Why Shorter Rest Periods Lead to Bigger Gains (#300)

Most cyclists think they need more volume or more power to improve. Coach Adam Pulford explains why that’s not always the case and how training density (doing the same work with less recovery) is one of the most effective ways to build durability, increase repeatability, and break through performance plateaus.

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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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Resources:

• What Training Density Is and Why It Matters for Time-Crunched Cyclists 
• Durability and repeatability of professional cyclists during a Grand Tour
• Fatigue Resistance or Durability in Cycling: Tests & Training Tips — High North Performance 

Transcript

Faster Without More Training Time

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Do you want to increase your performance without increasing your power or volume? I thought that might perk you up. If so, my advice is to do this. Increase your training density. By increasing training density, you'll improve your power for repeatability, durability, and mental toughness all by changing one simple thing, your recovery period. Performance in most races, group rides, and events is more about repeatable power and your ability to suffer rather than one massive effort. Increasing training density helps you improve repeatable power much more effectively and therefore prepare you for the key moments in the ride or race when you need it most. So let's talk about training density, what it is, why you need it, and how to develop it. Training density is the amount of work you accomplish within a given period of time. If you can do more work in a shorter amount of time, you're causing more strain to your system and thus getting more training effect. Assuming you rest and recover, you'll get stronger, faster, and more resilient because of it. One of the most effective ways I measure this work is with a power meter. Specifically, I'm looking at kilojoules per hour or kilojoules in the main set of intervals. Work, or payday, is measured by your power meter and is independent of body weight, VO2 max, FTP, or any other fancy metric. Work is work. The more you pedal, the more work you get done, and therefore increase the density of your training stress in that time. I'll get to some specific examples here soon. Think of training density as the ratio of work to recovery, and you'll see where I'm going with this. It's not just the power you're doing, but how quickly you can recover before you do it again and again and again. Why train like this? Because it's specific to races, group rides, hilly rides, windy rides. Anytime you're on a bike and you need to suffer hard and push through hard sections more than you really want to. In particular, the ability to do periods of high-density work is a performance determinant of any competition on a bike. Here's a quick screenshot of a race from a file, one of my athletes living in Spain, with a lot of fancy data and things going on here, but to make it simple, just focus on the bottom chart with yellow power and this purple line. The purple line shows the rider's dynamic FRC, which stands for functional reserve capacity. By definition, FRC is the amount of continuous work you can do above FTP before you fatigue. I like to tell my athletes that the purple line shows your battery for your anaerobic ability. And when you go hard, it goes down. Then you need to pace easier to have it come back up. Think of this as a super secret power to go fast like in a video game. If you use your secret power, it takes time to recharge before you go fast again. If you have a big full battery of FRC, you have more capacity to do hard anaerobic work over and over before you deplete and run out of juice. This period early in the race is a great example of high density period of anaerobic work, followed by steady riding throughout. Then more high density and intensity at the end of the race. Improving your training density will help you perform better in these moments when the purple line goes down to make the break like this rider did and put on a show when it matters most at the end. It'll make you more durable. Speaking of durability, so hot right now. Durability refers to your general ability to produce normal high power late in the ride when a key moment like a hill climb, attack, or technical sector approaches. In other words, it's your ability to hold up when the time comes to send it late in the game. How are you going to respond? If you've done your homework with training density, you'll be more successful. And if not, you won't, and you'll get dropped. Repeatability is arguably the most important performance determinant in hard races and group rides. It's like when the commentator yells, The elastic has snapped. It's usually after some top guys in the race attack again and again, and finally the group snaps and there's separation amongst the riders. Everyone can go hard once, maybe twice, maybe three times, but four? More? And do you have the guts to go with it? Do you have the physiology for it? You will if you improve your training density. Now let me show you how to increase your training density. It's pretty simple. Reduce the recovery time between your hard intervals. Take a look at this example. If you're doing five by four minute VO2 intervals with quote, full recovery of one to one work to rest ratio, meaning about four minutes recovery time, you'd simply reduce recovery to three minutes or two minutes or gasp, one minute, but keep the power the same. Now, if we isolate for just the main sets of these intervals, you'll see a slight difference. Here in the one-to-one