The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

How Quickly Can Aerobic Training Make You Fast, with Tim Cusick (#283)

• CTS • Season 5 • Episode 283

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OVERVIEW
"How long is this going to take?!" Everyone wants to know how long it takes for the training you do today to result in performance improvements you can see and feel on the road or trail. To find out, we called upon Tim Cusick, an elite coach and one of the data gurus behind TrainingPeaks WKO product. Together, Coach Adam Pulford and Tim explain how training stress leads to physiological strain, which causes fatigue and then adaptation. In this episode they look specifically at how quickly aerobic training results in measurable improvements in VO2 max, along with improvements in neuromuscular and metabolic processes.

Topics Covered In This Episode:

  • Stress vs. Strain
  • Two responses to training
  • Neural vs metabolic vs cardiovascular adaptations to training
  • Time to adaptation for aerobic system
  • How VO2 max increases from Zone 2 training
  • Why Time-Crunched Cyclists need some intensity during base training
  • Cadence workouts during base training

Resources

  • Tim at Basecamp: https://www.joinbasecamp.com/tim-cusick 
  • Tim on IG https://www.instagram.com/tim.cusick_coach/
  • Stress vs Strain: Difference Between Stress and Strain - GeeksforGeeks https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/physics/difference-between-stress-and-strain/

Guest Bio:

Tim Cusick is a world-class cycling coach, a leader in data analytics for endurance sports, an educator, and an innovative business leader. Tim works with Olympians, world champions, and more, including Amber Neben and Rebecca Rusch. As a data analytics leader, Tim is an acknowledged expert in the field for endurance athletes. He is the TrainingPeaks WKO product leader, 
codeveloper of WKO5, and Instructor: Advanced Training with Data. As an educator, Tim has presented at USA Cycling summits, TrainingPeaks Endurance Summits, TrainingPeaks University, and more. Tim is also the founder of BaseCamp, which is driven by Tim’s philosophy of bringing together the science of data and the art of coaching. His values-based approach focusing on shared vision and team building allows for the construction of dynamic and purposeful organization development.

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_00:

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 Polford, 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. He's an educator, thought leader, and analytics guru at WKO5. And he's got a few world championship titles as well. Tim Cusick. Tim, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01:

Good to see you again, Adam. Thanks for having me back on.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's it's been it's been a minute since you've been on uh the podcast, but you've been on several times before. And you know, for our listeners who may have missed those episodes, uh first of all, shame on them. Uh, but perhaps they are first-time listeners. So um we'll give them a pass. But could you tell us a bit more about yourself uh for those who have missed the episodes in the past?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Uh I've been coaching for over 20 years. As you stated, I've I've definitely had the luxury of working with some pretty elite athletes, uh, have captured some national and world championships, guided some athletes to the Olympics, uh kind of lived the coaching dream uh to some degree. So I've always had the pleasure and the luxury of doing that. I also, on the other side, I'm the training Peach WKO product leader. I have had the pleasure of uh being a giant nerd and digging into a lot of data in the world and endurance data, data analytics really is actually my true background and and specialty. So to be able to blend those two together has been uh made for some an exciting coaching career.

SPEAKER_00:

This is true. And you know, I gotta tip my hat to Tim and uh the folks at WKO5 because uh they've been instrumental in helping me as a coach uh personally and a lot of my colleagues understand uh complicated matters when it comes to data analytics. So uh Sheppo, Tim. Um But at the start, uh, you know, I provided some simple but big and potentially complicated questions in the opening of this podcast. So these questions come from a few listeners, uh Jonathan and David in particular, who wrote in uh with their curiosities. And I'll admit I've taken courses in college that last a semester on these topics. But the answers, you know, we can deliver them and they can be a little bit complicated. But do you think that we will be able to answer all of those in 20 to 25 minutes today, Tim?

SPEAKER_01:

No. There's the based on the list that I saw, we're probably gonna need a couple of episodes to be able to dig into it with some quality response.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yes, I agree with that. So for you, our listeners, strap on your fun physiology hats over the coming weeks because this is the start of a four-part mini-series I've entitled The Time Course to Adaptation for Endurance Training and Performance. And my head of marketing will probably hate that title, so we'll see what he actually comes up with. Uh for now, let's dive into the first part where we'll look at the time course of adaptation to aerobic endurance training. But of course, if anyone knows Tim, we always have some caveats and disclaimers before we get going. Uh Tim, what do you want to tell our listeners before we answer these things in particular?

