Biggest learnings from Dr. Seiler for me is that training is merely a means of creating stimuli for adaptations. KJ or time or # of intervals isn't some sort of "high score" or magical calculation of how much mitocondria or fitness you get from performing them, but rather a way to systematically assure you're getting the right stimulus for what you're trying to to train. People shouldn't get caught up too deeply into the numbers but rather how their system/program is intended to grow to keep applying the optimal stimuli for how you want your body to adapt.
Moreover I think too many people overlook the recovery part which is when the actual adaptations happen. A good rest day is better than a harder workout the day before
Check out the training that Nils van der Poel did to win Olympic gold in 5k and 10k speed skating mentioned by Dr. Seiler in this video: www.howtoskate.se/
Loved that he mentioned this. As a swede I'm obviously a big fan of Nils, but not just because he managed to win, but because of How he managed to win. I discussed his manifest briefly with the Mikal Iden, the coach of the Norwegian superstar triathletes Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden - probably two of the aerobically fittest guys in the world - and he called Nils an "adventure mind", meaning he's a person who seems to find meaning and motivation in thinking out of the box and coming up with a bit unorthodox approaches. Of course his way of training isn't for everyone, but if you're a fellow 'adventure mind', like I believe a small bunch of us are, his manifest and psychological/philosophical perspectives on his training should be of great interest. He emphasised this in long talk he did in a popular Swedish radio show, where he said the biggest obstacle to put in those massive aerobic hours is motivation, not letting the training drain him too much, mentally, so that he was willing to put in the long term work, week after week. For him, the two day rest - treating his training like a normal mon-fri job - was the key; making a point of spending his weekends with friends having fun, like any normal person, was key not just to his physical recovery, but to his mental recovery and his long term motivation.
I recently this year from doing 15 hour weeks doing high intensity every other day to doing 12 hours a week and high intensity every third day. Pretty much the week I switched I started hitting personal bests across all intensity ranges, whether I was focusing on them or not. FTP went up by 4-5% in my 17th year of cycling training. So, I've been doing it wrong this whole time! The best part is my legs are rarely sore, I have more time, I rarely ever feel tired, and I basically have no mental stress on high intensity days because I'm only doing 2/3rds the amount of it.
@@cracked229 You have no idea. 1. I only did it for 9 months of year? The 3 month off season I did much less volume and about half the intensity. 2. I did 6 days of high intensity for a few years... After that, every other day seemed much easier. 3. I had a deep, gnawing, desperate need to win. I'm a stubborn person.
This is excellent, Dylan, I would argue that most athletes should only go one or at most two days a week hard. It’s amazing how the adage, hard days hard and easy days easy has been around so long, and yet so few people truly follow it.
took two weeks off because of covid recently, my first hard ride back I saw my heart rate and power go up to a level I haven't reached in quite a long time and I felt fresh and great. Two weeks of rest is what I needed for a reset.
The cycling community 99% of it is fatigued. Cyclists don't know how not to be fatigued. All this information will be unleashed and more on my videos. I will educate the cycling world on How cycling training should be. I've already changed cycling training forever. But I'm going to let my secrets out very soon.
Lol! I should show this video to my group ride, every freaking ride is a hammerfest! It rings true that if you want to pace yourself or go easy on a ride you better off going by yourself or with a buddy who has the same mindset or goals.
This is excellent, the older i get recovery is more important. Those double rest-days feel really necessary for avoid fatique after some hard intervals or longer endurance rides.
I'm 27 years old training at the best level I ever have, and I have two recovery days per week. Helps to push harder on the hard days and recover from long sessions
Thank You Dylan for these Dr. Seiler interview videos. Lot's of things to take in training. I've been using polarized system for two years and I'm in best shape ever. Riding long slow distance plus strenght training has lifted me to next level.
I did a hard and fast group ride last Friday, and was pretty spent. Then 2 days later I did a relatively easy gravel ride that was half the length and effort. That was the mistake. At my age (nearly 53) I did not have enough time to recover, and it left me feeling completely spent for a good 3 days after that. Only now have I recovered enough to ride again. (I have to remind myself that I am not in my 20s anymore!) I have to ride smarter now, not harder.
Most misleading thing: I learnt something wrong from a coach, that works sometimes, but I took it wrong. "A bad physical day is a good mental day" I was the guy going out totally over trained. I have paid the price more than once until realize that something was wrong, that my approach was extremist. Your videos are very useful. I should have paid attention or find someone like Dr Seile (or just been less stupid myself) years ago. Great job as usual young Dylan
When going too hard i have less appetite after the work-out, so i feel my recovery is not going 100%. Also doing long rides i want to come home feeling i could have easily done 1 hour more. Dont completely destroy yourself!
I've seen/heard more interviews/podcasts with Seiler, but you somehow manage to get new important nuances out of the discussion, that I don't think I've heard before. Thank you, both of you 🙂
So glad that Dr. Stephen Seiler mentioned the training program of Nils van der Poel. Nils training was considered extremely unusual with up to 30 hours of aerobic training in the off season; including long runs, cycling, cross country skiing and skating to break up the monotony. And as Dr. Seiler says Nils broke just about every longer distance ice skating record.
"30 hours of aerobic training in the off season" Is this unusual because it's high or low. I assume high. Also assume he did that in what is for him Zone 2 Heart Rate?
Most of theses clowns are on steroids . Not many men today stay pure. Especially doctors. Doctors that are in fitness are all on steroids. If they are the ones prescribing them, they are the ones that have the most trust and belief in them. And will know how to use them better. Doctors are not to be trusted when it comes to them being clean.
@@Timmeh2Buck Look out for the signs of fatigue, know your body and then train appropriately:) He knew how to stress his body and how to absorb the strain, over a whole season. Consequently, he laid down a massive endurance foundation, upon which he built a fortress.
@@johnschmitt3083 Yes very high load; possibly twice that average world class long distance skater. Also as far as I remember all at Zone 2 at least in the early off season per Dr. Seiler's discussion. Actually I think his training was looking at lactic acid levels more than heart rate or perhaps both metrics to determine optimal stress on the body ?
overtraining or over-reaching will undoubtedly burn you out, make you sick or injury yourself. i doubt you have been over-training. if you were. you would not be bragging about it. you would be losing weight, not sleeping good, likely not have great sex, chances are be moody, and lost your aggressive competitive growl. Am i correct?
I did trainer road in the past and it burnt me out fast. I switched to 2 hard sessions a week and the rest z2, and I feel fresh and have finally broken through my fitness plateau. building up ctl via z2 has worked wonders for me.
@@jimmoses6617 I've heard it described as 'if you're talking on the phone, the other person could tell you're doing an activity'. It's a pace where you can get out like 3 or 4 words at a time.
