That Triathlon Show | EP#169 - FTP, VO2max and VLaMax

[TheGuil]

Similar interrogation for me.
Starting base with a lot of sweetspot may improve our aerobic engine but also decrease vlamax which usually result with higher FTP.
Then building with vo2max intensity increase our vo2max and FTP as well.

Based on that progress would it be beneficial to start over with sweetspot base and what would be the impact on last tested FTP if not doing vo2max intervals anymore but exclusively sweetspot intervals ?

Would it be more beneficial to keep doing a mix of some vo2max intervals and sweetspot intervals ?

Will INSCYD ever been opened to athlete with no coach in between ?

Your podcast is (one of) my favorite for endurance science, continue the great work !

[guyc]

My question - it seems that Zwift is working on including some variation of the INSCYD test protocol. Can we learn more about this?

In case anyone is curious - Kevin Poulton on Instagram: "Want to be able to utilise the same testing protocol as some of the biggest World Tour teams including @jumbovisma_road @borahansgrohe and @CCCProTeam The @inscyd_ Power Performance Decoder test on @gozwift provides the ideal combination of accuracy and athlete engagement. There’s more to your performance than just FTP. #inscyd #gozwift"

[tofel]

Some infos here: Power Performance Decoder - demo using only power data - YouTube

[buzzcock]

Interesting discussion above re Olbrecht. Has the situation improved, @Bioteknik? I am asking because depressed hr and power due to fatigue could have been one possibility.

More generally, while I am not sure whether olbrechts strict distinction between capacity and power is entirely valid, imho classic supramax intervals are power workouts in that framework. Not capacity. Also I think his framework for base is almost the exact opposite of lydiard, ie brief all out intervals plus z1 (below 1mmol often) vs tempo/sst plus z2. What they have in common is alactic speedwork around the year and the periodization where high intensity longer intervals are introduced in the specific prep or race period.

What I would ask Weber is this: we roughly know how to decrease vlamax for “gc rider purposes” and increase it for “sprinter types”. How would one work to balance the two at a level optimised for all-rounder one day racers? I guess many of us fall into that bin so this would be of interest.

[AJS914]

Mikael, I’ve heard Weber on 3 or 4 different podcasts now. I find the work very interesting but most of the podcasts were the same stuff.

I would love to hear more in depth discussion on how the Inscyd can help amateurs / age groupers improve. I wouldn’t mind listening to more training specifics.

[bbarrera]

@AJS914

I would love to hear more in depth discussion on how the Inscyd can help amateurs / age groupers improve. I wouldn’t mind listening to more training specifics.

For example masters 55+ with training age of 4 years. VLamax is already low at 0.3. My target events are long adventure rides and fondos. Local conditions are mostly flat and windy, with access to mountains. Both of those conditions require long tempo/sweet spot efforts. My experience has been SS/threshold work is required to improve strength endurance.

@Mikael_Eriksson I’d like to understand some basic principles around pushing vo2max higher while continuing to work on strength endurance. For example would Weber support doing two blocks of vo2max work and one block of sweet spot? Or simply incorporate threshold work in ongoing vo2max blocks?

[norman]

+1 as well! Just wanted to write the exact same questions.

Dan mentioned that it’s based on experience when asked for formulas. From the descriptions and test profiles it was hinted that the vlamax, ftp and vo2 values were based on the relations between test durations (eg. 3’ Power / 10’ Power for Vlamax iirc).

[Berggeiss]

I started my INSCYD journey last September, meaning I’ve been on the subscribed training programme for ca. 9 months. I’ve definitely improved my fitness in this time, but I wouldn’t say I feel like I’ve gained any more than I have through other training methods, and now I’m back in the mountains I’m not setting many PBs or riding at a level that reflects the hours I’ve been putting in.
I’ll probably go back to using WK05 and building my own intervals using the Optimal Intervals table. I’ve definitely learnt some things that I will incorporate into future training, but at the moment I can’t justify the costs of testing with the INSCYD software. I’m an average 4.5W/kg rider at the moment, I’m on the bike 14 -16hrs per week. My philosophy for the next 12 months is going to be “keep it simple, stupid”. Maintain the volume, lots of Z2 and sub threshold work to increase my TTE and then sprinkle in some VO2max where necessary. My goal is to get back up around 5W/kg in the next 12 months.