SPEAKER_01:

It's always great to start with the caveats. Thanks for labeling me for that. I'll forever be known as the caveat dude. Great. It's true. Real quick, right? There's three here because there's a complexity we're going to discuss. And we're talking about human performance, which is complex. Uh, caveat number one, there is variance. As human beings, we have some similarities, but we have a lot of difference. As we talk about time adaptation, uh, load management, and things like that. There is some uniqueness, and that could be genetic. Uh, muscle fiber makeup has a lot to do with that. There's uh cardiovascular capacity. We vary as humans. We're gonna talk in these in this podcast series. Really, we're gonna target the bell curve. Probably 50 to 70 of 70, 75% of us fit within that bell curve, so this will be relevant. But sure, there are people outside of that where it might be quicker, might be slower, might be different. The second thing, we have variance. The second one, we have variables. There are a lot of things that impact training that are not specifically training related, and they introduce variables. Ones we commonly talk about life stress, sleep, nutrition. Like the answer might not be the same for everybody because you're dealing with a different set of variables. Again, we're gonna target the bell curve. We're gonna target kind of the common performing athlete here that resides within that bell curve. So you might be outside of that due to some life extremes or those variables themselves, but we're gonna talk about that bell curve. And three, and probably one of the most nuanced elements, and in podcasts, sometimes it's hard to hit all the nuance. When we start thinking about the response to exercise stimuli, training load, and time to adaptation, we have to understand in all adaptation and all response to training, there's what's known as a law of diminishing returns. So let's say you're born with a certain amount of capability. So totally undeveloped capability is zero, and totally developed is 100%. When you start training, and that's time, right? The first day you're training is day one, and if you train year over year over year, uh you begin to build training maturity. The curve is a reverse curve, meaning if you're untrained and have never trained and you suddenly start training, you will see gains faster early. Your capability will improve faster early. But the more you train over time, we'll see a diminishing return to the exercise stimuli. The response simply gets harder to get. So they might hear a point and be like, wow, that doesn't seem to apply to me. That possibly there might be other reasons, be law of diminishing returns. So again, we're gonna target the bell curve. You know, think about athletes with a certain amount of athletic maturity. So basically, when it comes to answering most of these questions, we're gonna throw the fastball right down the middle and understand that you might be on the fringes or outside of that, but that'll save us a lot of time in saying it depends. There are a lot of variables and having to discuss every nuance in the answers.

SPEAKER_00:

This is so true. Uh, we will probably still say it depends every once in a while, but uh, those are good caveats, uh Tim. I super appreciate that. Uh another thing that I really appreciate is when is uh when we were collaborating on this outline, uh Tim pointed out that we should probably talk about uh the impact of training to help us understand how this adaptation actually takes place. And and what that means is like how it hits to the body. And that in turn shapes a response to the like our physical selves of what we respond with. So, Tim, I want to start with a few terms and I'm just gonna like steal them from physics. I'm gonna dumb them down here a little bit too, but uh then you can go wild on training impacts. Or are you good with that? Sure. Okay. So uh stress and strain. People are probably very familiar with uh training stress score, talking about the stress of the ride and things like this. Strain, I think, is getting a little bit more popularized thanks to Dr. Steven Siler uh and kind of his evolution of promoting some of these concepts as well. But when it comes to like the science of physics, we look at stress and strain, and those are pretty established aspects. And I'd say in general, stress, we can talk about an external uh like kind of total amount of force that's being imposed on the body, is just like all the things coming in. But strain is the amount of like distortion experienced to the body from its original shape of some kind. So it's like you can impose training stress, but how does it how does it uh distort a body, you know, anaerobically or aerobically, or uh some other aspect or strength training? It tears down the the muscle fiber itself. And so we'll leave it there in terms of some generalities. But when when you and I talk about training impact scores uh with our athletes, um can you start to uh help us understand what a training impact is and how you use that to determine training and talk about adaptation for your athletes?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. So we think about training. Training is this concept that a human being, uh, your body, you uh you want to be and achieve homeostasis. So we train, we're actually breaking that homeostasis, and we're hoping that that breaking is a purposeful breaking and our body reachieves a more higher, better, capable homeostasis, right? So we're always trying to come back to some norm, but we want to grow that norm into more and more capable. We do that through what's known as the stress, strain, and adaptation model. Stress is external load very well, exactly as you said. It stresses in a quantitative measurement we put on the system. In this case, you, the human being, is the system. So stress is a quantitative load. Let's say you and I, Adam, climb a hill, we're riding bikes together, we climb a hill, we both go 300 watts. That is a quantitative measurement. The exact force we are doing, we're applying for, you know, uh the exact watts we're generating, is the same, 300 watts, quantitative. Now, when we apply stress to that system, us, the system undergoes strain. We respond to that stress. Um, the strain response is that distortion, that's a great way to think about it. But the strain is a direct response to the stress in relationship to our capability or fitness, that you know, where we're at in the performing model. So, again, if you go back, you and I climbing the hill at 300 watts, our stress is exactly the same. I'm probably hurting a whole lot more than you are. My heart rate is higher, I'm moving higher uh stroke volume of blood, I have a higher uptake uh intake of oxygen, I'm using more fuel, and I'm just generally a lot less happier than you are. So stress results in strain. Strain becomes really where we see a very quantitative impact of stress having an impact on that system. Strain results in adaptation. That's what that distortion does, particularly uh when applied over time, load, and rhythm that gets us, changes our body, readapts, and reachieves that more higher uh improved homeostasis. So stress results in strain, leads to adaptation, is the model we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, bingo. And I think uh super important to for everyone to realize that is strain just can't happen with without that stress, right? Correct. And on this podcast, I you know the general form is uh stress plus rest equals adaptation. We'll get into the rest forming that adaptation here soon. Um but I will say if if Tim sprints, though, my strain goes up, even though I'm very happy climbing hills all day long. So let the record show.