@@jimmoses6617 what the guy above said. Described as the best indicator of transitioning from Z1 to Z2 - Z1 easy conversation possible that someone on the other end of the phone couldn't tell you are exercising to Z2 still comfortable to hold a conversation but you need to pause now and again and that imaginery person on the other end of the phone can tell you are exercising. Try talking to yourself when out/in riding and you will soon find the tipping point.
I think the ideas are sound, but the messaging was confusing: going deep in training is important, but it must be reserved to specific parts of the season/training plan and be done carefully. I'm confident he didn't argue for never going deep in training but that's how the message came across (for me, at least)
I switched to 11 h/week polarized training plan from 7h sweet spot training and my RHR dropped to 45 average from 51. Still 11h is a really high volume for me and wanted to see if i can handle
Switched from a high intensity Trainer Rd program,( where I was smashing myself 4-5 days a week) to this polarised training. My first FTP test, after this change resulted in the largest FTP jump i have ever had. Early days still, but I am a believer, so far.
So you’re telling me my 3 days a week of sweet spot intervals prescribed to me by my trainer road program is probably the culprit for why I feel like death about two weeks into a training block? Thank you for the refreshing information. Polarized has always allowed me to remain balanced and healthy while still making gains through proper volume. Every time I’ve tried to venture past two days a week of intervals, I start to run out of gas. I’m not sure why I wanted to the threshold mentality again. I was hoping to use it to sharpen up the high aerobic energy systems for a race in about a month, but dug myself into a hole not even two weeks in. Time to go back to what works.
You went to threshold mentality because is satisfying go hard and difficult to take it easy 80% of the time. I like to Heard This guy all the time to help control myself 😂😂
@@sergiogomes8035 I agree that a good set of intervals feels good! The first 4 days worth of intervals in the training block felt great. Then the 5th one left me with heavy legs. Then the 6th one finally left me feeling like I just had no power at all. I finally bailed out on day 7 and decided it was enough, I just couldn't get the power out anymore or the heart rate up. This was with one or two days worth of rest between the sweet spot days and I was completely exhausted two weeks in regardless.
it's not only a matter of how many hard days, but rather what is the proportion hard/easy....if your total weekly volume is no more than ten hours, yes you can't go over more than two hard days per week....The total weekly volume is how much you can handle, the easy/hard ratio staying more or less the same...
I certainly embrace rest days! 👍 I generally hit 3 intense sessions and 2 endurance sessions a week, zone 2. Then 2 rest days spread over the week, Monday / Friday for example! 🙏
Awesome video answered a lot of questions for me. I use the whoop wristband to help me. I’m 54 yrs old. Rest is important. I train 2-3 days a week hiit sessions. If I’m feel horrible I rest til I’m back in the green per my whoop wristband. It help me am got a amateur crit racer and ride for fitness and health.
Dylan, would you consider doing a video on combining intervals with long zone 2 rides, before, during or at the end? I notice you do this, as do many pros. But it's not something a lot of amateurs do.
Great video!!! I know when I've let the fitness horse out of the barn when 130 watts feels like 220 watts. LITERALLY! My goal in training is to never let that happen and your recommendations in this video resonate nicely with my personal experimentation. Keep up the great work!!!
56 yr old and probably been training too hard for 42yrs 😂 Saying that I do live the buzz of a hard workout. Having watched this I'm now going to get slower to go faster 🤞
That is not the way. It's way simpler than you can ever think . I will show you how to get fast with very little training. Uncross those fingers no need
6:36 I'm not sure if it's you, Dylan, or Dr Seiler who misread van der Poel's training manual. The screen grab shows thirty _second_ intervals of 400 W as a warm-up. His 4x 30 min @400 W workout is deep down in his training log, which is unfortunately displayed as a series of images and is therefore not 'ctrl+f'able.
These three videos are some of the most important content on cycling RUclips and i need constant reminders of this. Especially since the older you get the easier it is to overreach. I never used to log my RPE after rides. Now I do. Especially in the time of year where I'm dealing with extreme heat.
Great video. What's still puzzling for me(maybe that's the topic for one of the next videos) is where you draw a line between a hard and easy workout? I mean it's obvious Vo2max intervals is a hard workout zone 1-2 rides are easy workouts(though I'm not so sure about 3h + zone 2 rides, but I guess this is different kind of hard and it doesn't count) but what about workouts that are kinda hard but not so much? mixed zone 2/3 rides, zone 2 rides with some sprints in between or short zone 4-6 efforts, easy rides with 2-3 spikes(like pre-race ride the day before). What EXACTLY does a hard workout mean? Also, about not going too hard to kill yourself during high intensity sessions - I understand the concept with pros who have 50+ races during the season, but what if you race more like 5-10 times a year(2-4 hours) and sometimes it happens that you have no race for a few months, maybe sometimes with no race on the horizon it's beneficial to dig a little bit deeper?
I really appreciate you sharing your time with Dr Seiler with us. I took up polarized training several years ago and have found that it's the best way to train. The difficult part is that most of my training is done solo because it's hard to find other cyclists who will ride at a slower, endurance pace. You know how that is. Macho macho macho, always have to ride hard. And to be honest, I'm just not going to waste my time trying to explain the science to them. And group rides are pretty much a bust too, because they go hard, but not hard enough, so it's usually just junk miles. Anyway, thanks again for sharing.
Agree on this - my personal experience is that group rides always seem to be too hard than it should because there always are a few ego driven riders in the group that try too hard to prove they are stronger. Now I started to ride solo so I can follow a structured training schedule.
I'm also seeing improvements when I take a lot of rest days .. sometimes 10 - 12 rest days (I'm 43), with only very mild walks and some short very low intensity e-bike rides (30 - 40 min) on those rest days. I'm pretty sure if I took 12 - 14 days off completely I would improve my FTP.
Great insight info! Modern tech tools (Smart watches, HR, watts) definitely are helping to understand how to better train. i am 60 years old. so, i believe age is a factor. The pace of training and overall momentum building of your Physical and mental aspects is the key to peak performance. as a youth i could train harder and peak more frequently. Now as an older athlete i peak less frequently yet still very high performance. Thanks, DOC!
Love these videos man, I played hockey very competitively through college and the training for me was very enjoyable most of the time but during the summer months it would get stale and I could tell I needed time off. Didn't listen many times and ended up burning out of the sport completely
wow, this is kinda new to me, I am the guy who put 110% on high-intensity interval sessions, and finished halfway at the last set because I was bonked...
Been there done that! I remember quite a few yrs back now, I was training really hard, riding hard every ride, and then my HR suddenly went down on my rides. And I thought "great I must have just gotten fitter". No idea it was a clear overtraining sign. Soon after ended up with a muscle tear and 7months before i could train properly again.
When I overtrained a year ago, my heart rate remained the same, but my power output dropped considerably. Also, my (Garmin-estimated) V02 Max suddenly dropped from 68 to 58. It took me 11 months to restore my V02 Max. Using my new training programme, I have in just one month increased my V02 Max to 72, which isn't bad for a 61 year old.
