Which Training Intensity Distribution Intervention will Produce the Greatest Improvements in Maximal Oxygen Uptake and Time-Trial Performance in Endurance Athletes?

Not sure if this was posted here already but it is well worth a read.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388557095_Which_Training_Intensity_Distribution_Intervention_will_Produce_the_Greatest_Improvements_in_Maximal_Oxygen_Uptake_and_Time-Trial_Performance_in_Endurance_Athletes_A_Systematic_Review_and_Network_Meta

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I wonder which part you found worth reading?
They found that intensity distribution had no impact on performance. So far, so boring.

Worthwhile science does not need to revolutionize anything to be worthwhile publishing.

The biggest takeaway I have is that once one is sufficiently well trained high intensity becomes more important. It is worth noting that while any good coach already is aware that is the case it is always good to have more support from science to show that this is the case.

If you find science that helps to reinforce things that are already “known” that’s on you but imo it is important to reexamine things that we “know” to make sure they are correct.

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Just that the found the opposite of that. It didn’t make any difference for the performance endpoint.
One could write books about all the things which don’t make a difference to performance and they would be equally useless as that study.

I would suggest a more careful read of the study.

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“Our results indicate that the adaptations to VO2max following different TID interventions are dependent on performance level. Athletes at a more competitive level may benefit from a POL TID intervention and recreational athletes from a PYR TID intervention.”

You are missing the point.

there was no difference in […] TT performance […] between POL and pyramidal (PYR) interventions.

Cycling is about who get’s to the finish line first, not who has the highest number of something printed on a piece of paper in a lab.

Not so boring. It means it doesn’t really matter, so we can do the workouts we enjoy doing which for me is pyramidal

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:point_up: Correct answer. Do training to meet your goals, not to meet a target training intensity distribution.

When a descriptive measure becomes a prescriptive target, it ceases to be a good measure.

We agree, performance is the most important outcome measure for performance, and TID did not make a difference for either recreationally trained or competitive athletes.

But how do we “know” that without doing the work? Previous papers (some very recent) have reached different conclusions (including a previous meta from our own lead author) because they have asked the question and analysed the data slightly differently. We think this conclusion is the most robust that has been done. But research conclusions don’t apply universally.

Thanks for posting our study @Twowkg. More summary and discussion on bsky, /r/velo, and other places. Happy to chat more here :+1:

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That’s why I found it “boring” and not “useless”.
“Exciting” would be something like “…doing X improved TT by 5%”.

You and reviewer 2 agree then, that positive findings are more exciting and publication-worthy than null findings :joy:

Ya, no that’s valid, thanks. I’ll admit I was also slightly disappointed, if not surprised by our results. We all want to find big breakthrough positive findings that are strong enough they overturn the current paradigm. But unfortunately, unless we’re studying super shoes or GLP-1 agonists right now, we’re not likely to see those legitimately. Research is incremental.

Keep in mind, if we were to stack up all the little training and nutritional ‘magic bullet’ interventions that have been peer-reviewed and shown to give a nice little +1-3% performance boost each, from the past 20 years… and we applied them all together… we’d still probably only see a nice little barely-detectable and temporary +1-3% boost in our performance :smiling_face_with_tear:

My advice is: build our sustainable training foundation, pick one or two special interventions which we believe in, enjoy, and find productive in our own training, focus our time & energy on those and ignore the rest.

But let’s keep talking about all the fun little potential marginal gains, because they are interesting and informative to think about, and the thing that works best for me might not work best for someone else!

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