshold, uh, at FTP, okay, and you can't hit the minimum for any of the intervals, but typically maybe the final two intervals, okay. Now the power may just be, you know, dipping on the third and fourth and the heart rate remains high, or perhaps it's even creeping up into zone five, okay, likely, rate of perceived effort is also high, going from you know seven to eight on the first one to eight, you know almost nine on the second one, and maybe like eight to nine on the third, nine, maybe 10, you know you, basically and genuinely, you're on the struggle bus is what that means. And if that's the case, here's the pro tips simply lower the power by about 10 Watts across all zones, just lower it down and then round it off again to the nearest five. And then you want to repeat this workout again in two to three days when you're fresh and ready for it.

Speaker 1:

And what I'm guessing is that all the stars will align, though the Holy Trinity, the Holy Trinity of exercise monitoring, will align. The perceived effort will be between seven and eight. Power will be in the zone, heart rate will be in zone again for zone four. So that's the first scenario, if you can't hit the power numbers. Second scenario is heart rate is going too high.

Speaker 1:

Let's say you hit all the power numbers, okay, your time in zone at the minimum or middle, whatever, but you're in zone for the power. Zone at the minimum or middle, whatever, but you're in zone for the power. However, the heart rate is on the higher side of zone four or it's going again up into zone five. This could be for a number of different reasons. And remember heart rate. It has the highest variability of any of the three metrics that we're talking about here, power, heart rate being the other two three metrics that we're talking about here, power, heart rate being the other two. So if heart rate is high for the given effort relative to power, here's some pro coach tips.

Speaker 1:

Look at where you rode the power at. Is it on the high side of the power zone or is it on the low side of the power zone? If it's on the high side, it makes sense that heart rate would be high. Okay, more on that in a second. But if it's on the low side for power, check, perceived effort, if that too is high eight or nine then you want to definitely adjust the power down five to 10 Watts. If you're on the low side of the power and the heart rate is going much higher, like in the zone five and more, okay, like we're talking about, you want to adjust the power down at least 10 watts, maybe 15, again across the board for every zone, and that will set you up for better success. So if that heart rate is high and the power is low, definitely adjust the zones. If you're on the high side of the power and the heart rate is high not drastically high what I would do is probably stay the course and just hang out on the low end of the power zones whatever zones that you're going to be doing in your upcoming training, because you probably just need some conditioning, you probably just need training, aerobic development, okay, and the heart rate is going to come down over time. So if that power and heart rate is high, probably don't need to adjust too much. But I would definitely suggest pacing lower on the lower end of all training zones until that heart rate comes down within zone and the perceived effort ticks down a little bit.

Speaker 1:

One quick note here on perceived effort. I've talked about it quite a bit in using it as a metric to monitor exercise intensity. But man, be honest with yourself. Be honest with yourself of how things feel. Rpe is subjective. It's based on your perceived effort. Don't lie to yourself or your coach on what it felt like, just to try to prove that you're tough or better than you are or worse. I suppose the whole point in testing and verifying these tests is to get as close as accurate to where you're at currently with your physiology and fitness to train properly. Falsifying the records does nothing for you. It does nothing for your coach, other than make them frustrated. Now if you coach yourself or you use some AI program, this is probably even worse, because all that false feedback is going into an echo chamber of sorts and stuff can get off the tracks pretty quickly in a bad way. So RPE is an excellent measuring tool so long as you're honest with yourself and the scale is calibrated properly.

Speaker 1:

Let me say this again scale of one to 10. That's what I use. One is super, super light. 10 is a maximum effort Okay. There are other scales out there, like scale of one to five, five being a max effort, one being a lightest Okay. But everything kind of gets a little tighter in there. I find that my athletes really enjoy a scale of one to 10. Training peaks uses a scale of one to 10. Many systems use a scale of one to 10. There's the Borg heart rate scale. It's a little bit out of date In my opinion. I generally find that scale one 10 is pretty simple, pretty universal, and I don't really care what you use, so long as there's some perceived effort scale out there and you and your AI program or you and your coach or whoever's involved, is talking the same language and everybody's calibrated on effort.

