The Best VO2 Workouts For Triathletes

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo coaching, Gerard Donnelly. Today we're answering the Questions, how much VO2 work does a triathlete need? How much time spent in training in VO2 zones should half ironman or ironman athletes be doing and are you doing too much or too little amount of VO2 work in your training week? Plus, in this episode, all our usual segments to help you train smarter and race faster. That includes starting with our gratitude and dad. We had one of our best weekends ever at Trivalo. We had a whole bunch of athletes racing Australia wide across a bunch of different races. And Internationally we had two athletes in their pro debut race at Geelong, 70.3 and we had the overall winner of 70.3 again, which we just absolutely love. So start us with our normal opening segment. What are you grateful for?

Yeah, it's a bit hard to go past the gratitude of having such an unbelievably motivated and group of athletes who trust the process and are willing to do what it takes. And I think that's probably one of my biggest gratitudes. I've got a lot to get through with the gratitude, but, you know, it takes a lot to reach out to a coach and take on everything that, that you know, that you, you may not agree with maybe. And, but trusting the process is such a hard thing for, for a lot of people to get their head around because they've been doing it their own way for so long. A lot of athletes have never had a coach and, and to see guys like, you know, people on our podcast know we've, we've got two really great age group athletes, Tom and Roland, who've now turned pro. And that's super exciting for us because we feel like it's, they've come through our academy and now they, now they're good enough to be, you know, up with the big boys and they had their first experience as a pro in a pro race, which was fantastic. And of course those guys came first and second at this race in the age group category last year overall. And the beauty of those two leaving that age group, that category was that one of our coaches, Matt Phillips, who's just been training the house down for the last six months and really following the process Trivalo method that we give free out on our podcast all the time, but you know, For Matt to come and win that race, replace Tom as the winner. Remember, Tom only beat Roland by 17 seconds last year and Matt's, you know, had an absolute, you know, unbelievable race where he's I think he's won by 35 or 37 seconds and was pushed all the way. But. But yeah, what a great outcome and well deserved victory. His first ever age group overall win. He won his own individual age group and remember this guy's 37, so he's in the 35 to 39 category and he won by five minutes I think. But he won the overall race by less than a minute. So yeah, Matt epitomises an athlete who trusts the process. And look, when Matt joined us he was a reasonably talented athlete, hadn't won many races but that's his fifth or sixth race as a trivalo coach and athlete and he's won all six and you know, that's not what we're all about is winning but he's just improved that much that he's ended up at the top of the tree. So I'm so grateful to have the personalities of those guys and everybody who raced with the Trivalo kid on the weekend. Whether you were in New Zealand or whether you're in WA or Victoria or anywhere in the world, you know, everybody understands how much preparation it takes and how much planning in your race strategies with your coach and how much goes into you getting to that race day with your training program obviously, but that last week of getting the race plan and everything like that, you know, I was so happy to have people come up to me at the end saying I'm so happy that you've given me this coach and if I was coaching them, so grateful for the work you've done and getting me to compete today and really have a great outcome and a really enjoyed the race and I can't wait to improve on the next race. They're the things that I love about, you know, this job is, is having that and, and you know, I had to fill in as a team rider for our team and one of our guys, we had a cyclone here not long ago and so it threw out a lot of people's plans. And one of the, the gun time trial is that we had Dave Ross who can ride, you know, probably a 202 somewhere between 2 and 2 hours and 2:02 which is equal to what the pros are riding. That shows you the level that Dave can ride at. He was unable to do the race and unfortunately I had to take his position which is someone who's not at that level. So I was actually grateful to actually have to be in the race to get that opportunity. And I've got to say, after having the two years with a backup operation and a pulmonary embolism in your lung and having some coronary issues, I was told that I shouldn't compete anymore and that my days were over. So it was great for me to actually, you know, put a number on again and, and have a little crack. So I'm grateful for that as well, for that opportunity, even though it was not the best way to be thrown into an event. So it was an amazing weekend. Coincidentally, there was so many events on and, and that's the most trivalo athletes we've had competing around the world on one weekend. So it was, it was, it was really good. I'm grateful for the, that that every athlete gets to, to test themselves. So, yeah, what a great weekend.

