Got it, thanks. It really only makes sense on long-ish, steady, sub-FTP portions of the ride. After that we get into athlete differences due to physiology and metabolic fitness, assuming proper nutrition and hydration.
Yes, having a tool like Intervals-icu automatically calculate it - with or without warmup/cooldowns - its easy to miss the big picture and take decoupling out of context.
Yeah I just glance at it after a ride, and only for the steady-state portions. What I learned since looking at it for 6 years - my decoupling is only interesting after I take a break. And then for only a handful or two of weeks, depending on length of the break.
I was now also curious: Basically the same indoor training every day (only sometimes a little longer), and I don’t really see a trend in the decoupling.
Interesting video from Ollie. I felt like he understated genetics, and made me feel bad about my inability to so closely control my diet. I enjoyed the video though and it added more curiosity.
Question (that I’ve seen before but couldn’t find the answer) how do those of you that MTB and follow the “Z2” approach manage your riding?
Yeah, I enjoyed this video, though the one thing that I did take away from it, is that somebody who is interested in science, seems to love tech (and aero), he didn’t get to carried away in fine detail and (it seemed to me) more interested in general health like diet and sleep, and that gave him most of his performance gains
I did think he was understating his training, or genetics, or both. To say I got to 5w/kg by not really focusing on riding is a bit vague as you say.
14hr per week seems more reasonable. It still indicates he’s reasonably gifted but is a more reasonable sort of number.
I think you’ve struck something I felt odd about it. I imagine he does pay more attention to training than he let on. The video was a real “you can do it too” thing. He didn’t talk about how he establishes his “Z2”, or what specific zones he hits if he does do intensity.
I think the answer to this is an e-bike (if climbing is a big part of your rides). Hear me out.
I put my Assiomas on my e-bike since my e-bike kit doesn’t give much other than battery volts. I still know how much I pedal with the Assiomas.
I just did 3.5 hours at 0.65 IF and travelled 65 miles with 4,000 feet of elevation gain at about 18mph average. Yeah, I was on the road, but you could do the same on the trails. The effort, not the speed, of course.
It’s just way more enjoyable to cruise up hills at Z2 instead of crawl, like I usually do.
I tried that, but then I realized that, for me, I could structure my trail rides like intervals - multi-minute climbs, followed by trail skills descending.
So now I do all my Z2 work on the trainer during the week, and then Saturdays are my high intensity polarized day - intervals on to climb, trail skills work during the descents.
Genetics is the #1 determining factor in athletic success. Training is #2 but you can train harder and smarter than everyone else, but if you haven’t won the genetic lottery you’ll never reach the top.
All too often those at the top get away with things that aren’t ideal for everyone or have some whacky training that people try to emulate. Talent masks mistakes.
I remember a guy in college who’d party all Friday night, skate board to the meet and still run the equivalent of a 4 flat mile. No matter how hard I trained, how much I slept and did things right I couldn’t beat him. I hate to say it… but not everyone can do it. We can train to be OUR best and should be happy with that.
14+ hours a week consistently (he’s been making training videos and competitive cycling since he was at cycling weekly, the other UK mag, which he left at least 5 years ago) for the best part of a decade is not ‘magic genetics’, that’s hard work.
Plenty of people who race UCI continental and higher and are pushing 5.5+ on those kinds of numbers. He’s just put in the hours, stuck to it, chosen to be a light climber and his body composition has followed.
His story is replicable for 90% of the bell curve. Throwing stuff onto genetics because your life doesn’t / hasn’t allowed you to put in the time or you don’t want to is a bit cheap.
Hogwash. I’m training 14-16hrs a week the past several months and I’m not gonna get anywhere close to 5 ever, maybe 4.3 if I’m lucky. There’s a reason why Coggan estimated the average person can get to 3.9w/kg as their ceiling.
having trawled through lots of comments here, and i have watched the peter attia interviewa few times, my take aways are thus:
Z2 is not riding easy. it refers to a lactate of about 2mmol. factoring in a heart rate of about 75% of max, this is lower tempo when i appy it to traineroad (for me)
outside/ above of the Z2, the environment in the muscle changes, therefore the training response changes.
the slow twitch fibres deal with the excess lactate, so having better mitochondria will better deal with it. the best place to train this is at 2mmol (Z2 limit)
doing high intensity during a Z2 ride, changes the environment and it can take up to 30 mins to return to base point.
when you do high intensity training, your new level at Z2 will recover you faster and more often.
training frequency is more impt than dose. 4 x 1 hr is better than 1 x 4 hr
Without knowing his ‘before’ fitness, then I wouldn’t read too much into those video’s.
They have done something similar with Dan Lloyd a couple of times where he’s had a long time off the bike and then after ‘x’ weeks he’s back with really good numbers after following ‘insert sponsored training plan’. What they fail to mention is the very high level he was at before and I expect you’ll find the same with Olly.
Can you say more about this? It’s the only ping in your summary that I had a different takeaway for. I was under the impression that training duration (1x4 hour) was more important than frequency (4x1 hour)
i believe its because you are getting 4 individual stimuli. he likens it to medicine. 1 pill per day has a different effect to 7 pills every monday. given that he talks about “most” people requiring from 60 to 90 mins to get a training effect, its more effective to train with frequency.
again, dr millan never talks about right vs wrong, but keeps going back to lactate being key. more training is better if you can recover, and central nervous system stress is kept lower during Z2.
@mailman it is tough - both due to choice of terrain and just the desire to rip the trail but I find that if I keep to double track and single track without a lot of features that I can tame my inner beast and stay in the right zone.
