annual training hours



acoggan said:
However, if you buy into the idea that our ability to recover/benefit from training diminishes as we get older, you shouldn't necessarily extrapolate your own observation that ~400 h/y is "optimal" to somebody who, say, is in their early- or mid-20s and is trying to get to the very top of their sport. (Kirk shouldn't do so either...although he does.)
I wouldn't say that 400 h/y is 'optimal', but what I did say is that more than that isn't 'neccessary', at least for me, and I'm guessing for most people, as I certainly wouldn't describe myself as a fast responder.

As far as someone in there mid-20's trying to get to the top of the sport, I wouldn't say 400 h/y is optimal either--but what I would say is that, based on your own power level training chart, the most effective training zones are L3-5, and you can only spend a certain amount of time at these levels and improve. How much time, exactly, is probably individual to a small extent, and can be evalutated w/a power meter while training. But, if you add up the high end of what you can do at each of these levels and add it up, I just don't see a training plan that results in 1000 hrs, unless you're doing long buckets at L1/L2--and I haven't seen any evidence that, outside of the *posibility* of fiber type conversion, L2 rides of over 2 hrs. have any benefit.
 
RipVanCommittee said:
and I haven't seen any evidence that, outside of the *posibility* of fiber type conversion, L2 rides of over 2 hrs. have any benefit.

Weight management. Nothing, whatsoever to do with the "fat burning zone" but simply that if you have lots of time available you can expend more energy this way compared to e.g., intervals.

Additionally, some cycling events require you to have trained for long periods of time, e.g., prior to riding a Grand Tour you might want to do more than 2 hours in anyone session, simply to get used to being stuck on a bike for 6 or 7 hours a day and toughening up your behind.

Also, the more training you do, the more you can do. Which means being able to handle more intensity and more volume.

There's also enjoyment and e.g., prevention of burnout. Social rides, or easy long rides maybe more fun and help maintain peoples interest in the sport

I'm not necessarily suggesting this is what i (solely) prescribe - just offering up some examples.

Ric
 
kmavm said:
Interesting. I'm in nearly exactly the same boat as you: limited genetic gifts; recovering from wasting three years thanks to Friel; and I've recently (lasts 9 months or so) discovered the extreme power of intensity. However, I have stopped making progress in the last two months or so. Maybe a volume cut is in order; when I think about riding six or seven hours a week, it makes me so ANXIOUS that my adherence to my 12+hour/wk schedule must be somewhat belief-based.

From a TSS perspective, this makes a certain amount of sense, too. I've gone from 500-700 TSS/wk to 800-1000TSS/wk, and seen no gain. Logic suggests I should go back to my lower volume, where I was making progress, but it's hard emotionally to do that, since volume itself feels like "progress." Ahh, the perils of neurosis and self-coaching...

In such a case a relatively extreme temporary change can sometimes cause your body to decide to make new adaptions instead of just maintaining its current ability, responding to a relatively consistent pattern of stimuli.

Examples might be doing 3+ days back to back of very hard training followed by several days rest, then repeat, then cruise along for about 7 days to see if your body adapts and prepares itself for another one of those extreme loads.

Or, 3-4 days in a row of 3+ hour rides, then some rest, then repeat. Or, a week+ of riding with the same types of intervals you have been using but at a much smaller volume.

You might also try doing some intervals in a different format to cause some new adpations. For example, instead of doing only 4' intervals at VO2max power you might try aiming at VO2max with 40" on/20" off at power greater than your current power at VO2max. Or instead of doing threshold intervals always on the flat, or rolling, try doing them for 4-6' on uphills, and with a 30" sprint at the end of each.

Or maybe a one-time consult with a good coach could give you some additional insight.
 
SolarEnergy said:
But long term planning, or macrostructure like some call it, involves taking a decision about number of training hours, right at the begining of the year.

On what basis should this decision be taken?
acoggan said:
you shouldn't necessarily extrapolate your own observation that ~400 h/y is "optimal" to somebody who, say, is in their early- or mid-20s and is trying to get to the very top of their sport. (Kirk shouldn't do so either...although he does.)
Age is certainly an important variable here.

