Friel - Making fall and winter training program - Page 2

I have done some digging on the Internet, and quite a lot in this forum. I've also read Morris book.

I would like to test the following plan on you with more experience from training.

Use Morris as the base for training, including block training - but I will skip the weight lifting. This means that I will start on my VO2max, using SMSP intervals, and later during winter move to MSP intervals. Long slow rides (3.5 hours +) for endurance will be added once a week when the weather allows it.

Doing this I have 6 months of training, in which I need to set the point where MSP training becomes dominating. Any ideas on how to balance the two phases against each other? From what I read in the forum, 2x20 minutes is the base for most of you, but Morris use SMSP intervals a lot in all his examples. This is btw much in line with the training ideas of Nordic Skiing linked to in this thread.

Secondly, you that have been using Morris, how do you increase your CTL in SMSP phase? As I see it you could add reps, set, maybe extend the time of a rep - I use 4 minutes as reference for first day in a block - or add days to the training block. Is 1.5 h SMSP intervall training during a day more or less the maximum time if wanting to keep intensity up, or what do you think?

Anyone training twice per day with a similar set-up as discribed? How do you distribute the training then?

Finally, what are the risks with a set-up like this? Will I become a 'Christmans rose', meaning I will peak at Christmas time, or? Are there other risks that you are aware of?

What would you expect as an outcome of the suggested approach? - I guess the question is - Will my ability to ride MTB and road races be biased so that I will hard time to handle certain race senarios, track profiles etc, but give me an advantage in up hill sections, for instance?

Thanks for your input

It's pretty popular to trash "Friel's periodization," which of course isn't even his own invention, on this forum. A lot of that is fair criticism founded on new understanding of excercise physiology. And even he agrees that training with power is the wave of the future.

That said, properly following classic periodization is a pretty good way to go. Not the best way, but a good way. After following the low-brow "ride lots" approach for a few years, with group rides and centuries thrown in, I bought Friel's book and followed his advice on designing a training schedule to the letter, minus his weight training. That season I made a huge improvement, even winning races and cool stuff like that. And it cost me nothing.

When I save up enough pennies I plan on buying a power meter and using the Cycling Peaks program for my training. I expect to see further improvements.

One note: While Friel does advocate easier rides in the off-season, they're not necessarily that different from the 2x20 L4 workouts advocated in this thread. For me, the "E2" endurance rides he fills the off-season with are actually fairly tough. Though I do use training zones defined as percentages of my lactate threshhold instead of my maxHR which might skew the zones higher.

Anyway, I'm not disputing anything posted here, just suggesting we pay homage to the past experts before moving on to the newer methods.

I think Friel is even backing away from this approach. If I recall properly, he sent out a newsletter last year basically telling everybody to subsitute zone 3 for the normal winter base. I'm inclined to think that it should actually be zone 4 stuff.

By the way, there is a also good, albeit esoteric, book by Michael Ross that follows a similar approach to Morris.

Friel's book isn't that old and reading it critically suggests he was never an expert. There are some good general tips though, I guess, and I'm glad it worked for you.

New to many cyclists, perhaps, but not to scientists or even coaches and athletes in other endurance sports (e.g., running).

I'm bumping my question. I made significant progress using Friel's book, and like his straight forward way of building a plan. For a beginner to structure his training, I would even recommend Friel.

Inspired of Friel, find your weak spot - and make it your strength, I don't see that Friel has a good approach for what I want to improve, i.e. FTP. Look what Nordic Skiing guys are doing, for instance. They are going from about 1000 hours per year with much of the training in the range of 95-105 % of LT heart-rate and maybe lower intensity, to 4 minutes intervals as base, and 600 hours per year in training. What I've suggested is not strange by any means.

So any thoughts on my training approach?

It's really difficult to say without knowing your specific event lengths and when you want to be in form. With that caveat, a couple of general comments...

Focusing almost exclusively on VO2max intervals may not be specific to the demands of you event... if you want to progress at FTP I would recommend doing a lot of time at ~80-100%FTP. Andy C has said some really sensible sounding things before about the wisdom of improving metabolic fitness through FTP work before you tackle VO2. I don't think this is the only approach, but I do think it tends to be logical for most people.

The Dave Morris approach is just one approach. I would present it as a 'working hypothesis' on how to train, rather than a scientific approach. Not to say it is completely out of step with science, but it is only one approach and there are certainly drawbacks as well as positives.

By "past experts" I was really thinking of Tudor Bompa. But anyway...

While I would love to use a power meter and Cycling Peaks for my training, that would cost more than my entire bike did, so that'll not be happening any time soon. So, I will most likely continue to follow some form of periodization, though not following Friel so exactly. I'd love to hear what youse think of this idea:

- In the off-season, pretty much discard most, if not all, of the "E1" and "E2" endurance workouts Friel recommends. Ignore his advice on miles during this period too. And don't bother with the weights, ever. Instead, just do one or two 2x20-minute intervals workouts each week. (Realistically, I'd probably also do occasional group rides, and some very easy E1 rides because I like to bike-commute and to keep my weight down, but not consider them part of my training.)

