The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Beyond Intervals: How to Get Fast Without Interval Training
OVERVIEW
Interval training works, but there are ways to get stronger, ride faster, and win races without interval training. There are even aspects of performance that are better suited to no-interval training blocks. In some cases, the structured intensity with planned recovery breaks hinders an athlete's flexibility to use power and fitness spontaneously. Coach Adam Pulford breaks away from the dogma of interval training to show you how to improve your fitness and performance with a period of reduced structure.
TOPICS COVERED
- The 5 reasons we do intervals in training
- 3 Ways to train without intervals
- Sample workout 1: Hard Climbing Day
- Sample workout 2: Kilojoules per hour
- Sample workout 3: Normalized Power Game
- 3 Ways to use Group Rides for productive training
- Monitoring your fitness when you're not doing intervals
- Subjective feedback: "real feel" vs. "should feel"
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LINKS/RESOURCES
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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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.
Speaker 1:I was talking to one of my juniors the other day and they asked me do I really have to do my intervals today? I replied nope, and they were like wait, what? So again, I said no, you don't need to do your intervals today, or any day really. They paused for a second and then they asked then why do you make me do so many of them? Now, that's a great question, so so great, in fact, that I decided to, of course, make a podcast out of it. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and today we'll be exploring why you should do intervals, if at all. But first you may be asking yourself what did I tell this junior athlete in this conversation? I can't recall entirely, but it went something like this I told them you can ride on vibes, you can slay every day. So I told them you can, you can ride on vibes, you can slay every day, shred till you're dead and not stress about a training program. That's fine and presumably what some people do, but there's some problems with that, because when you get fit or fast, you may not know why and you may not be able to replicate that when you need to if you're just riding on vibes. Why, and you may not be able to replicate that when you need to if you're just riding on vibes. Additionally, I tend to see athletes just overdo it and cook themselves into overtraining because riding more is generally how they got fit or fast. In that process along the way, they typically don't go easy or rest until it's too late. However, with some of my athletes and for the majority of the year for myself, I am not doing intervals in my training program, and that is fine. You just need to know what levers to pull on, what dials to turn and what to look at in your data to make sure that you're improving if that's your goal, and you need to have a system in place so you don't overcook yourself.
Speaker 1:So, to start, let's begin by exploring why we do intervals in the first place. Well, it all depends on your goals, what you have time for and what you're trying to accomplish in your training. It's as simple as that. I break it down historically. I've broken it down into four major reasons. When developing this podcast, I came up with a fifth.
Speaker 1:So here are the four, maybe five reasons why we do intervals. First one you do more work in less time. Okay, so instead of writing for two or three hours, we can do intervals and simply do more work. That's kilojoules, which we'll talk about here in a minute. That's time in zone um, aerobic work. However, you want to quantify work Okay. Second reason you want to improve some aspect of your energy system or your metabolism Okay. So I want to improve my threshold. I want to increase my threshold, for example, you do threshold training.
Speaker 1:Another reason why you do intervals. Third reason is you want to increase your durability. Okay, we've talked about durability on this podcast, sometimes at length. It's kind of a new buzzy thing. We've always known it's been a thing, but now we can actually measure a bit. Measure it and specifically that durability is talking to how well you can perform late in the game, specifically after a certain amount of kilojoules has been done in the ride or the race itself.
Speaker 1:The fourth reason is develop specificity of racing or some event goal. This is a good example of his criterium racing the punchy on off, high intensity and sprint at the end sort of ability. So it's very anaerobic in nature, it's on off in nature, and that specificity can get somebody who maybe was just riding on vibes the whole time and didn't never sprinted, never did some squiggly efforts like that Okay. So those are the four reasons. Weekly efforts like that Okay, so those are the four reasons.
Speaker 1:The fifth reason I have found and observe in my athletes is entertainment. Sometimes it's just more fun to do than riding your bike around for a while and that's perfectly legitimate, okay, for many reasons, many psychological reasons, many physiological reasons. It's a perfectly acceptable reason. I didn't think it was at first, but the more I spend time with it, that's my fifth reason. So some key points here. Intervals can help us change our physiology faster in a more direct way. Secondly, if you're crunched on time, like, I'm guessing, many of us here on this podcast are. Intervals can help you be very efficient with your time. So I'm not advocating for never doing an interval again for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:Intervals are very effective, but there was a time before the concept of intervals was even invented. There was a time where people were exercising, racing and doing things, and if you want a brief history on that and how we got to where we are today, stressing out about a seven zone versus a three zone training system, cp versus FTP, w, prime versus FRC and wondering what is the best training program anyway, then I suggest listening to a podcast by Steve Magnus called the Evolution of Endurance. I'll link to this in my show notes. But my main premise for today is to tell you and get you to think differently about what you're doing in your training, and really not doing intervals may be just as effective and may help you develop your riding in different ways, including event specific preparation, which we'll talk about later, adding variety to your training program and, most importantly, thinking differently about your training and what you're actually trying to achieve. So let's talk about how to train by not doing intervals.