SPEAKER_01:

Got it. Excellent explanation.

SPEAKER_00:

So when we were talking, uh we also were discussing how there's essentially two responses to the training itself. Could you explain what those two responses are and why should we care about them?

SPEAKER_01:

I think this will really help the listeners as a whole when we start because we tend to ask that. Like you had listeners ask you, time to adaptation, right? And basically we're saying, I want to get faster, faster. That's what we really want. We want to know how long we can expect to happen before we start questioning our life decisions. When we think about that, we have to understand that when we introduce exercise stimuli, when we exercise, when we do a workout, there isn't one response, just one response to consider. What well, I'm getting fitter. When can I really see it? There's actually two responses that occur. And this is very well explained by the banister impulse response model, which everybody can Google and spend a little time reading that. And the concept of this uh of the banister model is that you have these two responses. The first one is fatigue. If I've been laying on the couch for a year and suddenly I get up today and I'm like, I'm gonna do a four-hour ride, and gee, I'm gonna be fitter tomorrow, and I go and I do my four-hour ride and I try to ride tomorrow, I'm not feeling any fitter. I got news for you. I'm at what I'm feeling is the acute response to exercise stimuli, which is fatigue. When fatigue stimuli response, when we track that response, it's acute because it tends to last, let's call it five to ten days, probably seven to ten days more of a specific window. So if we do that, if I do that four hours, I'm gonna feel it somewhere. And I might not feel it, feel it like when I'm just walking upstairs or something, but my body is feeling it. It's under the fatigue load in that acute window. So that's one response. The second response is yes, I am getting fitter. So my fitness has increased, but the time relationship to that response is really three to eight weeks, with probably five to six weeks being the overall sweet spot. Your genetics, your current fitness have impact on that. But you could say five to six weeks for that response. And that really is going to drive the complexity of all the tracking of this time to adaptation, because a coach or a self-coached athlete, those are two distinctively different responses that have a relationship. But the struggle of managing those two is the time response is different. So you're trying to figure out a way to get optimized adaptation in a system that's requiring you to measure an acute response that's lasting seven to ten days against or along with a chronic response, which you're not going to really get for about five to six weeks in that sweet spot, anywhere from three to eight weeks. So managing those two makes predicting time to adaptation complex and complicated, because really well-balanced relationship of those two will speed up time to adaptation. Under stimuli, maybe of those two will result maybe in faster adaptation, but under-adapting. Overload of those two might actually slow down adaptation and also lead to under-adaptation. So there's a complex relationship between the two, which the listener has to consider both sides of that as they head down the how fast can I adapt journey.

SPEAKER_00:

That's exactly it. And and in layman's terms, it's basically you do training, you get tired, but delayed gratification is if you get tired enough and rest enough with some good dosage and tips from Tim here, you'll get fit, which makes you uh more resilient, and then you can do more training and get more of what you want in those forms of adaptation. So um when it comes to kind of those those adaptations that we're talking about, we're gonna start with aerobic, which it's kind of the the long one, right? Like the long form adaptation. We'll get into the time courses of that too. But what's there's also a fast kind of like adaptation? Um, and that's on the neural side of things, and there's also some metabolic things, okay. Um but Tim, we always talk about like base training and and do your zone too and and all this kind of stuff. But would you say that if you double down on anything or focus on something first, would it be the neural and the metabolic stuff first? The quick responding, okay. If I do this training, I get a quick response, and therefore that's great because I'm I'm seeing it right away, or should you focus on the aerobic, longer term stuff?

