5W/Kg on Minimal Hours

A light bike doesn't replace good fitness.

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Tifosiphil
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by Tifosiphil

Hi Everyone, a quick question of whether I am flogging a dead horse or whether it is just going to be out of reach currently.

I am a frequent cyclist, chaingang rider and Zwift racer. I'm currently at 4.2/4.3W/KG for my FTP at 67kg. Where I live is pretty flat and all the crit courses and road race courses don't have enough elevation to really distance climbers from more punchy riders.

My question is on my limited time to train weekly (around 6-7 hours) will it be possible for me to get up from 4.2W/Kg to 5W/Kg where I believe my power will still be enough to hold in the races with the heavier set riders and also be more competitive on Zwift?

I guess my question is whether people have reached these sort of levels on minimal training and if anyone has any recommendations aside from doing more intervals and cross training to get the next level on from where I have plateaeud.

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calleking
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by calleking

It depends on many variables like genes, training consistency, quality, nutrition and rest.

It is impossible to know which if these (and other) variables you can improve already as we do not have a baseline to compare with.

With no endurance background I have reached 4.95 W/kg FTP at 73kg during peak fitness. 6-8 hours a week. Full time job, two kids and other commitments. This was only possible with consistent training for a few months. Polarized training model. That is probably my limit and I'm happy with that. I suspect I would need more volume to improve more.

Also, don't focus only on FTP. It doesn't win you races or guarantee that you won't get dropped. Shorter power durations and repeatability is much more important along with tactics/positioning.

How long are those surges? Train on that and repeatability. There are lighter riders who are extremely competitive in flat races.
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FatLadAtTheBack
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by FatLadAtTheBack

calleking wrote:
Thu Aug 12, 2021 1:14 pm

With no endurance background I have reached 4.95 W/kg FTP at 73kg during peak fitness. 6-8 hours a week. Full time job, two kids and other commitments. This was only possible with consistent training for a few months. Polarized training model. That is probably my limit and I'm happy with that. I suspect I would need more volume to improve more.

May I ask if you can share the details of the plan you followed?

calleking
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by calleking

It is heavily inspired by the vast majority of the content Stephen Seiler has provided over the years.
  • Two hard sessions a week accumulating time at ~90% of HRMax.
    One longer endurance ride (3-4 hours, easy)
    Rest of the time just add easy rides that you can fit in. My commuting served this purpose
I did a lot of 4x8min intervals slightly above FTP. Don't race the intervals. Pace them. Save that extra for races. Going super hard every time creates a lot of stress hormones and is actually counterproductive.

I had an easy week every 3-4 weeks with less volume and only easy rides.

Once races start getting closer start doing specific rides mimicing the type of riding that you will find yourself in on raceday.

The easy rides are the foundation, the cake. The intervals are just the icing on the top.

Professional athletes don't really add more intensity than what I was doing but instead built that huge aerobic engine that pushes vo2 and mitochondrial adaptations. This is also true for juniors. Same intensity distribution but the accumulated time doing aerobic work as they get older increases.

It's a slow process to get fast for many. Takes consistency and a good life style over many years. Then we have some unique people who are on a very high level almost from start. Mother nature at its best 😄
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maxim809
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by maxim809

There is no formula that can answer your question. Could be anywhere from 0 hours to infinite.

Over the years, I have seen people (of varying athletic background) jump off the couch and immediately hit 5wkg... so their goal is 6wkg. Meanwhile, others work really hard and never achieve 5wkg. For some of these people, their unique strengths may lie in areas other than raw WKG, so it'd be good to identify and have a look at those.

Sorry for the unsatisfactory answer. Point is there is no straight answer to your question. The most someone can do is provide statistics with extremely well defined starting conditions and make loose correlations with time spent for a particular WKG outcome. But it's hard to imagine anyone having a clean dataset of this kind of information you are after... maybe Zwift or TR -- but their dataset probably isn't polished well enough in a manner that you could identify where you are on their bellcurves and be all like, 'yup, that's me! looks like 5 hours!"

But how cool would that be. Maybe motivational for some, but demotivating for others. Depends on what the results are and how you take it in...

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otoman
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by otoman

calleking wrote: Don't race the intervals. Pace them. Save that extra for races. Going super hard every time creates a lot of stress hormones and is actually counterproductive.
THIS

It’s better to leave a little something on the table each time you train rather than completely detonate yourself. I have known some people that changed their approach to intervals to this “pace not race” strategy who had significant jumps in FTP, overall happiness, energy and love of the sport with just a bit more chronic freshness in their life.
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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

calleking wrote:
Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:56 pm
It is heavily inspired by the vast majority of the content Stephen Seiler has provided over the years.

