In my last A1 Coaching post, I spoke about the need to challenge conventional methods and to embrace new knowledge and techniques.
Over the past couple of years I have travelled all over the world, working with clubs and athletes. The number one mistake I’ve seen repeated time and again is the use of average speed as a measure of training effort and performance.
This phenomenon of ‘junk miles’ is the main factor preventing athletes from maximising their available training time.
ADVERTISEMENT
The main training-related problem with this average speed culture (made worse by Strava) is that riders ride around at a perceived effort of 7 out of 10 most the time. Therefore, whatever number of hours are available, they tend to ride as hard as they can for that time, trying to get the best average speed. In this way, they are not training the different physiological systems for optimum benefit.
If you like this blog and want to know more about building a perfect winter base programme, click here for free access to A1 Coaching’s Winter Training Video Series.
Your physiological systems and training zones
If you’re a time-crunched cyclist you must learn that performance is a combination of your different physiological systems working in harmony. Each system is trained differently, and you have to adapt your training accordingly – this is ‘zonal training’.
The physiological systems
1. Endurance / aerobic endurance / exercise economy (AE)
2. Threshold / lactate threshold (LT) / functional threshold power (FTP)
3. VO2 max / maximal aerobic capacity
The training zones
- Zone 1: ‘recovery pace’ – this feels very easy and you might find it difficult to go this slow as you’ll think you are wasting your time
- Zone 2: steady endurance – a pace you would ride steady at for two to six hours without putting yourself under pressure; conversation is easy ('tempo')
- Zone 3: moderately hard but sustainable; limited conversation('tempo')
- Zone 4a: sometimes described as the ‘sweet spot’ – quite difficult, conversation in short sentences only
- Zone 4: time-trial pace – the maximum output you can hold for around 30 minutes or more. It hurts; conversation is definitely out
- Zone 5: short, all-out efforts from 10 seconds to five minutes; it hurts a lot
- Zone 6: extremely short, maximal efforts of a few seconds (not relevant to most cyclists)
Smart training – setting and using the zones for optimum performance
You can read more at BikeRadar.com
via BikeRadar All the latest from BikeRadar.com http://ift.tt/1PZybkT
No comments:
Post a Comment