What is a realistic, average increase in VO2max over say 2 years?
Might be of interest… not cycling specific though. There are loads of studies on PubMed - a quick review it seems intensity and type of training (not just duration of training) could have an impact.
Results: After 3 years of training, in MET and FET athletes the performance improved by 1.77% and 0.69% (P<0.01 and P=0.579), respectively. In Class A runners, training resulted in non-significant increase in performance (-0.04%) (P=0.982) and in Class B runners, performance increased by 3.16% (P=0.001). In all groups VO(2max) remained essentially unchanged. Longitudinal changes in the VO2max were not related with the changes in running performance in any group.
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Should this be the main takeaway?
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Super impressive consistency. Way to go, 2 key workouts per week followed by a ton/some z2 seems to be the way, progressive overload, and seems like you learned really quickly on what worked for you. What testing protocol did you switch to?
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Yes.
Everyone can make meaningful improvements in fitness given their starting point.
Elite level athletes are born with potential that the average person does not.
5w/kg is awesome for us non-pros, but 5w/kg isn’t even anything special for pro cyclists in general.
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Thanks!
Yep, consistency is something that has helped me massively. I am in a position to train as such. No kids, very supportive wife and work schedule means I can do so. In terms of learning what worked for me, yes, It happened quickly but I think I got a little lucky on that front - I followed some general approaches and listened to how my body felt - adjusting accordingly.
In terms of testing I switched across the the KM/ Empirical Cycling FTP Tests - The Physiology of FTP and New FTP Test Protocols - discussed quite a lot in this thread: Kolie Moore's FTP test protocol
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I didn’t pick up a bike until I was 34 and got to 5 w/kg around 38 years old. Not a runner, but spend a lot of my winters in the past splitboarding. That helps build a huge engine. All the top CO xc racers are big into ski or splitboard touring, cross country skiing.
Back in the day played the typical sports in high school. I have no idea what my vo2 max is.
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I find the VO2 Max discussion interesting. After learning where it is on Intervals.icu (thanks @ojtCycling) I see that it shows me at 60.3. My garmin has me at 68.
I don’t understand how VO2 max “doesn’t change”. As people lose weight, and increase power and decrease heartrate at the same effort, the number naturally goes up right?
Or are they saying actual measured in a lab max oxygen usage does not increase with training?
I’m afraid you got the causation arrow backwards: they are at the top of those aerobic endeavors because the have huge engines
It does increase, but it is marginal compared to the baseline differences. Coggan had an estimate somewhere, think like 10-15%….but don’t quote me on that.
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That’s right.
@varmstrong vo2 max is the amount of oxygen you can process relative to your body weight. Similar to w/kg. The amount of oxygen your body can process for healthy trained athletes does change a bit, but it is far less responsive to training than the change in the amount of watts you can produce. ‘Training vo2max’ is training your ability to produce power at vo2 max breathing. You can meaningfully increase this. In other words, you can train to push more watts at a given level of oxygen consumption (or your body’s top o2 consumption). Essentially, all training is attempting to increase your ability to hold some power at a given percentage of vo2 max.
Trying to increase your ftp is basically just trying to increase the percentage of vo2max that you can sustain for an hour (or however you want to define it). That’s why vo2max is seen as a limiter for some sports or events. Some people have huge vo2 max so they can be dominant by utilizing a lower percentage of it. Some athletes, like lance Armstrong, are thought to have been able to utilize a very high percentage of their vo2 max (ie his ftp was achieved at a very high percentage of his vo2max breathing).
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I see your hours per week and avg daily TSS but I’m not sure if that means times the avg x 7 to get weekly average? Or is that average per day? Just trying to understand if 48 tss per day means 336 a week and then 88 per day means 616 per week avg?
Yep this is correct - it’s the average weekly load /7
In reality though I do take a rest day completely off the bike each week so average daily load on those days I train would be slightly higher
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Nice, thanks for clarifying! Really dig this data on your progress. What KG are you?
It looks too like you ramped up to being able to handle 600 per week. I see in your first year, it looks like Jan-May you were probably 250ish per week and then ramped up in the summer, and a small dip near fall.
How did you know you were ready to up it from the 300ish levels to that big jump to 600 in Jan 2021? I ask because I think I’m nearing a similar spot. The past year I could only really handle 200-300ish, now I’m handling 400 tss weeks a lot better, hoping to be able to maintain through the winter (Indoor training is hard to keep the volume) and then up it some maybe.
Glad it is welcomed. It was actually quite insightful documenting some thoughts like this. Will probably use as part of my end of season review.
I am currently circa 64.5 (bsed on 60day rolling average).
The begining of 2020 load was pretty much based on what I had been doing in 2019. This is when I started riding again post injury and my main focus was on loosing weight for my wedding and get used to being back on the bike. I focused on the time I had available and maximum bang for buck - 30-45m smash fest - not proper planned out training.