Speaker 1:The first way to do this just ride and have fun doing it. There's nothing wrong with this at all. Whether it's a short amount of time or a long amount of time, just go out and ride your bike and enjoy it. And I suggest to the diehard interval folk maybe just have a month or a time period where you do this for a bit. Maybe just have a month or a time period where you do this for a bit. It's a breath of fresh air and it's super healthy for the mind and body and all the microorganisms associated with yourself. Okay and I've advocated for this in past episodes usually in that base building phase after a transition phase or some time off, but changing your habits and challenging yourself with can I just ride how I feel, without some sort of plan or pain associated with it, all right, that may do wonders for your brain. So, for what it's worth, you can just ride and that can be part of your plan.
Speaker 1:Second aspect of this is go hard when you want, but keep some easy days in there is go hard when you want, but keep some easy days in there. Interval training has a bit of a secret baked into it. No matter the modality, the pattern or the religion that you're following with your training program. Typically intervals will be hard. So you want to be hard on the fresh interval days to do the program well. So the other days are easy, or they bring you in when you're fresh and most programs with intervals have those easy days baked into the concept.
Speaker 1:Going hard when you want takes the bumpers and guardrails off the program. So you have to be more careful here. You have to be more careful so you don't just rally yourself every single day. So there's a time and place for that and I've mentioned it on this podcast before where you'd want to do that. But my advice goes back to the boring sentiment of stay balanced. We know around three days per week of hard intensity, with other days being endurance or rest, is a pretty good recipe overall most weeks for most people. Keep in mind a long ride that really stresses you and pushes you and makes you tired. That's still a hard day. Even though the intensity may be overall aerobic, that's a hard day on your system. So count it as that. So maybe you're not following a specific program but you're putting guardrails in place so you don't overcook yourself with too many hard days all the time.
Speaker 1:My next piece of advice is when you're kind of going off script and you're not doing intervals is be sure to use a mixture of rate of perceived effort and other data points like kilojoules, normalized power and you want to track these. But I'm still going to encourage you to not get overly structured with the workout itself. So here's some example workouts of how you can get a little bit more artsy with your training. First one I think a lot of people like this one is have a hard climbing day but there's no intervals. Okay, you want to climb the hills hard. I generally say perceived effort of eight out of 10. That's associated with threshold Climbing. You can usually produce a little bit more power, squeeze a little bit more power out of the legs. So maybe eight or nine, and I give some wiggle room there. I tell my athletes yeah, just go climb hard. Recover on the downhills easy endurance on the flats. You're just just hitting the hills hard and you're riding easy endurance in between. Simple, it's not easy. It's not an easy workout, but it is very simple in its approach. Don't overthink it. That's example.
Speaker 1:One Second example is a kilojoule per hour ride, some sort of goal attached with that. I don't even know when, but I talked about this in some episode, maybe a year or two or three years ago? I have no idea. But let's recap what a kilojoule is and talk about how to put this in place. Kilojoules are a measurement of work and the data comes from your power meter. It's not linked to heart rate, body weight or any other variability aspect to the body. It's simply a unit of measurement which is derived from your power meter and is accurate and consistent day to day, so long as your power meter is calibrated. I always say a kilojoule today is a kilojoule, tomorrow is a kilojoule in one year from now. So long as the instrument is calibrated, you can use kilojoule tracking to determine how much work per hour you're doing for different types of rides and intensities. It's important to note that this is separate from intensity alone. It's separate from percentage of FTP in the way that you quantify it and measure it.
