WorldTour Coaches Reveal Zone 2 Secrets

After months of chasing down five of the world’s top cycling coaches—the minds behind Grand Tour wins, World Championships, and Olympic medals—I discovered one shocking truth: most riders train far too hard on their “easy” days. In this episode, I reveal the Zone 2 training secrets shared by Dan Lorang, John Wakefield, Vasilis Anastopoulos, Dr. Christian Schrot, and Dr. Stephen Seiler. Learn why pro cyclists spend 80% of their time riding “embarrassingly easy” and how this counterintuitive approach can unlock your speed, endurance, and long-term progress. They give advice on time, duration and frequency.

Chapters –

0:00 I Tracked Down The Best Coaches In The World
1:29 Coach Dan Lorang
5:14 Dr. Stephen Seiler
33:54 Coach Vasilis Anastopoulos
40:34 Dr. Christian Schrot
50:56 Coach John Wakefield

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Zone 2 training is a lie. At least the way that 99% of cyclists are doing it and implementing it. I’ve spent the last 12 months tracking down five of the world’s best cycling coaches, the ones behind Grand Tour wins, World Championship wins, Olympic medals, and every single one of them told me the exact same thing. You’re probably riding 50% too hard when you think you’re riding easy. Here’s what nobody tells you about pro cyclists. They spend about 80% of their time riding at a pace so slow that recreational riders would be able to ride with them. Maybe some recreational riders will be able to ride past them on the bike path. We’re talking conversations without breathing hard slow. And yet, this embarrassingly easy riding is precisely what separates world tour riders from talented amateurs who plateau year after year. In this episode, I’m revealing the zone 2 secrets from the best coaches in the world, Dan Lurang and John Wakefield at Bora Red Bull, Vasilla Anastasana, Dr. Christian Shrout from Jake Olua, and the one and only Professor Steven Syler. And here’s the counterintuitive truth that all these coaches try to drum into me time after time. The slower you’re willing to go today, the faster you’ll be able to go when it counts. So, if you’ve ever felt guilty for not training hard enough or wondering why your FTP isn’t improving despite all those threshold intervals, this is your wakeup call and maybe your permission slip to finally train like the pros actually train, not how you think they train. Let’s jump into this. I think a lot of time crunched athletes fall into the same trap and they create one sacrificial lamb because it takes up the most time. And that’s typically endurance riding, zone two riding, because it by by its very nature, it needs to be done for extended periods of time. You mentioned athletes kind of optimizing around their environment. Is there a case to be made for in the winter, we can substitute some of our cross country, some of our endurance riding for cross country skiing or when we get into the summer season, can we substitute it for walking if we’re time crunch? Does it have the same physiological adaptations? 100%. So I think that is a really a big benefit what amateurs athlete have that they can really build their base with different sports. basically is about moving. Uh let’s take heart rate. Basically, we want to have physical adaptation and we want to have a certain amount of time in a certain amount of um training zone and there sometimes it doesn’t matter if you do it a V to max interval now by running by crosscountry skiing or on the bike because we want an unspecific adaptation at that moment. We want to increase your general V2 max. For sure if you’re doing it on the bike, um the expert will say it’s a little bit different because you you are using the muscles that you that you are really using during the biking. But in the winter, this is not so important. It’s more important that you can do it and that you can also choose between different training methods or different training disciplines. And it’s also good for the head. So it makes fun and also it it develops your your skills in a larger way. what is quite good also for for amateur athletes and more sustainable in the winter with bad weather with long working times and so on. So I I’m a big fan of that. How do you think about measuring the adaptation for it? If I go for a three-hour bike ride, we would normally think, you know, around 30 training stress points per hour for a zone 2 ride. If I went for a threehour walk, should I attribute the same training stress score to it? Is there a linear relationship? Um I think training stress score is probably hard to to take that one. I would make more go on on a heart rate. So basically to say okay how much time let me say your aerobic endurance heart rate is between 120 and 140. H and then to say how much time did I spend now in that zone by doing the the sport that I did. Probably on the bike it will be 120 to 130. probably when you run it’s 130 to 140 but that you spend enough time in that training zone. One trap that you can fall one trap where you can fall in is with running because running is quite demanding for your bones for your tendons. So if somebody says I have a 2-hour ride on my program and he’s now doing replacing it by a 2-hour run, it’s something completely different for the muscles, for the bones. And there sometimes also the injury are happening because the the the athlete says, “Hey, cool. I go outside. It’s it’s it’s cold, but running is always so there I don’t get cold.” And then he’s he starts running and after one and a half hour everything is just hurting. Probably knee pain starts. So running is a discipline or every every um sport where you have an impact are disciplines that you have to build up step by step not because you cannot do it from the cardiovascular system but just because your um your your bones tendons and so on are not ready for it. So you have to build it up step by step. That’s not the case with cross trainer with crosscountry skiing with uh those some sports where you don’t have this this impact. Yeah, I’m I’m kind of guilty of introducing that term to the to the entire scientific literature or at least placing it in that context way back in 20 like 2004 so 20 years ago and I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since. Um the but back then the initial data that we collected it was from rowers. It was from uh cyclists and runners or uh no excuse me rowers cross country skiers and runners. And we saw this in the data that they were either running or rowing very easily at at you know low powers, low paces, just aerobic endurance or they were doing fairly high intensity, often interval based work. This is what the rowers