Training Every Zone at Once, Heart Rate Data, Healthy Habits and More – Ask a Cycling Coach 259

Why training all your energy systems in one workout is not efficient training, using heart rate data to tell if you are getting faster, maintaining healthy cycling habits and more in Episode 259 of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast.


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Like using HRV info you see where your threshold is? see: @TrainerRoad Did training plans evolve because of data insights? - #12 by enki42
(Me wish TR calculated in the app? :wink: )

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Or maybe it could calculate cardiac decoupling for each work out to make it easy to see a trend

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I would say for HR to see if you’re getting faster, it would be matter of tracking efficiency factor (ratio of Pwr/HR). For example, I’m doing SSB1 HV and a lot of the intervals avg around 90% so I can see over time whether that EF changes much. In this particular phase, my EF has been generally 1.68-1.7 and I’m doing week 4 now, and so right now I’m not really anticipating any changes to my FTP.

Aerobic decoupling is a nice measure but I’m under the impression it’s of pretty limited benefit except for long steady efforts where ideally one would see under 5% drift (that’s used as kind of a rule of thumb to see if one has base fitness).

Anyhow, curious to listen to the discussion!

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Not sure if too early to ask a question, so feel free to ignore/delete this!

Collagen question — Coach Chad mentioned he puts hydrolyzed collagen in his coffee; however, collagen requires co-transport with vitamin C (about 50mg vitaminC for 10-15mg collagen, I think?), and coffee (caffeine?) inhibits vitamin C uptake to some degree. Do you know if there’s a sufficient amount of vitamin C one can take (i.e. via orange juice, 110mg per 8oz, or via Emergen-C, 1000mg) to get past this, or is the coffee inhibition of vitamin C uptake really not that big a deal?

Thanks so much!

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For a real outdoor ride decoupling measurement would be hard as the effort at the beginning isn’t always like the one at the end. But with the workouts the intervals are very similar from the beginning to the end so the measurement is more valid

No audio from Jon @Tucker

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Same problem was present last week.

OMG :scream: :exploding_head:

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@ambermalika’s look on her face while @Jonathan is shaving his head is priceless. And kudos to @Jonathan for shaving such a beautiful head of hair.

Amber’s comment about “the feeling of being fit” as an impetus to continue training resonates with me.

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I was discussing recovery measurement via devices products such as Whoop and Oura ring were what were in mind. Having used Whoop for over 6 months now I concur exactly with what @chad said about there isn’t always a correlation between recovery numbers and how the body feels. If it helps at all with studies I’d happily provide any Whoop data I can get out of the platform for the TR team to compare against my workouts history.

I think the weekly tuba segment is a great addition to the podcast :joy:

I found the discussion of the ramp tests really insightful, and would love to see how that continues! I think a lot of the time discussions around training focus on one particular area, so it’s really cool to see how those concepts work in the context of individuals with different circumstances, goals and training histories. (although- I recently bumped up the volume too fast and buried myself as well. So I’m not looking forward to the outcome of my ramp test on Tuesday :sweat:)

Follow up on the discussion of ramp test reductions. If your latest test shows a slight reduction of 5% or less, can you safely decline that as your new FTP and continue with workouts on old, higher FTP? My last two showed a 3 to 4% reduction, but for the most part (with possible exception of VO2 max), I have no problems hitting the required watts in workouts. I heard or read advice about not letting your ego cause you to overload your body, but I would guess the margin of error on the ramp test is likely 5% or so.

I’ll just leave this here for @Nate_Pearson . My wife will be joining you post-quarantine for Tik Tok therapy.

@Nate_Pearson just saved @Jonathan some watts. Talk about low hanging fruit

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Which week is @Jonathan doing his “stage race?” Actually sounds fun if I could fit in something similar.

I agree! I kinda wanna follow him when he does it.

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