CanadianBiker32

Just like to ask what type of training plans do you do after your main race season is done. Say you have nothing in races for a 3month period. what would be a good training plan to consider? weight loss?

Carbonfiberboy 

My A events are in June and July. I start my next year's program in October. I usually start with focus on pedaling skills, VT1 bike rides, full body weight training, and weight loss. This year, I think I'll start with 6 weeks of HIIT, then move to my usual activities and progression.

CanadianBiker32

i am thinking of trying to cut down some weight, maybe just do workouts and a strict calorie diet plan and loose lots of weight, maybe hurt performance at that time but once again if not racing , might be ok? and improve later

chasm54

Are you serious, CFB? If so, why would you do that?

Carbonfiberboy 

Well, we'll have had a period of only moderate activity, so we'll be relatively rested. I thought it would be a quick way to kick the VO2max back up again, lose some weight, and get ready for the endurance portion of the pre-season, plus it's a good use of indoor time and it's going to be raining here. It's the Carmichael TCC type of thing, but won't do it for long enough to get overcooked. I'll monitor my morning HRs and stop if I get too many hard training indications in a row.

Thing is, if we went right into VT1 work, our power at VT1 would be down enough that we couldn't keep up on group rides without stretching beyond my self-imposed early season limits. But if we do a little HIIT, maybe not. Besides, I experiment with something new every year and this is far enough away from anything interesting that it can't do any harm.

chasm54

OK, interesting. But I'm not really sure I see the point of working on VO2max only to revert, a few weeks later, to endurance base training. Plus my experience is that I can't lose weight once I'm focussed on HIIT. If I restrict the calories I can't hit the numbers on the intervals. I lose weight doing big base miles.

I'd be interested to know how it pans out, though.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yeah, me too. You know I'm big on clinical trials, and they show the most weight loss from HIIT programs. Thing is not to eat it back. We'll see.

Increases in VO2max should affect power throughout the range, thus faster even at moderate HRs.

Last season we got steadily faster at VT1 only doing VT1 work. I thought that was interesting. As some say, "all you get from riding slow is getting better at riding slow." Doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. Or maybe it depends on how one defines "slow."

chasm54

My own view is that this is bollocks, as they say where I come from. The old pros used to say that "distance builds speed", and that is certainly my experience. When I have put in long, long hours at endurance pace, I have not merely built stamina, I have got faster. My longest ever tour was eight weeks with about 40lbs of baggage on the bike. At no point did I work on intensity - though, inevitably, there was the usual amount of climbing - but when I came back, 2500 miles later, none of my racing peers could touch me, I was crushing them.

That isn't to say that I undervalue HIIT. There's no doubt that one needs to train the top end. But long, steady distance (of course I'm not referring to just ambling around) is immensely effective - if one has the time.

zenzo

This may well be so, but for us who do not have time to bike 4+hrs each day the path looks significantly different. I personally prefer to, after building some base, to hone my speed and power i.e. the top end, and then increase my intervals/rides to transfer this to end into long-duration endurance. It makes more sense, when having limited time, to hone your speed and power and then build your muscular endurance using this power so that one is able to hold it for longer.

In the end most approaches will give the same result, just the paths are different as is the invested time effort

chasm54

Up to a point. But the issue turns on what you regard as "some base". There's no substitute, in my opinion, for building a big aerobic base through spending long hours on the bike. Trying to build endurance from the top down will work for a while but quite apart from risking burnout, the gains one makes will never be as secure.

zenzo

You have a point there. But sometimes you simply have to invert things a bit in order to get most benefits out of training, especially with limited time. Of course, the risk of burnout is always present and one should be aware of that and closely follow his/her recovery and how does the body feel.

Regarding gains, they will be very secure if you build your speed which is related to the central nervous system and how muscles "fire" and how they are coordinated in the motion. Once you have trained this properly, the body never forgets it and the picture of the motion is always present in the brain. So, maybe we are just talking different things here because I'm not looking purely at the cardiovascular system gains. However, you do have a point that at a certain point the importance of long hours on the bike is very important and necessary. Still I would say that how much is required depends on ambitions, available time and type of races.

chasm54

I doubt that there's a real disagreement here, actually. My intial comment was prompted by CFB quoting (sceptically) the conventional wisdom that sub-threshold training doesn't contribute to speed. And of course one has to tailor one's training to the time available.

You might be interested in this Sports Science article from 2009. It was one of the first things I read that cast doubt on the trend towards a wholesale replacement of distance with intensity through HIIT.

zenzo

No, we're not disagreeing, personally I find it a very interesting discussion.

Of course HIIT is not the perfect answer to everything. One example ia that basic aerobic training makes the body more efficient in burning fat which is very important in endurance sports. I would dare to say that every training impulse contributes to speed, at different levels though...