Bompa's (controversial) quote, probably makes an (implicit) assumption that the athletes are late teen, early 20s. That assumption should have been explicit instead.

Thanks
 
RipVanCommittee said:
How much time, exactly, is probably individual to a small extent, and can be evalutated w/a power meter while training. But, if you add up the high end of what you can do at each of these levels and add it up, I just don't see a training plan that results in 1000 hrs, unless you're doing long buckets at L1/L2

Pros doing races of 4-5+ hours need time in the saddle and the volume of what they can do at L4 or L5 or L3 is two to several times what you or I can do. My coach works with some pros and sometimes I ask him how much of a certain interval I'm doing would they be doing, and it's usually at least double, and I'm doing about 9 hours a week with a relatively high amount of intensity (I'm focused on points races and criteriums). Where I might do 3 x20' at something around low L4 they'll do 3 x 40-60' at that intensity as part of a 4-5 hour ride. Or if I'm doing 9 uphill sprints they're doing 15 to 20. That's why they're pros.
 
ric_stern/RST said:
Weight management. Nothing, whatsoever to do with the "fat burning zone" but simply that if you have lots of time available you can expend more energy this way compared to e.g., intervals.

Additionally, some cycling events require you to have trained for long periods of time, e.g., prior to riding a Grand Tour you might want to do more than 2 hours in anyone session, simply to get used to being stuck on a bike for 6 or 7 hours a day and toughening up your behind.

Also, the more training you do, the more you can do. Which means being able to handle more intensity and more volume.

There's also enjoyment and e.g., prevention of burnout. Social rides, or easy long rides maybe more fun and help maintain peoples interest in the sport

I'm not necessarily suggesting this is what i (solely) prescribe - just offering up some examples.

Ric
I'd agree with you on the weight management and saddle issue, and, of course, the fun aspect...but I'd also point out that this added volume can come with an associated cost--increased fatigue. And particularly for weight management, diet is probably a more cost-free alternative strategy.

As far as 'doing more allowing you to do more', I have to question this one a little. I'm not sure what physiological changes occur doing longer blocks of L2 that will allow you to do more L3-6?? (I'm not being a smartass, really, I'm honestly wondering?).
 
RipVanCommittee said:
I'd agree with you on the weight management and saddle issue, and, of course, the fun aspect...but I'd also point out that this added volume can come with an associated cost--increased fatigue. And particularly for weight management, diet is probably a more cost-free alternative strategy.

As far as 'doing more allowing you to do more', I have to question this one a little. I'm not sure what physiological changes occur doing longer blocks of L2 that will allow you to do more L3-6?? (I'm not being a smartass, really, I'm honestly wondering?).
There are some implied assumptions in several of your posts that are not necessarily true. I regularly ride 12-15 hrs/wk with a minimum of 33% of the total volume at L4 and above. I can push this ratio to at least 50% if I choose to (and would do if my training time were more limited). You appear to be equating higher volume with more hours at low training levels, but it's entirely feasible to ride relatively high volumes with lots of quality minutes. I'm not advocating any particular training regimen, but just suggesting that your assumptions may be biasing your conclusions.
 
RapDaddyo said:
There are some implied assumptions in several of your posts that are not necessarily true. I regularly ride 12-15 hrs/wk with a minimum of 33% of the total volume at L4 and above. I can push this ratio to at least 50% if I choose to (and would do if my training time were more limited). You appear to be equating higher volume with more hours at low training levels, but it's entirely feasible to ride relatively high volumes with lots of quality minutes. I'm not advocating any particular training regimen, but just suggesting that your assumptions may be biasing your conclusions.
Well, my assumptions are based on fact that there's only so much you can do of L4 and above and still improve. While I'm not going to pretend that I know how much is too much, I'm guessing that over 20 minutes of L6,120 minutes of L4 and 80 minutes of L5, all in one week, would be pretty close to the point at which *most* people, pro or not, will not see much improvement, and more likely will see degradation in performance. When I add that up, I get a lot less than 15 hrs. a week.
 
