Share your training arsenal here (please)

Hi,

I don't pay that much attention to all the possible ways of training let's say, threshold, or VO2Max.

To me, yearly planning matters much more, than workout planning.

For the first 3 months of this year (and still today, as I got very late on my schedule), the most important workout is

30min (that will become 60min soon) at .88% FT
60min (that will become 90min soon) at .92% FT

This workout is aimed at preparing me for weekly 125k unofficial races, with a group of Italian crasy riders. This year, I don't intent to win sprint finishes. Just staying in the pack and not getting my usual knee injuries, that will make my summer.

As soon as I feel better performing this, I will start preparing for hill climbing, that will begin early April. Last summer, I started hill work WAY too late. And I have no talent whatsoever climbing. So this year, I will start preparing on the turbo, probably last week of Feb, or early March. I'll focus on VO2Max difficult workouts. Doesn't matter what interval combinasion, as long as I really push to the limit. Mental is pretty weak in my case, so I will try to improve that.

I've gotta admit that my training menu is pretty bland. Basically, I see training as an effort to stress a couple different energy systems within the body, and that just doesn't seem to require an 'arsenal' (🙂 ) of workouts.

Long-term aerobic energy production (ie, LT related): longish intervals between LT power and 1-hr power - typically 3x20 at 1-hr power, or 3x30 at 95% of 1-hr power with 5 minutes between intervals.
Short-term aerobic energy production (ie, VO2max): short intervals with short rests - typically 6x4 at ~112% of 1-hr power, or 6x5 at ~108% of 1-hr power with 2.5 minute rests.
Sprints: 6 maximal efforts of 20-30 sec durations with several minutes rest in between
Jumps: 6 maximal efforts of 10-15 second duration from a slow start (<10mph) with a couple minutes rest in between

I haven't started anaerobic training yet, so no workouts for that energy system. Anything of lower intensity than these gets trained during longer variable power rides or group rides. Pretty basic, but I'm a 'fundamentals' kinda guy.

Just long and plenty of l4 threshold work. 10 days of l4 threshold work in a 3 week training block. I am on my second block. The next part of the workout is some l4-l5 or l6-l4 work. It is not easy to go to l5 or l6 from l4 without blowing it up. This workout should suit well with short hills and rollers.

frenk said:

Hi all,

for some months I've started adding structure to my training. I have read several times Joe Friel's book and many threads in this forum and on the wattage list, so now I guess I got the basics and a little more.

What I find most difficult at this point is finding the right workout to reach the given goal.
For example I know that one day I want to train speed skills, so I can do spin-ups. Another day let's say I want to train LT power, so I do some kind of intervals.

Near the end of Friel's book there is a chapter called "workout menu" (or something like that), but there are not many different workouts to choose from (and I guess not everybody agrees with what he says).

It would be so cool if you shared your "training arsenal", for example "to train x I do 3x20' at L3 intensity, to train y I do 5x 30"on/off (ok, let's not start this again 😄)", and so on...

So if these data are not top secret... let's share (I promise I won't be faster than you anyway 😉 )
Francesco

My training philosophy is about as simple as it gets, yet my workouts are so complex I can hardly describe them. First, my training philosophy is that I achieve my primary goal of inceasing sustainable power by getting in significant minutes at L4-L7 (Andy Coggan's schema); everything below L4 is good for endurance, but not for power. My goal is 3-6 hrs/wk of L4-L6 minutes, with a target mix of ~50%/25%/25%, with a few (e.g., 3) L7 intervals thrown into each ride for good measure. In the winter, I'd be closer to the 3hr mark and then gradually increase to 6hrs by April 1.