And I don't want to skim over just your little gratitude there about, you know, having your best ride in three years at Geelong because for anyone that's followed the podcast the last couple of years, you know, the, the bit of tumultuous process you've been through, dad, as an athlete and having to adjust your own expectations as an athlete and what you can do now because you had major, major back surgery and then was on the road to recovery for that, then had a pulmonary, pulmonary embolism which took you out a major blood clot. And yeah, it was told that, you know, with, with blood thinners and, and the recovery for that, you just may never get back to where you were and, and kind of let those expectations go. Um, and yeah, you've come out and you've been training really well, but you've ridden 219this year, which, you know, last year you rode 222 and I think the year before it was 223 or something. So across three years where you've, you know, not been able to train as well as you wanted, 219 was at 38Ks an hour. Was it just phenomenal ride. And I, I know you were feeling really good about that. It was kind of just a really nice surprise for yourself.

Oh, absolutely. Jordan. I don't actually like talking about my performances, but I, I can suppose I could use it as a, a motivation for others that, you know, there's a lot of people telling me that, you know, to hang it up and, and not bother anymore and, and that's just not me. I, I, I just still wanted to be fit and healthy and I still want to train and, and see if I can squeeze a bit more out of. Even though that I was told that that's probably not going to happen. So it was, was quite a surprise actually to, to ride so well. I'd certainly done a lot of training and my PB, there's 213, so it's still a fair way off that, but it's actually better than I've done in the last three years. So I felt great. I think I'm in reasonable shape, which is good to know. An event like that gives you a bit more feedback about you feel like you're not getting anywhere. And I think it's a reminder that if you just keep plugging away consistently week in, week out, and when I think I was talking to you about it after the race, I look back at what I'd been doing in the last sort of six months and I'd been the most consistent I'd been since I've. Since I came out of hospital, which was, you know, the reason why your form slowly. But it just sneaks up on you because you don't actually see any big changes. It's just if you keep doing the work, you're actually, you know, it could end up being a good outcome on race day. I was fortunate enough for that to happen. I do know that my course management on that course is probably my saving grace because there's a lot of athletes who are probably fitter than I am, that we coach that in their testing they were probably faster than I am, but, but they finished a little bit behind what I did. And I think I put that down to course management and, and that's a really good coaching tip as well that, you know, you don't have to be, you know, riding the house down to still actually perform well as long as you can actually put the power down where it counts and, and take it easier where it doesn't count. And I think, I think I know how to do that well. And that's the message we're trying to, trying to give out here for free on the podcast, is to give all the experience that you, you and I have had over the years of competing and coaching athletes to help athletes be better at it. And we had a few funny situations, I was telling you during the race where things that we'd been talking about on the podcast, I found myself in a hilarious position where someone had actually come up beside me and said, I'm not going to go past you because I know I'm going over the ranges that, that I'm supposed to be. And for me, that was, that was just like the funniest thing. In the middle of a race, someone actually talk to me and say that, you know, and in the meantime, we were actually on a hill and about 15 people passed me at that particular hill, which I found was hilarious because within three or four minutes I passed them all back. And that's just another example of course management. And so, yeah, so there are a lot of coaching tips I could get out of it, which I can help others from actually doing that course again.

Yeah, the course management is great because every year we know, we have, we know the course so well. And it's such an important point of you can get so much benefit out of every aspect of the course. And this a is, is where the Tour de France riders, you know, Jonas Finger, God in the Tour de France a couple years ago where he smoked Tade, he done that time trial course over and over and he knew every single corner to the tee and he. And he beat him by 50 seconds to a minute and won the yellow jersey and won the Tour de France. You know, every year we know the course for sure, but every year we keep refining more, we keep finding more and more spots of exactly where to put the power down and where to get the most out of the course. And that's the really exciting part. And I was also chuckling to myself that I think about that time of 219 and 38 ks an hour. The irony for me is it's kind of still at 67 faster than your times in 1988 on your old steel bikes and road bike. It's just so funny with bike technology now, how you can go faster at this age than what you're riding a.

