Pro/Elite training

That answer is higher up in the thread. He’s a data scientist and spent time writing his own code to do the scraping and visualization. Quite nice to see it shared here. Cheers -Mark

:laughing:

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Sagan keeping it real, ride on :+1:t3:

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On the topic of “base” training…

Is the reason pros do such a high volume/extended period of base training (vs specificity training) because they require it in order to handle the stresses of 70-80+ days of racing/season?

In terms of amateur/joe/weekend warrior base training, specifically high volume/low intensity, do we really need to be doing that much volume for that length of time if we’re doing only a fraction of both racing and intensity that the pros do?

Using the pyramid metaphor, most weekend warriors aren’t going to have that high of a peak and perhaps don’t require that large of a base…? Cue SSB!

speaking for myself, with the benefit of 2 years doing SSB mid-volume and 2 years doing something else. Following SSB mid-volume plan didn’t give me enough base. SSB 1 High Volume gave me great muscular endurance and pretty good base, but left me without a lot of motivation to continue training (its boring). Which leaves me with 2016 and 2020 when I did something else that gave me a sufficient base to do harder work.

Again speaking for myself, what seemingly works “best” is doing a couple months traditional base + strength training, followed a couple of months doing SS/threshold + long z2 rides at 8-11 hours/week.

But weekend warriors are always trying to squeeze out every little gain. So they should care about peaking higher. And it doesn’t require WW to do 25-30hrs a week. Just do a little more than last year. That’s how the pros got to 25-30hr weeks.

In my n=1 experience of increasing my base weekly hours over the past 3 years from 8hrs to 15hrs a week has been great. I seen gains that I wouldn’t have thought were in my cards. And each year I am handling the sweet spot work even better. I did 2x45min at SS yesterday, which is big for me.

Don’t really get the reasoning. Can you race well with less base? Yes. Can you race better if you train more? Probably also yes. Why would you limit yourself? Most amateur racers would train like pros, if they had the time (for both training and recovery).

The obvious trade off is needing time for things outside bike racing, so that sets the limit imo.

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Victor Campenaerts has an interesting video up on his youtube (26th May), discussing his recent training block with his coaches. Pretty cool to see how they approach that.

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I though that it will be the most suitable topic for this post it. Qute interesting article about pros:
Decrement in Professional Cyclists’ Performance After a Grand Tour

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Ooh, that’s my old coach on the video call with him…

This is about Victors video Revealing my FTP - BJARNE RIIS' opinion - YouTube

I dont think many of us can train 5-6 hours of z2 per day.

I bet all of us have a super high vlamax, has chad talked about this?

When I discussed vlamax with a former pro he said its not a big deal unless your at the pro level.

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Given the circumstances following pro training has become a little bit boring for me. Therfore, no updates here. And actually, I’ve seen enough now and I would say we have a fairly good picture of how road pros train.

While I’m not a huge AC fan, this one intrigued me:

Not so much the entire article but the secton “Think like a swimmer”.

I must admit I did not know anything about swimming but after digging into it I believe there is a lot to be learned from them. Especially for those of us who have to train a lot indoors. A 25m pool is probably as varied as riding on a trainer.

And how do they solve it: they break up everything. Sets/intervals. On everything. No just intervals for intensity.

Speaking of intensity: this was the second point which intrigued me:

127 elite swimmers (real elite), 20 years cohort [Hellard et al., 2019]:

For the entire cohort, ∼86–90% of the training was swum at an intensity of [La]b ≤ 4 mmol⋅L-1. This training volume was divided into 40–44% at <2 mmol⋅L-1 and 44–46% at 2 to ≤4 mmol⋅L-1, leaving 6–9.5% at >4–6 mmol⋅L-1, and 3.5–4.5% at >6 mmol⋅L-1

This is a no man land’s dream. What is even more impressive, swimmers combine this with a huge volume. This explains it why we hear this 8000 kcal food intake stories from Phelps & Co.

One approach I really fancy is to consider everything below FTP/MLSS/or-whatever as aerobic training. There are no evil sections in the zones spektrum.

18 elite (real elite) British swimmers, training regimes [Pollock et al., 2019]:

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If I’m not mistaken, you have a track background right? (If not I’m confusing you with another user and I apologize). Maybe any (old) data on that type of training? Could be interesting

Yes, I’m beginning to grasp this as well.

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yes, but only as a junior. Made it into the national team and we would race track and road. Which is the norm, even for adults, but we would not train that specifically for track. All I know training was not really different to pure roadies. There has been a strong tendency for more specialised track training in recent years. 25-30 years ago this was different.


Open water swimmers, 10k, ~2h race duration

There
was substantial
change in pace in this particular
race, of which some
can be explained by differences in current. It does
demonstrate though that open-water
swimmers need
to be able to deliver and deal with changes in pace effectively.

just like bike racing

Figure 17.12 shows a snapshot of a training week
of an elite female open-water
swimmer. This training-week
example included a large volume of high-aerobic
work with speed variations and acceleration
work, to mimic intrarace speed variations.

Low aerobic is basically up to Tempo
High aerobic is threshold and vo2max

This
low-aerobic
training intensity category is broad in
swimming, with a relatively large range of heart rate
intensities. Swimming longer repetitions below
threshold, but still relatively fast, will
predominantly
use the aerobic system. With threshold, we refer to
the anaerobic threshold,

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Wow…just think how fast swimmers will be once they discover polarized training!

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I’m sure someone will find a way to fit this training regime into the polarised model …

However, in all seriousness, I found this quite interesting:

There are many different programs out there. And some seem to be more polarised. HOwever, one has to note that the polarised scheme is a little bit shifted to the right.

Doesn’t the whole polarised training idea come from running? In running, impact and associated strain on the body is significantly higher than in swimming or cycling. So maybe the intensity makes a bigger difference in running than in cycling or swimming.

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And xc skiing data iirc

While typing… looking at one week or one month is cool but would be more useful to look at multiple years and understand goals and events. Mid season week could be very different than six months out. Most folks are interested in growth over time. Ok, I can’t say most. Let’s say me :grinning:

Mmmm …

Or this …

By the way, everyone can contribute here in this thread. I’m not the sole content provider.