Why is (a lot) more training better?
 

Obviously, there's a general range of training time that's considered the minimum to make legitimate performance gains, but beyond that point, what is accomplished by riding more (or rather, significantly more), other than staving off weight gain? I often hear racers say "If I had time to train 15 or 16 hours a week, I'd be more competitive," but for amateurs with full-time jobs that don't have access to personal chefs and a masseuse to recover, isn't that kind of training load just burning them out mentally and physically? No one can ride with intensity all the time, and that's where speed comes from, so once you've done a couple days of 60-90 minute interval sessions, and a 4-5 hour endurance ride on the weekend, what are you gaining by adding several more hours to your week?

Is there anything to suggest that, given an equal time spent riding at intensity, that 16 hours a week makes one faster/stronger than eight hours?

Experience? However, beyond ~10 hours/week, the gains get smaller. OTOH if you're trying to be competitive, a few percent will usually be the difference between winning and not winning. Maybe a fraction of 1%. I have a riding buddy who, for several years, rode 20K to 30K miles annually. He simply got faster than the guys who had been the fastest, most talented riders in the group. Riding a century almost every day will make you really, really fast.

It is said among distance riders that distance = strength. I have found this to be true. Just doing a 3-4 hour dayhike every week, the day after a hard group ride made a noticeable difference, even though it's not riding specific and was done entirely in zone 1.

The trick to increasing the number of hours is not increasing the weekly training stress beyond what you can absorb. Every one is different that way. My riding buddy had a full-time job, wife and 2 kids. Beyond talent, it's just a matter of focus.

When I raced, I found it beneficial to be able to ride the distance of the longest race comfortably.

So if the longest race was 75 km, for example ... if I knew I could get out there and ride a reasonably fast 75 km on my own, with minimal stops and fueling well, it increased my confidence that I could race 75 km.

So in order to attain that level of confidence, I used to ride 75-100 km rides just about every weekend. Then during the week, I'd work on my hill repeats, intervals and speed work.


Even now that I'm into long distance cycling rather than racing, I'm trying to get back to the point where I can ride 100 km reasonably quickly and very comfortably. For me, that will be a good base, both mentally and physically, for the longer rides.

Some people do very well with large volumes of riding. If you can still get your intense workouts done with a big volume of riding, then the concept is you'll have the same positive effect on your high-end efforts (ie top speed) while simultaneously building a greater depth of endurance.

However, some people will do better with lesser volume of riding, they need more rest to be able to do the intense workouts.

Some of this also has to do with how much endurance you need. Longer races or events require more endurance which typically means greater training volumes.

Human nature being what it is, people tend to be impressed by bigger numbers. It seems to be better to ride 16 hrs per week vs 10 hrs per week, because after all 16 is bigger than 10, right? And bigger is better, right? ;)

(Same thing with every year-end total given on Strava. More miles is better than less miles, right?)

I train with a coach and used to race Fondo-like climbing events, 100-125 miles. Now I race TTs, 12-24 miles. I pretty much always make 20 hrs per week available to him for training purposes. He used to schedule me at 12-13 hrs/week on average. Now? 10 hrs/week. Guess what? I'm faster now at most distances, but a 100 mile ride is a little harder.

More is definitely not always better. Sometimes less is more.

OP - It depends on what your goals are. This year mine include some long (100+ mile) races and fondos with much-to-a-bunch of climbing, so I'm doing 50-ish mile rides with long intervals and longer rides either solo or with a paceline. I'm semi-retired so time's not an issue. If my goals included a lot of crits, my rides would be shorter and harder. If I concentrated on TTs as @Heathpack does, it would be different again. If you want to get faster, you need to clarify what "faster" means for you.

The more hours you do, the more hours of intensity you can do, even if said intensity is a lower percentage of your overall riding. So to address your initial point, actually, you do get more intensity. There's also the energy efficiency issues that are improved with more time.

The more you train, the more you can train and the more workload your body can handle before recovery becomes necessary.