30 year old, it doesn't actually make sense, does it? It just shows you how technology's come so far.

It also shows you the bike is a different sport to the run in the sense that, you know, the machine is doing so much work for you. So you've got to learn how to use the machine of the bike to get more speed on the course. That's what you're talking about with course management is that it's not, it's really just not about your fitness. The run is about your fitness and what your legs can do because it's the only thing carrying you on the run leg. But the bike, you've got to work with this machine to get the most out of the course. That's what we're trying to say the bike speeds everything.

And, you know, that that dictates all the decisions that I'm making. I'm focusing on that. Whatever the bike speed's doing, I'm focusing on that to tell me what to do next. And. And that's the message I've been trying to say for, I don't know, 10 years. But it is a hard one to grasp. And, you know, people always go, what do you mean? What do you mean by that? You know, that's. That's the. That's the. That's the really hard thing to do with course management is to understand how to use that.

Yeah, we'll skim over that one because it is its own Pandora's box. And it'll probably just confuse people when we talk about power so much on this, on this podcast. And you go, focus on speed. You're going, what the hell? What are you doing? So. But, yeah, that's. That's very detailed coaching. Um, and look, I'll finish off the gratitude by saying, obviously my gratitude is very similar. I had a lot of fun last week. We were just looking at the list of athletes competing at Geelong, and then There was the 2 times U race as well. And then all around Australia, New Zealand and internationally, we were just looking at this, going, whoa, this is. This is phenomenal. And kind of took a moment to just appreciate it. And I felt really grateful for. I love what you said at the start of the episode about trusting the process. And it really does take a lot for an athlete to hand over the training to a coach and to trust that process, and we will happily take on that responsibility. That's what we love. And we love race week because it's where we get to really help our athletes have the most enjoyable experience that they can for the fitness level that they're at. But I was feeling. I just found myself feeling really grateful last week and having a lot of fun with the race week and with all our coaches. And we're really big on the race plans. It's the most intensive week of coaching. There's race plans flying around everywhere between us as a coaching group, where we're sending each other athletes race plans and discussing what athletes should be doing and coming up with the best core strategies for athletes. And, uh, obviously we're overseeing everyone's race strategies, so. And then it comes to the weekend, you get to see how. How everyone performs. Um, and did their race plan, did they execute according to their race plan? It's just a whole really fun process. That, that we absolutely love.

Yeah. And you know, that's why we train so diligently and don't waste a training session because we want to replicate all the practice we've done and, and make it all happen on race day. And, and that's the bit I'm grateful for as well, is that if you do all that well and you have a day where you have executed the best you can possibly have possibly done, you have to be happy. You can't be disappointed. The time you did or the placing you get, they're bonuses. If you've actually gone out and prepared your training, done the race plan during the week, got up, gone and done the race and executed the way you want to, regardless of the outcome of placing or time, you can't be anything more than satisfied. And the other things are a bonus. And for me, like, even just another example, I think that's my only 300th time I've done some sort of triathlon in my career. And I still get excited about the day before and the morning of, and then knowing that I'm going to test myself, I'm going to be testing, how can I get the most out of myself? Regardless, I didn't actually know my time until I just thought, geez, I'm writing, I feel really good today. I'm riding well, I feel like I'm passing a lot of people and I felt in control. I was really managing the course well and by the time I got to the finish, I didn't blow up. I was actually, I think I sent you, I was think 5 seconds quicker in the second half than I was in the first half. And you know, that's kind of ridiculous really when you think about it, to be within 5 seconds in two 45k laps. So that's, you know, that's another example of experience in trying to measure your effort. And afterwards you can be satisfied with that because I didn't care what the time was. I was just satisfied that I actually did a good event. And then the icing on the cake is I was 4 1/2 minutes quicker than last year. Well, that's unreal.