RipVanCommittee said:
I'd say that if you're riding 12 hours a week, take a look (if you're using some training software that allows this), and see how much you're actually 'training'?? Looking at AC's chart of the adaptations that occur at different training levels, nothing really happens in L1... I really think that reducing that, and L2 to some extent, ends up being key, as the endurance part is much easier to train than speed.
I'm using cyclingpeaks, and no, those numbers aren't coming from toodling around town. Over 35% of the last month has been L4 and above, looking at my power distribution chart, and of the remainder, about 30% is L3. I've basically always thought of myself as limited by time to train, so I try to make every minute out there count. But now I'm realizing that, actually, I'm doing quite a bit of volume. Hmm.

My goal is to improve threshold power, and that hasn't really been happening for about two months in spite of lots of high L3 and low L4 work, and no small amount of L5 work either. Since I can't really train any more, and I've got to try something, maybe training less is a viable option?
 
kmavm said:
I'm using cyclingpeaks, and no, those numbers aren't coming from toodling around town. Over 35% of the last month has been L4 and above, looking at my power distribution chart, and of the remainder, about 30% is L3. I've basically always thought of myself as limited by time to train, so I try to make every minute out there count. But now I'm realizing that, actually, I'm doing quite a bit of volume. Hmm.

My goal is to improve threshold power, and that hasn't really been happening for about two months in spite of lots of high L3 and low L4 work, and no small amount of L5 work either. Since I can't really train any more, and I've got to try something, maybe training less is a viable option?
How long have you been training this way? Simply ratcheting up to more mid-high l4 work may do the trick (although that may result in a decrease in volume).
 
WarrenG said:
...Or maybe a one-time consult with a good coach could give you some additional insight.
Thanks for the ideas. I've definitely tried some of this stuff; right now, I'm on my first rest day after a hard block of three days, so I might be feeling a little more mentally fried than usual. I plan to "get the cobwebs out" with some short, hard efforts tomorrow and do a lighter week next week. Maybe I'll see some improvements.

I'm in your neck of the woods, WarrenG. I live in Sunnyvale. Can you recommend any decent coaches I might be able to do a one-time consultation with? I'll warn you that I'm one of the mindless Andy-worshipping slaves to pubmed that haunt your dreams :p, so if the coach can at least persuade me that they did well in science class, the consult will have a better placebo effect.
 
whoawhoa said:
How long have you been training this way? Simply ratcheting up to more mid-high l4 work may do the trick (although that may result in a decrease in volume).
I just got on the power bandwagon in late December, so it's hard to quantify my training prior to that. Basically, from November to December I was ill-advisedly trying to hold onto a very fragile "peak"; I spent a lot of December doing L5 and L6 work, and was fried to bits in early January. I took a very easy week in early Jan, and have been doing higher and higher volumes of "sweet spot" until March or so. Starting in March, since I was seeing diminishing returns, I've been upping intensity: pushing the "2x20" type workouts nearer to FT, and adding in 1/wk L5 stuff (I can usually only handle about 5x3mins, 4x4mins, or 4x5mins if I'm on a good day).

Judging from 20 minute test efforts (not the gold standard for FT, I know, but representative for the events that concern me), this has gained me a whole lot of nothing in '06. I think a major confounding factor for me has been diet. I got really into restricting calories over the last year, and I may need to loosen up on that front.
 
kmavm said:
Thanks for the ideas. I've definitely tried some of this stuff; right now, I'm on my first rest day after a hard block of three days, so I might be feeling a little more mentally fried than usual. I plan to "get the cobwebs out" with some short, hard efforts tomorrow and do a lighter week next week. Maybe I'll see some improvements.

I'm in your neck of the woods, WarrenG. I live in Sunnyvale. Can you recommend any decent coaches I might be able to do a one-time consultation with? I'll warn you that I'm one of the mindless Andy-worshipping slaves to pubmed that haunt your dreams :p, so if the coach can at least persuade me that they did well in science class, the consult will have a better placebo effect.

You actually made me laugh out loud. That was funny.

I think this is definitely more of a coaching issue than a science issue.