Not for everybody. You are speaking from the perspective of a 30ish yr old male, when you are young and/or have an abundance of testosterone, what you are saying is somewhat (but not universally) true. This is one of the problems with cycling- a lot of the training "adages" are developed with the young male road cyclist in mind. People who are outliers- women, masters- frequently should not follow the adages of what's optimal for a 35 year old male.

Absolutely for some people, more volume = more fatigue, which in turn translates to a diminished ability to meet targets during interval workouts.

I guess you could argue that my coach doesn't know what he's doing (lol, although I could see you arguing that to me, I somehow doubt you'd argue that to his BF face). But if 16 hours were universally better, and I make greater than 20 hrs per week of training time available to him with a known preference for riding as many hours as possible, why would he schedule me on average for 10 hrs/week?

Because for me, less is more. And I'm not especially rare or unique. It depends on goals, physiology, age, psychology. More is not universally better.

For endurance cyclists (races and fondos of 100+ miles), more is definitely more -- to a point. Even for ultra-marathon events (200+ miles), the benefits of long workouts diminish until even Zone 2 rides of over 6 hours become counter-productive.

I've tried the "Time Crunched Cyclist" thing and the outgrowths from that -- the whole intensity-can-make-up-for-lack-of-duration idea. And you CAN hit the same power numbers using intensity rather than duration. At least for awhile. But when it comes time to endure the 100 to 200+ mile race or fondo, shorter intensity training doesn't really get the job done. Intensity gives you a peak that doesn't last very long. Long duration Zone 2 training gives you a base that endures through the whole event and the next one two weeks later and the next one -- the whole season.

But I will confess . . . the "Time Crunched" (and "Fast After 50") ideas have influenced the way I train. Nowadays, there are a couple of Sweet Spot Interval workouts blended in to my long endurance rides. More training is better. But more training with some intensity blended in is better still.

FWIW, Carmichael does point this out in his book and emphasizes that it works primarily for races less than three hours long. He also notes that if you can fit in more than eight hours of training per week, a more traditional periodized training plan works better.

I don't know why you turned that into a weird "me vs. you and your coach" attempt.

I never for a second said that specificity and individual needs should be dismissed in some blind attempt at loading up TSS until you crack.

There are pretty simple physiological concepts at work in endurance training, however, and nothing that you said negates those.

As I said, the more you train, the more you're able to train. What that means for the individual is up for them to decide, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

For a while is the key. At some point you plateau (if you're doing it enough) and/or regress and to break through that plateau, the stimulus has to change. And at the end of the day, to make that aerobic roof higher, you're going to have to add to the foundation.

The old Impulse/Response model.

It's pretty disgenuous to say that you can just reduce hours and get faster with higher intensity when the body's ability to handle and adapt to that intensity may be directly correlated to that earlier volume.

And vice versa. It's silly to say that you can be fast on lower hours and lots of intensity and then take a huge bump up in hours without the intensity and claim that lots of LSD made you fast.

There's a bit continuum at play and the body's ability to adapt to new stimuli may be predicated on an aerobic base established by previous other means.

Long story short; if you've been doing the same thing for a while and results have floundered, start doing something different.

And if you want to be hellafast (like in a professional sense), then you'll need the volume AND the intensity and the ability to handle and recover from it.

Lol, apologies. I have had so many odd interactions on BF and in the world of cycling that I sometimes anticipate arguments that people have not even made. My favorite here on BF: I was told that women are slower than men, not because of any physiologic difference, but because we "don't like to sweat". Second favorite was being told by a young cat 5 guy that I should fire my coach because he clearly doesn't understand how power meters work. This weekend I was out riding with two male friends and trying to have a conversation about tire choices for my TT bike. I was talked over and interrupted so many times, I couldn't finish a single sentence. My friend concluded with, '"I can't remember the name of the company, but they have a bunch of data on their website". Finally I could get a word in edgewise to respond, yeah it's FLO cycling, I own five of their wheels and have been to their house. Totally typical.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I disagree with you. OP asks why people will inevitably have better race results if they could just figure out how to free up 15 hours to train. Your response is that training more would enable you to train more. By logical extension, if I previously were training 12-13 hrs per week, that should set me up for training 14-15 hrs per week now, my cycling life would be a progression of becoming able to absorb more & more volume and that increasing volume would have a positive effect. Maybe I could do that, but would it get me better race results (bringing it back to OPs original question)? Nope, pretty confident it would not, it would be counter-productive. For some people more training does not make you able to train more. It just makes you fatigued.