[Mikael_Eriksson]

Everybody - thank you for your questions and interest, I’ve added all Q:s to my document, and I think we will be able to tackle a good amount of them, although not all of them as the list of questions is already looking (I secretly hope I can have Sebastian on for almost 2h but we’ll see, haha).

@DaveWh What @bbarrera said re. your first questions is what Sebastian has talked about before. Which one is more effective depends on whether you’d be better off improving VO2max or decreasing VLaMax.

@tofel 1) Generally well-established that HIIT works best for central adaptations, long slow distance and maybe throwing in some tempo/SST is good for peripheral adaptations. 2) The first part we’ll get to. The second part is that you need a coach or a testing center. I for one actually hope that they would increase scrutiny even on which coaches are allowed to provide the service, as we’ve seen in some other posts on this forum that not all coaches do a good job with that, and I’ve seen some other things on Youtube etc. recently that speaks to the same problem. I just hope that coaches without the required knowledge won’t undermine the value the service can have when done correctly and used correctly. We’ll also discuss pros and cons versus lactate, but just to give you my two cents, I would choose the PPD protocol for myself and my athletes any day of the week even if access or cost wasn’t an issue.

@Anna_K The question about blocking versus mixing is super interesting and was one of the first questions I had already put down on my own list

@TheGuil What you’re asking is probably too specific to answer if I understand the question correctly. It’s not possible to predict training response to that degree. But the question on blocking vs. mixed stimuli we’ll definitely cover.

@guyc I don’t know if it’s already available but I’m sure it will be. However, my preference is to prescribe the tests on separate days, ideally non-consecutive. E.g Monday 20" + 3’, Wednesday 6’, Friday 12’.

@AJS914 Yes, I definitely want to get into some training-related questions as well. Everybody has heard about VO2max and VLaMax by now, I won’t waste time on regurgitating those topics.

@bbarrera Will be discussed as part of the “Blocking” vs “Mixed” discussion.

@norman It is absolutely essential to have a short test (20 seconds or so) though to assess VLaMax accurately. Yes, once you know a rider and their testing history like Dan does, then based on the relation between the medium to long tests you can take a reasonable guess I’m sure, but I think that requires a degree of experience that is pretty hard to attain. I could not do that, and I’ve seen quite a number of tests and repeat tests.

[DaveWh]

Thanks Mikael. The question @Anna_K asked is probably a better way to ask what I am trying to understand.

[tofel]

Thank you, @Mikael_Eriksson. There are studies like this here

Improvement of $$\dot{V}\hbox{O}_{2 \max},$$ by cardiac output and oxygen...

that indicate that interval training improves both central and peripheral components of VO2max whereas continous training is mainly associated with greater oxygen extraction. My question was aiming at specific IT workouts and their effect in this regard.

Looking forward to the podcast!

[Bioteknik]

I would doubt its chronic fatigue or anything like that. I take planned weeks off typically every 4th week. HR responds well to self-selected high power or stride up type of efforts, they just haven’t ever been repeatable efforts. Doing the 30 second efforts at 120% aren’t really that hard at all… doing 6x3 minutes at that power is a lot harder, but was still achievable and I was able to finish it without fading.

From the 10,000 ft few, there’s a lot more similarities in Olbrecht’s base period with Lydiard. As I’m reading that doing more of the super high power efforts interspersed with the endurance sets is more for the middle distance swimmers. I see there’s a typo in my original post, but I only said that I was influenced by the olbrecht interview, book and early lydiard training prescriptions. The way I understand the book and gain from the interview is that the hard efforts are to spice things up, increase muscle activation and oxygen uptake, but the main focus of the work is aerobic threshold and avoiding the power workouts until the proper time. He’s also got some paragraphs talking about how high volume lowers V Lamax. Looking at some of his charts he’s got in there, it’s clear that for most swim distances, he things that having a higher concentration at threshold is advantageous for all of the swimmers except the endurance ones. During Lydiard’s base period, there was mostly just running, some of them steady/hard, but never hard enough that you faded during the 2nd half of the run. I would only put that towards the middle/lower portion of tempo at best, especially if you’re trying to build up your volume.

So I focused on volume and was saving the true aerobic power work until now.

I just completed SSBII for an 8 watt increase. I’ll do a lactate profile on Wednesday to confirm. But in general, I think it would have been just as good if I had just alternated SSB1 and SSB2 during the base months to get what might have been a better response. With the caveat that I have modified the TR plans to keep intensity to around 20% of total time, which means mostly doing aerobic work on the weekends instead of intervals.