@@dpstrial Impressive VO2! Strange when the body stops being predictable. Glad you made a good turnaround. Makes sense though as you might have not have been resting/easy riding enough to bank the gains before.
@@swites I think the issue was I was doing one-hour HIIT sessions, when really I should have been restricting it to 30 minutes maximum. I have also found a way of making the sessions more effective at increasing V02 Max and less stressful to the body at the same time.
I have a very heavy manual job doing a good volume of work. Trying to train with this is harder but it also makes me have days off because I’m so tired I can’t physically get my gear on then climb onto the bike. Some of my peers never get tired and do twice my volume. I think they’re on PED’s.
Train for peak performance in terms of time scale and the context of the event. Periodisation meaning you have set volumes of work to do before the event,with chill out days. Rest days the most important days.
Dylan, Great video as always! I have two questions I'm hoping you can help me with. 1. How "restful" does a rest day need to be? I'm training for Enduro MTB racing. I need to get my baseline up so I can have gas in the tank for those final sprints. I'm wondering if it's alright to get some cone drills/cornering practice in (heart rate zone 1 the entire time) on rest days, or if even that's too much. What about a hike where HR stays at zone 1 or low zone 2? 2. Do the rest days need to be two days in a row? For everyday people with busy work/personal schedules, sometimes we are simply forced to take a rest day on certain days due to other activities/commitments. I'll often try to plan my week so that I coincide busy evenings with rest days, but I'm wondering if two full days off is really better. Just a side note... man my high school coaches could have learned a thing or two from the science. We were lucky to have Sunday off!
Great content, worth watching a few times per year! I found myself getting over trained in triathlon occasionally due to the intensity sessions of each sport sneakily adding up each week. One or two hard run sessions, a couple hard bike sessions and some intensity in every swim plus the accumulated volume of all three first led to tremendous fitness but later to injury and fatigue.
Sometimes I have a rest day and the next day I am still tired, but I do interval training. The first two intervals are terrible, but then I start to feel better and at the end I feel the best.
I was doing 2-3 spin class over the winter, and kept doing 2 a week up until 3 weeks ago with my outdoor rides ( 3-5 times a week ). Was always tired and sore in the road rides. Now that I have stopped the hard spin classes I’m flying on the road bike.
To the average 10hr/wk guy is there more detriment to not doing enough intensity or too much? Will that top peak effort really suffer if you only do one hard day a week I guess is what I’m asking.
If I'm doing a 5 hour endurance ride, (zone 2) there would be between 80-1000 Meters of climbing. How do I handle climbs that could be 3-4 min long, do I try to stay in zone 2? Usually a climb that I would come across requires close to a threshold power, even it the lowest gear.
Probably its just me, but i watch the video 3 times and im still not to sure about the awnser to the question: should you go to your absolute limit our leave a little bit in the tank during your Hard day ? Now i understand about the pacing and tapering of the season, im asking for hard training day at the peak of the season ? Thank you ! Btw watch Dylan video for over 2 years now and it helped me doubled my FTP over the course... Best cycling content on youtube, thanks alot !
At the 12 minute mark he talks about not going to that ultra/peak buried state in training very often in training. Essentially you don’t want to burn to many matches over the season, if you consider matches in this case to be going to that last 2 or 3% place.
@@AFMOS-ND yeah, might be my understanding but i understood that as, pacing the season and making sure hard effort are not to hard early in the season. But i was wondering if you keep this 2-3% in the tank in your peak season (in training obv)
For decades Hard, Medium, Easy, rest, Hard, Medium, Easy, rest, rest was the cycle I liked to use. Easy days are easy days which for me was 65-70% of max.!! Many decades later and 25 pounds heavier, if I ride a couple of times a week for 1-2 hours that is good. However I do love to go bikepacking where if I start breathing hard, I stop and take a picture. Enjoy and have FUN but the hammer must go down a couple of times every 10 days! :)
Listening to this I'm thinking I pushed too hard this year (your training plans to blame! lol) So I guess the only times to really push the envelope in training is on fitness testing days -after a rest week?
Dylan, kudo's, I agree with other comments, this is useful youtube to another level. THANK YOU! I've been fortunate with my training and not being pro so I could listen to my body, but this was super helpful and insightful as I've become a "mature" home athlete and have a couple decades of training in me.
Hey there, thanks so much for your videos. I'm trying to come up with a personnal plan for 2024 and I've already filled a couple of notebooks with notes taken while watching these. One thing that's still unclear to me is how you distribute "easy weeks". Lots of plans are built around a 3 weeks on/1 week off scheme. Do you agree ? Any scientific consensus about that ? I heard Dr Seiler arguing against the seven day idea and promoting a 14 day planning. But then : how would one articulate progressive overload principle with that idea ? So all in one : is rest week a thing ?
Twice a week is too much for me at 69 but my sessions are LONG and so are my hard days. I can do a mixed easy hard 5 days a week as long as my average HR is under 140 but I need some easy days with average HR under 125 but I'm hiking, not biking and hiking 10-20 miles
Love these videos BUT there is not enough focus on daily life. Personally I work 8 hours weekdays quite physical job so for me harder workout days only on weekends. And on the beginning of the week I always feel super tired.
The reality for most blue collar professionals looking to train hard is recovery has to be taken far more seriously, lots of vectors to leverage if you so choose.
Curious how intensity and volume correlate when you consider workouts by kilojoules of work performed. For instance, if I do a 3 hour zone 2 workout of 2000 kj and I do an 1.5 interval workout of 2000 kj, how does the body know the difference in terms of training stress? I bring this up because I heard a world tour coach talk about training in terms of building a capacity to do work and he was less concerned about the energy systems and more concerned about the overall capacity for work.
This doesn’t make much sense as we’re talking different energy systems. Aerobically, I’ve had 12000kcal days on ultra distance races and there is now way you could burn that much during intervals at higher intensities. I bet the coach was taking some mental shortcut perhaps knowing that he was training people for multi stage races so the intensities are known and riders must be able to sustain both long rides and some random chases or climbs in the middle.
Great video series! I noticed you have this little action camera on your bike in some shots…can you recommend it? There are so many conflicting reviews out there.
strange to hear some people don't feel strong after a rest day. i honestly feel like taking a day off is turbo fuel. i come back just PUMPED with energy. and then after a week of cycling i completely forget how useful the day was, i overtrain for a few weeks, then hit a wall, cave and miss a day, realize its great! and the cycle continues...
61 years old. Around five hours of easy Z2 to each hour of more intense effort. Thing is, the intense effort feels easy. The power is high, legs good, breathing great. And then back to another five hours of loafing about.
@Dylan Johnson, how do you train for a specific distance to maximize race day potential? For example, would I train different for a 25mi race vs. a 15mi race? Or even 60/30?? Maybe my Google fu isn’t strong but I can’t really find anything in the topic.
