Leg fatigue vs. cardio preventing going harder

Training
21

Indeed, caught wrong keywords from diagonal reading :slight_smile:

Anyway, for OP: if you want to improve leg strength and fatigue resistance, gather lot of hours at low intensity, capped by HR (for me, HR cap makes me ride at 60% of FTP). Yes, you’ll be still tired, need lot of calories and rest but you don’t throw your hormones off balance. If your HRV heads lower and/or can’t sleep well, etc., it is good indicator you had too much intensity. High volume of low intensity should not create such symptoms.

Once you built up fatigue resistance, it is easier to push high intensity workouts more frequently. Usually 2 per week, maybe 3 but not for too long periods.

2 Likes
22

I suffer from the same for (probably) over a year.
Very interested in this topic.

Thanks for sharing.

23

I agree with you @Power13 (piling on the grenade).

I used to think along those lines: “My legs hurts but my breathing is not max. Therefore this is a leg strength problem.”

I now believe it isn’t really about muscle strength. I can produce the force required to push 600W@100rpm for 10-20 minutes by pushing 300W@50rpm, and I don’t die. But no way I can produce 600W for that long…

So I believe it is about metabolism in the muscle, and the ability to produce the required energy without drowning in by-products. The breathing doesn’t max out because you simply can’t process more oxygen and have nowhere left to transport the lactate to and use it up. So the body knows more oxygen and more blood flow isn’t gonna help you.

Metabolic efficiency is the key here (in my mind), not strength…

Fun fact: when I do sustain efforts around threshold and am swimming up to my eyeballs in lactate, my triceps start burning like I just finished a set of renegade rows :grin: So maybe my limiter is triceps strength? :joy: Took me 5 years to make the connection though!

2 Likes
24

Your poll was flawed, though. It was missing the option ‘I run out of enthusiasm’.

1 Like
25

your cardio system is not divorced from your legs. they are all one. you have sore legs because you lack aerobic conditioning. they remain sore because you are stressing the fibres. this takes time and effort to improve, and getting fitter allows you to stress them more. there is no legs vs lungs, you are one single complex network of variable systems, working to prevent you from killing yourself.

2 Likes