SPEAKER_01:

Poof. I'm gonna go right to it depends. I've got to use it early. Um understand the concept you're talking, normal and metabolic uh control adapts faster. Like that's some of the fastest response when we start to think about overschedule and time. Peripheral structures will adapt slower. So you're always kind of dealing with what is adapting and what is the time constraint of your demand. So in endurance training, one of the reasons we call it base or foundation is if you have all the times to do it right, like if you have the ability, you really the answer would be it's both. And understand that as I go down the journey of fitness, metabolic and neural adaptations will happen first because it's just the way your body's wired. Then as you get more into kind of the diminishing returns time frame, you're talking about peripheral structures and gains happening. They're slowing, but they're still building on top of each other. The point being is technically the best answer is they're actually additive to maximum capability. So you need to put your overarching training in some predictable order of things to get the best benefit, but also a certain amount of patience is required because you see some early benefits, noral benefits actually are the fastest, fastest of them. And then you kind of tend to go through a little time delay, and then you start slowly adding in more of the peripheral benefits.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, it's a perfect answer. And I think, you know, kind of cueing that up, and this is why I liked him, is because he doesn't view like he understands reality, which is there's a lot of things happening all the time, especially in physiology, right? And so when someone says, Oh, I'm just doing base training, I'm just doing zone two, I'm doing and this is what I want, it's like, yeah, but you're also doing a lot more than that. Okay. But when you organize training in in a way, it's almost like, well, just kind of pick one and and have some sort of like logic and structure to it, because that is generally better than you know, blindfolded, throwing a dart at the wall and saying, uh, VO2 today, uh, strength today, uh, that kind of stuff. So it from a periodization standpoint, tutor bump uh all the way to now, uh, we generally talk about base and foundation phase. Uh, let's start there with aerobic adaptation, and let's talk about what are some of the adaptations that we expect if we do foundation or base training properly. So I know there's probably gonna be a pre-comment uh from you, Tim, on this, uh, but but let's start to get into the uh time course of adaptations here.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's put one overarching concept on the ground, like, and this is an oversimplification of science, but it will help people set proper expectations. Your aerobic system is takes the most work to respond, so it's the hardest to build, but yet its decay rate is the fastest, so it's the quickest to lose. Um, that's kind of one of the ironies of indoor sports, that all kind of makes our life a little bit harder. So when you think about this idea that we're moving into aerobic training, it's the slowest to respond and the fastest to be lost. Your anaerobic, let's just put that as one big above threshold it, you know, kind of concept. Um, that is the fastest to build and actually the slowest to decay. So, and again, I'm oversimplifying a lot of things here, but when we think about training and we think about where we're investing our time schedule, we tend, I say invest a time schedule, you think how many hours a week? I think how many weeks a year. Like, how are we gonna lay all that out? The development of your aerobic foundation, why it's really become is important because that is one that takes the most amount of time. You fall behind on that, you don't get it done in the right time, it's hard to make up. And then, two, it's actually uh we tend to think about aerobic and anaerobic being side by side. It's not, you have to turn that mental model upside down. Your anaerobic system is built on top of your aerobic system, and your aerobic system has other peripheral benefits which are important to invest in. The other part of that is, like I said earlier, um, your aerobic system is uh, you know, it's an adaptive curve. The rule of diminishing uh results really plays in here. You have to rebuild it every year to some degree, but it's it's we tend to see the smallest results in that area as athletes that are mature. We've been training three or more years, four or more years in a structured format. We're doing a lot of work for a small gain over time there, but you can't skip