Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
The problem with that article is the lack of definition of terms. Every college dorm discussion always begins with the mandatory definition of terms. He should know better, or alternatively, is purposely not defining his terms in order to push a point which may not stand up under scrutiny.
I think you may be trying to read too much into it. He's talking about riders who typically back off on all their intensity during the winter months and only do LSD rides, typically long, steady weekend rides. I know loads of club guys who take this kind of approach, so maybe I found it easy to relate to. Henderson is just saying that if you take that approach then you need a lot more volume than you might think to gain an advantage over someone following a lower volume plan with some degree of intensity. He was saying that around 16 hours per week of LSD is the minimum required to gain a significant advantage over someone following a structured interval plan. He also alludes to the fact that you can't do everything i.e. high volume and lots of intensity.
The only reason I even brought this up was in response to ThermionicScott talking about working easy trainer sessions into his winter schedule, as a reminder that if you go down that route you really need to commit to a high volume to reap the benefit. The link to Couzens is interesting and the training volume discussed in that article appears huge. The graph of Cardiac Volume vs Training Volume scales from 13.6-20 hours. Then the athlete who went from 50-70+ V02 max had a training volume of 20+ hours biased heavily toward "Easy" and "Aerobic" riding i.e. 15 hours of those alone. So it's actually consistent with the "garbage" in the Wahoo article.
In Couzens summary: "In fact, when I model the average response to training across the entire group that I have VO2 and long-term training data for, I see an average shift from 54 to 67 ml/kg/min (a change of 24%) when a long-term, high-volume training plan is undertaken." The key words here are long-term and high-volume.
He then goes on to say: "Conversely, when a short-term, high-intensity training plan is undertaken, the model shows a maximal increase (in 4-6 weeks) to only 63 ml/kg/min (16%)." Actually sounds like quite a good deal to me?
The whole point of Couzens article is to demonstrate that VO2 max is more trainable than we thought IF we are prepared to put in some serious training volume over a long period of time. Henderson is merely pointing out that you are better off with a lower volume, higher intensity plan if you are time-crunched or, for any other reason, not prepared to commit to 15 hours/week of mostly base riding volume.