Yep. So big shout out to everyone that raced over the weekend, and especially our tribal athletes. And whether you had the day you wanted or not, there's always something to learn. If you had the day you wanted, then you put you've had a great race experience that you can, you know, save that in the memory bank as a positive one. And if you didn't, and you need to learn how to Execute better, you've got lessons to learn and fire in the belly for next race. And already, you know, everyone wants to know how to enroll and did on their pro debuts. I'm actually going to speak to them on the podcast and yeah, get their insights from them specifically about their experience. And then also everyone wants to know how Matt won the race and a lot of people are asking Matt already, you know, what training are you doing? You've won the race overall, what training are you doing? Which we absolutely love. You know, it's the TR method and and we couldn't actually talk about some of the VO2 workouts that these athletes do as part of this topic today. So that's our gratitude. If you'd like to show your own gratitude for the show, you can help us a lot by ranking, subscribing and leaving a five star rating for us. We do see your ratings and your feedback and we really appreciate you whether you're leaving comments on YouTube and liking on YouTube, subscribing on YouTube or audio, anywhere you get your podcasts. And so before we get moving on to the rest of the episode, just a quick shout out and welcome to the newest members of the Trivalo coaching family. These athletes have all jumped on board with the hopes of improving their results. Karina, nicknamed Coco from Switzerland. Mark from Queensland, Australia. Karen from New Zealand. Carl and Janelle from Victoria, Australia, our home state. Andrew from Fort Wayne in the United States. Nigel from Queensland as well. Douglas or dad, the Scottish pronunciation of the of the nickname of Douglas Doogie. You do a good Scottish accent. Yeah, from the uk. And Dan from Texas, United States. We can't wait to help you all improve on your journey. Now it's time for our mailbag. And as a precursor to all the mailbag questions, we don't know your entire situation training history. So as always it depends but we're going to give a very generalized advice based on your general questions. So we had this question and I actually did not write down the name of who it was but you'll know who you are. Hello. Had a question from the pod. You recommend that in your long rides you have elevation of potentially up to 2,000 meters, not just 500 that was, you know, that's dependent on the person and your race requirements. But yeah, that's something that we definitely aim for. The problem is I live in the Netherlands and last week I went to the hilliest place I have access to and got a whopping 300 meters of elevation in 100 kilometer ride. The whopping is Sarcastic, I assume. Of course, I could do the Highest elevation part 10 times in a row. But also defeats the purpose of enjoying a long ride somewhat. Do you have any advice on how to gain those stronger legs you talk about us about for us in the flatlands?

Yeah, great question. And actually one of our athletes, Jack Nye, who went to Kona last year, a 909 athlete, actually has moved to the Netherlands. And we had to have this exact conversation six weeks ago. And I was saying to him, you know, I want an undulating endurance ride. And he's saying, coach, there's no hills, you know, so we've got lots of answers for this and it also depends on what your goal is in the event, as you did say in the introduction. So for someone who's looking for an undulating hilly course where the race they might be doing might have somewhere around, you know, anything from 1,000 meters up to two and a half thousand meters in your race and a lot of the Ironman races, you know, Port Mac In Australia has 1700 meters of elevation and I could rattle off 10 other events that have similar elevation. Kona has over, you know, 2,000 meters of elevation. So, so there is that issue with everybody who's living in an area and we have people who are in Florida who have no hills. And, you know, it's just a real issue. And so there's a simple way to do it is if you've got an area like the Netherlands which has got wind, as it's probably, you know, biggest, biggest factor that happens in any weather day is the wind in the Netherlands. And you know, anybody who knows how to ride in the Netherlands, they are a good rider because the crosswinds, the headwinds, the tailwinds, they're always, you know, between 30 and 60Ks an hour every day. You know, there are some days, one day a year where it's not. But we, we really want to use the wind to our advantage. And that would be like you, you know, you're trying to get low cadence work and riding into a headwind with low cadence is a good replica replication of hill repeat. So strength work is what we're trying to get you in those hill long endurance rides, those undulating hilly rides. So using the, the headwind and riding in a lower gear is a really good way to, to stimulate and simulate, stimulate those low cadence efforts and simulate the rolling hills that your elevation that we're trying to get. And obviously it's not going to reflect in the elevation, but you're feeling like you've done a strength effort by the time you finish that training ride. Another opportunity is to break the training ride into a little bit indoor, a little bit outdoor. So I'm talking if you're doing 140k or 120k or 100k ride, you could do maybe 80k outdoors on the flat, using the wind, maybe do 20 or 30k indoors, and then get on one of the indoor training apps like Full Gas or Ruuvi or Zwift or any of those Be Cool, that have even training peaks now have their own app, which is fantastic, which we recommend. And. And, yeah, ride hilly courses and, you know, even ride some things like swift as Alpe d' Huez or Von Topped, which is similar to Mont Ventoux. So there are opportunities for you to just jump in and out. So there's always a solution to any situation that you find yourself. You just got to think outside the square a little bit.