work-to-rest ratio of five by four minute with four minute recovery between, you'll see 436 kilojoules of work done in 40 minutes. In the reduced recovery workout, using the same 5x4 minute VO2 intervals at 106 to 121% of FTP, but with two-minute recovery periods, we have the same 436 kilojoules of work, but done in 30 minutes total time. This is subtle, but it matters. And it's not easy. If anyone has done a main set of 5x4 minute at zone 5, you know this is hard enough to do at a one-to-one work to rest ratio. Decreasing recovery periods causes a lot of fatigue in the first few times that you're doing a workout like this. You may not hit the same power on intervals number three, four, and five that you did on numbers one and two. That's fine. That's part of the process. The goal should be eventually to hold the same power on each interval over time, and this will be a sign of improvement when it comes to repeatability. Mentally, this is very taxing. Kilojoul tracking and time and zone for power are things that you can measure as a sign of progress to make sure that you're hitting the mark. The other most important thing is that you suffer a hell of a lot more with short recoveries versus longer. If you are hurting, this is a sign that you're doing it right. Punch through and you'll get tougher and better because of it. It's more stressful than you probably think. So if you haven't done intervals like this before, I suggest taking an easier endurance day or full rest day after a hard training density session for full recovery before you have done another hard day. Do this in your final build or peak phases of training or about six to eight weeks out from your main event to develop this ability and ensure full recovery from the training block before the event. I do workouts like this once per week for most, twice if you're an advanced rider. Best advice for most: do one training density session per week than a normal work-to-rest ratio interval session to help train both repeatability and good high power production overall. You can apply this strategy for nearly any intensity, but I find it most effective at zone four and above. You can do it at zone three for sure, but I generally find it's better to go longer with no breaks when trying to develop high aerobic power like zone three tempo work. In my experience as a coach, I find training density effective for intervals that have some anaerobic aspect to it, or threshold and above. But with the specific context of repeatable and consistent power with short recovery. Another approach is to do some intervals, maybe like the VO2s I mentioned, but with the one-to-one work-to-rest ratios, you get tired, then you jump in your normal group ride, working on the intermittent, spontaneous power production that happens in a group like that. I wouldn't do this all the time, but when you're focusing on increasing your training density to improve your performance, it's a good time to do it. Intensity is still important. We're still talking about some solid effort needed here. This isn't zone two interval stuff. I'm using this strategy for harder efforts and most often at specific race intensities to prepare riders best for this. In the workout you see here, I'm using 3015s at zone six to drain the anaerobic battery to the bottom of the barrel, having this athlete improve her training density and using the dynamic FRC chart on WKO5 as a guide to make sure we're doing it properly. Training at high power and the ability to repeat it with short recovery periods is the core message here today if you want to improve yourself. And I'll remind you, this isn't asking you to add more time to your training plan. It's a restructuring of your time that I'm giving advice about. Think of any race or group ride where the hills came fast, everyone's attacking, trying to break away, and the efforts were relentless. It happens often if you're towing the line and you're in the mix, right? This is why I argue that main sets of repeatable efforts early in a training ride, late in a training ride, and maybe in the middle too, is more important than intervals spread out over the course of a ride. The workout you see here is hard VO2 work, but with full recovery, about eight to ten minutes in between. You can see the dynamic FRC gets back to 100% before going hard again. Anyone can go hard once when you're fresh. Few want to do it when they're tired. Even fewer develop the ability to produce high power when the fatigue is high. But that is where the magic happens. You can develop this ability if you increase your training density. Start this week by reducing recovery periods on your intervals, but try to keep the power up even on the efforts toward the end. You should do main sets like this in the beginning of rides and later in the rides to work on both high power repeatability when fresh and durability when you're fatigued. If you're doing races or group rides, the group or the terrain will dictate high intensity efforts when you least expect it. And likely you don't want it. Therefore, you need to train for it. It's simple, it's effective, it ain't easy, but it's totally worth it. And anybody can do it, including you. So here's your homework. Take whatever intervals you're doing this week and cut the recovery by just one minute. That's it. One minute less rest. Increase your training density over a few weeks and see how it feels. I know you'll see improvements down the road. If you're not sure how to plug training density into your specific plan, when to do it, how often, and around your actual race schedule, that's exactly what a CTS coach does. We build this stuff around your life, not a generic template. Link below to learn more about coaching.