How Training VO2 max Also Increases FTP (and vice versa) (#291)

OVERVIEW
In Episode 291 of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast", Coach Adam Pulford answers a listener question about the relationship between FTP and VO2 max training, particularly how and why targeting training to improve either will typically raise both.

TOPICS COVERED

• Think of training intensities as a continuum, not as neat little boxes
• Descriptions of primary energy systems
• How FTP and VO2 max are directly related
• How to organize training to maximize both FTP and VO2 max

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Chapters

• 0:06 Welcome And Episode Setup
• 1:03 The Listener Question On FTP And VO2
• 2:11 Correlation And The Role Of Training Zones
• 3:00 Continuum Not Boxes: Six-Zone Framework
• 3:42 Push Up vs Pull Up VO2 Max
• 6:17 Building A Stable Aerobic Ceiling Over Time
• 6:46 Energy Systems 101: ATP-PC To Aerobic
• 11:14 VO2 Max Power, FTP, And Durations
• 12:52 The Aerobic Crossover And Practical Takeaways
• 14:06 Simple Programming: Zones Two And Five
• 15:21 Strength Training For Durability And Power
• 16:15 Final Summary And Calls To Action

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

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. Everybody loves talking about it and improving it. So we're going to take a few episodes to answer some of your questions that have been pouring in over the past few months. And I'll start by clearing up some confusion about the differences and similarities between FTP and VO2 Max training. Let's listen to the original question and we'll dive into some answers. Here is that original question. Just a comment and a few questions on your recent series with Tim Cusick. Both you and him imply that training at FTP improves FTP, and training at VO2 Max improves VO2max. And you talk about these training blocks that do just that. But that's not true, is it? I've heard you say many times that all training improves all systems all the time. Surely a block of VO2 Max training would improve FTP and vice versa. Just an underlying assumption I thought I heard through this series. Thanks for the great podcast. I've learned much since I've discovered you a couple of years ago. First, thank you, John. And thanks for your questions. Thanks for listening over the years. Super appreciate it. And glad you're tuning in on a regular basis and you're learning from what we're putting out there. Second, yes, this is true. FTP training improves both FTP and VO2 Max. And VO2 Max training improves both VO2 Max and FTP. This is because FTP and VO2max are directly correlated. And yes, I have said and will continue to say that all intensities are important and influence all energy systems or all aspects of your riding. But certain zones can influence areas of your physiology more than others. And this is why it's important to have a plan, be organized about your training, especially if you want a specific result at the right time. So let's dive into this a little bit further, but I will keep it short and to the point. Okay, my first piece of advice on this is you need to think about training intensities as a continuum, not as little boxes of training zones. Okay. Now, many systems have multiple training zones, and uh both both myself and CTS colleagues that I work with use a six-zone system to describe the intensity that we want the athlete to do, or use those zones to show what the athlete has done during a ride. Any training will definitely influence your physiology, but targeted training can influence areas more than others. Targeted high volume, low intensity versus low volume, high intensity training is really what I'm referring to here. And that's going to be the theme of what I talk about on this episode, since we're talking primarily about VO2 Max and some FTP. Now, it's your question in particular, Stefano, you can influence your VO2 Max with lower intensity aerobic training or higher intensity aerobic training that has a higher amount of anaerobic contribution to it. I call this pushing up or pulling up your VO2 Max. So pushing up versus pulling up is probably how we should think about this. Pushing up is those longer, lower intensity, call it zone two rides, where we're increasing aerobic capacity, increasing CTL, and pushing up the aerobic ceiling of the house, right? Because the training load is filling up the room of that house that Tim Cusick was talking about with his uh analogy or metaphor. And you're building that aerobic potential. And so your VO2 max is also increasing with that. Conversely, or additionally, pulling up I refer to as the shorter, high and higher intensity, let's call that zone five. Okay, that's that VO2 max training zone. And we use that to pull up the ceiling for a short period of time or to round out the physiology of the athlete. Okay, so we're using both low intensity, high volume, and high intensity to influence your VO2 max. Now, ideally, we use a mixture of these throughout the season to fully develop an athlete to ensure that the VO2 max is big but also stable. Because with Tim, I talked about uh if you just do a little bit of training or a couple months of training of uh lower zone two type stuff, and then you just hit the gas uh with VO2 Max right away, you'll pull it up, okay? But there's likely still quite a bit of room to grow from the uh the high volume standpoint or aerobic capacity development. Probably increasing CTL would probably be the best way to indicate that. Okay. So you can play it over the long