LSD vs SST/Z4 for a full time cyclist.



MintID

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Sep 22, 2006
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Hi guys. I can’t really decide which way to go with my training.
Some background info: Highest national category, 25years old, 192cm, 76kg. Threshold ~380 watts (405watt 20mp).

After my season ended (late October) I took off 8 days, and started doing something like this

Monday: off
Tuesday: morning: Sprints (90-120 minutes)
Afternoon: 3x20 @92-96% (120 minutes)
Wednesday: 2-3x20 @92-96% (90-180 minutes)
Thursday: Endurance (mid L2) (180-300)
Friday: Off
Saturday: repeat of Tuesday (maybe with a bit more distance) (90-120 minutes)
Sunday: Endurance (mid L2) (180-300)

After reading a bit here, and on the wattage list, I’ve seen that people think a LSD or L2 approach would be more appropriate for someone like me, since I have all the time in the world to train.
The question is if LSD training will be as effective in raising my threshold as my focused SST/Z4 work throughout the winter.
I’ve never tried a pure LSD approach, so I don’t really know what to expect. Maybe a LSD approach with two days of threshold work would be better?
My goal is to raise my threshold as much as possible, I like training and it takes a lot to burn me out (haven’t yet). I think I could even handle focused upper end Z4 throughout the winter if that would be superior.
 
Cheers Mint :)

From the look of your recent schedule it appears you have approx. ~18 hours or so to ride yeah?

The simple fact is this, the more hours you train, the lower the overall intensity has to be. Given the intensities we are speaking of, you are mostly trading intensity for duration (and vice-versa if you trained less hours). The key is to do "enough" of whatever intensity you tend to ride at, in order to promote positive adaptations.

Will 18 hours of lower intensity be better than 10 hours of somewhat higher intensity? Hard to say as
training response is highly individual. I've known some riders who have done copious amounts of LSD along with some HIIT work and
experienced better results with HIIT on an SST base. You could hire a coach to work with you or certainly you could
go forward with your proposed schedule and think of it as an experiment. Successful self-coaching requires a certain sense of adventure :)

Riders on the continent doing races over there obviously put in massive hours on their bikes - more than 18 on average though. So plenty of examples of the success of this approach. Granted their races are far longer than those typically seen in America so preparation reflects that to some degree.

Whatever approach you opt for, stick with it for long enough to see if it is working for you and then you can always change things around as needed.
 
It looks like you are doing mostly a traditional LSD based approach to me, with some threshold intervals midweek. Looks like very close a 80%/20% split between endurance and high intensity training. Interesting to me that you arrived at this on your own, since it is the distribution Stephen Seiler recommended in his review paper that came out a year or so ago. This of course is assuming that your are doing mostly L1/L2 during your warm ups and sprint workouts.
In my view a SST based approach would have a more (and shorter) L3 intensity sessions during the week.
 
I don't think a purely LSD approach will raise your threshold. My understanding is that real LSD -- as in, nothing higher than L2 for weeks on end, followed by a specific plan of raising intensity -- needs to be very regimented, otherwise you will not make the gains you should. I'm not a proponent of LSD at all, but I know people who are so I would say if you do go for that (as opposed to the mixed approach you're doing now) then get a coach and/or find out everything you can about it because I think the risk of wasting your winter is high if you do it "wrong".

That said... can I give you a few other tips? /img/vbsmilies/smilies/wink.gif I'm assuming you want to go as far as you can with this and your numbers are already pretty good but I'm sure you feel you can still improve?

First, lose a few kg and that w/kg will start to look really good. Adding some extra L2 distance and longer rides will help with this, if you can handle more hours on top of what you're doing. Maybe extend one of your SST rides by an hour at L2 to burn some more calories?

What's percentage of your vo2max is your FTP? If it's up around 80% or higher already, you'll want to look at raising your vo2max "roof" as it were as you may not make many gains raising an FTP that's already so high relative to vo2max. Or not... a lot of it is genetics really. You might have reached your highest vo2max already but it pays to do some training/testing and find that out.

Being a full time rider is a great opportunity, I know I mosted wasted mine... not that women's racing was anything to write home about anyway at my age. But you've got a chance to give it a real go, so best of luck with it!
 
Thanks to all of you.

I think I'm going to pass on the pure LSD approach and pretty much keep with the 80/20 that Strader mentioned. I have yet to read about anyone actually succeeding with a pure LSD approach. Maybe the guys doing pure LSD just aren't the type of guys coming online to discuss training.
Right now I'm doing about 3 hours of structured L4 (94-96%) I know I said 92-96, but I usually end up going harder. I have about 3 2x30 sessions each week. I don't have much pure L3, but my LSD is usually mid-high L2. Maybe I should take the L2 intensity to low L2 and include a bit more L3 riding instead?
@Smaryka I've taken your advice and made my tuesday and saturday sessions longer and stopped splitting the session. So now it's about 4 hours, with sprints first, 1 hour endurance, threshold and then endurance back home.

The week I mentioned was the first week of my first block, so later blocks will have more volume. This week for example is about 22 hours, and the next week will probably be about 25. Maybe that's too much too early - I don't know. But I better do the long rides will I still can (weather). It usually gets pretty bad around here in January - Making long rides hard (not impossible) - maybe i should get a Cross bike or MTB.

My Vo2max power is just about 500w (completed 40seconds of the 60 second 500w stage in the vo2 testing). My true vo2max power is probably a bit lower, since I probably plateaued a little lower. I wont have the results from the testing for another months or so.