I’m listening to this interview right now (maybe you are too!) and that quote on the thumbnail, “zone 2 is a waste of time,” is at best out of context. Pretty click-baity.
I haven’t heard him say that yet. He’s saying what we all know, more or less: if you only do zone 2, you’ll be able to make a bunch of progress, but at some point you’ll need to do something else. He also says early on that consistency is the real key to any program.
Around the 16:30 mark he also says for someone with 6-8 hours a week, SS training makes a lot of sense, but it’s hard to pin down your zones.
At 20 minutes: “zone 2 training is really…it’s fine”. But he recommends mixing it up. And listen to your body.
Overall, not quite the contrarian follow-up teased by that video title.
Indeed. I’m at 16 mins in, with distinct appreciation for his view and repeated use of “nuance” and a clear-eyed realization that “being mindful about training” and use of “variety” are usually necessary. There is no single source, silver bullet here and his take is as pragmatic and realistic as I’d hope to see.
I definitely get the click-bait feel as the lead-in from GCN, along with some prodding by Simon where Olav steers clear of that in light of a more practical view. Refreshing to hear someone with that view vs what seems to be “this one thing…”, “easy” answer type of snake oil that is all to prevalent in this social media landscape.
I think a valid takeaway of the original video is that you can improve a lot (or recover some of your previous fitness) by doing only Z2.
What cannot be implied is that Z2 only was better or worse than any other training method because there’s no counterfactual or control.
The first is probably not surprising for many. Still, it’s interesting to have an example that “easy” rides can provide performance benefits even without adding intensity.
This is important for beginners, riders recovering from injury, riders with certain conditions, people who don’t have the motivation or are too tire (due to family, work) to do intense efforts, etc.
Of course, we know that riding has a lot of benefits beyond performance but sometimes it could feel pointless if there’s no perceived fitness gain.