Periodization(Periodisation)

jagrazor said:

sub lactic threshold. Lets go with the maxium intensity Hadd would call tempo which is right below your Lactic threshold by no more than 5-10bpm

so, now we have another definition of tempo! at up to 10 b/min below LT (not that, that is measured in HR), this is the sort of effort you could maintain almost indefinitely -- probably up to 6 hrs

ric

jagrazor said:

The idea of The Hadd Tempo "levels" is for the normal person to step back a little and build into a real tempo, to get the most benefit out of the "real" tempo intensity level.

In other words he is saying doing a tempo ride right now (assuming you haven't done this before (this being his "retooling"😉) it wouldn't be as effective as if you were to build up to it with slightly lower intensity tempo rides first and mastering that level.

just doing lots of low intensity prior to moving up the next scale, doesn't hold true anymore. for e.g., i believe that the AIS has riders go straight into high intensity workouts within a matter of days after a period of rest. additionally, cardiac rehab patients (not that these are athletes) also perform intervals early on in their rehab.

both capillary and mitochondrial density are correlated with hard training efforts - not low intensity riding. capillary density is related to VO2max (and thus pretty hard efforts) and mitochondial density is related to TT type efforts. nonetheless, it's actual cardiac output that is more important, this is demonstrated* by the effect of rH-Epo administration -- more O2 is delivered to local muscle sites with no increase in mitochondria or capillary density and yet performance increases significantly.

*(not that i'm suggesting anyone uses Epo)

ric

jagrazor said:

Isn't it important to get all the neuromuscular developments as well. When you do High Cadence Intervals (Fast Pedal(chris charmicheal)Speed skills(Joe Friel)) your muscles learn how to work together better in the motion that is the circle that you move your legs through. Saying that .. pedal however as long as your power goes up is certainly true, but more efficently is the way to do that. If you can make your power go up by doing simple workouts that hardly stress you at all, wouldn't you want to do that?

Sprinters and distance runners and swimmers all spend time with form, why wouldn't a cyclist?

To expand on what Beerco wrote: when cycling your legs are constrained by the pedals in the saggital plane, and thus, efficiency varies little between untrained sedentary people (~ 18 - 20%) asked to ride a bike and elite cyclists (~ 20 - 25%).

Efficiency is related to the absolute intensity of exercise, and as the intensity of exercise increases so does efficiency. additionally, it is also related to cadence. What may seem paradoxical to some is that a low cadence is *more* efficient than a higher cadence.

Cycling is a gross motor control sport, that is easy to learn and requires little skill. additionally, research has shown that the concept of pedalling in circles is incorrect. Using iEMG analysis and force instrumented pedals, we know that better cyclists (elite) push down more and pull up less, than less good cyclists (regional) who push down less and pull up more.

Pedalling workouts, do not increase your power output, unless they're of a sufficient intensity to stress you, which would ultimately lead to adaptation. however, you've described them as very low intensity, so this is unlikely to happen.

my professional coaching and sports science advice is to ignore rubbish about these types of pedalling skills*, and just to ride the bike, in a manner that truly increases your power output.

*as long as you're between about 80 and 100 revs/min on the flat you're good to go. on hills, you may be at a considerably lower cadence, because even though Carmichael (and LA) touts the high cadence stuff for climbing, they haven't thoroughly thought the consequences through. at least for anyone who isn't able to win the TdF or who doesn't have a triple chainset.

ric

ric_stern/RST said:

To expand on what Beerco wrote: when cycling your legs are constrained by the pedals in the saggital plane, and thus, efficiency varies little between untrained sedentary people (~ 18 - 20%) asked to ride a bike and elite cyclists (~ 20 - 25%).

Efficiency is related to the absolute intensity of exercise, and as the intensity of exercise increases so does efficiency. additionally, it is also related to cadence. What may seem paradoxical to some is that a low cadence is *more* efficient than a higher cadence.

Cycling is a gross motor control sport, that is easy to learn and requires little skill. additionally, research has shown that the concept of pedalling in circles is incorrect. Using iEMG analysis and force instrumented pedals, we know that better cyclists (elite) push down more and pull up less, than less good cyclists (regional) who push down less and pull up more.

Pedalling workouts, do not increase your power output, unless they're of a sufficient intensity to stress you, which would ultimately lead to adaptation. however, you've described them as very low intensity, so this is unlikely to happen.

my professional coaching and sports science advice is to ignore rubbish about these types of pedalling skills*, and just to ride the bike, in a manner that truly increases your power output.