My training rides are highly complex because I tailor my intervals to the terrain of my courses, where grade and wind conditions result in intervals throughout the duration ranges (e.g., L4s from 10-30m, L5s from 3-10m, L6s from 30s-3m). In between the intervals, I ride at different power levels designed to attain a total ride IF and TSS. Some days will be easy, with an IF ~.75 and other days will more like a TT, with an IF ~.90 (this sounds low, but is actually pretty challenging for a multi-hour ride). I ride either 4 or 5 days/wk, about 15 hrs/wk total. It's certainly not boring.

frenchyge said:

I've gotta admit that my training menu is pretty bland. Basically, I see training as an effort to stress a couple different energy systems within the body, and that just doesn't seem to require an 'arsenal' (🙂 ) of workouts.

Long-term aerobic energy production (ie, LT related): longish intervals between LT power and 1-hr power - typically 3x20 at 1-hr power, or 3x30 at 95% of 1-hr power with 5 minutes between intervals.
Short-term aerobic energy production (ie, VO2max): short intervals with short rests - typically 6x4 at ~112% of 1-hr power, or 6x5 at ~108% of 1-hr power with 2.5 minute rests.
Sprints: 6 maximal efforts of 20-30 sec durations with several minutes rest in between
Jumps: 6 maximal efforts of 10-15 second duration from a slow start (<10mph) with a couple minutes rest in between

I haven't started anaerobic training yet, so no workouts for that energy system. Anything of lower intensity than these gets trained during longer variable power rides or group rides. Pretty basic, but I'm a 'fundamentals' kinda guy.

i was wondering if you could " dummy down " the terms and meaning ( or point me to a thread that can) as im new to the sport and am sort of lost with the lingo. I would like to understand this so i can see how my tranning stacks up. thanks.

[quote="frenk"]Hi all,

for some months I've started adding structure to my training. I have read several times Joe Friel's book and many threads in this forum and on the wattage list, so now I guess I got the basics and a little more.

1)what intervals do you LIKE to do? do those often in the offseason so you dont get bored and it will help you stay consistent

2) what intervals do you hate to do... do those because you are probably going to find a weak point here

3) do everything with structure especially easy days & NEVER over 22kph

esoteric said:

i was wondering if you could " dummy down " the terms and meaning ( or point me to a thread that can) as im new to the sport and am sort of lost with the lingo. I would like to understand this so i can see how my tranning stacks up. thanks.

The cells in our leg muscles need energy for their contractions, and they get that energy through a combination of aerobic chemical processes and anaerobic processes which occur inside the cells. Aerobic processes are used to break down fats and carbohydrates for energy, and although they are somewhat slower processes, they can supply energy a nearly endless amount of energy for very long rides. Anaerobic processes draw energy from the fuel stored in the muscles themselves, and are much quicker processes which can supply large amounts of energy for short, hard efforts. The fuel reserves in the muscles are limited in quantity, however, and take a long time to replenish once depleted.

Endurance cyclists seek to build up their aerobic energy producing capability, so that they can ride for long periods of time at high speeds without using up their reserves. Anaerobic reserves are handy for short, steep hills and sprints.

Lactate Threshold (LT) and Maximal Oxygen Uptake (VO2max) are a little more complicated, so I suggest you take a look at the related links here: home.hia.noexphys.htmOpen ↗

thanks for the helpful information. Ill read threw that page and see if i can figure it out form there.

WOW, lots of great tips, thanks!

Now the big question...
If I got it right, there are two big "schools of thought": the old school says that you have to do a lot of slow miles (typically during the winter) before adding any intensity to your training. The "new school" has a different approach and allows intensity without all that LSD.

I read several articles in favor of one or the other approach and often both make sense.
So I start suspecting that event "new school" proponents do some amount of base (slow) miles. Is there any truth in this? If yes, how much?

(the hidden question of course is: did I wasted my time during the 2-3 months of slow-ish miles?)

thanks,
Francesco

Personally, despite appearances to the contrary, I don't believe the 2 approaches are really different enough to warrant be segregated into different schools. I seem the two approaches as 1) take an extended break at the end of the season and suffer a lot of detraining in the process, then slowly work back into it to avoid injury or overtraining when training is resumed, vs. 2) take a shorter break (if any) at the end of the season to avoid a lot of detraining, then maintain some degree of fitness throughout the off-season so it's not necessary to ease back into riding again.