Coming from strength training, its much harder to push too hard. You will just fail reps eventually and your body wont let you go on. But in cardio you can really just mind over matter into the dirt.
For polarized training, is it necessary to bundle your high-intensity work into two or three particular days each week, or can you do high-intensity work in smaller daily doses, say 5-10 minutes per dose, in every session such that it comes to about 10-20% of every session? e.g. For a 2-hour, 120 min, session, you do 5-10 minutes high intensity 3 times during the session (15-30 minutes total), with recovery of at least 5 minutes in between each high-intensity segment.
Don’t mix like that. If you mix 30 minutes of high intensity on an ‘easy’ day, then it’s no longer an easy day. On easy days you want to stay in the lower zones, below first threshold
@@lechprotean Isn't the goal of threshold training to have a mix of about 80% low intensity and about 20% high? It's not about 80% of your sessions (days if one session per day) being low intensity, right? Now, I do believe in having a mix of easy and hard days...easy days to recover from hard ones, but the way I define a hard day is that it's longer in duration, and so I have 2 hard days in my 6-day training week, and those days are about 1.5 times longer than the easy days, but on every day I have about 80-20 high-low intensity...every session is polarized and the body is switching back-n-forth from fat-burning low intensity to carb+ lactate burning high intensity, with some "sweet spot" in there too, throughout each ride.
@@Avianthro Tony is right, once you go out of Zone 2 you induce a stress response that is much harder to recovery from day to day, week to week, that will not be sustainable. Keep easy days easy, and hard days hard as prescribed.
@@paulrust1574 Yes, I know that way of thinking does seem to be the consensus nowadays. I do note though that San Millan approves (does it himself) of throwing in some above-zone-2 work at the END of a session, after having completed his prescribed zone-2 work for the session. Personally, I'm not yet convinced, haven't seen the good, hard, and sufficiently large amount of data to say that keeping one's sessions "pure" (either low-intensity or high and not mixing them) is going to give a significant improvement in one's rate of progress. It seems to me that if one does a bit of mixing, that's more realistic training for racing events. As to recovery, well, Yes, that's always an essential part of training...training IS progressive overload + recovery. For a session to be a training session it must be an overload relative to previous average sessions and we assess overload based on the integral I(t)T, or in guesstimation math, I X T...nowadays we have gizmos, power meters, to measure this, Intensity being another way of saying Power, and so in Physics this is just the Energy integral...the total energy you put out into the pedals during the session length T. This means an overload can be a longer time T at a low intensity or a shorter time at a higher one. If you've done an overload you then need to make sure you recover properly (morning rest HR back to normal and feeling in good form) before doing another one. I think that many of us who don't want to stay off the bike like to do "recovery" rides between overload sessions. These are done in zone 2 and we are careful not to make them so long that they become overloads. Really though, especially for older guys like me over 60, we're probably better-off to not even do these almost-no-training-value, "junk", sessions but to simply rest or take a walk. Besides that, for someone who counts every penny like I do, those extra junk miles mean extra maintenance costs on the bike, and extra safety risk out on the roads with idiot drivers. Also, when you're in time crunch it also makes sense to leave out those junk miles, and so combining your zone-2 with some higher-intensity work in each session looks like the best way to go, and though it maybe not pure, pristine, and perfect it probably makes only an iota's worth of difference in one's rate of progress...iotas might matter in the TDF but not to me.
After 3 years of training too hard I’m on week 3 of polarised training. This video convinced me to try something different. So far so good! I’m trying to solve for an apparent gap between my VO2 and FTP. My FTP is low as a % of my 5-10 mins power. Can you talk about VLamax, from what I’m reading long low intensity rides should help lower that, but folks like INCSYD appear to encourage 2-3h tempo rides - counter to this video. Let me know your thoughts!
I'm beginning to think DJs telling us all to train less so he has a better chance to win races. "Trust me guys, one interval set a week, be sure not to exceed 100bpm....the rest of the time should be spent on doing walks less than 2 miles preferably with a helium filled vest, sleeping at least 12hrs a night and soft pedaling down hills. You'll be smashing Keegan during races in no time!"
Whenever I'm overreacting, my body moves faster than me. Just had a bad cold and laid in bed for the past 4 days. Almost reaching the end of 12weeks session you did on TP. Probably it's time to get a easier one lol
Biggest learnings from Dr. Seiler for me is that training is merely a means of creating stimuli for adaptations. KJ or time or # of intervals isn't some sort of "high score" or magical calculation of how much mitocondria or fitness you get from performing them, but rather a way to systematically assure you're getting the right stimulus for what you're trying to to train. People shouldn't get caught up too deeply into the numbers but rather how their system/program is intended to grow to keep applying the optimal stimuli for how you want your body to adapt.
Moreover I think too many people overlook the recovery part which is when the actual adaptations happen. A good rest day is better than a harder workout the day before
Check out the training that Nils van der Poel did to win Olympic gold in 5k and 10k speed skating mentioned by Dr. Seiler in this video: www.howtoskate.se/
G.O.S. training is what he was doing. No surprise.
Loved that he mentioned this. As a swede I'm obviously a big fan of Nils, but not just because he managed to win, but because of How he managed to win. I discussed his manifest briefly with the Mikal Iden, the coach of the Norwegian superstar triathletes Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden - probably two of the aerobically fittest guys in the world - and he called Nils an "adventure mind", meaning he's a person who seems to find meaning and motivation in thinking out of the box and coming up with a bit unorthodox approaches. Of course his way of training isn't for everyone, but if you're a fellow 'adventure mind', like I believe a small bunch of us are, his manifest and psychological/philosophical perspectives on his training should be of great interest. He emphasised this in long talk he did in a popular Swedish radio show, where he said the biggest obstacle to put in those massive aerobic hours is motivation, not letting the training drain him too much, mentally, so that he was willing to put in the long term work, week after week. For him, the two day rest - treating his training like a normal mon-fri job - was the key; making a point of spending his weekends with friends having fun, like any normal person, was key not just to his physical recovery, but to his mental recovery and his long term motivation.
I recently this year from doing 15 hour weeks doing high intensity every other day to doing 12 hours a week and high intensity every third day. Pretty much the week I switched I started hitting personal bests across all intensity ranges, whether I was focusing on them or not. FTP went up by 4-5% in my 17th year of cycling training.
So, I've been doing it wrong this whole time! The best part is my legs are rarely sore, I have more time, I rarely ever feel tired, and I basically have no mental stress on high intensity days because I'm only doing 2/3rds the amount of it.
@@cracked229 You have no idea.
1. I only did it for 9 months of year? The 3 month off season I did much less volume and about half the intensity.
2. I did 6 days of high intensity for a few years... After that, every other day seemed much easier.
3. I had a deep, gnawing, desperate need to win. I'm a stubborn person.
@@cracked229 More often than you might have thought. I also got stronger year after year. Go figure!