Speaker 1:It's a unit of work. It's mechanical work. This is especially important for long, grindy performance. Think hilly rides, gravel races, epic shit. On one hand, we just need our cardiovascular systems to be able to endure and hold up for long periods of time on these longer events. So that's, we call that aerobic work. Okay, but on the other hand, we need our peripheral system, our legs, for cyclists to also be able to hold up and endure over time. From an intensity standpoint it is still aerobic work. However, the musculature needs to be able to hold up and one way I measure that is this mechanical work, this kilojoule per hour. So if we just do intervals and take breaks in between and do that all the time, this can influence the rate of work and the strain that could be adding up in that peripheral system. It changes it work and the strain that could be adding up in that peripheral system. It changes it. If we take away the recovery periods and just keep the intensity going and keep the kilojoule rate racking up, you're really going to cause a lot of strain to the legs. That's really what I'm talking about in a workout like this Pro tip here.
Speaker 1:If you race and you do events or train for the weekend world championships, the group ride on the weekend go back in your data and take a look at the highest kilojoule per hour that you've had in kind of a modernity, so maybe the past year or past couple of years and then go out and training and try to replicate it. Guarantee you it's going to make you real tired. But a lot of people don't do this in their training. So they do intervals, they do a long ride and then they show up to the race and they're like, holy crap, I was cramping at the end the first race of the year, maybe something like that. I was cramping at the end, I was so tired. Oh my gosh. It's because that's a pretty specific thing to link it all together and not have these interval breaks.
Speaker 1:So being able to identify that high kilojoule work rate and then try to do it in your training, that's a wonderful way to train and prepare for the upcoming event. You can use this especially for long races or rides, say something like the unbound 200 mile gravel ride. Maybe you never do 7,000 kilojoules in your training. That's a big day for anybody. But let's just say you've done it. Before you looked back, it was roughly 7,000 kilojoules in your training. That's a big day for anybody, but let's just say you've done it. Before you looked back, it was roughly 7,000 kilojoules so, and it took you maybe 10 to 12 hours. Okay, so you're going to have to do that work rate per hour if you signed yourself up for it again.
Speaker 1:So what I would do is go out in training and try to replicate that work rate for many hours upon hours upon hours. It's a very simple, but I mean it's hard. It's not easy, right, but it's a very simple approach to the training. So, target 700 to 800 kilojoule per hour work rate. Have kilojoules pulled up on your Garmin or your Wahoo device to keep track of that and you're just ticking it off one hour at a time First hour 700 kilojoules. Second hour 1400 kilojoules. Third hour 2100 kilojoules and you're just racking it up. So those numbers are example numbers. Those numbers are not going to fit everybody. Keep in mind, kilojoule is a work rate. There's no direct correlation to body weight and to all these other things that I talked about. But generally speaking, if your FTP is higher, typically your kilojoule work rate per hour will also be higher. However, I generally use past data history for my athletes to identify what is an appropriate kilojoule per hour rate to start training with. So just use your data to figure out what's going to work best for you. You can also use this kilojoule per hour and absolute kilojoules in a big, hard day to put together a fueling plan for your training and your racing. I talked about this with my interview with Stephanie Howe just a couple of weeks ago. So go back and listen to that one for more details.
Speaker 1:Next, let's talk about a couple more workout ideas of how you can do some hard training, do some appropriate training and not have to do intervals. So this one, I say play the normalized power game. I was just talking to one of my athletes about this one of my local athletes, and it was fun to see. But basically this is just riding hard the whole time, not even a hill climb day or whatever. This is just the whole time. So tempo-ish on the flats threshold on a hill climb, attack over the top, pedal on the downhill and just ride like a savage. This is the sleigh on the day that we're talking about. The whole goal is to try to keep the normalized power high for the whole ride.
Speaker 1:Now again to do this, just like for the kilojoule tracking have kilojoules displayed on your cycling computer? For this one, I want normalized power displayed on the cycling computer. I always have those two, as well as other ones, on my dashboard at any given time. So I'm tracking that. Why? Why is this a good workout? Why do we want to track this? Number one? It's fun. It's fun to go fast, it's fun to push hard, right? That's why we're here.
Speaker 1:Second is it gets you out of the interval mindset. Quick story about when I was a younger coach had an athlete. We were always doing intervals. He was doing crits and some road races Really good at training, terrible at racing why I always had him do intervals. We couldn't link together that exposure at intensity he would get dropped, he would get cramps, he couldn't mentally figure it out, get cramps, he couldn't mentally figure it out. And in that way then we had to shift over to some of the stuff that I'm talking about as well as group rides and we'll talk about that too in order to get him there. But the interval mindset or being you know, the muscles, the peripheral system, the cardiovascular system, the mindset being used to having a break, it's fine. But if you're, if you're going to ride hard, if you're going to do races, if you're going to do events, if you're going to do two-hour hill climbs in Europe, you got to break away from the interval mindset. This is one way to do it.