Yeah. Especially if you've got a kicker climb. You know, you really do replicate the angle of hill riding, which is super beneficial. And there's other ways outside of that. He mentioned, you know, just repeating the hills 10 times in a row. So maybe you get some strength. Not in endurance rides, but if you find one hill that's at least a minute, you can go to low cadence reps on that and get some strength from that. And then we talk about this all the time that, you know, doing strength in the gym is a great way to produce strength, and you need to get strength on the bike as well. But if you've got no other option, then think outside the box, go and get some more gym working. And maybe that's a more of a priority for you if you can't get enough elevation in your week. But I love the I love the wind example, because there is just something so hard about riding into a blockade wind. And so if you can go find a section of road where you're riding to a headland and get. Get in a low gear and get that cadence work, it's. That is. You'll feel that for sure. Um, it just. Riding to a headwind just sucks. It takes the joy out of cycling, I believe. So really, really good training. All right, now for the golden part of the episode. Talking everything VO2 max sessions. And what should you be doing? Now, this is a very nuanced topic, and we want to provide some examples of some really golden VO2 sessions that you might consider implementing to your program. But then talk about why it's actually kind of the wrong question to be asking and what you need to be focusing on when you're thinking about VO2 max work. So we've also tried asking the top experts on this. Steven Seiler, we've asked on the podcast, we've asked him outside of the podcast his thoughts on this. Joe Friel, every exercise scientist in the lab that we've ever worked with about what's the best VO2 work? Is there an answer to exactly how much time should you be spending at VO2 and for how many seconds per rep? 15, 30, 60 seconds? 2 minutes? What's the best? And just to be clear, there is no golden VO two sessions that are far superior. That is what all the data and science says. And we're still just learning so much about different variations. And there's some pretty wild studies out there really trying different methods and trying to use control groups, which just becomes quite impossible to measure really, really accurately. We have good studies, but they're far from perfect about, you know, in terms of the results and conclusions they draw. So let's go through some terrific examples about what you could think about with your program. And we'll actually go through it per discipline. So for the swim, you know, how much focus and emphasis do we do we put on VO2 work and really swimming well above your race endurance pace that you're going to be doing in a triathlon.

Understanding why we're doing the VO2 efforts in the first place is kind of imperative to making people's mindset at ease about why we're doing that type of training. And, you know, it's easy to use the example as a bike rider, if you do VO2 training, you will be able to increase your FTP. And if you just simplify that. What is so important about having a higher FTP? Well, generally, if you can push more power, your bike speed is going to be faster. So at the end of the day, that's actually what we're trying to do, ride our bike faster, swim faster and run faster. So if you can train in such a way that you're stimulating a response, and the only way to do that is to not do steady state or tempo, that will train a different fitness part of your of your arsenal. You want to use the VO2 and threshold work and steady state and sub threshold and tempo and recovery for the particular reasons that you do those sessions. And so for VO2 and for threshold work, we're really trying to hone in on improving our capacity to tolerate more load. And so the times that we do these sessions, you should Be thinking this is going to enable me to ride my bike faster or swim faster or run faster. That's actually the way I think about it, is I'm far out. I've got these hard VO2 sets coming up for this next 12 week block. Boy, they're hard. But I just think, no, this is going to make me. I'm going to increase my FTP, I'm going to increase my running pace, I'm going to increase my pace per 100 in the pool because I'm doing these sets and my body will cope with it. And over a period of three weeks and a little bit of recovery, or two weeks and a little bit of recovery and keep repeating that for or a 12 week block, the numbers I can push in 12 weeks compared to week one will be absolutely significant. And a lot of it's a lot of practice as well because your body's getting adapted to it. But that is the reason why we want to do these, and that's why this is such an important topic to talk about, is because without these, you are probably not going to get the same improvement that you can by just training Zone 2 all the time. Zone 2 has its own value. It's not a standalone thing that you should be doing all the time. VO2 has its value, like I just said, but you shouldn't be doing it all the time. You should use it in specific parts of the year where it's important to start getting that increase in your, on your fitness in terms of speed in the water, power on the bike, so faster riding speed and be able to run faster. So yeah, to start off with, that's actually how we should be thinking about it. And once you understand the why, then it makes so much, much more sense to you mentally to cope with the stress of, oh, how hard is this going to be? So most people are really afraid of doing these sessions because they know how hard they are. And unfortunately a lot of people avoid them because they're too hard and they're missing out big time on improvements they could be getting by taking the easy option. We're not trying to say you should be flogging yourself all the time, but you should be using it in the appropriate time. And that's the, the benefit of having someone to guide you.