There are definitely some inexperienced coaches out there and you don't want to be their latest learning experience, if you know what I mean.

Sunnyvale? Do you know about Dan Smith? I know he coaches people in Alto Velo and they're doing well and like him. I think he's nearby and strikes me as someone who might do a consult. $75-$100 for an hour or so may be worth it to you and he might just end up with a new athlete to coach.

If you can travel to Sacramento during the day I think you can do something similar with Max Testa at UC Davis. Understand that if you get an appointment with him for one hour's worth of money you can expect to spend more like 90-120 minutes because he likes to help and he's Italian, and Italians are talkers. Bring a pen and paper to take notes.

I also know Bruce Hendler with Athleticamps.com. He's got some education in ex phys via UC Davis Sports Peformance program, lots of racing experience, and consults with Max about stuff all the time so if you just want to talk by phone then Bruce would be good. This may be more convenient for you.

Whoever you go to, just make sure you do it as a conversation in person or on the phone because email isn't good for this kind of topic.

From what you said about holding onto a fragile peak in December, then just one week off, then ratcheting up from there... Without knowing what you did last summer and fall it sounds like you just need a few weeks to recharge. I know it's tough to think about rest in March but it sounds like, at the rate you're going you're going to need that rest now, or in May, your choice.

In October, two buddies of mine and I that ride basically every week of the year spend about 3-4 weeks just riding easy, about 3-4 times a week, what my coach calls "unstructured training". Maybe a few short low L4 efforts on hills you come across, and some L3 once in awhile but mostly L1 and L2 to maintain your pedaling motion/fluidity and so you don't lose too much of those nice enzymes, etc. that come along with training. A few little 10" sprints in 39x13 might be nice too. These keep me from feeling too slow and lazy, and sprinters have to sprint to maintain what sanity they may have. After 3-4 weeks like this I start doing formal training but the mid to upper L4 stuff is pretty much gone for another month, so, quite different from your "offseason".

But hey, hearing that you may need to take three weeks off from formal training, and from me at that, probably won't sit too well, so a more experienced professional's advice might be more helpful. :)


FWIW, the reason I finally sought coaching in 4/03 is because I kept hitting a plateau each April/May and I could not figure out how to get beyond them. I did a one-hour consult with Max and that was the beginning of the end of my plateaus.
 
Just wanted to thank both Warren and RVC for going above and beyond the call in helping me on this thread. I hadn't really consciously put together until today just how little return on my training investment I'm realizing. We're definitely straying into the realm of "coaching" rather than "training", so I'll take my whining into private messages for now...
 
RipVanCommittee said:
As far as 'doing more allowing you to do more', I have to question this one a little. I'm not sure what physiological changes occur doing longer blocks of L2 that will allow you to do more L3-6?? (I'm not being a smartass, really, I'm honestly wondering?).

L2 is a way to increase mitochondrial density, improve fat-burning mechanisms, and the more you do of this the more training you could do at L2 because it will result in less accumulated fatigue. Improving the density of the mitochondria helps oxygen, waste products and other nasties get where you want them to go more faster/effectively.

It's been said over and over that having a well-developed aerobic system helps your anaerobic efforts too. I improved my own aerobic system and among the benefits is that this allows me to do more sprint efforts-faster recovery between efforts, and recover better from day to day. Where I used to do about 5-6 hard days in about 12 days I can now do 3 in a row each week, and then a race on one day of the weekend, or two hard days in a row with races on each day of the weekend.
 
WarrenG said:
L2 is a way to increase mitochondrial density, improve fat-burning mechanisms, and the more you do of this the more training you could do at L2 because it will result in less accumulated fatigue. Improving the density of the mitochondria helps oxygen, waste products and other nasties get where you want them to go more faster/effectively.