All the rest of the hard and fast "do this" and "don't do that" rules related to intensity, base miles, hills, etc. seem to be guidance from particular coaches in order to keep over-eager athletes from injuring themselves by trying to duplicate competition-period performance, or being dejected by the amount of detraining they've suffered during their downtime.

The reason I say I don't see them as two schools of thought is because I think the natural delineation between the two approaches is volume-based, rather than philosophy-based. Pro's and riders who do a tremendous amount during the competition periods may need the extended downtime to decompress mentally and recover physically, while most amateur riders and racers probably don't need as much downtime and could probably train at their relatively low volumes year-round without detriment (and probably with a lot more benefit) if schedule and weather permit.

So, to answer your question, depending on how much riding and competing a rider does, and what their schedule permits, it's quite possible that a rider may be wasting training months by following a Pro's training program.

frenk said:

WOW, lots of great tips, thanks!

Now the big question...
If I got it right, there are two big "schools of thought": the old school says that you have to do a lot of slow miles (typically during the winter) before adding any intensity to your training. The "new school" has a different approach and allows intensity without all that LSD.

I read several articles in favor of one or the other approach and often both make sense.
So I start suspecting that event "new school" proponents do some amount of base (slow) miles. Is there any truth in this? If yes, how much?

(the hidden question of course is: did I wasted my time during the 2-3 months of slow-ish miles?)

thanks,
Francesco

I would generally agree with frenchgye. I think the real "new school" should recognize that there are a variety of ways to get to an end, or level of fitness. Thanks to some posts by Andy, I've realized that training is much simpler than it seems on the microstructural level, or day-to-day workouts. Macrostructure is where it gets tough, but no one pays much attention to that.

New School and Old School in the pros-a history

Old school: Lots of long slow miles, often for 7-8 hours almost every day and very little intensity during the winter. As racing season approaches there are still many long rides but including some more or less random periods of higher intensity, often on hills or when the person felt like it. Lots of what was called "racing into shape" where racing provided much of the intensity received during the weeks. Closer to peak there were more hard periods in training but mostly it was just more racing exposure to intensity.

New School: Started around the mid 80's. A team of neo-pros from America and Canada sponsored by 7-11 was training with an approach that included lots of specific intervals in their daily rides, not many rides beyond 6 hours, fairly strict structure for the intensity they sought during early-season races and performed during training.

Most days the team members would be divided up into small groups that would each have slightly different training objectives for the day. This was in contrast to the old school teams that would generally do one ride together for all team members or allow riders to do their own training.

Old school teams employed doctors/trainers that were usually family doctors that were so in love with cycling that they would take vacation from their practice for the opportunity to work alongside their heros for a few months or longer.

7-11, and a few new school teams in Europe employed a young group of doctors who had degrees in Sports Medicine. Among this group of doctors were Dr. Max Testa who was the team doctor for 7-11, and Dr. Michele Ferrari who was employed by an Italian team. The education and training of this group of doctors played the major role in how the new school teams planned, performed, and evaluated their training, and treated and prevented injuries. The new school teams also made use of various lab tests to measure fitness and response to some types of training and the 7-11 team was among the very first teams to use heart rate monitors.

When the 7-11 guys first went to Europe to play on the big stage they were the butt of jokes related to their tactics and training methods, and just the fact that they were an _American_ team in a European sport. It wasn't long before they won a few races here and there and more respect came when the 7-11 guys won some stages in the Tour de France with Alex Steida wearing the yellow jersey, and Jeff Pierce won the final stage into Paris with a rare solo breakaway. Full verification came when the American team, with Andy Hampsten won the Giro d' Italia.

Among the riders on the 7-11 team were, Bob Roll, Alexei Grewel, Chris Carmichael, Eric Heiden, Alex Stieda, Jeff Pierce, Raul Alcala, Davis Phinney, Doug Shapiro and Ron Kieffel.