run, and for a time crunched athlete, that is what you need to do in using uh both low intensity and high intensity, and and uh have that goal of improving or maximizing the VO2 max over a longer time period, six months, 12 months, maybe two years, if you're severely time crunched, as opposed to putting in a couple months of 20-hour weeks, which we let's face it, all of us listening and talking on the episode uh don't have time to do that. So coming back to my point is when when you put intensity on a good base of volume, that's gonna make it more stable, meaning if you take some time away, it's not gonna decay as quickly. Okay. Uh, that's what I mean by being stable. So we do a bunch of training or train to train, as Tim likes to say, over time. And then when once we hit that high intensity, we'll bring out the VO2 max and it's going to stay for longer. That's what I mean by being stable. Now, to understand this better, let's have a reminder of what the three primary energy systems are. And I will pull up a visual aid to help explain this a little bit more. So if you are on YouTube, that is where I'll be showing this. And if you're just listening, I'll do my best to describe everything that I am talking about. So now that I pulled it up, what you can see is a very simplistic uh graph here depicting the three primary energy systems. I'll describe what each of these are and how it in in the durations that we use during training. Okay. And I've talked about this before in the podcast, but this is always a good reminder and a good review for everybody because you need to, in order to understand the question or this, in order to understand the answer that I'm giving you, Stefano, you need to understand the basics of physiology, kind of the time course of the energy systems that are being used to fully grasp the FTP and VO2 max uh uh aspects that we're talking about here. Okay, so the first energy system is the ATP PCR system or the adenosine triphosphate phosphocreatine system. Recall that this is a very short duration energy system, meaning like one second, maybe out to 20 seconds. It's really high intensity, so this would be like standing starts, high speed sprints, full ham, right? Bridging up to a uh bridging a gap and just going full tilt. Okay. This rapidly depletes the ATP and it is slow-ish to recharge with the phosphocreatine system. This is the super secret power uh on the bike that you can deploy and um it goes boom, right? But you but if you do that, it'll take some time to recover. The second energy system is the glycolytic energy system. Now, this uses glycogen as the primary fuel source to fuel the effort that you're doing. It starts to kick in around that 20 to 30 second time period. And here on the graph, you can see where the blue and the orange intersect is right around that 20 second mark. And then you're you utilizing glycogen at a very high rate, and we call this anaerobic glycolytic system, okay, up until we hit this aerobic crossover point. Okay, and you can see it on the graph, and it's usually for most riders, it's going to be around 70, 75 seconds. That can be a little bit longer for some sprinters, it can be a little bit shorter for climbers. But overall, what we're depicting here is that the aerobic system starts to really kick in at that point. Okay, and a lot of people, that's where people get confused. They're like, whoa, I'm aerobic when I'm doing a 75-second effort. What's up with that? Yes, you are, but there's still quite a bit of anaerobic glycolytic contribution going on in that way. Okay, so there's carryover here, and go back to my uh recommendation of think of this as a continuum. It's not just ones and zeros. We have in your and still by this aerobic crossover point, there's still a little bit of ATP stuff going on. And as long as you're alive, there's always ATP stuff going on. Keep that in mind. Okay, so we have this gray area, right? Anaerobic glyc glycolytic interactions are happening with aerobic glycolytic interactions. And then once we move further down in time, where time is on the x-axis and the relative contribution of energy production is on the y-axis, we get more aerobic over time. So that oxidative aerobic system is really exclusively happening, you know, after this like really 30-minute mark. Um, there, but there's still some anaerobics going on in that. And this is a very simplistic chart. It's not perfect, it's a model. So keep that in mind as we're going here. Okay. And and like I already said, this this green, the green line or the third energy system is the oxidative or aerobic system, and that fuels the majority of really everything we do, you know, zone two, zone three rides, and even when we're doing some uh intervals uh amidst a 90-minute ride, we're still primarily using the oxidative aerobic system. So that is why the majority of our training should be done aerobically. Okay. Now, VO2 max power, which is often called maximal aerobic power, happens somewhere between five and eight minutes. I like to use a six-minute power. Uh, that's where Dr. Steven Seiler and a lot of research um start uh uh quantifies and defines MAP to be. And that's in this chart, it's right around here. But again, this isn't a perfect chart by any means, but that's around that uh five to six minute mark. Okay. Off the chart would be FTP, which would be 30, let's just call it 30 to 60 minutes, okay? And you need to think about the the VO2 effort that you're doing relative to the FTP effort that you're doing in a in a time course. I think that'll really help people