that step or everything moves backwards. Um, I think you tend to see two to three phases of growth here aerobically. Again, we're going down, we're throwing the fastball down the middle and playing the bell curve here. Three to six weeks, you often see a first round of gain. And I think it's great we say three to six weeks, because the first one or two weeks, you often, and maybe even three weeks, you'll see if you start training, you know, your winter foundation time all fired up, December one's coming, November one, whatever your kickoff date, you're in your new year. Those first two weeks, you actually performance will decline. Like you might not be because you're just the short-term response to exercise stimuli is fatigue, right? So you're in that short-term response. Fitness needs a lot of time to catch up. By three to six weeks, you're really seeing positive impact. And there's a lot of things going on because you we tend to think about foundation training, uh-based training as cardiovascular. We have this aerobic concept, and there's a lot of cardiovascular fitness, but you have metabolic things going on, you have neuromuscular items going on. Um, but the end of the day, we probably are talking key drivers in three to six weeks is the mitochondrial response is really important in that time frame. That stimuli of actually bringing more oxygen to the mitochondrial is triggering the response in density and size and enzyme response, and really uh beginning to trigger um the aerobic response, the improvement in aerobic capacity that we're driving. Um, to support that, we have increased capillary densities occurring at the same time. We are, you know, actually, it might be better to say it this way to support that, our our stroke volume begins to go up. Our heart, we tend to think our heart gets bigger, right? It's the Grinch that stole Christmas when we foundation trained. And technically that's true, but it's probably better to think about it as your heart gets a little more elastic. It's able to pull in a little more blood uh volume, and therefore each heartbeat is pumping more oxygen around the system. Typically, that's a plasma gain that's going on. So your stroke volume goes up. That helps and drive the improvement in capillary density, um, which then is driving more oxygen to the mitochondrial level, which is getting that cycle of improvement really rolling. Metabolically, we're seeing increased fatty acid oxidation. You know, we're seeing we're utilizing fats as fuel better. We're just turning that side back on or improving that side. That's a metabolic efficiency gain that you know is nice, and you start to see in that three to six weeks. Um, and you're just having some simple coordination impact, some neural, like neuromuscular, how your brain's taught you're back on the train, or you're riding your bike in steady, even ways, you're doing some cadence work, and your body's just saying, Hey, here's you know how I recruit motor units, here's the brain signal talking to my muscles better. You often see that first wave in the first three to six weeks.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. Yeah, that's a great summation of everything. And I and I think it's important, and that's why you know we call it foundational training or base training. It is it is setting the structure to build you know the higher, bigger, taller, stronger uh pyramid of performance, the anaerobic side of things, right? And that's where we work. But uh as you said before, is as we put in you know another layer of foundational work or uh aerobic foundation, is you you kind of need to re-establish it every year. I would say you need to throw like chip it out a little bit, throw in some more rebar and some concrete, strengthen it back up, and then we can keep on building. And that first three to six weeks, I mean, it is it's super important. It it kind of sucks because, like you said, you it's like you're tired at first and you're like, oh god, but then you start rolling, right? And once you start to see some of those benefits come, it's not right away, but month and a half or so. Now we're like, oh yeah, this is good. And so I I I kind of I think about the base training or the foundation or base training kind of in two phases, base one, base two. That second kind of like base two phase, I technically am using a mix of intensities at this phase, but um we I I start to see VO2 actually uh start to tidy. Yes, right. Um and we're still like zone two, zone three here. But when I tell people this, uh people are like, wait, what? How can my VO2 max increase? And I if I haven't done VO2 intervals or zone five intervals, Tim, uh, how does that work?

