Seems like a twice a year kinda thing for me (maybe)
- Cost
- Disruptive protocol
- Not able to take advantage of “continuous monitoring” of INSCYD. AFAIK, it’s not available to individuals like WKO4 or GC. I’m self-coached.
I just happened to be reading an old Andy Coggan article about VO2max estimation and came across an interesting section about pursuit style efforts that matched almost exactly the INSCYD protocol for the short effort.
See section 3: Training and Racing With a Power Meter Journal: How to estimate VO2max using a power meter
I’m guessing they are estimating VLamax from the time and duration of the section above the steady state VO2 power level. Quite clever, provided the effort is paced correctly.
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Sounds similar to a few of the strava segment PR’s I’ve done… as getting up to speed quickly and trying to hold that speed seems to be faster than just riding at a steady power unless you’ve got a really fast rolling start. I had thought of that sort of pacing would be similar for the overpaced 5 min effort.
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I’m curious… has anyone obtained a INSCYD report using remote testing from Mikael? If so, any comments? I am considering the report.
I’ve got one paid for and planning to do it on my return from holiday in a week or so
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If you wanted to lower your VLamax, Would you be riding approximately at 90% of FTP(Medio) at low rpm?
Thanks
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So, yes Medio/Sweet Spot, high torque and low carb training should lower your VLamax
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Maybe we’re talkinga bout two different things here, but i think it misses the point a little bit to call this stuff a magic bullet. Rather, the lesson of INCSYD and similar metabolic testing is that there is NO magic bullet and everything you do involves tradeoffs with something else; if you work on one thing you will sacrifice another and vice versa, and it is all about both being able to take a long term view and also choose correctly the right thing, at the right time.
E.g., you can do a bunch of sweet spot and your FTP goes up. How much of that is just from pulling down your vlamax (aerobic vs. anaerobic being in opposition)? How many times are people going around saying, I just did a bunch of SS and my FTP is up but i felt flat and got dropped in my crit. There are whole threads about that .
This is the kinda stuff that lets people understand the answers to tehse questions.
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My point was that metabolic testing and specifically new protocols/metrics aren’t necessary to recognize the obvious point that you’ve stated. Different training has different effects. Increase specificity as an event approaches.
A new report or plan doesn’t make you faster. 99% of the time just following any plan consistently works. I’m continually amazed at how deep average recreational cyclists will go down these rabbit holes when the recipe for improvement hasn’t really changed much.
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that’s perfectly fair. can’t disagree with that. whatever program you follow there is no getting around the work.
I do like this stuff though because i think it can be very helpful to know the “why”
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and some training adaptations are “it depends, could go either way” and that is the other reason some might want to use INSCYD for testing. I’m really curious, but not so curious to keep paying for the INSCYD field test to see the impact of each training block.
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Thanks for the interesting link!
I’ve been reading only superficially about Inscyd and their only-power-based field tests, but what puzzles me is how you take into the account the “nature” of the hard start i.e. pacing. I mean I can start with 1min all-out and be dead for the rest of the test, or do any degree of half-hearted hard-start, and I don’t see how this will give me the same result. How to ensure that every person at every occasion paces the same way?
[In other words: It would be easier for me to understand their “magical data extraction” if their were a clear prescription for the test, like “do 1’ all-out - rest 5” - do 5’ all-out" and not just “do an overpaced TT”.]
The coach you hire to administer the test should give instructions and guidance. Mine provided a 23 page powerpoint style presentation and several videos. My objective was very clear on how to perform the 3 max efforts.
INSCYD will soon introduce a new protocol.
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Thanks for the input. Given their reputation I didn’t think that the test was “nonsense” of course, but looking at the website I find lots of vague marketing blabla, but no hint at how the tests should actually work. Obviously I’m not expecting them to share all the details, but just some idea to give me confidence.
(I’m self-coached but thinking of perhaps contacting a coach to carry out the tests.)
I’m also self coached and heavily use TrainerRoad plans/workouts along with another companies plan built around outdoor training. A little bit more about my INSCYD experience here That Triathlon Show | EP#169 - FTP, VO2max and VLaMax - #232 by bbarrera and that company is on another continent. Pretty easy to do it remotely from the coach administering the test.
Yeah I listened to precisely that podcast and this is what pushed my curiosity 
(I had heard of Inscyd before but Mikael Eriksson’s interview made me really want to try it for myself). What I know about the test protocol is just very vague, extracting all those super-important metrics from a few TT’s seems like magic and I don’t believe in magic .
It’s not magic it’s science and mathematical modeling that has evolved and been fine-tuned for 15 years or so. There is a reason Pro teams use it. If you don’t believe in mathematical models then I suggest never listening or looking at another weather report
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Those training recommendations… sigh.
Undergoing any training is going to interconvert IIx->IIa fiber types. You can increase your glycolytic power while you separately do low glycogen riding or hard endurance training. You will see improvements in one or two workouts if you’re doing it properly. HIT intervals don’t increase vo2max in highly trained individuals. High volume will increase vo2max only if you’re right off the couch increasing blood volume, otherwise it just increases submax fractional O2 utilization along with all the other normal stuff. I’ve been able to get tons of vo2max improvements in people who ride 20-30 hours per week and thought they were tapped out of gains; you need to know the difference between peripheral and central adaptations, whoever wrote these training protocols does not. Force-endurance training is not that effective in fiber type interconversion because you’ll never recruit those high thershold motor units by just doing sweetspot.
Probably the most important thing to know here: VLamax is not the same as maximum glycolytic power. The former is complex, the latter is not. The former is not measurable with a power meter, the latter is. So I’m not sure their power meter only testing is going to measure what they think it does, or that the blood lactate testing is also going to measure what they think it does. If you have WKO4/5, I modeled maximum glycolytic power in the chart “Glycolytic Capacity”, displaying it as kJ/s. This is as accurate as we can get with just a power meter. I don’t know how they attempt to extract vlamax from just power data but I can assuredly tell you it’s as often wrong as it is right.
@stevemz The inscyd measurement of VO2max is directly lifted from Andy’s post. Their main metabolic model comes from Mader & Heck paper from 1986.
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Those were Dan Lorangs Slides. Maybe you should be Bora Hansgrohe’s Head Coach
That it’s based on the Mader/Heck model is well known and no secret 
The Mader and Heck model is nearly obsolete at this point. That Weber has seemingly made no progress or looked at much actual data beyond very simple tests is sad since he’s a smart guy who could do so much better. There are other HUGE problems with the model that are likewise not addressed, particularly with substrate usage. But we can save that for another time.