This is excellent, Dylan, I would argue that most athletes should only go one or at most two days a week hard. It’s amazing how the adage, hard days hard and easy days easy has been around so long, and yet so few people truly follow it.
Not first! This interview series with Dr Seiler is really valuable - thanks for taking the time to interview him and sharing it with us 👍
took two weeks off because of covid recently, my first hard ride back I saw my heart rate and power go up to a level I haven't reached in quite a long time and I felt fresh and great. Two weeks of rest is what I needed for a reset.
The cycling community 99% of it is fatigued. Cyclists don't know how not to be fatigued. All this information will be unleashed and more on my videos. I will educate the cycling world on How cycling training should be. I've already changed cycling training forever. But I'm going to let my secrets out very soon.
@@HarryTzianakisTheGodOfSpeed lol
@@ljadf 😁👍
Good for you. Start cycling after covid my HR went high like you said but power was at horrible low level. Need almost 6 weeks back to pre covid.
@@benjapolcycling your response is more common. Getting Covid is not resting for 99% of the population.
Got to admire Dr. Seiler's commitment to performance - he even wears a trip suit to the office.
Such a great series Dylan!
Lol! I should show this video to my group ride, every freaking ride is a hammerfest! It rings true that if you want to pace yourself or go easy on a ride you better off going by yourself or with a buddy who has the same mindset or goals.
This is excellent, the older i get recovery is more important. Those double rest-days feel really necessary for avoid fatique after some hard intervals or longer endurance rides.
I'm thinking now to start doing that.
I'm 27 years old training at the best level I ever have, and I have two recovery days per week. Helps to push harder on the hard days and recover from long sessions
Thank You Dylan for these Dr. Seiler interview videos. Lot's of things to take in training.
I've been using polarized system for two years and I'm in best shape ever. Riding long slow distance plus strenght training has lifted me to next level.
I did a hard and fast group ride last Friday, and was pretty spent. Then 2 days later I did a relatively easy gravel ride that was half the length and effort. That was the mistake. At my age (nearly 53) I did not have enough time to recover, and it left me feeling completely spent for a good 3 days after that. Only now have I recovered enough to ride again. (I have to remind myself that I am not in my 20s anymore!) I have to ride smarter now, not harder.
Most misleading thing: I learnt something wrong from a coach, that works sometimes, but I took it wrong. "A bad physical day is a good mental day" I was the guy going out totally over trained. I have paid the price more than once until realize that something was wrong, that my approach was extremist. Your videos are very useful. I should have paid attention or find someone like Dr Seile (or just been less stupid myself) years ago. Great job as usual young Dylan
When going too hard i have less appetite after the work-out, so i feel my recovery is not going 100%. Also doing long rides i want to come home feeling i could have easily done 1 hour more. Dont completely destroy yourself!
Such a great conversation. "training is training and racing is racing. gotta know you've got the extra gear"
I've seen/heard more interviews/podcasts with Seiler, but you somehow manage to get new important nuances out of the discussion, that I don't think I've heard before. Thank you, both of you 🙂
So glad that Dr. Stephen Seiler mentioned the training program of Nils van der Poel. Nils training was considered extremely unusual with up to 30 hours of aerobic training in the off season; including long runs, cycling, cross country skiing and skating to break up the monotony. And as Dr. Seiler says Nils broke just about every longer distance ice skating record.
"30 hours of aerobic training in the off season" Is this unusual because it's high or low. I assume high. Also assume he did that in what is for him Zone 2 Heart Rate?
It’s interesting, but what can mortals take away from the training of one of the most genetically gifted athletes in the world?
Most of theses clowns are on steroids . Not many men today stay pure.
Especially doctors. Doctors that are in fitness are all on steroids. If they are the ones prescribing them, they are the ones that have the most trust and belief in them. And will know how to use them better. Doctors are not to be trusted when it comes to them being clean.
@@Timmeh2Buck Look out for the signs of fatigue, know your body and then train appropriately:)
He knew how to stress his body and how to absorb the strain, over a whole season. Consequently, he laid down a massive endurance foundation, upon which he built a fortress.
@@johnschmitt3083 Yes very high load; possibly twice that average world class long distance skater. Also as far as I remember all at Zone 2 at least in the early off season per Dr. Seiler's discussion. Actually I think his training was looking at lactic acid levels more than heart rate or perhaps both metrics to determine optimal stress on the body ?
I've been over-training for weeks and I love it!
overtraining or over-reaching will undoubtedly burn you out, make you sick or injury yourself. i doubt you have been over-training. if you were. you would not be bragging about it. you would be losing weight, not sleeping good, likely not have great sex, chances are be moody, and lost your aggressive competitive growl. Am i correct?
I did trainer road in the past and it burnt me out fast. I switched to 2 hard sessions a week and the rest z2, and I feel fresh and have finally broken through my fitness plateau. building up ctl via z2 has worked wonders for me.
In my experience their training plans aren't sustainable.
Not to defend TR, but you are self coached in that platform. Guidance only. I only do 1-2 sessions a week with them, but still ride 20 hours a week.
@@jimmoses6617 I've heard it described as 'if you're talking on the phone, the other person could tell you're doing an activity'. It's a pace where you can get out like 3 or 4 words at a time.
@@jimmoses6617 what the guy above said. Described as the best indicator of transitioning from Z1 to Z2 - Z1 easy conversation possible that someone on the other end of the phone couldn't tell you are exercising to Z2 still comfortable to hold a conversation but you need to pause now and again and that imaginery person on the other end of the phone can tell you are exercising. Try talking to yourself when out/in riding and you will soon find the tipping point.
I think the ideas are sound, but the messaging was confusing: going deep in training is important, but it must be reserved to specific parts of the season/training plan and be done carefully. I'm confident he didn't argue for never going deep in training but that's how the message came across (for me, at least)
I switched to 11 h/week polarized training plan from 7h sweet spot training and my RHR dropped to 45 average from 51. Still 11h is a really high volume for me and wanted to see if i can handle
Switched from a high intensity Trainer Rd program,( where I was smashing myself 4-5 days a week) to this polarised training. My first FTP test, after this change resulted in the largest FTP jump i have ever had. Early days still, but I am a believer, so far.
Very informative. I found I recover faster/better when taking a day off the bike vs an 'active rest ride'.
Seiler said something about this in Dylan’s previous interview-video with him. Edit: ruclips.net/video/Ju3McjlSoAg/видео.html
Great stuff Dylan, and awesome B roll. You’re taking your RUclips-ing to the next level.
So you’re telling me my 3 days a week of sweet spot intervals prescribed to me by my trainer road program is probably the culprit for why I feel like death about two weeks into a training block? Thank you for the refreshing information. Polarized has always allowed me to remain balanced and healthy while still making gains through proper volume. Every time I’ve tried to venture past two days a week of intervals, I start to run out of gas. I’m not sure why I wanted to the threshold mentality again. I was hoping to use it to sharpen up the high aerobic energy systems for a race in about a month, but dug myself into a hole not even two weeks in. Time to go back to what works.