were doing. They weren’t doing threshold workouts, cross-country skiers, they were doing very disciplined uh kind of polarization of their training. And so that’s the term that that was used. But if you take that term to, you know, if you say, well, well, the ultimate polarization would be to just basically be sitting on the couch or throwing up, you know, then then the term can be misunderstood and misused and and there has been a lot of discussion around that. But now I would say 20 years on what I think athletes have learned how to do with their coaches over decades is they’re polarizing their the stress of the training. So they are doing a lot of their training I would say under the stress radar at fairly low intensities for them but they’re using duration. They’re saying, “Hey, I I will do four hours at a low intensity to build mitochondria because that doesn’t create a big stress response in my body as opposed to doing intervals every day. And so, uh, that seems to be the prevailing the key feature of polarized training is about 80% of the training is in that proverbial green zone. You know, the athletes are are talking to each other. they’re doing the work and and and maybe they’ll have a coffee in the middle of a six-hour ride, but then some of the days are really tough, you know, and so they’re doing both, but they’re balancing it in a way that is sustainable. So polaroid training to me is a training philosophy. And I wonder when you apply a training philosophy to very diverse goals is the same does the trains does the same training philosophy work regardless of if I’m targeting a 60-minute criterium I want to be national criterium champion or if I’m targeting a 350 kilometer ultra endurance race. Really what I’m getting at is how important is it to calibrate what we’re optimizing for? Well, I I would say it’s really not a philosophy, but it’s more of a self-organizing principle. That is that what are the constraints for us as as athletes? We h if we want to be successful in our endurance endeavors, whether it’s as a criterium racer or as a GC candidate or as an ultra uh rider, we have to to find a sustainable way. I know that’s a tired word, but we have to have a a methodology that keep that we stay healthy uh doing because if we’re not staying healthy, if we’re not recovering oh on average from day to day, if we’re not able to train for months and even years in this endeavor, then the the methodology is not appropriate. And so I think that is what we’ve seen is that what I didn’t invent polarized training, but what I saw is that athlete populations from from diverse sports that really weren’t talking to each other or independent of each other finding the same solution to a problem to a biological challenge if that makes sense. Yeah, it’s very interesting. I had Dr. David Litman on the podcast. You might have come across some his work in the area of human physiology as well and he advocated something very similar and he had a nice phrase. He said if you zoom out and look at an athletes macro cycle be a training annual training year or multi-training year success outcomes are less defined by the athletes ceiling and more defined by the athletes floor. So how good is our worst week is much more important than how good is our best week. Yeah. And I’ve I’ve in some presentations internationally, I’ve just had a PowerPoint slide with a number on it like 532. And I said, “Okay, this is a pretty important number. What is it?” They’re like, “Uh, is it the watts per five minutes or is it?” I said, “No. Yeah, that would be pretty darn good.” No. I said, “No, that’s the number of sessions that athlete successfully achieved in that year.” Let’s say it was a triathlete. And and and my number might be 315. uh a a cyclist might be 400, a triathlete might be 600 workouts. A a hobby, a recreational cyclist, it might be 150. But depending on my goals, that’s one of the success criteria is am am I able to be consistent? Have I been able to stay healthy, avoid injury, and string together a long sequence of workouts that were executed basically after my intention? And and what we find is when athletes stand on the podium and you ask them, “Well, what’s your secret?” They’ll say, “Well, that my secret is I don’t have a secret. My secret is that I get the work done.” I I was fortunate enough to have a six-month period where I I was able to train very consistently without injury or illness and good things happened for me. You know, that’s often the story. That’s kind of boring, but that’s that’s the floor is is being able to achieve that, I would say. Let’s hone in and talk about the amateur. I’ll define him as a time crunched athlete because I think most amateurs will identify with we’ve conflicting demands on our time. We don’t get to get out of bed and just ride our bike for the day. And if we have the three levers which we can pull intensity, duration, and frequency, what order should we be pulling these levers across a training week to build this training plan for athletes? I guess I’ll just repeat my typical. I say, “Look, if let’s start with just somebody that’s trying to go from basically not training to doing a sustainable session and they can maybe do a 40k on the bike, you know, and and feel good about it or it could be a 10k run.” So, I’m going to begin with frequency. I’m going to say, “Look, my first goal with you is to establish a habit.” Uh, I may not say that to them directly, but I’m going to say, “All right, for the next six weeks, all I care about is you get out the door a certain number of times a week. Now, let’s agree on how many that is.” And they’re going to say, “Well, given that I’m the coach of the football team and I’ve got this and this and this, let’s go for three uh three days a week. I I’m I’m going to commit to that.” Perfect. All right. So, we’re going to commit to that frequency. Uh, but now do it. Get out the door three times a week. it’s gonna you’re going to get challenged by it because you’ve got other stuff going on, but make that a priority and let’s talk and keep keep in touch. And so six weeks later, I you know, we feed get feedback for and talk about it with each other. Yeah, I’m doing it. In fact, I’m not only doing it, but it’s feeling like a habit and I’m missing it the one or two times I’ve I haven’t been able to to get out the door. And I say, “Awesome. Now we got frequency going and we kind of got a habit going. We’ve gota, you know, it it in the brain, exercise is a habit. So then I said, now let’s I said, “What have you been doing?” Because I haven’t asked them that before. All right. I haven’t I haven’t asked about how hard or how long. I said, “All right, how