Speaker 1:Now some people may be asking what is the difference between this and the kilojoule per hour workout that I just described? Well, it's typically the intensity, the normalized playing, the normalized power game, which is how high can my normalized power be for both the hour and the whole ride? So you play two games there. Uh, it's, it's the intensity. So with this one, all intensity is on the plate, is on the table, and you're, you're spiking the power up, you're doing sprints, you're grinding it uphill climbs, that kind of stuff. With the Kilojoule tracking workout I typically will have that more aerobic. So high aerobic or sweet spot type stuff will be where you're going to be accumulating time and zone.
Speaker 1:This playing, the NP game, all of them, all the intensities, all the savagery. It's also a race specific training, preparation for sure. So it's sort of like a group ride. So let's talk about group rides, because they work hand in hand together and sometimes what I'll do, if I'm playing the normalized power game, at least in my head, with one of my athletes and they can't do it in solo training, I'll have them do it in group rides, because group rides are probably the best way to get your intensity in without having to think too hard about it. For some of my athletes they are simply on a steady diet of group rides three times per week and the rest of the days are aerobic or rest days.
Speaker 1:However, we need to change the focus of the group ride to match what we're trying to do in training. Now please hear me on this one If you are doing anything, just stop what you're doing and listen to me. Right now I am not saying do intervals on the group ride, please do not do intervals on the group ride. That's a very big pet peeve of mine and I don't advocate anybody to do that. What we are saying is changing how you ride in the group, based on what we want to try to achieve.
Speaker 1:So here here's some examples early season, group riding Uh, if you're trying to build fitness and build aerobic capacity, uh, stay up more toward the front. So you're just like doing more work, okay, you're high kilojoules a day, more time in zone, at tempo threshold, sweet spot, grinding it out. Mid season, you want to work on more attacks, trying to break away from the group. So, all in on a super hard 30, 40 second, sometimes longer, full on minute attack See if it hits, see if it sticks, see if somebody comes with you, and then deal with the intensity after that, hard, deep attacks. Finally, maybe in the in season and you're trying to work on your sprint. Now we're sitting in the group more. We're being more conservative. We don't want a high kilojoule day, necessarily, but you're waiting for the townside sprint, you're waiting for the final sprint, you're waiting to attack and sprint over the top of the hill to keep the momentum going. So intermittent spikes of power throughout, but you're just chilling like a villain on wheels for the rest of the time. So all of those are really good ideas of how to train without doing intervals themselves.
Speaker 1:One nod to the long ride. I'm a big fan of it, especially when you want to deepen your aerobic base and your fitness. It's just a great way to do it. We're time crunch cyclists, so sometimes that's a luxury. You really got to plan for it and get the mental gymnastics going. For some people that I talk to and hear from on the podcast, they're super time crunched during the week, but they have some really good flexibility on the weekend. So if you're one of these riders that just loves the long ride and you're going like I don't know, four or five or six hours on Saturday and then another three or four on Sunday, and that's that's why you do what you do on your bike, that's awesome. Stack it up back to back, go for it. But, just like I said before, when you're going to go full send on the weekend, you got to go full recovery mode after that. So Monday and Tuesday maybe, maybe they're just off right, complete rest days and then you're just riding easy and you're getting ready for another big weekend block.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that that that's kind of like the rhythm that you're going to do and you want to arrive really fresh to the weekend. It's more like block training and maybe you're not doing intervals or anything like that on the weekend, you're just doing hill climbs and whatever. But those are your two big days. It's a great strategy. I love it. I wish I would do more of it myself. I need to for some of the stuff I have coming up. But don't go too big or too hard midweek. Don't overthink it Like if you're going that long on the weekend, uh, chill midweek Cause, then it's going to make your weekend rides that much more fun, that much more fresh, and you'll get way more out of it from a training and development standpoint.
Speaker 1:So what I'm trying to communicate to you is that you don't need intervals to improve aspects of your physiology, but in order to know that it's working or that you're not shooting yourself in the foot, you need to manage yourself wisely If no one is doing it for you, because, again, riding on vibes, though it's super fun, can cause some fatigue issues if you let it run wild. So let's talk about how to manage your performance, your freshness and your fitness. So this is where we talk about managing your data and your training. I really want to encourage everybody to look at your data and check in with yourself regularly. I really want to encourage everybody to look at your data and check in with yourself regularly. You still want to keep yourself accountable to measurable aspects of your own fitness and performance, and I cover a good bit of this in detail on a recent episode number 242, but I'm just going to touch high level on this give reminders and a couple of tips.