WarrenG said:

New School and Old School in the pros-a history

Old school: Lots of long slow miles, often for 7-8 hours almost every day and very little intensity during the winter. As racing season approaches there are still many long rides but including some more or less random periods of higher intensity, often on hills or when the person felt like it. Lots of what was called "racing into shape" where racing provided much of the intensity received during the weeks. Closer to peak there were more hard periods in training but mostly it was just more racing exposure to intensity.

New School: Started around the mid 80's. A team of neo-pros from America and Canada sponsored by 7-11 was training with an approach that included lots of specific intervals in their daily rides, not many rides beyond 6 hours, fairly strict structure for the intensity they sought during early-season races and performed during training.

Most days the team members would be divided up into small groups that would each have slightly different training objectives for the day. This was in contrast to the old school teams that would generally do one ride together for all team members or allow riders to do their own training.

Old school teams employed doctors/trainers that were usually family doctors that were so in love with cycling that they would take vacation from their practice for the opportunity to work alongside their heros for a few months or longer.

7-11, and a few new school teams in Europe employed a young group of doctors who had degrees in Sports Medicine. Among this group of doctors were Dr. Max Testa who was the team doctor for 7-11, and Dr. Michele Ferrari who was employed by an Italian team. The education and training of this group of doctors played the major role in how the new school teams planned, performed, and evaluated their training, and treated and prevented injuries. The new school teams also made use of various lab tests to measure fitness and response to some types of training and the 7-11 team was among the very first teams to use heart rate monitors.

When the 7-11 guys first went to Europe to play on the big stage they were the butt of jokes related to their tactics and training methods, and just the fact that they were an _American_ team in a European sport. It wasn't long before they won a few races here and there and more respect came when the 7-11 guys won some stages in the Tour de France with Alex Steida wearing the yellow jersey, and Jeff Pierce won the final stage into Paris with a rare solo breakaway. Full verification came when the American team, with Andy Hampsten won the Giro d' Italia.

Among the riders on the 7-11 team were, Bob Roll, Alexei Grewel, Chris Carmichael, Eric Heiden, Alex Stieda, Jeff Pierce, Raul Alcala, Davis Phinney, Doug Shapiro and Ron Kieffel.

This is a very cool post Warren, thanks!

WarrenG said:

New School and Old School in the pros-a history

wasn't steve bauer on that team?

What am I doing right now trainingwise? I'm definitely not doing the base miles approach, so looks like I'm doing it the new way, or more likely my own version of it.

Here's my training so far:

I ride my bike to get food, and get around, everywhere. It's -20 degrees C right now and it's a [censored] to go riding. This amounts to about 90-120 km/week actually on the bike going pretty slow, riding on bikepaths in a medium sized town. Total time on the saddle is approx 6 hrs a week. I ride a racing bike
with 28 mm front and 23 mm rear, doesn't matter whether it's snowing or icy or whatever.

Indoors on a stationary bike: now here I ride hard, my workouts consist of the following:
1) endurance - 75-80 minutes pedalling at 75% of Wmax.
1-2 times a week
intensity: ok at first, but I usually increase power towards the end. At the end, my legs feel heavy and I don't walk normal after I get off the bike (for a couple minutes anyway). Intensity is excruciating, just short of max. My legs usually feel fatigued one day after this workout.

2) intervals - 3 x 3, 1x 2 minutes minutes at 105% of VO2 max and maintaining 67% Wmax inbetween, sometimes I drop off to 150 watts for 30 sec after an interval because I feel tired. I wonder why? I feel incredibly wussy-like for not maintaining at least 67% Wmax.
Workout time is 45 minutes - 3-4 times a week
intensity: what I'd consider excruciating, but not quite maximum, a 95-96%
effort. I recover in 24 hrs from these.

3) long interval (sustained high power) + intervals - I've got it into my head to try raising the amount of time I can hold 400 watts, and increasing it gradually. Time inbetween is 65-67% Wmax. Also a 2 minute interval and a 1 minute. The time to hold 400 block comes first.
Length: 40-45 minutes, 1-2 X per week
intensity: the 400 watt block is at 96-97%, the other intervals and time inbetween is like 88-94%. Again I recover within 24 hrs from these.