long you know what what’s your typical workout?” Ah, I’m getting out. I’m doing walk run for 30 minutes or I’m able to ride for a half an hour, maybe 40 minutes, but that’s about it. It’s been quick. Okay. Now, I want you to try to at least one of those days to start with, let’s stretch. It’s still three days a week, but now we’re going to start using duration. That second lever you talked about, because duration is a powerful lever from a biological point of view. It really there’s a huge difference between 30 minutes and an hour and 90 minutes that it matters. So, we can use that to our advantage, but but that does add some time. So I say, “All right, let’s try to stretch one of those workouts.” Now, if we’re talking cycling, then we might try to stretch it to say a 90 minute ride over the next six weeks. Okay, that’s doable. In running, we’d probably say 60 minutes as a as a goal, you know, to initially. So now we’re using that and we’re going to use another six weeks to slowly build that out. We’re not going to do anything in a hurry. Because that’s another thing that that people do wrong is they they get enthusiastic, but then they go out too hard and they they they get hurt. Yeah. Or they have a really bad experience where they realize, man, I’m not in shape, you know. No, you’re not because you haven’t been doing very much. So, but it gets better. So, so we give them some time. So, now we’re 12 weeks in. What’s 12 weeks? That’s that’s three months. And now we’ve got two levers working for us. And now after 12 weeks, now I’m going to introduce that magic buzzword intervals and intensity, but not before. And I think that’s one of the most common mistakes that’s made is that we flip that. Of those three levers, what is the order that we use? We go out hard. So we use the intensity lever almost from day one and then and then we get hit in the face with it. So after those after I’ve established some frequency and I’ve got them able to stretch and they’re comfortable doing a 90-minute ride at a very aerobic pace and being able to talk to their their friends. Now I’m going to say, you know what, there I know there’s a hill on that favorite route you have. Let’s let’s introduce carefully some repeats up that hill, some interval training to try to push your heart rate up kind of maybe towards 90% and try to collect some minutes or accumulate some minutes doing that. So, we’re going to do it several times, but we’re going to progress it carefully. Okay. So, that’s that third lever. So, in my head, and that’s exactly what we see with elite performers is what do they do? They’re they’re very good on frequency. They’re consistent. They’re getting out the door. It’s a lot every day. And then they are doing a lot of duration. I was just looking at some workouts from, you know, uh, world tour teams today and, you know, eight hour rides. You know, I’m looking at their power files. This is part of their day. This is what they’re doing in January and February preparing for the tour, for the grand tours. I’m looking at grand tour candidates, you know, and they’re doing the eight hour rides, but they’re not going hard every day. In fact, if I look at an isolation at the power output for that eight hour ride, I say, “Well, you know what? I think I could do that, but not for eight hours.” You you with me? So, if you take someone that has like a So, they’re using duration, someone that has a use case B, we’ll call it somebody that actually kind of like myself. So, I used to view performance and cycling through how good can I be at cycling period. Everything else in my life came second to cycling. And now I have to view cycling through a new lens. I have to view cycling through how good can I be at cycling in this timebound container each week. So I have maybe 10 hours per week to ride my bike. Yeah. So my new challenge is how do I optimize that 10 hours? And what I see more and more athletes doing is pulling the intensity lever over and over again to ramp TSS higher and higher in that 10-hour week. So, they’re saying to themselves, “Hey, I can achieve the same TSS in a 10-hour week with piles of intensity that I used to achieve in a 15-hour week with a lot less intensity.” Talk to me about the what I’m assuming is a flawed logic in this thinking. Yeah, unfortunately, it is a flawed logic and and partly it’s a little bit driven by some bad metrics. you know, TSS uh developed by Training Peaks and and all power to them and and I know Derk Fel, great guy, but it it it says it stands for training stress score. Well, stress is not what’s being measured at all. It’s measuring load. It’s just measuring a calibrated load. And so let’s say you do a 4hour ride at some reasonable power output that’s well below your first threshold, you know, uh your first leg take third point. So it’s doable. The first hour feels easy, but is the fourth hour in that ride. Let’s assume you’re pretty serious and you do a 4-hour ride on the weekend. Is the fourth hour at 210 watts or whatever you’re holding, is that the same as the first hour? Does it feel the same? Is your heart rate the same? Is your perception of exertion the same? I’m pretty sure the answer is going to be no. Unless you’re a pretty unless Yeah, it’s definitely not for me, but if you know maybe for vault van it is, but it’s not for most of us. So that means that the stress of doing achieving those that that power for that first hour, second hour, third hour, fourth hour, they’re very different. Okay, that’s not accounted for. So they they even interpret it as a linear relationship between effort and stress and it’s not. And it’s totally wrong. No physiologist anywhere would ever agree that that’s that’s how that works. So what they have is a load score, which is great. That’s great. But then then they need to we need to say, well, yeah, but now what’s the stress associated with achieving it? Because that’s what we’re trying to manage, right? Because if it gets too stressful, if the interval session gets too hard, we dig too deep, then it’s going to take even longer to recover from, which is going to impact our subsequent workout. Because I often wonder, so we’re trying to manage it. Sorry to cut across just I often wonder that because if I if you take that example, so that’s I’m doing roughly, you know, if I’m training 390 to 400 watts for 20 minutes. So I’m going out at a 210 to 220 watt endurance ride. Like you said, that number was pretty accurate. And in error one, I might have 110 to 115 beats for that power output. But in error four or error five, I have this cardiac drift where I’m maybe 130 135 beats at the same power output. I often wondered, is heart rate TSS