#GERMAN CYCLING ENDURANCE BOOK HOW TO#

“The carbohydrate required in order to replenish their glycogen stores might be pretty similar because we can extinguish them in 1.5 hours of riding. However, Dr Podlogar adds: “Carbohydrate becomes more important for amateurs because you only have 3,000 calories to work with. WorldTour riders eats tons of white rice, which is simple to digest and carb-rich. The wide base is low intensity, the narrower middle is threshold and the peak is higher intensity. This creates a pyramidal training intensity distribution, where the blocks of the pyramid represent time spent training at different intensities. Bryan might suggest they do less zone 3 training and try fasted training in zone 1 or 2, which some coaches believe maximises training stimulus.īryan recommends riders with a medium amount of time, such as 8 to 12 hours a week, adopt a similar approach but add one longer ride per week. This approach can cause excessive fatigue in some athletes.

You won’t get much adaptation from five to eight hours of riding in zone 1 and 2, but you will see more by spending some but not all the time at 88 to 93 per cent of FTP, according to Bryan. The threshold training method, popularised by TrainerRoad, that prescribes lots of sweetspot riding, works well if your time is limited. However, Bryan says lots of long, slow riding isn’t the only way to improve your cycling endurance. The polarised endurance training method eschews moderate-intensity riding. But if you don’t have a power meter, use a heart rate monitor to keep your heart rate in zone 2 or lower.Īlternatively, maintain a conversational pace and consistent pressure on the pedals whenever possible. Staying in zone 2 is easiest if you train with power. This brings more oxygen-rich blood to the muscles, a key factor in improving VO2 Max, and improves your ability to remove metabolic byproducts from the muscles, some of which cause fatigue.Īdditional benefits of zone 2 include increased stroke volume (the amount of blood a beat of the left heart ventricle pumps out) and higher FatMax – the highest intensity at which you use mainly fat for fuel.īy sparing the muscle’s finite supply of glycogen, a high FatMax can help you avoid bonking on a bike ride. Time in zone 2 also leads to increased capillarisation (the density of capillaries) in slow twitch muscle fibres. Mitochondria use oxygen to create ATP, the body’s rocket fuel, so for endurance athletes, the more mitochondria the merrier.

#GERMAN CYCLING ENDURANCE BOOK HOW TO#

Zone 2 riding promotes physiological adaptations that underpin cycling endurance, as Tom Bell and Dr Emma Wilkins of High North Performance coaching explain in their guide on How To Train in Zone 2: Steady Endurance Training Explained.Ĭycling at this intensity increases the number of mitochondria in your slow twitch muscle fibres. To get maximal benefit from your long, endurance rides, you need to spend as much time in zone 2 as possible. Maintaining an even effort on the open road requires a fair bit of skill. “It’s a component of fitness that determines how long you can ride a bike for,” he explains. Nevertheless, he’ll often use a more colloquial definition to define endurance: “Training at a low intensity at least aerobically for an extended period of time”.īryan says endurance cycling is easier to define as an ability. He says in strict scientific terms, endurance is any action that isn’t sustained and uses the body’s stored energy source (ATP) for fuel, such as an explosive squat.

But, given zones 1 to 5 are technically endurance, this is inaccurate.Īll kinds of cycling, including track cycling, involve some endurance, according to Bryan, who runs Coach Pav Cycle Coaching. Many people will often refer to long, zone 2 rides or base training as endurance training.

We only hit our Anaerobic Capacity when sprinting flat-out in the highest zone. In the six-zone Coggan training zones model, the first five zones fall under endurance.

German cycling endurance book