*as long as you're between about 80 and 100 revs/min on the flat you're good to go. on hills, you may be at a considerably lower cadence, because even though Carmichael (and LA) touts the high cadence stuff for climbing, they haven't thoroughly thought the consequences through. at least for anyone who isn't able to win the TdF or who doesn't have a triple chainset.

ric

when you say elite, who is elite (I mean in the test), obviously most of the peleton in the tour de france for instance would be elite, i bet some of the better riders pull up more than the other riders..

and there is some problems with that test. Like if the main muscle used, even if you concentrate on circles, is the quad.. therefor your going to push down more every stroke, therefor every stroke gives the quad a better training effect... Therefore the ratio of power is going to get more and more toward the quad as you continue to train, maybe even to the point that your not actually powering your pedal at all by pulling up, but you are allowing less resistance against your quad as it pushes down.

saying all elite are the same is kind of odd anyway.

the meaning of using high candence is to use your biggest strength, which is your aerobic system. (obviously if it is already hard to pedal slow, then you need to shift down to pedal faster and go the same speed/have the same power output)

you do have a good point though, some people who are very weak, like frail old ladies, might need a triple ring to be able to shift down enough to pedal fast uphill.

jagrazor said:

when you say elite, who is elite (I mean in the test), obviously most of the peleton in the tour de france for instance would be elite, i bet some of the better riders pull up more than the other riders..

and there is some problems with that test. Like if the main muscle used, even if you concentrate on circles, is the quad.. therefor your going to push down more every stroke, therefor every stroke gives the quad a better training effect... Therefore the ratio of power is going to get more and more toward the quad as you continue to train, maybe even to the point that your not actually powering your pedal at all by pulling up, but you are allowing less resistance against your quad as it pushes down.

saying all elite are the same is kind of odd anyway.

the meaning of using high candence is to use your biggest strength, which is your aerobic system. (obviously if it is already hard to pedal slow, then you need to shift down to pedal faster and go the same speed/have the same power output)

you do have a good point though, some people who are very weak, like frail old ladies, might need a triple ring to be able to shift down enough to pedal fast uphill.

isn't it possible to move your knees a little more in or a little more out, to have your body in different positions. In running its very small adjustments your body more or less automatically makes that are the neuromuscular adapatations.

Form before fitness.

jagrazor said:

when you say elite, who is elite (I mean in the test), obviously most of the peleton in the tour de france for instance would be elite, i bet some of the better riders pull up more than the other riders..

and therein, lies the point i was making. it doesn't matter a jot how you pedal as long as you can produce the power required. in other words don't waste your time thinking about how you pedal, as long as it's roughly at a reasonable cadence.

Quoted post said:

you do have a good point though, some people who are very weak, like frail old ladies, might need a triple ring to be able to shift down enough to pedal fast uphill.

ignoring frail old ladies (as i guess not many race bikes), it doesn't matter about being weak or strong, it's about power output. as velocity uphill (or under given conditions) is higher at greater power, then it's obvious that elite riders, such as those who can win the TdF (etc) will produce more power for the duration of the climb than people who are less elite (e.g., 1st cats, 3rd cats etc). as these riders produce less power, their velocity is lower. as many people use the same gearing as pro cyclists (e.g., 53/39 chainrings, and say 11 - 23 cassette) then we're constrained by the same gearing. as velocity determines cadences, and power determines velocity (under given conditions) and because we can't produce the same power, we must be travelling at a lower velocity uphill. therefore our cadence is less. in other words most cyclists can't pedal at the same cadence as Tour riders. nothing to do with being weak

ric

jagrazor said:

isn't it possible to move your knees a little more in or a little more out, to have your body in different positions. In running its very small adjustments your body more or less automatically makes that are the neuromuscular adapatations.

Form before fitness.

in running, you have the ability to have grossly bad movements as your body isn't constrained.

fitness first.

ric

ric_stern/RST said:

in running, you have the ability to have grossly bad movements as your body isn't constrained.

fitness first.

ric

maybe your movents cant be as grossly bad, but they can still be off from perfect.

even good runners do form work. In fact better runners probably do it more than newer runners who dont know what the difference is between anything and something else in running.

I suppose though, since any intensity is form work, especially higher intensities. It doesn't matter (very much) if you dont do specific things for form.

jagrazor said:

maybe your movents cant be as grossly bad, but they can still be off from perfect.

even good runners do form work. In fact better runners probably do it more than newer runners who dont know what the difference is between anything and something else in running.