a better approximation of that effort than actual power TSS? Well, it would definitely be a more cons it would be more consistent with the concept of stress for sure, you know. So, if if you were going to try to really separate and say, “Here’s what I do. That’s just the external load. Here’s what it costs me to do based on heart rate or lactate or perceived exertion. You can also use perceptual measurements.” But that’s that triangle that we often talk about in training monitoring is external load and then physiology and then some perception some some you know what’s how does it feel and so that’s what we’re really interested in looking at is what’s the relationship between how dig how hard I’m having to dig physiologically and then what I’m actually doing both during a workout but then across days and weeks and months and so forth. So, so, uh, that’s that’s really what it comes down to. And then part of you optimizing for you is knowing when to when to pull the plug on a workout, when to say, you know what, four hours is enough today because I’ve had already I’ve got 20 beats of heart rate drift. I’m feeling really empty. I can do another hour, but I’m basically just going to be surviving it. and I don’t think the cost to benefit is going to be in my favor. Does that make sense? Yeah. Do we get a different physiological response? So, obviously, we’re all familiar with zones and then in each of those zones, we get an associated physiological adaptation when we start having that cardiac. Well, well, I’m going to back I’m going to time out. Time out. Time out. It’s not that simple. That’s that’s one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they think, “Oh, I’ve got to be in zone three to get the zone three adaptations. I’ve got to be in zone one to get the zone one adaptations. Uh-uh. It’s there’s a tremendous amount of overlap in in the biological adapt signaling. And this is what we’ve learned from lots of research in the lab and that it’s it’s not so simple and the and the muscle fibers are not like calculating which zone you’re in, right? They’re pretty they’re just they’re they don’t really care about your training program to that extent. They they’re they’re responding to you know either I’m being asked to contract on this duty cycle or I’m not and there are signals associated with that. So um that let’s take that 5 hour workout where you’ve got a lot of cardiac drift. Essentially, you started in in your green zone, but you may be in essence in a threat at threshold level by the end of that workout. Yeah. Even though your power hasn’t changed a watt. Does that make sense? And are you getting a threshold adaptation then? Well, what you are doing, why why is heart rate going up? Why is it drifting as we call it? Why is heart cardiac drift happening even and let’s let’s make the assumption that you’re you’re very good at drinking. You’re you’re putting water on board. You’re getting some carbs. So, you’re doing that part of of your job of of fueling and drinking appropriately. Let’s assume the temperature is you’re you know you’re in the UK so it’s not super hot. So, those things are okay. But yet, you still show cardiac drift. Why? That’s because you are your brain is having to recruit more muscle because you’re starting to fatigue. Our our muscles are kind of organized in so-called units. It’s like little brigades of fibers and they can be recruited. As some fatigue, the brain calls in reinforcements. Okay? So it is costing your body more and more to achieve a given power due to various fatigue and damage processes in the body. So the brain is is bringing in those reinforcements and then it’s in parallel turning up heart rate. Does that make sense? So that cardiac drift is kind of an indicator of the reality that it’s you’re not in a steady state. There’s no such thing as a steady state in the human body. If you go long enough, you wear out. You fatigue. And so your four hour, five hour ride is an example where yeah, it feels great the first two hours, but it it does start to get start feeling it’s a different kind of fatigue than that interval session. It’s a it’s an empty you’re going empty. Whereas in that interval session, you feel like you’re filling up with poison, right? You know, it’s a it’s a different perceptual feeling. Uh but they’re both associated with the fact that you are fatiguing and you are calling in every reinforcement you can to try to mobilize and achieve the power that’s expected. How do we measure the cost of that effort? So if the effort is the what’s that we’re putting out? Heart rate maybe is an approximation of the cost of the effort. Is there more effective way to measure the cost of that effort? Well, it’s a really interesting question and one of the things that we’ve started doing and it’s it’s still early days, but thanks to technology, we’re starting to measure ventilation also out in the field. And it turns out that and you know this from cycling, you can hear how hard someone’s working just listening to them breathe. Well, you know, if you’re in the break, that’s one of the things you’ll watch for. Like I I’ll watch for if I’m in the break with someone, I’m like, “Okay, I want to figure out the best place to attack here.” Obviously, you’ve your little tricks of we reference like 90° turns and if you can get somebody on the wrong side of someone else’s wheel, you know, maybe you’ll get a couple of bike lance advantage, but you’re also looking biomechanically. Are they starting to recruit more from the hips and their shoulders are starting to wag. But breathing is another thing you’ll kind of tune into and go, okay, he’s breathing has changed. Are they are they breathing out their ears? You know, and and if I’m breathing hard, I’m going to try to try to hide that, right? Because I don’t want to expose my weakness. So, so breathing is a is a trutht teller and it turns out physiologically it also really is because we’ve started to we’ve done quite a lot of field work to try to look at hard sessions where we’re measuring both that heart rate drift but we’re also measuring the ventilation drift because the same thing we’re seeing with breathing frequency is it goes up but it goes up at a steeper rate so it’s even more sensitive to fatigue and it’s a really interesting thing because when When when those athletes are in that really high brea breath frequency zone, they’re cooked. Even if heart rate’s not that high, heart rate may only be 85 90% of max and you say, “Ah, they should be able to do more.” But their breathing is telling us that no, they’re cooked. They’re they’re empty. And so, so that’s we we’re starting to get at it is this idea of how do we