Speaker 1:

My best coaching tip here is start ranking all of your intervals and rides on RPE and do it separately. Okay, either in your head or on training peaks or however you organize your training. What this means is separate your intervals from the total ride itself. Your intervals could be, say, these threshold intervals. They could be at an eight out of 10, but with warmup and recovery periods and maybe some endurance afterwards, maybe the full day feels more like a six. Okay, but the efforts themselves felt like an eight. Think about this If you do two max efforts on a three-hour ride max efforts so they were a 10 out of 10, but you did a three-hour ride and it was like a chill, like easy zone two ride, the aggregates perceived stress shouldn't be a 10, even though you did some efforts at 10. It's going to be higher than maybe three or four where you were riding throughout, but those max efforts it's going to change stresses right. So you have to be able to identify that as a rider when you're out there doing your efforts. So again, my advice is to get really good at perceived effort and the whole process of practicing uh rank ranking your perceived efforts will get really good when it comes down to doing uh efforts, uh, doing testing, racing and all these things. Okay, just start thinking more about your effort, record intervals and total ride time separately and you'll start to increase the accuracy of your interval pacing gauge.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let me get off my soapbox there on perceived effort. Okay, but it brings me to my third kind of scenario here, where rate of perceived effort is too high. So let's say that you're hitting all the power in zones but you're kind of hanging out at the minimum. Call it 91% of FTP, heart rates high, but on average it's still coming out to that zone four threshold. When you look at the heart rate and you're analyzing the power in the heart rate itself, perhaps the heart puts a toe or two into zone five, but nothing crazy, no huge spikes. However, perceived effort if you're honest with yourself, is that it has that eight going on, nine for each one. My pro tip here lower your power zones five to 10 on all zones across the board, no matter what training is going to do in the future, and just hang out on the low end of the power zones. Wait for the perceived effort to align with power and heart rate. You'll have a ton of success.

Speaker 1:

A couple of final points here. It all starts with good pacing on a field test. Listen to last week's pod if you hadn't already, and please understand that pacing is a skill, it's an art and important aspect of becoming an athlete. Cyclists, runners, swimmers, triathletes, really any sport have some sort of pacing to it, especially in cycling. Get good at pacing and you'll get good at bikes. Get good at pacing and you'll get good at bikes. And to get good at pacing, you'll need to get good at honestly ranking your rate of perceived effort across all efforts. I'll leave it there on that.

Speaker 1:

Now, using a workout like this verification workout that I described, four by 10,. It stresses and strains the aerobic glycolytic energy system and in my opinion, that's the best system and that's the best way to tease out these proper zones. This is the primary energy system that we use across all training, racing and everything else. Like I talked about before, some key aspects here is you want the total time of whatever this verification test or process should be. You want the total work time in zone of 30 to 60 minutes at threshold. Now, it's kind of a long time scale, okay, and I usually choose that four by 10 for many athletes. But let me give you some guidelines on how to scale this down and scale it up All right, so for beginners and this would be somebody who's new to cycling.

Speaker 1:

Scale it up All right, so for beginners and this would be somebody who's new to cycling maybe training three years and less and you're still kind of like new. Okay, four by eight minutes at threshold, 91 to 105%, with four to five minute recovery in between. That's what I would use. If you're a little bit more green, okay, four by 10 minutes with five minute recovery in between. That's what I would use for the majority of people probably listening to this podcast, their intermediates, their masters athletes You've been training for, you know, three to five, maybe a little bit longer years, okay, um, but you know what you're doing. You're crunched on time four by 10, with five in between warmup and cool down. You can still get that done in 60 to 75 minutes. Okay, and it's going to be pressing on that gas pedal. Enough in the aerobic glycolytic energy system to get us the data that we need Now for advanced riders, elites and pros. I'll generally use three by 20 minutes with maybe six to 10 minute recovery in between. I'm going to look at perceived effort, power time and zone. Heart rate time and zone all these things Okay, but use these workouts to help scale up or down for your verification workout accordingly, based on your training experience and your fitness level.

Speaker 1:

When in doubt this is probably the most important part of the podcast when in doubt, lower your zones by five to 10 Watts. If you're going to error, it is far better to error on the side of less, I mean intensity, so that you don't overdo it. And overdoing it means too much stress and you're just. You're overstressing all the energy systems, you're overstressing yourself, you're overstressing yourself Cognitively. Overdoing intensity will not give you better results. Typically it's going to do the opposite and it's super frustrating. When you're the athlete trying to do the training and you're overdoing the intensity, it completely sucks and it will usually end in a nose dive crash to the ground. You can always test again in six to eight weeks of training, you know if you think that you need to up the zones a little bit. But if you go through a verification workout and one of those aspects are off and you're like man, I don't know if this is, if this is my FTP, just lower it five to 10 Watts, do training test again in six to eight weeks. That's it, super simple and that's it. That's it.

Speaker 1:

That's our show for today. I hope you all got something out of it and, if you did, please share it with a friend. That's the best way to help grow the show and ensure that you keep on getting good advice from sources like this. Plus, you're helping your training partner get better. If anyone listening today has a question on all things endurance training related, please head over to train rightcom backslash podcast. Click on ask a training question. Fill that form out and send it over to me and my team at CTS and we'll do our best to answer it on a future episode.

Speaker 1:

Thanks again for listening and don't forget to come back next week to get more actionable training 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 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.

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