You went to threshold mentality because is satisfying go hard and difficult to take it easy 80% of the time. I like to Heard This guy all the time to help control myself 😂😂
Zwift FTP programs are another culprit of over training.
@@sergiogomes8035 I agree that a good set of intervals feels good! The first 4 days worth of intervals in the training block felt great. Then the 5th one left me with heavy legs. Then the 6th one finally left me feeling like I just had no power at all. I finally bailed out on day 7 and decided it was enough, I just couldn't get the power out anymore or the heart rate up. This was with one or two days worth of rest between the sweet spot days and I was completely exhausted two weeks in regardless.
it's not only a matter of how many hard days, but rather what is the proportion hard/easy....if your total weekly volume is no more than ten hours, yes you can't go over more than two hard days per week....The total weekly volume is how much you can handle, the easy/hard ratio staying more or less the same...
I certainly embrace rest days! 👍 I generally hit 3 intense sessions and 2 endurance sessions a week, zone 2. Then 2 rest days spread over the week, Monday / Friday for example! 🙏
I too make a point of incorporating rest days into my training. I carefully build anywhere from 3 to 7 rest days into my weeks ;-)
Awesome video answered a lot of questions for me. I use the whoop wristband to help me. I’m 54 yrs old. Rest is important. I train 2-3 days a week hiit sessions. If I’m feel horrible I rest til I’m back in the green per my whoop wristband. It help me am got a amateur crit racer and ride for fitness and health.
Dylan, would you consider doing a video on combining intervals with long zone 2 rides, before, during or at the end? I notice you do this, as do many pros. But it's not something a lot of amateurs do.
He said on one of his videos to start the hard effort at first when you are the freshest 😉
Great video!!! I know when I've let the fitness horse out of the barn when 130 watts feels like 220 watts. LITERALLY! My goal in training is to never let that happen and your recommendations in this video resonate nicely with my personal experimentation. Keep up the great work!!!
56 yr old and probably been training too hard for 42yrs 😂
Saying that I do live the buzz of a hard workout.
Having watched this I'm now going to get slower to go faster 🤞
That is not the way. It's way simpler than you can ever think . I will show you how to get fast with very little training. Uncross those fingers no need
@@HarryTzianakisTheGodOfSpeed Train slow to train a lot. Train a lot to go fast
@@dickieblench5001 ha ha ha 🤣👍👏 right ! Lmfaooo00!
Same here. I'm 55 and my definition of a "rest day" is failing to break my 10 mile record. This mentality has to die before I do.
@@glennrebillard3840Hah...BHD's philosophy
Nice to see the b-roll from your current leadville training. love the CO dirt/trails
6:36 I'm not sure if it's you, Dylan, or Dr Seiler who misread van der Poel's training manual. The screen grab shows thirty _second_ intervals of 400 W as a warm-up. His 4x 30 min @400 W workout is deep down in his training log, which is unfortunately displayed as a series of images and is therefore not 'ctrl+f'able.
Thanks for this! You are doing everyone a great service, uploading these talks for free
Great interview. Love the science based content of all Dylan’s videos
I needed to hear this.................15 years ago! This whole series has been excellent.
Love this. I absolutely agree with this content. Many thanks to Dylan Johnson and Dr. Stephen Seiler for the excellent explanations. RIDE ON 🤙
You didn't even watch it
@@HarryTzianakisTheGodOfSpeed 🤣🤣. Yes I did man, twice!!
@@MTB-Portugal sure you did 🤣🤭🤫
@@HarryTzianakisTheGodOfSpeed whatever... Have a nice day!
This is an excellent series of information. I'm older (56) and working my way back to performance level cycling.
These three videos are some of the most important content on cycling RUclips and i need constant reminders of this. Especially since the older you get the easier it is to overreach. I never used to log my RPE after rides. Now I do. Especially in the time of year where I'm dealing with extreme heat.
Great video. What's still puzzling for me(maybe that's the topic for one of the next videos) is where you draw a line between a hard and easy workout?
I mean it's obvious Vo2max intervals is a hard workout zone 1-2 rides are easy workouts(though I'm not so sure about 3h + zone 2 rides, but I guess this is different kind of hard and it doesn't count) but what about workouts that are kinda hard but not so much? mixed zone 2/3 rides, zone 2 rides with some sprints in between or short zone 4-6 efforts, easy rides with 2-3 spikes(like pre-race ride the day before). What EXACTLY does a hard workout mean?
Also, about not going too hard to kill yourself during high intensity sessions - I understand the concept with pros who have 50+ races during the season, but what if you race more like 5-10 times a year(2-4 hours) and sometimes it happens that you have no race for a few months, maybe sometimes with no race on the horizon it's beneficial to dig a little bit deeper?
I really appreciate you sharing your time with Dr Seiler with us. I took up polarized training several years ago and have found that it's the best way to train. The difficult part is that most of my training is done solo because it's hard to find other cyclists who will ride at a slower, endurance pace. You know how that is. Macho macho macho, always have to ride hard. And to be honest, I'm just not going to waste my time trying to explain the science to them. And group rides are pretty much a bust too, because they go hard, but not hard enough, so it's usually just junk miles. Anyway, thanks again for sharing.
Agree on this - my personal experience is that group rides always seem to be too hard than it should because there always are a few ego driven riders in the group that try too hard to prove they are stronger.
Now I started to ride solo so I can follow a structured training schedule.
I'm also seeing improvements when I take a lot of rest days .. sometimes 10 - 12 rest days (I'm 43), with only very mild walks and some short very low intensity e-bike rides (30 - 40 min) on those rest days. I'm pretty sure if I took 12 - 14 days off completely I would improve my FTP.
What a plan!!!
Great insight info! Modern tech tools (Smart watches, HR, watts) definitely are helping to understand how to better train. i am 60 years old. so, i believe age is a factor. The pace of training and overall momentum building of your Physical and mental aspects is the key to peak performance. as a youth i could train harder and peak more frequently. Now as an older athlete i peak less frequently yet still very high performance. Thanks, DOC!
I've loved this series of videos with Dr. Seiler - very insightful. Thanks to you both.
Love these videos man, I played hockey very competitively through college and the training for me was very enjoyable most of the time but during the summer months it would get stale and I could tell I needed time off. Didn't listen many times and ended up burning out of the sport completely
I really like the idea of the 'matchbook for the season', I'll be using that.
Factor in the background looks pretty nice. Upgraaaaade!
wow, this is kinda new to me, I am the guy who put 110% on high-intensity interval sessions, and finished halfway at the last set because I was bonked...