measure that stress during the workout and maybe make informed decisions about how how how deep to dig? Is that does that make sense? That’s that’s brilliant. So, to circle back to the the 10-hour a week athlete, are you advocating uh you know, my understanding of polarized has been an 8020 distribution of easy to hard? Is that the sort of distribution we’re looking at? It’s a good starting point for sure. You know, I’m not going to argue and say that everybody’s going to be exactly the same. You may have some people that recover better and and and also age comes into play. I think as we get older, recovery ability does tend to decline. So the the athlete, the 25-y year version of me that could handle two, you know, really tough sessions a week and just bury myself, maybe now I really I do well with just the one uh for example at six close to 60. So, so those kinds of issues, there’s individualization issues, but that 8020, you know, at least two, three out of every four days on average, three out of every four days are going to be just basically aerobic days without a huge high intensity. That’s a good starting point. And then you make fine adjustments as a function of your individual abilities, where you are in the season, and so forth. Does that make sense? Yeah. Do we have methods or tools for measuring progress if somebody is on a periodized training model? Like what’s our our signals of progress that we know we’re responding to this or we know maybe we need to pull a little bit more at the intensity level? Well, I think what we see with elite performers is like you were saying, it’s the floor that’s the most important. that first uh in in physiology language we call it the first lactate turn point where that that first break point where power output you’re increasing that increasing it and and and lactate is staying low staying low staying low you’re under control it’s easy but then you get this little first first break that that point in elite performers is they are at really high power outputs you know they’re at really high relative capacity. It could easily be well in in some of our elite riders it may be 350 watts. Uh at at L what we call LT1, you know, Tim Declar who’s who’s the we call him the tractor beast. He can ride he’s he’s ridden for five hours at 350. I I I talked to him last year, you know, we had an interview and he says he had had he did a breakaway in the tour to France. uh this year I believe or was it the tour to France or was it another but he got in a break and he almost never is allowed to do that but he said yeah I had a really good day I was 5 hours at 350 watts so that and that’s just him you know he says look I don’t have that upper end that’s you know that’s why I do what I do I’m the tractor but my upper my lower end is pretty darn good you know and that’s that’s what we see with all these elite performers is their lower and kind of first threshold is high uh you know uh and and in enviably high uh and then they take it from there upwards you’re looking for improvements in that LT1 but if somebody is to if we’re to sound the warning signs on a training plan isn’t working well we’re using a reversed periodized method and maybe the distribution of the the three levers we referenced we haven’t got this right what’s the warning signs look like that we maybe need to re-evaluate our training plan. One of the one of the you know there are several of course and we one of the things you need to trust is if you don’t feel like training that’s a problem because if you’re motivated and normally enjoy training but your brain has said man I I just can’t hardly get myself off the couch then that’s that is something you should be taking seriously as one of your first indicators. It’s the canary in the in the coal mine as they used to say. But we also see if you need some hardcore physiology, we see often that heart rate is actually too low for a given power output. It’s it’s suddenly, you know, it it’s 10 beats too low and you think, well, that isn’t that good. That means, you know, I’ve had a nice response. No, because it’s not good if your max heart rate is also lower. Yeah. meaning you you’ve got depression of the entire autonomic nervous system. The brakes are on. That is a very telltale sign that we’ll listen to athletes and they’ll say, you know, I can’t get my heart rate up. 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Yes, I’m focusing uh on the time that was spent in LT1 during the during the dur rides and then I can see uh so always the target when you do such a long rides is to improve a little bit your to move your LD1 close to the LT2 to LT2 and then move the L2 code close to your vert max and start the optimal goal for each coach. So this is the this is how I I define if the 6-h hour ride or the 7-hour ride had the the desire effect effect to the rider and of course it’s different when we’re talking about for sprinters or for climbers uh GC riders. It’s a complete different approach of course and so what’s the intensity level they’re spending time out on those long endurance rides because I’ve seen some coaches even putting zone one rides in. Yeah, most of the rides upper zone zone one and we do most of the climbs in around just below no more than that. This all about the the long rides. I describe this long easy endurance rides. I want the riders to finish to finish those long rides tired but not exhausted. This the how I describe them. I I told him I always tell them I want to finish tired but not completely spent. That’s not the the target of the of the session. So when they’re getting up the next day, are they carrying residual fatigue from that ride or they feel like they could do the same ride again? Uh they can they can feel like they can do the same ride again. I think that’s the key on the success. And do you look at data like heart rate variability, anything like that to determine their readiness to do the next day’s training session? Yeah, I would take, you know, HRV, resting heart rate, uh, uh, urine color, uh, the weight, all this data next morning to to see if they recovered from the rides or not because also we’re talking about specific blocks of training. It’s not only about one training. Usually we do three, four day blocks or two day blocks and then you have to to be able to manipulate these sessions and to to combine them. So at the end of the day you have the total idea the total picture after how the the rider looks like after two three days of work if he needs one day of recovery if he needs two days of recovery it’s up to the coach to determine based on his experience what is the the response of the rider because nowadays we have a lot