I did a lot of 4x8min intervals slightly above FTP. Don't race the intervals. Pace them. Save that extra for races. Going super hard every time creates a lot of stress hormones and is actually counterproductive.
Is there a reason why you settled on 8min intervals? Seiler "seemingly" recommends shorter intervals so I'm curious whether you tried shorter ones and how you decided on 8min.
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calleking
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by calleking

iheartbianchi wrote:
Fri Aug 13, 2021 4:50 am
calleking wrote:
Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:56 pm
It is heavily inspired by the vast majority of the content Stephen Seiler has provided over the years.

I did a lot of 4x8min intervals slightly above FTP. Don't race the intervals. Pace them. Save that extra for races. Going super hard every time creates a lot of stress hormones and is actually counterproductive.
Is there a reason why you settled on 8min intervals? Seiler "seemingly" recommends shorter intervals so I'm curious whether you tried shorter ones and how you decided on 8min.
Seiler had this study comparing 4x4, 4x8 and 4x16 where 4x8 was just a bit better for most athletes. I know there's been some studys about 40/20 or 30/15 (Ronnestad?) where those also work great and are perhaps better for cycling.

I just stuck to the 4x8 and was comfortable with those. It wasn't sexy or exciting but repeating them meant I could compare my progress over time and also not racing them played down the performance required from me. It was tough but enjoyable in a way.

I think training is a mix of adapting how the science says you should train so that it fits the athlete on a mental level. We're all different but need to make the plan work to keep that consistency. For me it was a lot of trial and error the first years plateauing with no progress.
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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

I recall Seiler also promoting intervals of under 5m, so I wonder if you have tried to mix those in. 8m intervals are beastly.
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calleking
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by calleking

Well, I did some 40/20 one season to get ready for XCM races and it worked wonders. Mattias Reck who trains Trek Segafredo has been on a couple of Swedish podcasts i listen to and he said that those are very popular and frequently used with good results as they are a bit more race specific but also give good adaptations. I'm sure Seiler also did a study on this and concluded that athletes are able to perform slightly better and the micro brakes are less taxing mentally.

The intervals are still just the icing on the cake. It's easy to forget that. It is also strange that on all forums there's so much emphasis on intervals when a high percentage of even a 1 minute all out effort is more than 50% aerobic (Seiler mentioned this in a pod).

This is a separate topic but in my opinion the way we train for aerobic adaptations is quite unclear even if we spend most of the time here. Even according to the science it is a bit vague. It' usually just go easy, 60-77% MaxHR and you should be able to hold a conversation or something similar. I have been testing to train with Xert LTP - Lower Treshold Power approximation lately. Basically since I'm not able to ride 10-20 hours a week I get prescribed "easy" rides that are a bit more similar to lower end of tempo rides. The less volume -> the more intensity. For me this has worked great and keeping polarized model but riding with a little bit more intensity for those short easy rides has kept me on the same level and even improved a little bit despite less training. It is always hard to say what contributes to performance gains but I think having a bit more intensity being time restricted on a polarized model has its advantages.
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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

The lower end of tempo rides are what I would call "high quality aerobic" and are good as long as you have the genes and muscular adapations to enable sufficient recovery.

For people who find the "easy" portion of a poloarized plan is too easy, you can start to experiment.

Starting with the most basic option:

Option 1:
Keeping your interval session(s) as is, and assuming you're not jeopardizing those sessions, a combination of a few short sprints with full recovery in the middle of the easy ride, and/or going harder close to but below threshold for the final 10 minutes or so of the ride can help. You don't have to do this on every easy ride of course.

Option 2:
For the more advanced rider, there are a variety of long "hardish" rides that you can do. One of my favorites is the "progressive" long ride of 2-3 hours, where you increase the intensity every fifth. So in 2 hours, that would mean you increase your power every 25 minutes or so. You calculate the rate of increase such that for the last 25 minutes, you are just below your lactic threshold, or roughly 80-90% of your MaxHR depending on your fitness level. Your first leg will be at roughly 60-65% of MaxHR, so you increase your power equivalent to 5% increments of MaxHR. If you don't have lactic threshold figures and just can't train based on HR, you can rely on FTP as the surrogate for lactic threshold although I think this will tend to be a bit high, making the overall effort too hard.