Been there done that! I remember quite a few yrs back now, I was training really hard, riding hard every ride, and then my HR suddenly went down on my rides. And I thought "great I must have just gotten fitter". No idea it was a clear overtraining sign. Soon after ended up with a muscle tear and 7months before i could train properly again.
When I overtrained a year ago, my heart rate remained the same, but my power output dropped considerably. Also, my (Garmin-estimated) V02 Max suddenly dropped from 68 to 58. It took me 11 months to restore my V02 Max. Using my new training programme, I have in just one month increased my V02 Max to 72, which isn't bad for a 61 year old.
@@dpstrial Impressive VO2! Strange when the body stops being predictable. Glad you made a good turnaround. Makes sense though as you might have not have been resting/easy riding enough to bank the gains before.
@@swites I think the issue was I was doing one-hour HIIT sessions, when really I should have been restricting it to 30 minutes maximum. I have also found a way of making the sessions more effective at increasing V02 Max and less stressful to the body at the same time.
I have a very heavy manual job doing a good volume of work. Trying to train with this is harder but it also makes me have days off because I’m so tired I can’t physically get my gear on then climb onto the bike. Some of my peers never get tired and do twice my volume. I think they’re on PED’s.
Sooo good. And sooo guilty! This is probably my #1 issue to correct… NOW! Thank you, Dylan! 👊🏻💥
Train for peak performance in terms of time scale and the context of the event. Periodisation meaning you have set volumes of work to do before the event,with chill out days. Rest days the most important days.
Some people get sucked into thinking higher weekly TSS is better
Duuuude, you gotta race up Mt Washington! It would be cool to see you there with Jukebox teammates.
This series has been excellent!
Dylan, Great video as always! I have two questions I'm hoping you can help me with.
1. How "restful" does a rest day need to be? I'm training for Enduro MTB racing. I need to get my baseline up so I can have gas in the tank for those final sprints. I'm wondering if it's alright to get some cone drills/cornering practice in (heart rate zone 1 the entire time) on rest days, or if even that's too much. What about a hike where HR stays at zone 1 or low zone 2?
2. Do the rest days need to be two days in a row? For everyday people with busy work/personal schedules, sometimes we are simply forced to take a rest day on certain days due to other activities/commitments. I'll often try to plan my week so that I coincide busy evenings with rest days, but I'm wondering if two full days off is really better.
Just a side note... man my high school coaches could have learned a thing or two from the science. We were lucky to have Sunday off!
Great content, worth watching a few times per year! I found myself getting over trained in triathlon occasionally due to the intensity sessions of each sport sneakily adding up each week. One or two hard run sessions, a couple hard bike sessions and some intensity in every swim plus the accumulated volume of all three first led to tremendous fitness but later to injury and fatigue.
Always great information, even more so with Dr. Seiler.
BTW, anyone know what that device at 9:20 hanging down the computer mount is?
Thank you Dylan for this
Yeah! Go Nils! ♥️ coolest guy ever! Well worth a read!
Sometimes I have a rest day and the next day I am still tired, but I do interval training. The first two intervals are terrible, but then I start to feel better and at the end I feel the best.
I was doing 2-3 spin class over the winter, and kept doing 2 a week up until 3 weeks ago with my outdoor rides ( 3-5 times a week ). Was always tired and sore in the road rides. Now that I have stopped the hard spin classes I’m flying on the road bike.
To the average 10hr/wk guy is there more detriment to not doing enough intensity or too much? Will that top peak effort really suffer if you only do one hard day a week I guess is what I’m asking.
Fantastic series, curious to know how strength training, 2-3 times /week, will, or wont, add to the total stress, fatigue for the day, week.
Hi. Dylan covers this comprehensively in other videos. Basically there is a strength training schedule for winter gym work 👍
Great content. Thank you so much 👍
Thanks mate🤙
Outstanding video, thanks again
If I'm doing a 5 hour endurance ride, (zone 2) there would be between 80-1000 Meters of climbing. How do I handle climbs that could be 3-4 min long, do I try to stay in zone 2? Usually a climb that I would come across requires close to a threshold power, even it the lowest gear.
Probably its just me, but i watch the video 3 times and im still not to sure about the awnser to the question: should you go to your absolute limit our leave a little bit in the tank during your Hard day ? Now i understand about the pacing and tapering of the season, im asking for hard training day at the peak of the season ? Thank you ! Btw watch Dylan video for over 2 years now and it helped me doubled my FTP over the course... Best cycling content on youtube, thanks alot !
At the 12 minute mark he talks about not going to that ultra/peak buried state in training very often in training. Essentially you don’t want to burn to many matches over the season, if you consider matches in this case to be going to that last 2 or 3% place.
@@AFMOS-ND yeah, might be my understanding but i understood that as, pacing the season and making sure hard effort are not to hard early in the season. But i was wondering if you keep this 2-3% in the tank in your peak season (in training obv)
The highlighted bit at 01:44, just above it reads “10 to 14 times per week”. Surely that’s supposed to be hours, if not, what does that mean?
It means "times" per week eg an Ironman triathlete will train that often.
Great content, as always. Thanks Dylan!
For decades Hard, Medium, Easy, rest, Hard, Medium, Easy, rest, rest was the cycle I liked to use. Easy days are easy days which for me was 65-70% of max.!! Many decades later and 25 pounds heavier, if I ride a couple of times a week for 1-2 hours that is good. However I do love to go bikepacking where if I start breathing hard, I stop and take a picture. Enjoy and have FUN but the hammer must go down a couple of times every 10 days! :)
Listening to this I'm thinking I pushed too hard this year (your training plans to blame! lol) So I guess the only times to really push the envelope in training is on fitness testing days -after a rest week?
Dylan, kudo's, I agree with other comments, this is useful youtube to another level. THANK YOU! I've been fortunate with my training and not being pro so I could listen to my body, but this was super helpful and insightful as I've become a "mature" home athlete and have a couple decades of training in me.
Hey there, thanks so much for your videos. I'm trying to come up with a personnal plan for 2024 and I've already filled a couple of notebooks with notes taken while watching these. One thing that's still unclear to me is how you distribute "easy weeks". Lots of plans are built around a 3 weeks on/1 week off scheme. Do you agree ? Any scientific consensus about that ? I heard Dr Seiler arguing against the seven day idea and promoting a 14 day planning. But then : how would one articulate progressive overload principle with that idea ? So all in one : is rest week a thing ?
Twice a week is too much for me at 69 but my sessions are LONG and so are my hard days. I can do a mixed easy hard 5 days a week as long as my average HR is under 140 but I need some easy days with average HR under 125 but I'm hiking, not biking and hiking 10-20 miles
thanks for sharing. Interesting topic.
Love these videos BUT there is not enough focus on daily life. Personally I work 8 hours weekdays quite physical job so for me harder workout days only on weekends. And on the beginning of the week I always feel super tired.
The reality for most blue collar professionals looking to train hard is recovery has to be taken far more seriously, lots of vectors to leverage if you so choose.
