a new victory for the ISM Training Model 
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Measured today for a jersey order. Added another 1+ inches to circumference of upper legs. Really noticeable over the last two months. Cut way back on lifting in December and arms lost a bit of muscle. I’m convinced it is from the zone2 cycling. Roughly 7-8 hours per week total riding on average. Wasn’t the goal to build mass in my legs. Not too shabby for a comeback as I close out my fifties. Tip of the hat to Coach Isaiah and the FasCat crew.
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Hi everyone,
I apologize for the obvious question, but can anyone write briefly what this training method is all about? As the discussion is relatively long, it will save a significant amount of time if one can just read the main bullets of this training model.
Thank you in advance
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Plenty of threads in this forum which touch the train-low-glycogen training. However, I’d rather put this in here as the sub-maximal exercise in the study is 3h right at LT1. And the subjects are fairly well trained amateur cyclists, not some recreationally active or similar college students. And trials were done after a proper glycogen loading protocol, not fasted.
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1113/JP281127
This study may offer some insights on how this endurance training works and why restricting carbs before and during is not necessary. It’s all about how empty glyocogen stores are at the end of a session.
Eat your carbs, riding happy hard at LT1 is much more fun then. You just have to find the time for the required training volume.
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ride your bike a whole lot
ride a whole lot of that whole lot at, or slightly above, your measured AeT
cap it off with some high end “stuff” a couple of times a week.
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Haha, this is me usually but the end of base season. By March/April, I definitely notice the pants being tighter. I do know I’m one who puts on muscle easily, and I have realized I can’t do too much lower body weight work, or else I struggle to fit into my pants.
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He gives a good overview in the many podcasts he’s been on.
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- 4 min steps could have yielded a lower absolute La concentration than 10 min step
- “amateur cyclists” can mean a lot, no word on volume. Definitely trained but La kinetics could be typical for lower volume (when compared to high volume or elite athletes).
what study is that?
You don’t see the link?
I do now, sorry when I opened the thread it jumped to your second post starting with “Mmmm …”
Oh no, you have removed whole “magical” aspect out of it… do you tell me that I have to train a lot, and do hard work on the top of it? 
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surprising, isn’t it?
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I have my A event coming up in July. The event is 638 miles single stage unsupported event over a max of 3 days. It has 40,000ft of ascent , most it towards the western end.
The 5 or 6 hour ride isn’t epic , it’s my weekly bread and butter long ride. The long weekly ride tends to be 2-3 hours over winter, extends to 3-4 hours as we move out of winter, then extends to 5-6 hours as move out of spring. Once a month I’ll throw in a 10-11 hour ride / event.
I’ve only just started adding in the VO2 max work twice a week. Before that it was just once a week. I find that 8 weeks or so of increased vo2 max work is more than enough to get the gains for my A race without breaking my body.
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I’ve tried to read the study but to be honest it might as well be written in Chinese as far as I’m concerned. In simple terms could someone please explain what the benefits are of completing a longish workout is without having depleted your glycogen stores? Does it just help with the recovery process or are their other benefits?
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I’m going to try and parse the opening paragraph in the Discussion section:
"Confirming our hypothesis, our data demonstrate that CHO feeding during prolonged endurance exercise does not alter IMTG and glycogen utilisation in either type I or type II/IIa muscle fibres. Moreover, we also present novel data on the subcellular-specific changes in IMTG content and LD morphology during exercise, in that we observed for the first time that IMTG content was reduced in both the peripheral and central regions of both fibres, an effect independent of CHO feeding. The reduction of IMTG content was a function of a reduction in LD number in both type I and IIa fibres, whereas a reduction in LD size was only evident in type I fibres. In accordance with similar absolute glycogen utilisation and depletion, CHO feeding did not attenuate activation of acute cell signalling pathways with regulatory roles in modulation of skeletal muscle mitochondrial biogenesis. Finally, CHO feeding improved exercise capacity in a dose dependent manner, an effect likely to be related to maintenance of circulating glucose availability and whole-body rates of CHO oxidation.
Here is my attempt, and as a caveat I have no actual training in physiology:
- Ingesting carbs (eating carbs / carb feeding) during long exercise does not change the amount of stored fatty acids and glycogen that are used as fuel.
In other words, you are going to deplete stored fuel in muscles (both fats and sugars), regardless of what you eat during exercise.
- Some first time technical discussion around the use of stored fatty acids in muscle fibers, and independence from carb feeding.
In other words, carb feeding does not impact adaptations leading to gains in metabolic fitness (adaptations that generate more mitochondria mass “mitochondria biogenesis”).
- Ingesting carbs improved exercise capacity.
Didn’t read enough to comment on this one.
Somebody with a background in exercise physiology should chime in and correct my understanding.
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And I parsed it during a long and frustrating meeting at work.
Updated caveats: distracted and no background in physiology.
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My take is that it supports what San Millan has been saying - that fasted rides don’t work.
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fasted rides are not necessarily low-glycogen rides
- training with low glycogen has generated quite some buzz over last few years
- studies suggested that training low augments endurance adapation to a higher degree than exercising “fully loaded”
- the most recent studies suggest (including this) that it is not necessary to train with low glycogen. Elevated signals for endurance adaptions seem to be the result of how low you end a session, not how low you are during the session
- this may be one of the reasons why long endurance rides work
big caveat with all this train low literature, it’s always just about signals, not about how these signals get expressed. big caveat.
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