SPEAKER_01:

Great point to be brought up because there is a lot of confusion. And I think this is finally starting to get hurt enough that maybe we're we're getting ahead of this curveball. When you if you think about the first three to six weeks of everything we just talked about, once that's established and that system is now moving forward, where you're getting your gains and your base or foundation training six to 12 weeks is your VO2 max starts moving. Like if you had regular access to testing and stuff like that, you will start to see change. You know, assuming, by the way, all this assumes that you're take doing a quality training program and everything is generally going and you're being consistent. Just having the plan doesn't matter. You have to do the work. Um, you'll see VO2 max increase. I'll I'll make this as scientifically complex as possible. Zone two riding. Riding under uh a moderate, low to moderate aerobic stress improves your VO2 max. As a matter of fact, it's one of the best ways to improve your VO2 max. I actually, when you think about what's the greatest limiter to VO2 max, medically, I guess would be the right way to say it. Your stroke volume itself is usually what's the greatest limiter. Um base training, zone two training, pump stroke volume is one of the best improvements you will get. That alone will be lifting your VO2 max. Now that we're stroke pump stroking more, you know, we have more oxygen rotating around the system, we then have a series of, you know, we think about cardiovascular capability, that is the intake of oxygen. Like, am I breathing? Am I bringing oxygen into the system? More blood means more oxygen rolling around the system, but there's also an uptake element. What's happening at the molecular level? That's the role of mitochondria and some of the things that we mentioned earlier. That relationship between uptake and intake is getting more efficient. So your stroke volume is going up, you're moving more oxygen around. The system, and then in week six to twelve, and all these things are going on at once. We're just talking about maybe a little more focus of one versus the other. Um, now you're improving the efficiency of the uptake of that oxygen at that well, at that level. So you've built that first couple of weeks of work, you're three to six weeks in, the volume, the stroke volume's coming up, fatty acid oxidation, or your fat utilization is improving, you have mitochondria growing and they're getting more dense and you're having more, and capillaries are getting density is going up. Now we're improving efficiency on top of that because we're continuing to strain that system. Because if you go back to that dual response model, you're overcoming the short-term fatigue now. Remember, let's say we said five to six weeks is the sweet spot to true adaptation to the you're starting to adapt to the load you started four, five, six weeks ago. Now that you're adapting and fitness is coming up, the more you know uh you can improve the efficiency. I now have the fitness to deal with that stimuli better. Assuming you're progressing the stimuli, that means I'm progressing my ability to deal with that. I'm improving efficiency in doing that. That is driving the specific fitness improvement I want.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And and I think there I will say that stick to the plan because again, time course of adaptation, we'd certainly need time, time and zone, and volume. And we'll speak to the time-crunched athlete here uh shortly about this kind of volume driver. But that six to twelve weeks, I do think is a pretty magic window to keep pursuing, try to maximize the volume as as best you can to get those structural adaptations in place. Because once we start to drag this out, if you if you drug out just like pure zone two endurance training into the uh 12 to 20 week sort of time phase, and you're a time crunched athlete, I think that this is a no-go uh zone because you'll you definitely start to plateau if it is just pure zone two. And you can correct me if I'm wrong or argue with me if you'd like. Um but one thing I did a podcast a while ago to because we had some zone two questions and and whatnot. Actually, I what I did was I just took a you know, Joe Schmoe example athlete on training peaks, uh starting at zero CTL or zero, you know, uh fitness. And all I did was uh six to eight weeks, uh zone two, copy and paste it and just built it out for 20 weeks to see where that plateau by the numbers would occur. And the the specific uh plateau happened somewhere between 12 and 14 weeks, but the build of CTL was very, very slow leading up to that. And so the point for a time-crunched athlete here is uh building aerobic capacity with endurance training is very effective. But at some point, you need to change your intensity, you need to change your training because uh, even though it's very important, like Tim said, uh primary driver of increasing stroke, uh stroke volume and uh increasing VO2 max, at some point you're gonna need to change the stimuli to keep on improving.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you know, you make a great point. And just to add to this, so we think about uh one of the things you said that I really like, you break the idea of base training down into some phases. That's super important for two reasons. One, we have in periodization micro and macro cycles and all types of ways of looking at blocks. You need uh uh a couple weeks of stimuli, then a little rest. A couple of weeks of stimuli, then a little rest. The build is a jagged line. Even time-crunched athletes need a little rest in there. And that's the concept of supercompensation. You're kind of loading and then a short unload, then loading and short unload. And that's an important model. And but everyone kind of again gets that. We've learned the lesson of stress pretty well. The lesson we might not have is one of progression, which is the principle that you're the physiological principle that you're talking about. We only have so much in zone two, and we have time limits, whether that's time crunched or you maybe have six hours, 10 hours, 14 hours a week. There's a point where we can't progress the stimuli anymore. That point in foundation comes pretty quickly. I like the concept of, you know, you're somewhere in five to eight weeks where it's like, wow, I need to, I've gotten everything I've gotten out of zone two that I'm not gonna get much more. I'm beginning to really see those diminishing returns. I need a new and improved stimuli. But then everybody goes to, oh, you mean I start doing anaerobic work? No. Concepts like temp, when you're riding tempo, you're still aerobic. Like we get confused about like our LT1. That's like endurance, right? Your LT1 probably