understand it. Because if we're talking about maximal aerobic power or VO2 max power, as I like to call it, that five to eight minute power is still heavily aerobic, okay? But it also has a it's also heavily anaerobic, and it it has a lot of fatigue and and and other aspects of pain that's going on, okay? But think of those durations, and that'll help you to uh think of those things both separate and together. You're using the same energy systems to do it, but they're different time courses of efforts that you're doing along with it. So as I said, FTP and VO2 Max are directly related. As one goes up, so does the other. But VO2 Max or maximum aerobic power, because it's a shorter power duration and it's a maximum effort, we have more anaerobic contribution going on in that effort alone. But it's still very aerobic in nature. Okay. Now the main takeaway that that Stefano and anybody looking at this chart should should have is once we hit that aerobic crossover point, everything after that is highly aerobic in nature. Okay. It doesn't mean that it's not hard. VO2 Max training is very hard, but it's drastically aerobic. FTP, over here, it's off the chart right now, but it's highly aerobic, but it's using the same energy system to get there. That's why if you're training FTP, you're also influencing VO2 Max and vice versa. Now, depending on your current fitness level, age, past history, genetics, you'll need more than 75 seconds, right? That or that aerobic crossover point uh to move the needle on on the aerobic system, obviously. But this is a key aspect of how your physiology works. So I wanted to show everybody that uh because a lot of people's minds are blowing when they're like, oh, it just takes 75 seconds of continuous exercise for the aerobic system to really uh kick in. And yes, that is it. Now, my final piece of advice is to be organized and be intentional because that can bring out better results. If you want to build your VO2 Max for the long term, you want more aerobic training in the system. You want to build that base up for a high level of fitness, and we and we do that primarily through zone two, but I use a mixture of all intensities to do that. Okay, more on that here in a second. If you want to bring out your VO2 max quickly, you want to use zone five intensity. And a mixture of these two over time builds and develops both FTP and Vue2 Max nicely, and you need to do both to maximize your aerobic potential. Now, what about zone three? What about zone four? Yeah, I've done a ton of podcasts about that. And even back in December with the the podcast with Tim, we talk about how to use those zones in your training to influence both FTP and Vue2 Max. It's very important. But to keep it really simple in this podcast, we'll talk about that a zone two and zone five to use both high volume, low intensity, and high intensity to get there. All zones are needed to be an all-around rider. And that six-zone system helps you to target aspects of your physiology that you want to build more specifically. Just know that most people find success by doing hard workouts of targeted zone four plus two to three times per week, with endurance rides being the majority of the days of training. Now, strength training, that should be in there too. More on this in the next episode. But it if you have 60 to 75 minutes of time throughout the week, chop that up in two to three sessions. For most people, two sessions gets it done. Okay. 30 to 45 minutes per session. And this is also effective at building and maintaining the muscles used to push the power. It's not to say that strength training will improve your VO2 max directly, but it can influence it positively by developing lean body tissue and the structural aspects needed to produce the power and be durable over time of that effort so you can suffer, push through, and achieve higher VO2 max. Now, as I discussed in my annual training plan episodes, numbers 288 and 289 in particular, you'll want to map out the training phases ahead of time with strength training to ensure that you map it out properly and accordingly with the intensity on the bike in order to build your engine and the structural aspects of your body properly. Now, final word here: FTP and VO2 max are directly correlated, meaning if you're improving one, you're also improving the other. This is because it relies upon the same energy system, which is the oxidative or aerobic energy system. You can do this with higher volume at lower intensity for weeks and weeks or a high volume training camp, or you can use high intensity and low to moderate volume sessions with zone five intervals, for example, a few times per week. You can push up your FTP and VO2 max over time, or you can pull it up rapidly. A good training program uses both to stair step up these metrics over time. And if you are building or maintaining aerobic capacity or aerobic training load, you're building and maintaining your FTP and your VO2 Max. So I hope that makes sense. I hope it hits. Thank you again for writing in today, John. And uh, if there's any other listener questions out there, please head over to trainrate.com backslash podcast, click on ask a training question, fill it out, send it over, and we'll do our best to answer it on a future episode. That's it. That's our show for today. I hope you liked it. If you want more, or if you want to take it to the next level, you know where to find us. Trainwrite.com. 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 trainwrite.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.