It's been said over and over that having a well-developed aerobic system helps your anaerobic efforts too. I improved my own aerobic system and among the benefits is that this allows me to do more sprint efforts-faster recovery between efforts, and recover better from day to day. Where I used to do about 5-6 hard days in about 12 days I can now do 3 in a row each week, and then a race on one day of the weekend, or two hard days in a row with races on each day of the weekend.
Hi warren.
I have been doing a lot of L2 work especially because I came back from the couch. I have started a couple of threads realted to a plateau and hae been struggling for the past 2 months to get faster. After talking to a lot of people the suggestions were to cut down some L2 time and put in some additional L4,5 efforts. The question is how do I really determine how much of L2 work is productive and how much is too much? My goal is to be race ready for Cat5 by next year. The peak I am targetting is for a 65 mile race in April 2007.
Thanks in advance.
 
netscriber said:
Hi warren.
I have been doing a lot of L2 work especially because I came back from the couch. I have started a couple of threads realted to a plateau and hae been struggling for the past 2 months to get faster. After talking to a lot of people the suggestions were to cut down some L2 time and put in some additional L4,5 efforts. The question is how do I really determine how much of L2 work is productive and how much is too much? My goal is to be race ready for Cat5 by next year. The peak I am targetting is for a 65 mile race in April 2007.
Thanks in advance.

First, I would suggest you race this year several times, just to learn a lot more about what areas you need to work on most. Even if you get dropped after 1/3 of the race you'll learn a lot.

I'm not sure how you're measuring progress or what "not getting faster" means exactly. There are many worthwhile goals or measures for you to be thinking about for this year and speed isn't the only one.

I do what you'd call L3 efforts pretty much 11 months a year. During my one month off season (October) I just do easy riding. L3 does a lot of the same things for you that L2 does, and some things better. If you spend all your time just doing L2 you'll get better at L2, but you could be improving 3-5+ different aspects of your fitness instead of just one.

After a month (November) that includes SFR, L3, L2, I will start doing some efforts (in December) that would be what you'd call low L4. I really don't plan in much L2 after December. Maybe one 3 hour easy ride with some sprints in the ride, every 10 days or so, but most of my L2 comes during warmups and cool downs and between blocks of intervals. Also on some active recovery ride days. Since you're coming from the couch you'd probably want to keep about two L2 rides each week until April or so. There are some good things that happen once you're able to do 3 hour rides at L2 with a few hill efforts at L3 to low L4, and maybe 2-3 little 10" sprints in a smallish gear like 53x17.

So... by April or so (or whenever your 5th month of the season is) you'd want to be doing one session with some L5 that's not so hard that you couldn't do more if you had to, a session or two that includes some 10-15' efforts in the low L4 to hi L4, and then try to fit in L3 several times a week, often as part of your warmup for the harder stuff. If you can get out for a 2 hour mostly L2/L3 ride during the week and a 3 hour L2/L3 ride on the weekend that's good for you too.

I like to have the workload in progression almost every week. So maybe you do the L3 as 3x10' one week and the next week it's 3x12', then 3x14', or 4x10'. Just try to add to the total time for the easier intervals like L2, L3, and low L4 almost every week until you're doing something like 45-60' of L3/low L4 in a session. do some on hills if you can. For the harder intervals you might add minutes every few weeks or so but you'll be looking to improve how fast (increase watts?) every 2-3 weeks or so.

For the L5 you might start with something like 2 x 3', just to get a feel for the intensity, then next week try 3x3'. Work up to about 3 x 5' and after that you just try to ride faster during those intervals. Once every 7-10 days is enough L5 for you. Maybe you could do your L5 as 30"/30" on/off every other time, alternating with the other format.

At your stage of progress you don't want to ride until you're very tired/exhausted more than once a week or so, and that should probably be a fun ride like a group ride, or when trying to reach a certain goal like 50 miles in 3 hours or riding all the way to some town and back, etc.. Maybe even less often than once a week or so. You just want to see steady progress and feeling real good once or twice each week or so. It shouldn't feel like a grind. You don't need that much effort just yet. Once you have a more solid foundation (late this year?) you can beat yourself up pretty good and still be ready for more 3 days later.

You want to see progress in at least two areas every week or two. If not, and you're tired, take some rest. If you're not tired and there's little to no progress, look to add something new to your interval efforts or modify what you're already doing.

It's supposed to be fun.
 

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