I'm not trying to get into some kind of argument with you. I think this idea that just riding more and more will make you fast (as @Carbonfiberboy mentioned above) is no way universally true. It's such an easy training trap to fall into, but a big mistake for some people.

Few Cat 3 or below racers get anywhere close to over-training on a consistent basis. Here are some suggestions on how to reach the next level: Hunter Allen Power Blog: The Next Level

Ok, so how about answering this question:

I am a 50 yr old woman. I race TTs, 20k & 40k. In 2016, I was faster than in 2015. In 2016, I PRed one course three times in races.

I make 20 hours per week available to my coach for training. I could make 30 hrs per week available to him and he knows it.

Yet he schedules me on average 10 hrs/week, which is a 15-20% reduction from last year. Never was there a concern about over-training. It was about being able to do harder workouts on the interval days.

The question: why the decreased training volume this year if the rule is "more training is better"?

As mentioned in the article it's quality and quantity that's important. I think you answered the question by indicating you weren't able to maintain intensity on your hard days.

500 hrs/yr is still a fair amount of volume and likely involves some periods with 15-20 hr weeks. Most guys don't start riding 750 hrs/yr, especially older guys, it can take a few years to build up to that level. If you're riding 500 hrs and your competitors are doing 750 it's reasonable to assume you might be at a disadvantage in longer races. If one is doing shorter races (crits and TTs) high volume is less important. The length of season also plays a role.

Women also may not be able to handle the same volume as men. I don't know if this is true I'm just speculating. I know extra testosterone helps men so I assume a lower level of testosterone and other factors may limit the maximum training load for women vs men. At 500 hrs/yr you may already be close to your upper limit for training volume.

You're assuming that one's ability to recover stays the same over time. Among the geezers on the Master's Racing subforum, I don't think there are any of us doing three-week builds; it's more like two weeks. My own schedule works out to 16 days on and five off most of the time. Last year was my biggest, 478 hours according to Strava, and that includes about a month off for medical reasons and life events. It'll probably increase somewhat this year because my goal events are mostly 100+ miles and include significant climbing. Could I increase the volume 50%? Sure, but it would involve cutting out the intensity stuff. There's no way, at 65, that I could work up to that volume at my current level of intensity. There wouldn't be enough time for recovery.

Well there's clearly a limit to how much volume is useful. The unfortunate thing is as we age we have more time to train but less ability. Most riders in their 40's aren't bumping into their physiological limits, rather there are family, work or motivation factors that restrict time allocated to training.
I know the US Masters champion for 55+ is training over 800 hrs/yr. Given that young pros are doing around 1000 I doubt there's much room for a 55 yr old to go above 800.

While it's not reasonable to increase your volume by 50% in one year, it could be that you could handle an extra 10% during the year without changing the intensity during key build periods. I know for myself (57 yrs old) if I have more volume (or higher CTL) in my legs I recover faster from big days (5+ hrs) than periods with low volume.

You threw in the variable that makes the biggest difference. I am a fellow over-50 person. More so every day. Over 50, humans need more recovery between big workouts. (And a "big workout" is either a long workout or an intense workout or a combination somewhere in between.) Over 50 usually means 3-week training cycles rather than 4-week (including the recovery week). It usually means two intense workouts per week -- or one -- rather than three, and a couple recovery days rather than one. The age factor means recovery time is a LOT more important than it is for the cursed under-40 crowd. I will ramp up to around 16.5 hours on the bike for a few weeks of the year, but I'm generally in the 10.5 to 12 hour range -- 7 hours for recovery weeks. A huge limiting factor, for me, is fitting in enough time for recovery. Recovery is where we get faster / stronger, assuming we did our work in the big workouts.