happens in for most of us, low tempo, maybe high endurance, but most of us it's low tempo. You can do tempo work and still be getting and driving aerobic gains. Um, you could be doing uh other types of neuromuscular manipulation, other things in there that you are getting. So you can stay aerobic, add moderate and occasional high intensities, and continue to stimulate that aerobic response and continue to build the things that we associate with base training while improving some of the other facets that are important in performance. You know, doing tempo helps your neuromuscular fitness more, builds fatigue resistance or endurance. You might want to look at it. So there's other benefits for moving along also. In that six to 12 weeks, if you're consistent with the first six, that is definitely where you tend to see some of the bigger gains. Like if you're testing every four weeks, you'll see them in that window the most. That's telling you, wow, the the the train is rolling down the track. I need to keep adding some stimuli and keep that going in this window.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. Yep, completely agree. And I think for our listeners, maybe they're shaping up their annual plan or something like this. But you know, that base one, the first, you know, uh one to six weeks. I'm gonna be using just go ride your bike. But this is typically like 55 to 75 percent of FTP. Go ride your bike, and maybe there's some cadence intervals in there where we're looking at you know, working on both high and low cadence and rate of perceived effort, three to five-ish. Again, try not to overthink it, but go ride your bike in that second like six to twelve weeks. I'm just gonna open up the top end a little bit. I'm gonna go 55 up to maybe 85% of FTP, right? And so that's going up into tempo, but we're still subthreshold. And the RPE uh three to six. So we're just nudging that up a little bit. And that that goes in line with what Tim said about the progressive overload that happens uh during the base phase. We just want to shift the intensity and keep on making sure that we're improving the athlete. And I don't know, example workouts here, Tim. I you know, personally I don't prescribe zone two intervals, but I have seen it and I know coaches who do it. Um I don't I don't know if you do or not, but what I do is I do prescribe, and we've been talking about some of the neural adaptations and some cadence intervals. Could you maybe just share uh maybe like a cadence workout that would incorporate a mix of zone two and three that you do during a base one or two phase?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'm very similar. I don't like it's so funny, the indoor impact here, right? We've gotten so used to seeing little blue box, and I can't do a workout unless my little blue box says go 142.5 watts. That's a habit. It's a great habit to break in the first, you know, five, six weeks of your base training. Don't worry about the blue box. Even if you're indoors, just jump on in whatever program you're using and ride around, ride your time, and you know, have a range and have a feeling. Great time to dial in your feelings during that time frame. And then as you move into the six to 12, you begin to add some structure. There's where tempo, unique tempo work, things like that matter. To answer your question specifically, I do a fair amount of cadence work in that, in the in your base one, base two phase. Here's why. I think what happens for us, we call it neuromuscular manipulation, I call it neuromuscular manipulation. Because if you think about how we make power, um, if we're pedaling a bike, we know a watt is how fast times how hard we're pedaling. Um if we start at zero in a big gear, right? We grind up and then we kind of hit this sweet spot, then we sort of lose control and power's coming up, but torque is actually going down as that's occurring. As our cadence comes up, torque is dropping. There's a very tight range that if we don't work on enough cadence work, we get efficient at making power only at a small range of uh cadence. And you said this and it was super smart. It's like outside of that, what happens when that's all we're doing, we're making power in our known range. When we go to an event and suddenly we're climbing steep hills or we're keeping up with a group and we're forcing low gear and some high gear and other things, we struggle to make because we haven't worked on that neuromuscular range or versatility. Neuromuscular manipulation, the reason you add cadence work is to improve rate coding, improve the efficiency of muscular recruitment, but also broaden the range that you're comfortable making efficient power at a more broad range, because that will prepare you for performance. So I'll do it simple, like a lot of my cadence works. We're doing five minutes high cadence, five minutes off. Um, uh when it comes to high cadence, I tend to lead into ramping better. It helps neuromuscular coding, neural coding specifically, or rate coding, the way your brain is sending the message. Um, so I might do one minute at 85, uh, one minute at 90, one minute at 95, one minute. So you're stepping the athlete up so their brain is absorbing it better. You know, you're you're you're kind of drilling in the pattern and the speed. I also like to do a lot of high torque training in that sense. And we tend to say, well, is high torque training strength training? No. Um, it's not enough resistance to really call it strength training, but you are improving your efficiency at torque level, at applying torque. You're again recruiting muscle fiber different. And actually, between high cadence and low cadence, you're making a different biochemical environment in your body. When you high cadence work, depending, or when you low cadence pedal, depending on your power, but assuming you're kind of in tempo zone, you're actually producing more lactate than you are when you're fast cadence. And that's a broad statement because there's a ton of nuance to what I just said. But that's also part of it. You know, people don't think about that concept that as you engage more fastwitch fiber to do more torque work, you are uh producing some lactate. And to do that torque work in this phase prepares the body for more lactate uh response. Let's just say the management of lactate later when we go harder. So I'll often build in, and I like to do cadence work two to four times a week. I'll limit the high torque, you know, the heavier load stuff depending on the fatigue, but I want to do both. And then I always get people who say, Well, you're trying to make my cadence higher. And I always have this answer, no, but it might help you find your real true natural cadence, and that might be a little higher, usually is, to be honest with