Pro/Elite training

This made me question have I suffered for no reason doing 95% unders in TR over-under workouts :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks for sharing, I’m falling behind on podcasts. A few items caught my eye from scanning the transcription:

  • tempo #gasp (LOL) and GC training philosophy
  • indoor training to promote heat adaptations
  • low carb training needs to be done carefully and timed appropriately (age groupers tend to do too much)

Looking forward to a listen. All of those have made a difference in my training.

So how do you know that you are getting those heat adaptations? Turn off the fan and sweat more? Thats it? I thought that the room temperature should also be higher.

only details in transcription:

“Lately we have also started to utilize a thermometer measuring body core temperature, which has really been ground breaking in terms of being able to control the heat adaptation processes occurring when riding indoors, for instance, this has been used to knowing when to turn on and/or wind up the intensity of the air flow from the fan.”

and

“As I have already mentioned, measuring core body temperature during training and setting up a heat training protocol to make heat training more effectively is definitely one of the most interesting areas at the moment that I am currently exploring.”

Hoping there is another little nugget in the actual podcast…

Edit: some info here:

I genuinely wonder what would happen to many TR users if, in some odd hypothetical experiment, they had all their living expenses paid for a couple of years and were told these were the conditions:

no, you can’t have a training plan, no, no power meter either. Just work up to spending 20+ hours a week on the bike. Keep pressure on the pedals but largely brisk walk/steady jog kind of intensity. Do a few hard hill efforts every now and again. See you in a couple of years.’ :rofl:

I’m willing to bet that many would hit numbers (when they got their PMs back) would shock them.

The trick IRL is being good enough early enough that you are actually able to train for that time (because you get paid to).

I still think if absolutely top level performance is the goal, you’re not going to get there with 6-8 hours of intervals a week. If that’s the time you’ve got (and for most of us, it is) then it’s the best option, however.

That’s why I’m not sure how much we (as in largely people with real jobs and families who occasionally want to see us) can learn from pro
training plans. Not bashing anyone or anything, just my .02

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My own experimentation says that is interval overload :wink:

Yup. Been pointed out in this thread multiple times how much Evil Tempo the pros ride…perhaps they can do so much of it because 1) they have the luxury of TIME for recovery, and 2) they have the luxury of professional level GENETICS which allows them absorb that type of training. As an added bonus, they are almost all under 30 which also allows their superior sporting genes (which include recovery abilities) to perform at peak levels.

A weekend warrior MAMIL has almost none of the above, which is probably why Tempo is so enticing yet so ruinous.

That hypothetical turned reality for me this year. Thanks, but no thanks, COVID. For ~5 months I got to ride my bike more than any other time in my life. A lot was “brisk walking” and occasional hill hammering (different stuff than TR plans), and yeah…I was shocked! I shifted my entire power curve! However, I can’t say for certain if it was the additional volume or the change in training stimulus which did the damage. But hey, at least I got a glimpse!

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I don’t think the tempo riding has mych to do with recovery or genetics. It’s simply where their lactate and fatox curve say they should ride.

I give you the age thing though, everything is easier when you’re young!

the main thing that resonated with me is that the training changes depending on where they are in cycle, type of rider/type of races…ie no fixed philosophy.

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I do think the early development aspect is actually overlooked. I know 2 very good amateur sportsmen; 1 is a golfer and the other is a chess player (let’s not quibble over the definition of ‘sport’ here :rofl:).

The golfer (in his late 30s) plays off +3, and over the last 2-3 years has regularly matched pro scores during pro ams, has got to the final rounds of Open qualifying, etc etc. I asked him why he’d never tried to go pro. His answer: he wasn’t really good until he was about 30, and was married with kids and a day job by then. He couldn’t take the risk of jacking his job in at that stage in his life.

So I suppose my point is that it’s not just physical recovery that’s easier when you’re young, but also generally having a less complicated life, with more time and fewer responsibilities.

That said, as @Captain_Doughnutman alluded to earlier, even if someone gave me the chance to spend 20+ hours a week riding, I’m not sure I’d take it! My worry is that as soon as it became a job, it would lose some of its appeal. YMMV.

And those have developed to that point (probably) with the assistance of time and genetics.

The body/brain doesn’t know the difference:

grandmasters’ stress responses to chess are on par with what elite athletes experience

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Lots of talk here about differences between pros and amateurs. Of course the overall load can be higher when training and racing is your job and sole focus. Age does play a role, genetics probably too.

But with that said I think the differences are quite overplayed compared to the similarities. I would strongly disagree with a statement earlier that if you’ve got 6-8h to train then the best option is to just cram interval training in there.

Regarding tempo riding - don’t mistake that being part of elite athletes training diets as it being the greatest part. The low-intensity training still clearly dominates. I know the whole polarised training approach may not be too popular around here, and I agree that in sports like road cycling, marathon running, triathlon etc. it’s not my favoured approach at all. But let’s maybe be a bit more positive about the amazing knowledge that all that research has uncovered for us? Before Seiler, who even knew what “training intensity distribution” was? With the work of him and others, we know a heck of a lot more than we did before, and most of the conclusions are IMO spot on, importantly around the low-intensity part of the training pie.

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Wat.

That is fascinating. Thank you for posting it.

I also now have a sensible explanation for why I lose weight when i am stressed, despite doing less exercise!

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DeMar? Zapotek? Matveyev? Lydiard? Bowerman?

Read a long article once about the physical exercise the top chess players do to be able to play like that. Was a few years ago, no idea how to find it now…

I don’t lose weight when stressed fwiw. Too much cortisol making me put on belly fat. :frowning:

I grew up running in the 70s, a handful of years older than Dr Seiler. All of my middle school and high school coaches had us doing long slow distance with some speed work. I can remember friends riding on a bike while I ran, and we talked because even then we were instructed to use the talk test to pace efforts. While I’m sure “no pain no gain” existed, the running boom of the 70s made low intensity base training popular.

Dr Seiler does deserve credit for bringing the value of low intensity training back into public discussion. Oddly I have the Time Crunched books and they emphasize a lot of low intensity training. So I’m not sure why time crunched evolved into what I also perceive as an overemphasis on intervals.

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similar here, started cycling in the late 80s. Long slow distance, small chainring upfront. In winter fixed gearing. This all was the norm. And even more when all the East German coaches came over. LIT/Zone 1 was always the norm. Seiler is just stating the obvious on LIT.

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This was a very good episode

In January 2016 I started training with a cycling club for a climbing event in July. Some of the guys I started training with had no kids and were able to put in 12-15 hour weeks. The senior ride leaders of the club had them doing a lot of ~15mph flat rides, along with 2 or 3 climbing rides a week. In my group of newbies, we started climbing together in January but by early June the high-volume guys were faster than those of us that only had 6-9 hours/week to train.

Point being, just 4 years ago our club’s ride leaders impressed the value of low-intensity rides on new members. I guess that along with growing up during the 70s LSD running movement led me to :man_shrugging: when FastTalk breathlessly broke the news of polarized training.