of data we have a lot of as I said a lot of metrics but at the end of the day the question that we do the rider how do you feel is the most accurate one. Yeah, I think that’s like a pendulum cuz when I started and you know I was reading books like Joe Freel’s training bible that was all they talked about. How do you feel? Do a morning score. What’s your fatigue from 1 to five? What’s your motivation to train from 1 to five? Your level of sickness and then from that you decide if you were going to train or not. But in the, you know, next 10, 15 years, we seeing this massive trend towards data. But I kind of view it like a pendulum. And it feels to me like the pendulum’s back swinging a little bit away from data and going back to the writer. How do you feel? Because the data is always going to be a proxy for how do you feel? Yes. Exactly. Exactly. I also have the same uh same philosophy because we might have so many data now, but we’re not talking talking about computers. We’re talking about human beings. And this didn’t sleep well or didn’t feel well in the night before or had a fight with his girlfriend while in the camp. Uh he just needs to he just needs to be honest and uh discuss it with the coach because if we had if the riders were just computers we’ll take all the data and would soon need to do any train plans or any adjusting the train plans. We’ll get the train plants for an automatic software especially now with the AI technology it would be really easy and then we have the optimal train program for each one then we shouldn’t uh wouldn’t wouldn’t be the coaches but that’s the job of the coach we have to do with human beings and we have to be very very careful on what we and how we prescribe a train to them when you look at amateur athletes what I’ve seen in the last few years is because we’re all time crunched you know we’re all balancing conflicting demands on our time. We’ve, you know, family obligations, work obligations, and then we’re trying to squeeze our training in. What we’ve seen is athletes who can train 10 hours a week, they’ve started to add more and more intensity into that 10 hours. So, it’s like almost every day is just packed full of intervals and cadence changes. How would you approach that kind of philosophy you have of zone one, zone two being so important with an amateur athlete who is time crunched? You know nowadays that you can get the info so easily. Uh internet’s full of train programs. Uh the biggest mistake that the the amateur athletes do is that they try to copy what the pros do. But they forget that the pros don’t do anything except from training, eating and sleeping while they have to do a an 8 hour job in the morning and they have to go out for training and they try to replicate the the intervals that pogab for example is doing or vinegar is doing. Uh while it’s not not possible to me it’s it’s really simple. If you are in an amateur level, you have to devote most of your time on uh zone one, zone two and then we can put some uh specific efforts just two times per week. That’s enough for you. It’s enough to bring you in a in a decent uh level. Uh I have seen a lot of uh amateurs doing as you described earlier on intervals every day, every single day quality work. It’s going to bring you up to a certain level, but then you’re going to start to to hold it and you’re going to feel either overtrained or you’re going to feel the fatigue or you will not be able to to have any social life at all. In other words, just finish your work and then you will be just after you just dead lay in the sofa. That’s my experience. So, I think that’s maybe shift one that I’ve taken here is amateurs, we’re setting up our training zones wrong and we’re not maximizing the adaptations because we’re not we don’t strictly know what our zones are. We’re approximating our zones. If we were to move on past that and kind of layer and build as we go. If you take an amateur who is like almost all of them time restricted in some sense, we’ll take someone that’s riding 10 10 to 12 hours a week. How do you think about intensity and distributing intensity across that 10 to 12 hours? Are you an advocate of like the Steven Sailor method where it’s like 80% easy, 20% hard? What does your head go to when you’re thinking about that distribution? Yes, I think um a pretty robust approach um when we moved back to to the older days where it was more more or less mainly endurance-based this has shifted to in a direction what you have said somehow called polarized approach more in that direction and um I think this this approach is pretty robust also for a good variety of riders uh which we are talking about when we talk about amateur athletes as well And so I think that would be a pretty good starting point working off um having a good good amount of base work. Um but also being combined with some race specific intensity work uh especially focusing also when we talk about aerobic enhancements also with the V2 max training. Um and then in the leadup to the to the goal races um yeah sharpening more with threshold work and maybe if it’s also yeah some kind of more punchy race or criterium or whatever then also with um that kind of uh sprint specific work. Um that’s that’s for sure a good approach. I’m I’m completely on that and uh that is also an approach of polarized training that is uh also applied in high performance sports and uh among different sports but also in cycling very common uh to do it like that because it’s a good way to build up uh the Arabic system. When we say 8020 just to clarify on the 20% are we talking about 20% of our total duration needs to be heard or 20% of our sessions need to be heard? Um that’s a bit uh also uh I think there is uh this the understanding you’re right is is not always the same. Uh as far as I would say um it’s not that it needs to be on that point of 20%. Uh normally it’s seen on the overall duration. Uh so if you see all the trainings together then uh the 20% uh would be the time to to spend at the higher training zones but it can be also 15 28 and it will be still a good training or um five 5% up or down. I think that will not uh mainly change the the impact. It’s more about having the consistency and also um yeah the quality of the training being able to stay in zones and not always trying to over push because also for example a V2 max training can be either more or less an allout training for some persons where it is still a control training um if you put it in the right uh borders of the training zone. So that’s that’s a bit the direction I would say. Yeah. So the 80/20 it shouldn’t be taken too literally from reading between the lines from what you’re