Occasionally I do a few plyos (depth jumps+bound out, multiple jumps over hurdles set up in a row) and leg press with not heavy weights. I see no negative impact on my training, seem to feel a bit more powerful. I haven't done weight training for a year (an experiment on my part) and started doing these again.

I'm noticing the long 80 minute efforts really put the hurt on my recovery abilities while the intervals at high power are easy to recover from. Probably will roll back the power on the 80 minute session, it's too hard.

-Bikeguy

I don't have the experience, nor the knowlegdge level Warren has. But I have witness that old school of thoughts too.

Could it be T.Bompa influance? Maybe. The Internet was not what it is today. Athletes relied much more on clubs and coaches back then. And coaches relied on printed litterature. Pretty much all the coaches I know have read and learned from Bompa.

Nevertheless, nowdays, people living here up north have a choice to make. Either going for the classical periodization model, starting with a lot of base miles, then slowly building up. That is one extreeme.

Or going more intense first, then adding more miles as soon as the weather permits. Some call that reverse periodization. That is the other extreeme.

But today, with the explosion of communications (Internet). I think there are more than two schools of thoughts. They go from one extreeme, to the other. All shades of gray.

frenk said:

(the hidden question of course is: did I wasted my time during the 2-3 months of slow-ish miles?)

Francesco, I think that the key, is to create an overload of some sort. If at the end of your workouts, if you are tired in anyway, if as the weeks pass, you feel you are improving in some way, then you didn't waste your time. You know, a 3hr ride, upper L2 or L3, can be taxing.

But if you just turned the pedals, stopping after 90minutes, but feeling you could have gone this tempo for 4 hours, then yes, you wasted your time.

grom said:

wasn't steve bauer on that team?

I think he was on La Vie Claire at that time.

If you're looking for a bit of variety in your training around threshold, here was my prescription for today.

(TP=power at OBLA, 4mmol/l, MLSS, 40minute TT, etc.)

3 hours. During the first 90 minutes, on flat to rolling, 2 x 10' at 80% of TP. At around the 2 hour mark, on a hill, mostly seated, at 80 rpm's, 1 x 20' at 90% of TP. 4-5' rest. Then, on a hill, 4 x 4' at TP but the last 30" are a sprint out of the saddle, (220-250% of TP). 4' rest between intervals. Finish with 20' easy spinning.

SolarEnergy said:

I don't have the experience, nor the knowlegdge level Warren has. But I have witness that old school of thoughts too.

Could it be T.Bompa influance? Maybe. The Internet was not what it is today. Athletes relied much more on clubs and coaches back then. And coaches relied on printed litterature. Pretty much all the coaches I know have read and learned from Bompa.

Bompa has good stuff, but the ideas around periodization go back to the early 70's and a case could be made that they go back further, e.g. East German training methods. Bompa's ideas about periodization were more or less employed by athletes long before the 80's, i.e. base conditioning, pre-competition, competition phase, etc. I think what was changing, or becoming more widepsread in the 80's was just how the training was carried out within the framework of periodization.

For example, to develop the characteristics associated with "base" training the old school just did lots of really long rides wheras the new school guys would do 5-7 hours with intervals at certain intensities for certain duration on certain days that created the same, or similar training adaptions, and even more, than daily 8 hour rides. IOW, both schools were developing mitochondria and increasing certain enzymes and endurance, the new school just did it quicker and probably more effectively.

I remember reading some stuff from the US Cycling Federation a long time ago and they were going on and on about this idea of periodized training and how great it was and how their athletes were using it. The problem was they really didn't have a clue about what to do within the framework of periodized training.

A little story about this. When Max Testa was working with the 7-11 and later the Motorola guys he was in the US and was asked to meet with some folks from the USCF. The USCF folks were going on and on about these great training ideas they were using and how great their athletes were, or were going to be, and after listening to them for awhile he asked, "Where are your World Champions?"