Will read the article as soon as I get to a PC, it is kinda hard to read on a smartphone

Carbonfiberboy 

I would point out, on the issue of neuromuscular coordination, that this doesn't necessarily have to be effected through speed training. Every year I do a few months of once-a-week high spin training on my rollers, spinning at 115-120 in very low gears below VT1. IME this is not as hard-wired as we would like and has to be renewed every year. Always takes me a few weeks to get the rpms at VT1 up again and to get my legs capable of holding those rpms continuously for over 30 minutes.

Years ago, I had an email conversation with Pete Penseyres about how I could best improve my climbing performance on very long mountain rides. He said, "More base." Particularly, one long ride per week.

zenzo

Agreed, but you have to take into account that once you have achieved a certain level of speed it is always easier to get back to that level than building to a new level (breaking-through). With time and no training everything degrades (except fat and weight ) but the neuromuscular coordination degrades much slower though. Wouldn't you agree?

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, I think that's possible. Always seemed to me that my heart muscle went first, cannibalized for lack of use I suppose.

zenzo

You're not alone, started training very late this year after 10 months off, almost died at the beginning of the regimen. A bit sad, but this year I'm starting the after-season training without having participated in any single race this year... first time since I started training 4-5 yrs back

Carbonfiberboy 

Yeah, I once took a winter off. Never again. The older you get the faster it goes.

zenzo

I think I'll keep that in mind for the future
It may be a bit off topic or at least stretched, bu a question to those that do proper base training (I don't really count under that): what are the general guidelines regarding the volume of training before adding intensity to the plan? In my case I don't do races longer than 100 miles.

chasm54

The traditional thing is to spend about three months in the winter doing base miles. Assuming the season starts March/April, and bearing in mind you've had ten months off, I'd be spending from now until Christmas doing nothing but base then building in some intensity from early January.

CFB is absolutely right about not taking a winter off. My brief career as an elderly racer came to an end after an injury deprived me of a winter's base training. At 59 it was hard enough to stay competitive when training well. I knew how hard it would be to get back into competitive racing shape after that break, and decided to settle for being fit, rather than race fit.

Incidentally, if you have any weight to lose it's far easier to do that doing base training than during the more intense work. When I tried to restrict calories during the racing season I couldn't hack it, I found I couldn't hit the numbers during my interval sessions. But during the winter's base training it was no problem.

hubcyclist

the whole winter base miles is increasingly being thought of as a myth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTuaxOGdeXU

there's no reason why you can't do sweet spot/threshold efforts throughout the off-season and work on increasing your FTP, in fact if you don't have a ton of time on your hands, you should be focusing on bigger bang for the buck with these types of efforts. I did it last winter, although I didn't have a power meter at the time so I can't make any claims of improvements. if you sign up for a service like trainerroad, they have base plans to choose from which are heavy on sweet spot

chasm54

Read the sportscience article I linked to earlier in the thread. The evidence suggests that what works best is high-volume, heavily polarised training - 80% - 85% at low intensities, 15% at very high intensities. Sweetspot training is at best a compromise for those who can't spend enough time on the bike.

zenzo

I started training again in July so by now I regained the larger portion of the fitness I had last year. My plan is to now transition towards the off-season by doing serious strength work in the gym (2x week) and the rest doing HIIT focused on transferring the gym gains to power and making a gradual transition towards longer, lower-intensity rides. When I feel that my recovery starts to get slower I'll take 1-2 weeks off, as an off-season rest period and then continue with gym work and start getting in base miles (and/or long hikes/runs depending on the weather). Being 27yrs old my body still adapts really fast and I can build significant fitness in 2 months while at the same time loosing weight and being able to push through loads of HIIT training. Still, this does require keeping a close eye on recovery...

I do agree to a great extent, but in its essence this approach looks like you actually try transferring your base miles from one year to the other, some kind of always fit periodization. I think I may have inadvertently made this one winter, it was fine, but I ended up being a early season star, and when the real season came I was fading. There is a certain importance to proper base miles, I'm starting to realize this more and more

Carbonfiberboy 

I also don't think base necessarily transfers from one year to the next. Many of us do more intense training and riding in the latter part of our season. This leaves our base weaker, not stronger, and thus it has to be rebuilt again. We may be sacrificing base for shorter term power. This shift moves our metabolism more toward relying on carbs for energy and increases lactate production throughout the power range.

hubcyclist

but sweet spot is an aerobic zone, which does build endurance. the way I've seen it written it's a bit like base and build combined, it allows you to work on endurance but it continues to bump up your functional power without being a "january star". According to this article by Hunter Allen, unless one has 4-6 hrs to dedicate to Z2, then one is better served with sweet spot during the winter Workouts to rebuild your power foundation by BikeRaceInfo

Like I said, I focused on this level of intensity, with some threshold too, over the winter where I was essentially trapped inside from Jan-Apr due to the extreme snow (max workout 90mins), and my endurance has been strong all spring and summer. I actually have a power meter now so I'll be curious to see what type of measurable gains I can make. I've even begun combining long Z2 with high intensity intervals, today I did 3 hrs with 6x1min intervals at >150% FTP sandwiched between z2, so I'm kinda of trying to take the best of both worlds with my training right now.