saying. Like if we’re in a sprint block and we’re training 10 hours a week to make the maths easy, it seems pretty crazy to think I’m going to do two hours of sprints inside a full week. So it it’s quite dependent on what the primary stimulus is during that block, how strictly we adhere to it. Yes, that’s what I said. So if you break it down to a narrow block then this is uh probably getting also super intense. So you have to see it more from an overall picture and when these kind of uh yeah overall metrics are derived uh for for kind of a c consensus on a training concept it’s more seen on I would say on a seasonal basis or training uh period basis um and then it’s also incorporating all all the training sessions. So, uh, but if you if you break it down, um, more to to one training peak, uh, training week, sorry. Uh, I I would say, um, it’s, uh, I would always focus in one session on on a main target as as a really um, like a primary adaptation. Yes, exactly. Not to mix too much the different trainings in in one session because you think you might do good by adding more. Um the only time when this I think makes really sense if it’s uh trainings that fit to each other and also when it’s I for example a kind of simulation day where you might want to add up more fatigue to a rider in regards of having something like a a race simulation for example uh then it might make sense for example to to start with threshold efforts and adding then a high intensity in the end uh because you want to simulate a race in a training but that’s that’s not the common training of a normal day. So normally you would either say okay this is uh a specific endurance training added by something that can be added for example short posts of sprints um fat max uh intervals in it or some tempo training can be related to it some blocks of intervals on that. uh this I think makes really sense. But when you go more specific on the higher training zones, I would tend especially for amateur athletes to have this a dedicated training and then also uh to shorten the training to really have the impact from that kind of uh stimulus that you want to have uh in sense of mixing in it mixing it up again with super long ride and then intervals in the beginning, middle and the end. So I would more attend to the the first approach. So if we continue with this kind of layered analogy of building up. So we’ve determined a new way of setting zones. We figured out the distribution of intensity across kind of a macro block. For me the next logical step in building this out feels like what type of intensity do we introduce? Do we go with standard periodization, reverse periodization or randomly allocated intensity based off our goal? Um I think in in in general um there are always different ways to go around. I I think there’s not one standard way. Um but having a a a classical approach to have some kind of buildup uh and this can be also already polarized. Um then um this makes yeah especially for an athlete who’s lacking in in some on on the one hand in time. uh that that’s one limitation factor and on the on the other hand also needs to build his systems. I think it’s good first to focus on um on the weak points which is mostly and there’s the most benefit in uh to start off working on the aerobic capacities. Uh so with a zone 2 training with the uh endurance blocks but also for sure can be added already um either during in a process or blockwise then in in the process uh the V2 max work there are different approaches in that some coaches might tend to say okay I don’t want to incorporate V2 max sessions in in a traditional classical buildup. Uh some others say okay I I want to incorporate it. My personal favor is to incorporate it continuously. So um and I do that also with high performance athletes that I really try to stimulate the V2 max regularly. Also in endurance training I can remember vividly a December training spin. I was on the back roads. There was fog, wet leaves, potholes everywhere. I was riding on a descent onehanded trying to stab this tiny little mode button and praying the battery would last until the final climb of the day. You know that anxiety, the is it going to die anxiety? It totally ruins your ride. And the truth is for years that was normal. Every season I got into this repetitive cycle. I’d end up buying a new set of lights in the winter. normally plastic lights, plastic brackets which would invariably snap, charging ports which would fail, and batteries that would fade. Most lights feel very disposable. They’re shiny for the winter and then straight into the bin at the end of the winter and we repeat again the following winter. That all changed when I got my first set of exposure lights. Suddenly, this wasn’t a consumable anymore. This was a piece of kit built to last a lifetime. That’s why I’m absolutely buzzing about the fully updated exposure range. Reflex 2.0 automatically adjusts the brightness of your light. It dials it down when you’re going at slower speeds on the climbs and then unleashes the full power of the lumens on the descent so your hands stay where they need to be on the bars so you don’t actually crash. There’s another really cool feature. It’s called reserve mode and it kicks in when run time hits zero. It drops to a low beam and you get another 30 minutes to get you out of trouble and get you home. USBC charging is a total gamecher to my mind. It means you can get now 70% faster charging. But importantly for me, you can top up your lights from a power bank mid ride. So if you’re doing an ultra, a bike packing trip or you’re going on an event like me at Badlands, just plug it into the power bank and away you go. No need to worry about batteries failing. Exposure isn’t just another set of lights. This is the last set of lights you’re ever going to need to buy. Go to exposure.com to check out their full range. Yeah, it’s an interesting one cuz I know a lot of companies are starting and the links between top performers there. It doesn’t necessarily have to be sport. I’ve noticed a lot speaking on the podcast to people who are CEOs of big companies and the amount of common traits they have with Vultry Butthas who drives an F1 car with Greg Lemon multiple tour of to France champion. High performance is a tread that links all these people together and personality tests are definitely creeping into corporate worlds more and more. Yeah. like you know someone says to me, “Oh, why do you, you know, coach this age group athlete?” And for me, sometimes an age group athlete is the easiest athlete to coach, especially if he runs a really high-end company. Like if I co there’s a a CFO that I coach, how he approaches