- As my 2008 racing season approaches, about 9 weeks prior to my first priority race, start to follow Friel's advice more closely. That would mostly mean adding in shorter, higher-intensity intervals workouts, and maybe continue with one 2x20 each week.

- During the regular season, just pretty much follow Friel's plan. Minus the weights still.

Anyway, this is just a rough idea, and I'm offering it up with the hope that we who don't train with a PM can also benefit from this forum. (There is a separate forum here, specifically for training with power, after all. So I think we need to leave some room for non-PM training threads.)

Ok, now we're getting somewhere. I'm a mtb and road racer, with a start of season in late April. As you can see in my first post, I have no problems going the distance, it's the speed that kills me. Typically I do marathon distance on MTB, say 3-4 hours of racing, and road races that are approximately equally long. I also have on race during June that is 300 km, that I would like to run faster than 9 hours in total, including stops.

Between my posts, I read on a web page, that you don't have much gains in going 6 weeks + with VO2max training, since you pretty much hit the roof after that. I can't judge if it's true, but maybe it make sense that you get close to your maximum potential, in terms of VO2max, after a certain time, and then should start to focus on the typical 2x20 minutes intervals.

Have you read up on 'SST' style training on the forum? Basically, this is an approach that targets intensities from the upper end of endurance to the lower end of threshold work. Relatively hard, sustained aerobic efforts. These are highly specific for the type of races you want to do. Although MTB involves some shorter, harder efforts, recovery and repeatability for these efforts is all about your threshold and that will ultimately decide if you come first or last. Studies of elite MTB riders show they have the physiological characteristics of road hill climbers - extremely high threshold and relatively low body mass.

As you want to do longer races, your endurance will come into play, which necessitates building up a solid foundation of aerobic work (like a base... except don't get it by riding slowly). I would suggest doing longer threshold intervals and lots of tempo/SST. Gradually build up your volume and the amount of time you spend doing these efforts. Once you are near your peak (6-10 weeks out), add in some VO2 work but don't cut out threshold stuff completely.

I think the reverse periodisation approach VO2max approach is sub-optimal for many people because you get the 'low hanging fruit' VO2 improvement just by doing threshold work and then when you go to specific VO2 work if you have done threshold first you should have the ability to do a good volume of work and you should get to the maximum possible level. Plus, you can train more at or below threshold... the ratio of training stress to positive physiological adaptation is lower. That's why I tend to think it's best to max out threshold before going to VO2, especially in events like yours where threshold is probably the most important determinant of success.

I don't think any of these concepts strictly require power to implement, although there are advantages to having it.




This sounds not entirely dissimilar to what I would advocate. A good basic approach. Sorry if the PM stuff is leaving you cold. I think you can still usefully implement a lot of the ideas from power training without a PM. If you need specific ideas or concepts explained more b/c you haven't seen the PM stuff just let me know and I will tyr my best.

Thanks Roadie Scum! The advice from you and the others has, in fact, been very helpful. I especially appreciate the links that bailsibub provided, with the reverse periodization. That sounds like very useful info I can use as I progress beyond Friel. Will definitely modify my training, for the 2008 season, based on this thread and other stuff I've absorbed.

Slightly off-topic here, but how did "2x20" get established as the holy grail for FTP training? Would a single focused 1x20 produce about the same gains? Over the winter I ride stationary trainers at the Y, and one solid 20 min FTP interval seems like about all I need. If there's a good reason to do two instead, I'll give it a try this winter.

I dunno about holy grail status, there are plenty of interval variations that would be just as effective. I think 2x20 with a 10 min warm up, 5 min recovery between efforts and a 5 min warm down gives a nice round 1hr workout for time poor riders that's easy to remember and attainable in training where motivation is not at race day levels.

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personally, i find 2 x 20 immensely boring and would rather do

1 x 90 - 120 @ zone 3 (with steady and intervals thrown)

or 8 x 5 @ zone 5 in the morning and an hours steady ride in the evening.

right that's it folks i'm off.

everyone sing: "we're all going on a summer holiday..."

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So I have Virtual Coach by training peaks which pretty much automates the scheduling and excercises/drills that you need to do once you put in your race schedule an answered a few questions outlining your strengths and weaknesses. This follows the Friel method of training.

While I do agree with the base/build process, I feel it's a bit mild, maybe even outdated so I was wondering what other people did that may be different in terms of drills, intensity or even actual excercises.

Instead of gym work for example I'm curious to substitute with excercises from the Cyclo-core program which seem to be more cycling specific.

Thoughts?