Speaker 1:So in training peaks, there's something called the performance management chart and a couple of tips. So in training peaks, or something called the performance management chart, I like to say this tells the story of your training. In there you can see ramp rates of CTL, or is your CTL building up right, and if you want to build fitness, that's great At some point. The goal is to not build any more fitness and you want to bring, you want to start to freshen up, so you bring ATL down. If you want to freshen up and then start to really hit on some intensity, you want to tune into your TSB, which is training stress balance. This is your freshness factor, right, or your form is what it's called on training peaks, and you want to see how fresh or unfresh you are when you're performing at your best or hitting some of these peak power durations, and that's all really important.
Speaker 1:It's very artsy and I would say you need to work with your data. You need to look at your data and compare your data and get in tune with that. To get real good about it or fail. You hire a coach, plain and simple. However, having a good working knowledge of this performance management chart and the basic concepts of it of do. I want to grow CTL right now and grow fitness, because, as endurance athletes, we're spending the majority of the year pretty much doing that. But then at some point, when we have a race or we want to just intensify our training, we're going to do more intensity, less volume and typically CTL will just stabilize and we're going to double down on the intensity and start to go fast, because really that's why we're here. That's super fun. Speaking of going fast, how we manage that mean max power, what that means is highest average power. This shows you if you're making progress in your performance and if you're increasing your mean max power, meaning your 20 minute power is going up, your five minute power is going up, your 22nd power is going up. Whatever power duration is going up throughout the year, that means you're increasing performance and if you're not, you're not simple. So I love performance. It's just very simple.
Speaker 1:Check in with yourself every single day. You should be asking yourself how do I feel? How tired am I? How fresh am I?
Speaker 1:One thing I ask my athletes is what's the real feel? Over there, the real feel is compared to the should feel. Everybody thinks they should feel like a 10 out of 10 every day. If 10 is, I feel amazing and I feel like conquering the world. Right, everybody wants to feel like a 10. The reality is rarely do we feel like a 10. So what is the real feel on the day? Am I a little dented up? Did I have a good night's sleep? Did I not have a good night's sleep? Is the training from yesterday still sitting in my legs? What's the real feel? Mood, energy, motivation, how are these going? And my plan is to go really hard and have a hard hill climb day or to do a high kilojoule day. But is my motivation lacking? Is my energy not there? Am I sad? That kind of thing. So all of these are really important questions to ask yourself when you're riding on a more abstract sort of plan.
Speaker 1:The other thing is when was the last time you had a true rest day? Because if you go into these concepts that I'm talking about, where normal interval training has the guardrails baked in and all of a sudden you're like I'm going to explore, I'm going to start to do what Coach AP said and do a bunch of rides and then go easy and all this kind of stuff. But how about just a pure rest day? Pure rest days are gold. They hit the reset button in magical ways. So, in my opinion, have one at least every week, if not every 10 to 12 days, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:So, for the record and to wrap this thing up, all of my athletes do intervals at some point in the year, but some of them don't do intervals for big chunks of time and we focus on things like rate of work or those kill the jewel per hour rides. We focus on durability, we focus on the art of racing and tactics in a group ride and I do endorse interval training for most people, especially if they're time crunched athletes. But getting out of quote interval mode does have some benefits, including adding variety to the training program, thinking of things differently and perhaps another layer of specificity to your next race or event. Interval training or not, I do advise to pay attention to other aspects of your data, like ramp rate, fatigue scores and tuning into yourself or the real feel, before just going out and slaying yourself even deeper than you did the day before. Training and coaching has a lot of art and science to it, both feelings and data. You need both for sure, sometimes more than the other, but always both. So that's it.
Speaker 1:That's our show for today. If you liked what you heard, please share it with a friend or your training partner. If you have any questions on your own. If I said something, that's it. That's our show for today. If you liked what you heard, please share it with a friend or your training partner. If you have any questions on your own. If I said something that's like wow, I never really thought about it that way. And now I have even more questions.
Speaker 1:Head on over to trainrightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training training question. Those get sent directly to me and my team at CTS and we'll do our best to answer your question on a future episode. So thanks again for listening and we'll meet back here next week for 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.