I suppose though, since any intensity is form work, especially higher intensities. It doesn't matter (very much) if you dont do specific things for form.

i don't think you've understood what i've said. this is essentially what i wrote: that running you can have bad form. in cycling you can't, you're constrained by the pedals. thus, learning to run well is important (as is stroke technique in swimming). cycling technique is a waste of time, as there's not a lot you can do to alter it.

ric

Well...now that we have argued a dead point (no one is changing their minds this evening) I think we should go back to the question at hand. Ric, I appreciate all your advice and trust it, BUT for us mere mortals with only a few dollars to spend on our `hobbies` and `passions`, lets get back to heart rate interval training. I am getting the feeling that aforementioned idea does not exist except in the land of Mary and all her little lambs....

Also, may I add....three cheers for winter training? (okay, I will wait for the pub to warm up a bit for that one...)

cheers,
e

ejglows said:

Well...now that we have argued a dead point (no one is changing their minds this evening) I think we should go back to the question at hand. Ric, I appreciate all your advice and trust it, BUT for us mere mortals with only a few dollars to spend on our `hobbies` and `passions`, lets get back to heart rate interval training. I am getting the feeling that aforementioned idea does not exist except in the land of Mary and all her little lambs....

Also, may I add....three cheers for winter training? (okay, I will wait for the pub to warm up a bit for that one...)

cheers,
e

lol, cheers

ejglows said:

Well...now that we have argued a dead point (no one is changing their minds this evening) I think we should go back to the question at hand. Ric, I appreciate all your advice and trust it, BUT for us mere mortals with only a few dollars to spend on our `hobbies` and `passions`, lets get back to heart rate interval training. cheers,
e

i might be wrong (just got in and not rechecked the thread) but i don't think anyone has asked per se about HR and interval training in this thread. so, sure, if you have a query on this, please ask and myself or Michael will try to respond to it.

ric

bikeshop said:

Thats about as high an authority as I am aware of in cycling training. Guess the worlds top athletes could do a lot better than their current coaches philosophies. www.the-bike-shop.com/training

Dear Bikeshop,

CC may be the highest authority you are aware of in cycle training but is he even close to being the highest authority? Unlike the great Scandinavian Sports Physiologists he is not trained in Physiology and a number of his remarks strongly suggest this. For example he expects any elite cyclist he trains to be capable of 2hrs at 260 Watts. What the physiological or training basis for this is anyone's guess. I can point to some remarkably fine cyclists who would have difficulty with this and some fairly poor ones who are capable of it (they are usually large).

I have seen some pretty lousy coaches working with world class athletes. I suspect that the mark of a good coach is what he does with his weaker clients and I suspect that Armstrong would make a coach of any ability look good. I am much more persuaded by reason and sound scientific data than by authority. CC may be a great authority but from his writing that is not clear. He tends to lack originality and, in my view, perpetuates dogma.

I should mention parenthetically that a 2 beat range in not just a "bear" to maintain. It is impossible. Moreover I would challenge anyone to demonstrate significant physiologically adaptive differences in performance over the extremely small ranges of HRs under discussion. As Ric points out HR has an enormous amount to do with a riders recent training history. In what I have read of Mr. Carmichael's teachings, this is a confounding factor that I have not seen him acknowledge. However that may well be due to my inattentiveness. Given its remarkable malleability, HR presents some insuperable difficulties to narowly defining training ranges. At the very least other factors must be taken into consideration. I sincerely hope that in the not too distant future any cyclist will be able to afford a power meter. This will eliminate a great deal of sterile debate.

Yours,

[email hidden]

[email hidden said:

"]Dear Bikeshop,

I should mention parenthetically that a 2 beat range in not just a "bear" to maintain. It is impossible. Moreover I would challenge anyone to demonstrate significant physiologically adaptive differences in performance over the extremely small ranges of HRs under discussion.

Couldn't you view the 2 beat range as a target for your training session, and not a range that you have to be within?

For example, when I do a workout that prescribes me to train between, lets say, 130-150 bpm, I usually try to stay at 140bpm. Of course, it's hard to stay at 140 all the time, so my pulse varies between maybe 135-145, and sometimes a little bit lower or higher.

This workout might as well be prescribed as "try to stay at a heart rate of 140". For me, and probably most other people, the result of the training session would be exactly the same....

Aaberg said:

Couldn't you view the 2 beat range as a target for your training session, and not a range that you have to be within?

For example, when I do a workout that prescribes me to train between, lets say, 130-150 bpm, I usually try to stay at 140bpm. Of course, it's hard to stay at 140 all the time, so my pulse varies between maybe 135-145, and sometimes a little bit lower or higher.

This workout might as well be prescribed as "try to stay at a heart rate of 140". For me, and probably most other people, the result of the training session would be exactly the same....