work is how he approaches his training, you know, and he’s the easiest guy to coach. I ask him to do something, it’s done. The feedback is there. It’s it’s bulletproof, you know, and you kind of think I wish that some of the professional athletes at at, you know, proconty or amateur or, you know, world level are as professional as what this guy does. Um, you know, so that when you speak to him is like, well, that’s what my life is like. That’s what I just transfer straight over to my training, you know. So, what you say is is 100% correct. And is that you know let’s maybe unpack that idea of professionalism like what makes him so professional and is that a trait that you can see repeated among top performers. Is it the same reason Rogich is successful? Is it the same reason Vlassov is successful? What is that trait that we call professionalism? I would say how I like to look at it and then it’s also quite a wide route but it is the attention to detail. you know, it’s it’s it’s it’s a very structured attention to detail. Um, you know, someone says has asked me, “Oh, who’s the most professional person you’ve ever worked with as an athlete?” And I didn’t personally coach him, but I worked with him closely. I landed up doing a lot of races with him and stuff at when I was at UAE. And that was Alexander Kristoff. He was probably the most professional athlete I’ve I’ve ever seen. Um, you know, and yes, don’t get me wrong, Tade winning the tour is super professional. Roglage has been incredible since he’s come to to Bora, but they all carry that same trait where yes, they fun and they laugh and they make good jokes and stuff like that, but when it comes to their trade, it is just super focused, super professional. Their attention to detail is incredible. Um, and I just feel that that is what makes them, you know, like you walk in their room and their bag is packed, it’s clean, where you walk in some athletes riders bag rooms and it’s like, mate, you’ve got to flush a toilet, you know? It’s like, you know, so, so when you look at it that side, I do feel that that then follows over into the actual racing on the bike. I remember having a football manager back when I was a kid. I played football, tried to make it as a pro. I got to kind of pro in Ireland, which is not really pro, about the level I got in cycling. And I had a football manager who fined me for having dirty boots one day. And I remember going home, I must have been 14 years old. Like going home and just baffled at this talking to my dad. I’m like, like the the boots are going to get dirty. I’m going onto a dirty pitch. Why does he care if my boots are dirty starting the session? And my dad said to me, “Because how you do anything is how you do everything.” I was like, “That’s such a beautiful turn of phrase.” Because it’s so true. Yeah. Correct. You know, like even, you know, with our lab here in Jerona, you get people that come in with a a good clean bike that we work on and then you get guys that, you know, it’s like going to the dentist with peanut brittle in your mouth. You know, you just don’t don’t do that. Um, and I just feel that, you know, if that’s how you do this, it flows over and flows over into into every other part of your life or what you do. Um, you know, like going back to the Ultra stuff, there was the one rider I work with, super professional, super successful, really wins races, podiums, like fantastic. And then he’s like at the end of the year where I’m like, you know, man, this was unbelievable. He says, “Oh, like what can we do to be like 2 3% better?” And you sit there going like, “I thought we could maybe let go of 2 or 3% and just have it a bit easier.” Um, you know, so, but yet you see how that is, you know, and it’s it’s everything from tire pressure to do I need to eat this at that time. And it’s just those small small things that have a really big impact at the end. And I I and how modern cycling is especially at world tour level now it’s changed so much over the last four years and even now coming into the ultra side and as you said the gravel which has also become a lot more professional you need to apply your trade 100% so you can get a 90% reward almost nowadays like nowadays that oh I’ve got the talent I can get by doesn’t really cut it anymore. The line is difficult, isn’t it, for amateurs and I struggle with this myself as well because you the nature of cycling, it sucks you in. And it’s why every time I go out to Jirona for two weeks, I’m like, I’m going to go out and I’m going to do a bit of balance of work and training and then I’m like 200k deep into a ride out near France or something with a load of full-timers. I’m like, what am I doing? How have I got sucked back in this deep? Yeah, that’s hard because it’s a sport that you can always give more to. I have a friend who’s training for the moment for a tracker for the 500 one or the 520 or whatever it is and he’s trying to win that at the moment and I was chatting to him. He’s like, I think I’ve done everything I can. I was like, you can always do more in cycling. Like, you’re not in an altitude tent. You haven’t done camps. It’s like, yeah, at what point is that healthy balance for amateur athletes to say, I’ve been professional and I’ve done enough, but I’m not running a, you know, train without a driver through my whole personal life or my professional life. Um, yeah, it’s it’s actually a very good topic that because I have found lately that that line is is so thin and linear where what I say to people is what are you being paid to do? And they’ll say, oh, I’m being paid to be an accountant. And you’re like, okay, but that’s where your focus is. You’re not paid to be a professional. you know, so yes, they are 100% into it and they, you know, dot the eyes and cross the tees, but there’s some of them that are doing more than what a full-time professional that’s landing on actually landing on the podium at tracker is doing. Yeah. And that is where it’s like too much has a negative effect. Um, you know, with those people I sometimes say do less. you know like you you are more intense than my most intense will athlete and that to me I think just becomes like it works negatively you know that that line between in performance now that line between success and failure is so thin where before it wasn’t and I just feel that the more that athlete does that serious amateur athlete and goes deeper into it because they possibly have the finances the resources is they fully invested. They they are clever and they have a brain so they invested into it has a negative effect. It’s like maybe do less, bring the fun back into it, and you’ll actually have a better reward.