you, but that's how I see it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, that's that's exactly it. And I would say uh I pretty much do all of that, and I would say I structure it more if the athlete is going to be inside more often. Yes. Um, as I tend to see a lot of my athletes uh these days. However, to make things even more simplified, here's what I tell my athletes. We want to make a strong chain for your cadence, high and low, and everything in in between. And so I'm gonna train high and low to make sure there's no weak link in the chain so that when we do go bike racing, we don't get the cramps, we don't get bogged down, we can bridge a gap and things like this. And we're gonna work on it in the in the base phase. Additionally, if people are like, oh, I hate the trainer, it's like, cool, go ride the mountain bike. Because you will naturally get the highs and lows and high torque and high cadence uh by simply riding your mountain bike. And then I'll still give some intervals to make sure that we're kind of shoring that up. But that would be the the like the dummies version, the simplified version of uh getting some of this uh cadence work done in in the base phase. But I do think that especially inside, because of monotony and and also the way people pedal inside. I would say if you just say endurance miles go, I don't know, 75 to 85, 95, something like that, people will stay in that tight band versus dipping down low, going up high. And that's why I also manipulate the cadence uh for somebody who's riding inside quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Couldn't agree more. I'm gonna steal your chain idea.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent. Steal away. I've stolen a lot of concepts from Tim Cusick. So um, so you know, we've been poking at zone two. I just want to say a kind of a short word on this, um, because it's gotten pretty hyped, and I and I've just texted to get some of my frustrations out to Tim in the past. Um, when it w when zone two is like the the height of its hype, it's coming down now, and I do think that people are getting a more balanced uh education about it. Okay. But Tim, how do things like this get so hyped? And and and hyped, meaning like people were just putting so much emphasis on, oh, zone two, oh, do you want to learn how to go to zone two? Zone two is the best. And meanwhile, I doing all the podcasts, writing all the things, it's like, no, it's not just one intensity, man. Like it's it's all the intensities. Aerobic training is important, but it's not just zone two. So how do things like get like this get hyped? And how can we be sure to sift through the bullshit of it all?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you know, and it's funny, and it's it is sift, is exactly the right word. Here's what happens, my opinion, everybody. So just take it as my opinion. Here's what I see in the world of knowledge, of endurance training. Knowledge is not mastery. We're in the age of information, knowledge is available in a lot of different ways. We go out on the internet and we find knowledge, but mastery is something different. When we see what's on the internet, we often have people with really great ideas and concepts. But they present them in what I call a reductionist format, meaning they look very specifically. Hey, there's a science study that shows riding zone two uh is has these improvements. So suddenly we're like, wow, and we reduce mentally, because as we have all this information floating around and we're searching for mastery, we want to make it simpler to think about. We reduce our vision down to that's the answer. And then a couple of weeks later we hear about 8020, you know, and it's like, oh, wait, this makes totally sense to me. And then that's the answer. And then uh suddenly we hear a reinvigorization of the pyramidal training formats and modalities. Oh, that's the answer. Here's my advice to everybody there's quality knowledge out there, and each one of those systems, which one of those things we just mentioned, those training modalities to give them a name, all are highly effective tools in a toolbox to train over time. You have to find out which the athlete responds to best, and understand no one system gets the athlete from untrained to high performing. It's a use of them all, in which case, time application, like when in training you apply them, probably is the key. And I think a versatile, the development of high-performing, versatile athletes absolutely require you to break the reductionism model and apply different modalities if you're going to want to optimize their training. Uh a whole bunch of reasons to talk about why stagnation, adaptation, things like that. But you need those different modalities to get the most out of the athlete. It's just what order you put them in and apply them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, that that is absolutely it. And I think, you know, in that way, even as we try to uh throw fastballs uh down the middle on podcasts like this, there's still conversations that can't be reduced down, which is why we just need to talk a little bit longer, kind of sort them out and and help the athletes. You know, everybody listening here who you know hasn't been in the industry for 20 years uh working with these uh, you know, kind of complicated models of sorts to try to get the results is like we want to try to deliver the information to you so that you're not confused. Because I will say that kind of shame on us in the industry for just jumping on bandwagons and trying to reduce things down and sell something real quick because we have made it muddy in the past.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and you know, what's good is I see now a change in that it's not so much people just have their idea and they're promoting their idea, and it's hard to promote in today's world and go on podcasts and stuff like that, and you don't have enough time to explain all the nuance, so you tend to focus on your idea, and that's what makes listeners at times confused.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So we still got three more episodes, Tim. So we're gonna try to make people uh less confused as they listen to us uh more, but we'll leave it there for today. Um so Tim, thank you for helping to unravel some of these uh bigger questions that our that our listeners have. And we got some really good stuff coming up, including the next uh podcast where we talk about the adaptation to threshold training. So don't forget to come back next week, folks, and uh listen to more knowledge from Tim. 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 trainwright.com 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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