I may have misunderstood the original point. What you suggest is of course entirely reasonable. [email hidden] 🙂

ric_stern/RST said:

just doing lots of low intensity prior to moving up the next scale, doesn't hold true anymore. for e.g., i believe that the AIS has riders go straight into high intensity workouts within a matter of days after a period of rest. additionally, cardiac rehab patients (not that these are athletes) also perform intervals early on in their rehab.

I'd be interested to know what you mean by high intensity. One of the AIS guys I know is building up to a massive volume at the moment and I think the only intensity he is doing is reasonable length climbing (10-60 minutes) which is more of a TTpower workout than VO2max. After a month or so he'll do some crit racing then more specific intervals. (From my understanding - we only had a brief discussion).

Quoted post said:

both capillary and mitochondrial density are correlated with hard training efforts - not low intensity riding. capillary density is related to VO2max (and thus pretty hard efforts) and mitochondial density is related to TT type efforts. nonetheless, it's actual cardiac output that is more important, this is demonstrated* by the effect of rH-Epo administration -- more O2 is delivered to local muscle sites with no increase in mitochondria or capillary density and yet performance increases significantly.

*(not that i'm suggesting anyone uses Epo)

ric

I'm not sure that this does demonstrate cardiac output is more important (I may be missing the point). If you need to deliver a greater amount of oxygen via blood to muscle sites in order to reach a greater intensity for aerobic exercise, couldn't you achieve that in a number of ways. Simplistically, you might do it by increasing the pathways for blood to flow through (capillary density), changing the propulsive force behind the flow or the flow characteristics (cardiac output, blood volume changes - endogenous or via plasma boosters etc) or by increasing the density of oxygen in the blood (haematocrit changes, rhEpo, etc)? Just because one of these factors in isolation causes a difference I don't see how that means the others (eg capillary density) are less important. You said yourself capillary density was related to VO2max.

(Not disagreeing that cardiac output is very important - and not that I'm suggesting anyone use rhEpo OR plasma boosters).

ric_stern/RST said:

To expand on what Beerco wrote: when cycling your legs are constrained by the pedals in the saggital plane, and thus, efficiency varies little between untrained sedentary people (~ 18 - 20%) asked to ride a bike and elite cyclists (~ 20 - 25%).

Efficiency is related to the absolute intensity of exercise, and as the intensity of exercise increases so does efficiency. additionally, it is also related to cadence. What may seem paradoxical to some is that a low cadence is *more* efficient than a higher cadence.

Isn't it also closely correlated with slow twitch muscle fibre density? Would this not suggest that manipulations of pedalling technique are have little or no effect on efficiency since it relates to fibre type not technique (unless someones technique really, really sucks)? [so your use of 'thus' is possibly a little misleading because it suggests (to me) that the reason pro's are better than untrained people with respect to efficiency is small increases in quality of pedalling technique, whereas its more likely to be dominant fibre type and density??]

Roadie_scum said:

I'd be interested to know what you mean by high intensity. One of the AIS guys I know is building up to a massive volume at the moment and I think the only intensity he is doing is reasonable length climbing (10-60 minutes) which is more of a TTpower workout than VO2max. After a month or so he'll do some crit racing then more specific intervals. (From my understanding - we only had a brief discussion).

that probably should have read higher intensity (as compared to the lower intensity work generally suggested for "base" type training). Normally, the standard type of base work is say zones 1 and 2. so some TT type training would be higher intensity.

Quoted post said:

I'm not sure that this does demonstrate cardiac output is more important (I may be missing the point).

looking back i'm not too sure it does either! i'm not sure what i meant to say there!

where've you been? did you get my PM?

ric

Roadie_scum said:

Isn't it also closely correlated with slow twitch muscle fibre density? Would this not suggest that manipulations of pedalling technique are have little or no effect on efficiency since it relates to fibre type not technique (unless someones technique really, really sucks)? [so your use of 'thus' is possibly a little misleading because it suggests (to me) that the reason pro's are better than untrained people with respect to efficiency is small increases in quality of pedalling technique, whereas its more likely to be dominant fibre type and density??]

this is correct. i hadn't meant to infer that it was technique based by the use of "thus", i was trying to demonstrate that it wasn't technique based

ric

ric_stern/RST said:

where've you been?

In a hole, covered in books about dispute resolution, legal ethics, evidence and health and medical law! I spent some time working on a vitamin D deficiency despite the lovely weather Australia is starting to turn on at this time of year...

Quoted post said:

did you get my PM?

Yes, I just replied then, sorry for the delay. 🙂