In the summer I started riding outside again and yes the load ramped up based on this. Again, in the latter part of the year I revereted to riding inside and upping the volume/ applying some more structure. In all honesty I probably could of handled more load in this period and the jump from 300 to 600ish weekly avg load was not a concious one other than I moved house and had my sights set of getting fit/ fast enough to hang with one of the faster groups at the local club come spring. I just started down the TR path and added some z2 where I could - with this came more weekly load but it was probably predmoniatly from adding the (not so fatiguing z2).
How are you adding more tss? Harder key workouts or more z2? Perhaps try the latter first if you can to adjust to the workload. I had to make a concious decision this last year or so to make all workouts 2hrs minimum. Prior this is it was 1.5hrs. This means z2 for 2hrs on easy days and then key workouts + z2 to make up to 2hrs minimum. Most of my training Mon-Fri is indoors. I get to play outside at the weekend 
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More Z2 for sure. I am pretty well keyed into the science behind polarized training. Learned a ton over the past year, which has sorta been my progression from just using TR without really understanding what I was doing, to now doing my own plan. In the summer it’s much easier to do this with long outdoor rides. I’ll do usually do 2 productive 1 hour interval workouts during the week (threshold and V02max) and then I either tack on Z2 to the end of those, so Sunday might be a 1 hour V02+2-3 hours of Z2. Or I’ll just make sunday a long Z2 and get the intervals done during the week. This past 12 weeks I gained about 8 watts doing this, averaging about 350 TSS (about 7-10 hours) and felt very solid doing it, not overly fatigued, but not too fresh either. It tells me I’m starting to handle more stress better. I only started riding in Aug 2020, Got a trainer Jan 2021 and started TR then. I wouldn’t say I really figured out what I was doing till Aug 2021, so I’m about a year into real structure training.
As another anecdote, there is an interesting article by Alan Couzens, who drastically changed the training protocol for one of his triathletes and “built the engine” on tested Vo2max for the athlete from 53.1 to 74.6 over a period of four years:
He makes the point that this is an anecdote and not yet the plural (“data”), and that this athlete’s response could well be an outlier. But the athlete had been training significantly for a while, and Couzens’ approach was to drastically change training distribution to be lower intensity and have more hours in the saddle, centered around the hypothesis that cardiac volume increases due to overall volume would increase Vo2max.
My rationale for using low-intensity, high-volume training as a potent stimulus for large changes in VO2 max comes from the observed relationship between training volume and cardiac stroke volume, one of the most important and modifiable factors in VO2 max. In a large EKG study of athletes’ heart morphology, Berbalk discovered a strong, almost linear, relationship between training volume and total heart volume,2as shown in figure 3.
Interesting article, and gives me hope as I’m almost completely past injuries (torn calf, Achilles tendinopathy) that significantly limited me in the last 18 months.
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This brings up a point that I don’t think I’ve seen discussed or considered in the path to 5 w/kg. Or simply any training goal. Some people are much more injury averse than others, not sure if there is anyway to quantify that. Maybe it’s luck, training history, genetics, probably a combination of all 3. One thing I noticed in the training calendar that ojTCycling shared above was in his 2 year journey from 3w/kg to 5w/kg. He literally had like only 2 weeks off the bike or only 2 weeks in the TSS chart that look under 100. That tells me he pretty much was able to train 2 years straight injury free. That is pretty damn amazing.
I only started riding at 36 with about 5+ years before that not doing much, although I’m in decent shape and progressing. My body is very injury prone. I don’t think I’ve strung more than 12 weeks of back to back training together without some type of overuse injury or related issue. Knee, glute, broken toe, tibial tendon in my ankle currently. I think in my case, this is lots of growing pains getting used to being on a bike and doing more training. Done lots of mobility work to get better at this and I’m much better than I was a year ago. But that aside, some people simply can handle more without getting hurt.
Matt Beers actually brought this up on that most recent episode on Payson’s podcast when discussing Keegan. He mentioned how you go through these periods in training and if you put it all together without any injuries, it can be pretty magical.
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Yeah, I’m never sick or have overuse injuries and I’m almost 46yo. That’s doing HV+ plans and without doing anything off the bike. Even when I crashed a few months ago and broke a rib I was able to continue training. In the past 2 years the only time I’ve not trained is when I’ve purposely taken an off season and mid season break.
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This is correct. The only major time I have had off the bike was when I got Covid. Other times have been for holidays which I tried to have aligned with end of season (or mid season breaks).
COVID aside not travelling for work as much etc in the 2 year period probably kept me a little safer from common colds etc but physically I have been very fortunate (I do listen to my body very closely) to attempt to stay injury free.
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