Option 3:
You can also try the "cruise interval" long ride. This will mean in a 2-3 hour long ride, you introduce 3-5 segments of 15-20 minutes each at lactic threshold pace (or slightly slower than FTP), with full recovery between sets.

These will be hard rides, but not as bad as a properly executed interval session where you really need to have your game face on and complete focus to complete the session. On a very hard week, you would do 2 sets of intervals, plus one of the above. On a normal "build" week, you would either do 2 intervals or 1 interval plus 1 of the above. In a maintanence of base building week, 1 interval or 1 of the above, although the intervals should be longer with more recovery. In a recovery or tapering week, none of the above.

As you get more advanced, you have to be a lot more thoughtful of the duration of your intervals, the number of repetitions, and the amount of recovery. Less than a minute with short rest has a completely different benefit than less than a minute with 1 minute rest, and are used at different times of the season. There is some substitutability as well. A minute with short rest is very similar to 5 minute to moderate rest, which in turn is very different than a minute with minute rest. Vo2 peak workouts differ from lactate treshold workouts, but if you are targetting a high FTP, you need both so you need the variety, although you would favor the longer intervals (probably 8 min max), or the short with very short recovery sessions for 1 hour or longer races.

As a caveat, the above is based on maximizing your endurance for a race distance of 1-2 hours, so would also be a good fit for someone seeking to realize a net improvement in their FTP W/Kg. Not ideal for people training for Gran Fondos or longer races.

A note on Seiler
I really like his approach, and like me, he borrows a lot of his research and methods from track and field, which remains to this day the most heavily studied and researched endurance sport in the world. In case you are curious where 1minute, 2minute, 5minutes and 8minute interval durations came from, it's all from track and field and the marathon. Elites do 400m repeats at around 55 seconds, 800m repeats around 2 minutes, 1500m repeats between 4-5 minutes and 3000m intervals between 8-9 minutes, and the combination of intervals prescribed vary depending on the distance they are racing. The marathoners (2 hour race) will favor the 5m and 8m intervals, whereas a half-marathoner (60 minute race) will favor mostly 2m, 5m and some 8m repeats, and the 10k runner (30 minute race) will favor 400m through 1500m, with a very occasional dabble of 3000m.They rarely if ever do intervals past 8-9 minutes.

They also rarely train more than 15 hours a week, sometimes 10 or even less, so there is a great parallel in terms of aerobic fitness to most cyclists who aren't competing on the pro conti or higher level.
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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

Forgot to include a "last ditch option," where you've tried everything and you don't improve, or you find yourself getting slower.

Last Ditch Option
Disclaimer: Use only if you have not taken any real rest weeks in the last 2 or 3 months.

In week one, you only go on 1 or 2 easy short rides of 60-120 minutes each. No intensity whatsoever. However, you do proper leg weight exercises in the gym 3 times this week. Squats, leg pushes, hamstring curls, quad extensions, weighted toe lifts, the standard lower body routine. As an example, do the heaviest weight you can for 6-8 repetitions, and target at least 5 sets. Work with a trainer if you don't know how to do these exercises.

In week two, you do the same gym routine. This time, you do 3 easy short rides.

In week three, you cut the gym routine to twice a week, and do 3-4 easy short rides.

In week four, you go back to your regular riding routine, with 1 hard session. Try for 2 gym sessions, if not possible 1.

After week four, you are more or less back to your regular riding routine, and do at least 1 gym session going forward to maintain your gains. You can consider foregoing the gym session on hard weeks where you are doing 2 or more interval/hard sessions.

Try to avoid gaining too much weight during these 4 weeks.

Hopefully after this 1 month, you come back with stronger legs. You have minimized your aerobic losses, and you can gain those back again. If this doesn't work, you may be chronically burnt out, you may be at your limit given your number of hours, or you can go full bonzai and try 3 or 4 intense sessions a week and see where that leads you :) (I'm kidding).
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Tifosiphil
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by Tifosiphil

Hi Guys, thanks for all the responses! Definitely gives me some options for trying new things to mix it up. I think it is easy to lose motivation when you plateau like I have so to mix it up will definitely inspire my training a bit more.

I've been doing some gravel rides recently and seeing my average power and NP go up even though I haven't been focusing on numbers during the rides. I think maybe it was just time to take some pressure off my self and ride a bit more for enjoyment and save the hard sessions for when I am more time crunched

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