So, maybe the best way to say this is "more training is better within the range of training appropriate for your (I hate this, but it's true) age and physical condition."

I still don't understand why you're turning this into a discussion about you. This really has nothing to do with you.

A person training 12-13 hours a week will be much better equipped to handle bumping up training to 14-15 hours a week than someone training 8-9 hours a week. That is, them having more of a training load allows them to train and recover even more. Do you actually disagree with that?

Now, whether or not doing so would better enable them to perform at their events is something that I didn't particularly address with my initial post because that delves into specificity and a multitude of other factors.

As for some random Joe thinking they'd be faster at 15 hours than whatever they currently do, then no, probably not because you simply can't overload the body to such an extent and expect it to simply adapt. There's a component of progressive overload that must be necessary. But again, I didn't address that.

To paraphrase/quote Dr. Andy Coggan: "SPECIFICITY, SPECIFICITY, SPECIFICITY."

And who ever said more training is better in any case?

Well that was what the OPs initial query was about. Is it is misperception that "if only" I had 15 hours to train I would be better? That's what this thread is about. I'm not making it about myself, I'm using myself as a very specific example of why more is not better. 12-13 hours of training per week (which happens to be exactly what I did two years ago) might sort-of enable you to train 14-15 hrs per week, in that you could do it. But bringing it back to the OPs point, would it make you race better? No, not necessarily. Sounds self-evident but people actually believe this. Reading the training thread in the 33 and you'll encounter it from time to time. Forty year old guy decides this is going to be the year that he finally makes it in racing, he pushes and pushes trying to do what the 30 yo guys do for training-volume. He repeatedly gets injured and comes back too early each time, determined he's gonna get it done. Even when people point out to him that less might be more, he resists. Why? Because he has the impression that more is always more, for everybody. It's an easy impression to get when you read BF, because more always impresses people than less.

Except you are. You're doing 20 and 40k TTs. Hour long events at a max. What you do to prepare for those races ONLY is going to be quite different from most other events.

And yet for some incomprehensible reason you're using your experience in preparing for such a specific event to try and validate some very strange assertion that training more is wrong or something. You seem to be going out of your way to try and discredit concepts that really have nothing to do with you at all.

No one in this thread is saying to just go out and train as much as you can.

In fact, I have specifically mentioned progressive overload, specificity, and individual needs as cornerstone concepts necessary for improving performance.

The OP wanted to know why more training is better. The physiological adaptations that comes from increased training are pretty hard to argue against (and you haven't really refuted any of those concepts). But it's a part of a puzzle and that piece may or many not be one needed to finish the picture.

It should be pretty obvious that there are a myriad of events in endurance sport that necessitate a substantial amount of volume and training load, and then there are others that require something different. Just because one event requires something less or different doesn't mean another doesn't require more.

A professional opinion to counter/supplement all of our amateur ones (I'd recommend all of his blog for anyone interested in performance, as well as Tim Cusick's webinars on WKO4).

Hunter Allen Power Blog: Little Changes That Make a Difference

Lol exactly the point I am making. Who is this guy writing about? Who is the OP's friend? Hunter Allen for sure is a professional and guess what? I've read his book. And realized that a lot of these training concepts apply to young-ish men who are doing road races and crits. Not to women. Not to older people. Not to people riding shorter events or longer events. These are not universal training principles and I doubt Hunter Allen would argue that they are. It's hard to see that when you are a youngish male who races road races and crits, these training principles apply perfectly to you and everyone you know, that makes them seem real and universal. But based on things like Hunter Allen's book (professional as it is), people dispense espouse training "truths" to others without regard for who that person is or what they're training for. Because the perception is that the professionals must have it right. While failing to realize exactly who these training principles were designed for.

I guess maybe you find my comments "silly" but personally I would have loved to have someone point that out to me when I first started riding seriously. Because I got all kinds of wildly inappropriate advice. :)

What sort of riding are you thinking of training for?