Give me a training plan

[TheRich]

https://m.facebook.com/groups/180980610 ... 9982670137

A pre-defined training plan is either suboptimal from day one or suboptimal after the first workout that doesn't go to plan.

This is so true.

This is like comparing a Forester to a Cayenne.

When you pay the however little money basic "coaching" costs, you're getting your money's worth. You're getting a little feedback, a little motivation, and a little accountability, which is what most people need.

I don't use them because I'm self motivated, not time crunched, and don't use a trainer.

[iheartbianchi]

I have a question about the 60% of max heart rate. I have consistent measurement of max heart rate being 190 +- 3 bpm. Is it truly 60% of max HR or the Karvonen formula which for me would produce a rate of 138 bpm? 114 seems ridiculously low, but don't dispute the concept of using an appropriately low heart rate for the "easy" workouts. I can also monitor lactate and see consistent measurements with 152-154 bpm producing 2mmol readings and at 138bpm I would see 1.5 mmol, which is a similar reading at 115 bpm.

A secondary issue I run into is a tendency to see elevated HR when rolling out for a road ride and for an equal effort based on power, I may see 20+ bpm higher for a similar RPE. This may be due to adrenaline spiking and a function of nerves and poor aerobic fitness. I have had a full review by a cardiologist this year, so no issues there. When this occurs, my HR at harder efforts are in line with my typical threshold and RPE. I don't have this issue when riding on the trainer indoors.

While I can commit to 7-8 hours per week, would hate to see the "easy" efforts be too easy and not elicit appropriate training stimulus.

For someone with a max heart rate of around 190, 138bpm is clearly not a correct figure for 60%. Note also, that the range for your "easy" rides is 60-70%, which puts you up to 133. I find it hard to imagine that you feel you are going "slow" when your heart rate is at 133bpm! It should feel relaxed (which is good, because if you are tense, you are firing your muscles inefficiently and training your body to function ineffeciently) and easy, but you should also be sweating.

Depends on the person, but generally 1.5 mmol/l would be seen for a moderate level of effort and 2 for a moderately hard effort.

When you're "rolling out" your body isn't warmed up and so your HR will be elevated as your body spends extra energy recruiting muscle mass for work and increasing blood supply to those muscles.

[buzzcock]

FWIW, my max HR is roughly 190bpm too and on the 60%-70% rides I use the range 115-130bpm for practical purposes (on some hills I allow it to rise to 140, but other than that stay below 130). My lab determined lower threshold HR (VT1/LT1) has been consistently around 145-150.

Once one decides to slow down, it might take some time to make muscle firing patterns efficient at lower outputs. At least for me it took some time to attain a sustained feeling of "hip contribution" (ie. glutes) and the accompanying feeling of stability on the slower rides while on harder rides it was a lot more apparent. It probably has to do with pelvic rotation, ie. I tend to rotate the pelvis anteriorly more while under pressure, which in my case tends to increase glute contribution.

[cazdrvr]

Thank you AJ and IHB for the responses! I am going to focus on 60%-70% of max for the easy rides and see how that progresses over time.

Regarding the elevated HR, I truly feel it is an adrenaline response. I can jump on the trainer and my HR is around 70 bpm but before swinging a leg over the bike to ride, can see 110 bpm or higher. Going for a brisk walk will have typical HR and 115-133 is very brisk. After a proper warm up before crits, I could be standing at 120-130 before the start.

[RocketRacing]

for zones, is it better to use hr or power? I struggle to get my hr low enough, and tend to go on power zones. I find my hr is one zone above my power.

I have been watching some videos by Dylan Johnston on training plans, and he echoes much of what is said here. at least one very long ride a week. 2 rest days. HArd interval day, followed by short interval day. Keep your endurance days true endurance. Do your hardest interval days when you are rested. His approach is quite evidence based.

Strava also gave me a training plan for a goal of about 7 hrs a week, and to max 5-10 min efforts. It actually looks quite similar to what DJ suggests.

M: rest
T: endurance ride 1 hr.
W: high intensity intervals (100% plus) plus endurance
T: lower intensity (80%) intervals plus endurance
F: rest
S: endurance with low intensity longer intervals.
S: long endurance ride

DJ's theory just swap the timing of the weekday endurance ride until after the intervals.