Great segment thanks Dylan. What about multi sport athletes. Should I only do 2 HIT sessions across bike/run/swim?
Thank you!
Curious how intensity and volume correlate when you consider workouts by kilojoules of work performed. For instance, if I do a 3 hour zone 2 workout of 2000 kj and I do an 1.5 interval workout of 2000 kj, how does the body know the difference in terms of training stress? I bring this up because I heard a world tour coach talk about training in terms of building a capacity to do work and he was less concerned about the energy systems and more concerned about the overall capacity for work.
This doesn’t make much sense as we’re talking different energy systems. Aerobically, I’ve had 12000kcal days on ultra distance races and there is now way you could burn that much during intervals at higher intensities. I bet the coach was taking some mental shortcut perhaps knowing that he was training people for multi stage races so the intensities are known and riders must be able to sustain both long rides and some random chases or climbs in the middle.
Great video series! I noticed you have this little action camera on your bike in some shots…can you recommend it? There are so many conflicting reviews out there.
strange to hear some people don't feel strong after a rest day. i honestly feel like taking a day off is turbo fuel. i come back just PUMPED with energy. and then after a week of cycling i completely forget how useful the day was, i overtrain for a few weeks, then hit a wall, cave and miss a day, realize its great! and the cycle continues...
Great video and insights. Thanks!
61 years old. Around five hours of easy Z2 to each hour of more intense effort. Thing is, the intense effort feels easy. The power is high, legs good, breathing great. And then back to another five hours of loafing about.
As always, awesome content. Thanks!
What no backwards hat dylan ? Where am I going to get my best tips from ?
I've always thought intelligent training should be called recovery based training - recovery is the limiting factor for everyone.
Hi Dylan, What is your factor bike hander bar model? Thanks
What IF range should you be aiming for to make sure workouts are hard but not to hard?
I use indoor trainer rides or long flat bike trail rides for easy days so I don’t go over, is that a good strategy?
@Dylan Johnson, how do you train for a specific distance to maximize race day potential? For example, would I train different for a 25mi race vs. a 15mi race? Or even 60/30?? Maybe my Google fu isn’t strong but I can’t really find anything in the topic.
Coming from strength training, its much harder to push too hard. You will just fail reps eventually and your body wont let you go on. But in cardio you can really just mind over matter into the dirt.
For polarized training, is it necessary to bundle your high-intensity work into two or three particular days each week, or can you do high-intensity work in smaller daily doses, say 5-10 minutes per dose, in every session such that it comes to about 10-20% of every session? e.g. For a 2-hour, 120 min, session, you do 5-10 minutes high intensity 3 times during the session (15-30 minutes total), with recovery of at least 5 minutes in between each high-intensity segment.
Don’t mix like that. If you mix 30 minutes of high intensity on an ‘easy’ day, then it’s no longer an easy day. On easy days you want to stay in the lower zones, below first threshold
@@lechprotean Isn't the goal of threshold training to have a mix of about 80% low intensity and about 20% high? It's not about 80% of your sessions (days if one session per day) being low intensity, right? Now, I do believe in having a mix of easy and hard days...easy days to recover from hard ones, but the way I define a hard day is that it's longer in duration, and so I have 2 hard days in my 6-day training week, and those days are about 1.5 times longer than the easy days, but on every day I have about 80-20 high-low intensity...every session is polarized and the body is switching back-n-forth from fat-burning low intensity to carb+ lactate burning high intensity, with some "sweet spot" in there too, throughout each ride.
@@Avianthro Tony is right, once you go out of Zone 2 you induce a stress response that is much harder to recovery from day to day, week to week, that will not be sustainable. Keep easy days easy, and hard days hard as prescribed.
@@paulrust1574 Yes, I know that way of thinking does seem to be the consensus nowadays. I do note though that San Millan approves (does it himself) of throwing in some above-zone-2 work at the END of a session, after having completed his prescribed zone-2 work for the session. Personally, I'm not yet convinced, haven't seen the good, hard, and sufficiently large amount of data to say that keeping one's sessions "pure" (either low-intensity or high and not mixing them) is going to give a significant improvement in one's rate of progress. It seems to me that if one does a bit of mixing, that's more realistic training for racing events.
As to recovery, well, Yes, that's always an essential part of training...training IS progressive overload + recovery. For a session to be a training session it must be an overload relative to previous average sessions and we assess overload based on the integral I(t)T, or in guesstimation math, I X T...nowadays we have gizmos, power meters, to measure this, Intensity being another way of saying Power, and so in Physics this is just the Energy integral...the total energy you put out into the pedals during the session length T. This means an overload can be a longer time T at a low intensity or a shorter time at a higher one. If you've done an overload you then need to make sure you recover properly (morning rest HR back to normal and feeling in good form) before doing another one. I think that many of us who don't want to stay off the bike like to do "recovery" rides between overload sessions. These are done in zone 2 and we are careful not to make them so long that they become overloads. Really though, especially for older guys like me over 60, we're probably better-off to not even do these almost-no-training-value, "junk", sessions but to simply rest or take a walk. Besides that, for someone who counts every penny like I do, those extra junk miles mean extra maintenance costs on the bike, and extra safety risk out on the roads with idiot drivers. Also, when you're in time crunch it also makes sense to leave out those junk miles, and so combining your zone-2 with some higher-intensity work in each session looks like the best way to go, and though it maybe not pure, pristine, and perfect it probably makes only an iota's worth of difference in one's rate of progress...iotas might matter in the TDF but not to me.
Really great info!
After 3 years of training too hard I’m on week 3 of polarised training. This video convinced me to try something different. So far so good!
I’m trying to solve for an apparent gap between my VO2 and FTP. My FTP is low as a % of my 5-10 mins power.
Can you talk about VLamax, from what I’m reading long low intensity rides should help lower that, but folks like INCSYD appear to encourage 2-3h tempo rides - counter to this video. Let me know your thoughts!
I'm beginning to think DJs telling us all to train less so he has a better chance to win races. "Trust me guys, one interval set a week, be sure not to exceed 100bpm....the rest of the time should be spent on doing walks less than 2 miles preferably with a helium filled vest, sleeping at least 12hrs a night and soft pedaling down hills. You'll be smashing Keegan during races in no time!"
Interesting
2 or 3 times hard days per week? He suggested 80/20, if i train 5 days a week shouldn`t it be more like 4 days easy 1 day hard?
How do you manage recovery/training between races?
Next interview...Iñigo San Millán?
Whenever I'm overreacting, my body moves faster than me. Just had a bad cold and laid in bed for the past 4 days. Almost reaching the end of 12weeks session you did on TP. Probably it's time to get a easier one lol
This why I need a coach.
Not to make me push hard. To stop me! 😪🙄🙄
I just deadlifted 230# earlier! Todays ride will be chill. This ought to be amusing....last time I did this I didn't break 10 mph! Lololol