[devolikewhoa83]

@DaveWh

Thanks Mikael. Your last interview with home was very interesting - one of the most useful podcasts I have listened to in the past few years

A few proposed Qs aa follows:

• What is your opinion of polarized vs sweet spot? Are there certain instances or riders where one kind of training is more effective than the other to improve FTP (e.g. fast twitch vs slow twitch rider)?
• Short of doing an INSCYD test or similar, are there signs from training about when to focus on increasing VO2max vs increasing fractional utilization / reducing VLaMax?

I think the main lesson of looking at performance through the Vo2max / VlaMax lens is that there is no one right answer, it’s different for everybody, and it’s even different for the same person at different times.

In this respect it’s nothing new but it’s a point that often gets lost when people approach their own training. If you read Olbrecht’s book he’s very clear that you need to constantly be reevaluating and seeing how the “organism” is responding to the training, making sure that your view of their lactate profile is correct, etc.

So when Trainerroad for example says ‘sweet spot base is what we recommend for most people,’ that recommendation is subject to some critical assumptions, probably most importantly that most amateur athletes who haven’t done structurd training before have a VlaMax that is “too high” for their chosen sport modality. And that assumption is probably correct for a lot of people, but you also have to try to evaluate whether it is true for you.

[Bioteknik]

Every 2nd or 3rd ramp test, one should try an hour of power. Clearly one way to determine if your fractional utilization is climbing, staying the same, or getting lower.

Speaking as someone who is using a lactate meter, throwing in some functional testing really made it make sense though.

For me, I think chasing the higher VO2 levels reduced my fractional utilization, so in the end race performance was neutral at best. I guess I’ll see how this year ends up, but with no racing I’ll only have some lactate profile data, and a few functional tests. Due to the duration of bike races, it really seems that higher fractional utilization is the way to go as that also improves substrate utilization which should help with the longer events.

[Rizzi]

@devolikewhoa83

I think the main lesson of looking at performance through the Vo2max / VlaMax lens is that there is no one right answer, it’s different for everybody, and it’s even different for the same person at different times.

Does this imply that there could be a state where an athlete with pure goal of raising FTP would get prescribed / benefit more from VlaMax training? If so what would that situation look like?

[Mikael_Eriksson]

@tofel Yes, that’s the generally accepted view, and to clarify, I didn’t mean that HIIT only improves central adaptations and vice versa. It’s important to note though that the subjects in the study you linked have very low VO2max, so maybe not the best to extrapolate from.

@devolikewhoa83 I think you’re spot on with the main lesson you’re describing there. But one aspect, that we actually discussed with Sebastian, is that the effect of lowering VLaMax is not linear - it improves threshold more the higher your VO2max. So the takeaway is, when you’re VO2max is low, don’t bother about VLaMax at all. Just build your aerobic engine (VO2max). When you reach moderate fitness levels it starts to become more relevant to work on VLaMax, but VO2max is probably still the bigger limiter for the majority of this demographic. But when you reach well-trained status (say VO2max in the high 50s), tha’s when it really starts to pay to know what your physiology is and VLaMax interventions can be just as if not more powerful than VO2max.

@Rizzi See what I wrote above. The answer is yes, if your VO2max and VLaMax are both moderately high or high, your threshold can benefit significantly from training designed to lower VLaMax.

[Mikael_Eriksson]

Curious to get people’s feedback on the following specific example of a more general dilemma. The interview with Sebastian ran pretty long (which I loved), 1h 45 min. What would people say are the pros and cons and your preferred option as for splitting it into two episodes vs. publishing it as one big episode?

(From a shownotes editing perspective two shorter episodes is definitely preferrable…)

[bbarrera]

If you can naturally break into two episodes that would be good.

[devolikewhoa83]

@Mikael_Eriksson

But when you reach well-trained status (say VO2max in the high 50s), tha’s when it really starts to pay to know what your physiology is and VLaMax interventions can be just as if not more powerful than VO2max.

Thanks, this makes perfect sense. Relatedly, doing high intensity intervals to raise Vo2max also may increase your anaerobic capacity, to a different extent in every individual. Hence why after a long block of working on Vo2max ideally you’d retest and see where vlamax ended up.

[devolikewhoa83]

agree. a “stay tuned for part II” is a good way to build everyone’s natural excitement about exercise physiology