M: rest
T: high intensity intervals (100% plus) plus endurance
W: lower intensity (80%) intervals plus endurance
T: endurance ride.
F: rest
S: endurance with low intensity longer intervals.
S: long endurance ride

[TheRich]

Use HR for endurance, and then power to maintain it smoothly, power for anything close to or over threshold.

[iheartbianchi]

for zones, is it better to use hr or power? I struggle to get my hr low enough, and tend to go on power zones. I find my hr is one zone above my power.

It's not better to use either HR or power. It is very common in the professional and elite ranks to use either, or both. There are many known problems with amateurs using power zones. For example, they can be completely off if you are relying on FTP zones. Pros who use power zones don't use FTP zones, and instead have careful measurements of their heart rates, respiratory rates, Vo2max and lactate thresholds before assigning training "zones," which are regularly re-evaluated and adjusted. Trying to emulate this method by creating zones based solely on an inaccurate and unreliable FTP test results in a rough approximation of your zones, which can be off by as much as 12% in either direction. If you think that's good enough, fine, maybe it is but maybe it's not. Up to you to decide.

There are several other problems with using power to pace intervals which have been dicsussed extensively in another thread. One problem if you are training outdoors is that your power will fluctuate with the terrain. No matter how hard you try, your power output can fluctuate drastically depending on the terrain. I'm actually not sure how you are doing your intervals based on power, but I imagine it must be confusing for you to see your power fluctuate by +-50.

[robertbb]

for zones, is it better to use hr or power? I struggle to get my hr low enough, and tend to go on power zones. I find my hr is one zone above my power.

It's not better to use either HR or power. It is very common in the professional and elite ranks to use either, or both. There are many known problems with amateurs using power zones. For example, they can be completely off if you are relying on FTP zones. Pros who use power zones don't use FTP zones, and instead have careful measurements of their heart rates, respiratory rates, Vo2max and lactate thresholds before assigning training "zones," which are regularly re-evaluated and adjusted. Trying to emulate this method by creating zones based solely on an inaccurate and unreliable FTP test results in a rough approximation of your zones, which can be off by as much as 12% in either direction. If you think that's good enough, fine, maybe it is but maybe it's not. Up to you to decide.

It has been shown scientifically that in zones up to FTP (i.e. on the aerobic end, namely: recovery, endurance, tempo, lactate threshold), using FTP as an anchor point is perfectly sound. There is very little meaningful difference between humans on this side of the Power Duration curve.

Where people vary significantly is at efforts above FTP, and it's here where using zones based only on FTP will likely be suboptimal. Again, WKO4/5 with Coggan's izones (FTP, FRC, PMAX) is designed to show what power targets to hit for interval training (and just as importantly, what interval durations to use for those targets!)

This is of course all predicated on having an accurate FTP, which is NOT "how much power you can sustain for an hour, or 95% of 20 minutes, or a 40km time trial" or any of those other commonly mis-represented terms. FTP is simply the power you can sustain at Maximal Lactate Steady State for a period of time before fatiguing. That period of time varies person by person and ranges anwhere from 30 to 70 minutes.

[RocketRacing]

for zones, is it better to use hr or power? I struggle to get my hr low enough, and tend to go on power zones. I find my hr is one zone above my power.

It's not better to use either HR or power. It is very common in the professional and elite ranks to use either, or both. There are many known problems with amateurs using power zones. For example, they can be completely off if you are relying on FTP zones. Pros who use power zones don't use FTP zones, and instead have careful measurements of their heart rates, respiratory rates, Vo2max and lactate thresholds before assigning training "zones," which are regularly re-evaluated and adjusted. Trying to emulate this method by creating zones based solely on an inaccurate and unreliable FTP test results in a rough approximation of your zones, which can be off by as much as 12% in either direction. If you think that's good enough, fine, maybe it is but maybe it's not. Up to you to decide.

There are several other problems with using power to pace intervals which have been dicsussed extensively in another thread. One problem if you are training outdoors is that your power will fluctuate with the terrain. No matter how hard you try, your power output can fluctuate drastically depending on the terrain. I'm actually not sure how you are doing your intervals based on power, but I imagine it must be confusing for you to see your power fluctuate by +-50.

I use both. If my hr starts going up, i dial back.