Off-Season Intensity

I need a little help settling an argument with a friend. My friend claims that you MUST log base miles (i.e. 3-4 hour Zone 1-2 ride) in the off-season to have a successful racing season. If your primary focus for the upcoming season is time trailing, which are no longer than one hour, why would one need to log 4 hours training at a lower heart rate? Wouldn't it make more sense to train at zone three, four, and five for two hours?

there's loads of stuff on this - belief based or evidenced based the choice is yours, or more specifically your mate's? Do a search on "base miles" and decide. Here's a nice gentle thread to get you started. http://www.cyclingforums.com/t439104.html

I just finished a very successful racing season including a 40km TT win, a third place finish in a road race, several top 10 finishes in stage races and a very strong finish in a 206 mile one day road race. My base work last winter was entirely SST which does not include long slow easy gear riding and was based on hour to hour and a half indoor trainer rides at moderately high intensities. It was my best season ever and that includes over a dozen years where I religiously tried to work LSD base training around a full time job with lousy results.

So based on this unscientific sample of one but supported by lots of other folks on these forums with similar results, your friend's assertion that you must ride long rides at lower intensity to have racing success doesn't hold up. Sure if your life allows you to ride those long easy rides daily and recover from them and your events involve long hours in the saddle, IOW you're a full time pro riding grand tours - then build a base of long easy miles. But for most of us working full time jobs there are better ways to develop a strong aerobic base. I'm not saying you should be hammering out minute long make ya puke intervals during your early base build, just that you can get a lot of solid aerobic training without spinning long easy miles.

Search these forums for terms like SST, Sweet Spot, FTP, 2x20, etc. This stuff worked really well for me last winter and I'm back at it again this year.

Good luck,
Dave

There's no "MUST" way of training that applies to EVERY cyclist. If a cyclist is coming from a highly anaerobic sporting background (for me in particular - American football) and possesses a greater percentage of fast-twitch muscle to slow-twitch, then logging LSD miles is HIGHLY beneficial in order to reprogram the mitochondria in the muscles. If the athlete is primarily a slow-twitch guy/gal, then LSD is of MUCH less benefit and this athlete would be better served with workouts designed to increase FTP.

My $0.02 worth...

+1 - There is no one best way for everyone, and it can be quite dependent on where you are at physically to start. We have a lot of people come to our team who may not be in the best physical shape. They probably wouldn't profit too much if we did not have them build a base first - they'd probably get burnt out, discouraged and quit..... On the other hand if you already have years of cycling under your belt your time may be best spent in other ways.

NICE! Thank all of you for the advice and essentially we (my friend and I) are both right.

You're just more right than he is

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except mitochondria are best trained at intensities around VO2max

ric

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I barely enter these forums but I was bored today...Not only mitochondria density is important but also oxidative enzimes and the whole lactate shuttle mechanism where you will increase in Type I and IIa muscle fibers primarely...and it has to be stimulated according to the muscle fiber recruitment pattern....(just a clue).

Aerobic and anaerobic terms are old terms....except for the ATP/PC system, the truly anaerobic system (not sustainable for more than 1-2mins, although it could be less or a bit more) the rest of exercise is done under an Aerobic state and what it changes is the fuel/substrate utilisation and not the "gas" (O2)....(Another clue)

On the other hand...there are so many super "cool" to pronounce names like FTP, SST...etc. But....I am still waiting for any scientific answer/evidence about what is FTP,....what I mean is that FTP for what?...for a 40kmTT, for a crit, for a 2min effort or for a 6h Tour de France stage or for an ironman...There are different metabolic pathways and substrate mixture and utilizations as well as different metabolic adaptations, including endocrinological (hormonal and humoral) to the "supercool term FTP". I agree it could exist something like a "FTP" but in that case...there are soooo many FTP´s...as I mentioned before due to the many different metabolic responses and situations it is not possible to describe an FTP or some kind of "steady state" exercise based on a power that someone can develope for a duration close to 1h...That is why I am asking for some scientific evidence...and by that I don´t mean by a book someone wrote or a coaching article in a cycling magazine or internet site.
If we want to be real scientific and use "scientific cool terms" applied to traininig we need to be able to give and support those with scientific evidence....

http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/.../threshold.asp

One aspect often missed is available duration to train. If a rider has 3-4 hours per day to train, a lower intensity approach may be effective. However, if a ride has only 1 hour per day to train, a L1-L2 intensity will not be effective.

You could make the same argument for lactate threshold, but that doesn't stop the concept from being highly useful when discussing the physiological responses to exercise.

You are right Andy, I agree 100% about the Lactate threshold concept. I have the same discussions on and on with lactate threshold defenders. However I believe that FTP is a good approach to describe a similar phenomenom to MLSS without the need of blood but I believe that it is a tool that many cyclists don´t understand very well and it could be a weapon that many are not using correctely.

As you very well know FTP is based on 1h or 40km TT. However I don´t see many metabolic explanations of why using that concept to prescribe a training program for a cyclist who has to do to do a 180km road race with 5 climbs. I believe that It is not possible to interfere with specifical metabolic adaptations by extrapolating data from a 1h "steady state" effort, the same way that there is no correlation between FTP and performance level beyond a 1h effort or a 40km TT. This correlation is not that I have studied in the lab, but we can see it on the road and real situationms. Cancelara probably has the highest FTP of the world and that does not make him a candidate for the classics (Execept the Unique Characteristics of P-R), neither for small stage races and needless to say of grand Tours. However he will be the best candidate for a 50km TT.


I believe thata FTP is GREAT tool and very good correlation with the effort that it was created for, that is 1h or 40kmTT. However as I mentioned many people don´t understand the concept very well and it is misused constantely by extrapolating the data to an, e.g., 5h road race trainining program.

A TT, cyclecross, criterium, team persuit, 1kilo, Tour de France mountain stages and Classics are different subunits of sports within a same common sport. However the performance and training programs for each of these subunits varies a lot to establish a "standard gold" test to prescribe trainings for all disciplines. That is only my opinion.

BTW, Andy, and changing subjects. I am preparing a paper related to "crossover concept" and came across with the "letters to the editor" from JAP, 1996, when Brooks was questioning your findings and you were arguing about a lower glucose Rd in trained vs untrained during moderate-intensity exercise with your 2 excellent papers you published related to the issue. Just as a comment, unfortunately I did not have the possibility of using tracer methodology but while studying the "crossover concept" in the paper I am writing I saw accidentally the same blood glucose concentrations between elite and non elite individuals as you saw in your study. .

While I agree that there are many who don't understand the FTP concept, I am not sure that here are many who do and use it incorrectly. What would be an example?

You are neglecting the anthropomorphic aspects of cycling. Cancellera has a high absolute FTP, not obviously not the highest relative one. In addtion, I would expect that Cancellera's power profile stongly favors the right. Nevertheless, he is tactically estute enough to pull off the occasional surprise.

First, I am not sure anyone prescribes a single gold-standard test and it is quite possible to establish training zones from a MAP test. However, with the possible exception of pure anaerobic activities, I disagree that cycling training should be all that different for the various events, although many make it so.

LOL! Your comment makes me laugh. I know what I meant when I used the term, and I have an idea the OP knew what I meant when I used it as well. The fact that you are getting hung up on it is quite silly, IMO.

I am a recreational/competitive cyclist - I'm not a scientist. I am not required to support with scientific evidence any term that I use, thank you, nor do I need a scientist's permission to use the term. IMO, there are a great many users of this forum that fully understand the acronym FTP without your additional requirements.

Obviously the term gives you much consternation. It would probably be helpful for you to simply overlook it and its users...