Yeah, there's a time to do these hard sessions and when they come, you really. I just find I have to get myself up mentally for it. If I'm doing it first thing in the morning, the night before, I'm. You get a little bit nervous about how hard it's going to be. And if it's a, you know, you're doing it as a nighttime session, you kind of think about it all day and you're thinking about your nutrition and when you're going to eat. And this is for me personally, how am I going to get myself up and about for this? So it's because it's so valuable, you know, and it's so hard because you really have that max intensity and it's kind of sickening. So when we're thinking about the swim, I think, you know, firstly, you need to be doing VO2, working to swim. But there's a huge limiting factor here for VO2 work, and that's your technique. You know, you might be a swimmer that gets in the pool and no matter how hard you go, you're just not swimming any faster. So you're not even. You might be working pretty hard, but you're not actually swimming pretty faster. So there's this huge balance here. And Brenton Ford, Effortless Swimming, who we love and partner with, he talks about this all the time. He talks about, you need to be getting both right. You need to be swimming hard and training hard, but you need to be getting your technique right. You can't be doing more of one than the other, but one can't improve without the other.

It is dangerous to get our athletes, and we've tested this, giving them time ranges to swim in per 100. And we're asking them to really go harder than they would normally in an open water situation where the swim might be a 750 or a 1500 or a 1900 or in an Ironman 3.8. And so we're doing these short, sharp efforts because we're trying to get us a fitness response. And in swimming, that is so hard to do compared to bike and running, because in swimming it's such a technical sport and if you start thrashing about, you're actually not doing anything that's going to contribute to you swimming faster. You're just becoming a more erratic swimmer. So we have to be careful that we don't emphasize this too much. In swimming, I'm a believer in a lot of the time, I'm saying to our athletes, look, the paces are there. I want you to think about the intention of swimming harder, but I don't want you to change your stroke, I don't want you to change your technique. I want your technique to remain very calm and very smooth. But your intention is that you're actually trying to swim faster without thrashing. So if you don't hit the targets that we're asking, that's okay in the water as long as your effort is still controlled, technically wise, and you feel like you're puffing more than you would be if you're just swimming easily. So the technique is the number one thing, and then the speed and the pace is secondary in swimming, so that will come if you get the technique right. Then. I've seen some of the most beautiful strokes in the water, not look like they're actually swimming fast at all. And then you time them, they're doing 50s in 26 seconds, yet they're. They've only taken like 14 strokes up the pool. And then you see someone thrashing down the pool, you think, boy, that guy's flying and he's done a 29. Yet the two techniques don't correspond to the outcome.

Yeah. The positive of doing hard work in the pool and pushing yourself is that you can go pretty hard in the pool and not massively negatively impact your week. We talk about this all the time. You think of how much a hard VO2 running session impacts your body and your stress for the week. It's just the hardest thing you can do on the body. It's the most impact. And. And you really have to be careful about the days you train leading up to that and the days you train after. If you go into do any run in VO2 work at all, you know, you have to be careful about your run volume around that. You have to be so, you know, so clear about when you're programming that into your training week. Whereas you can go pretty hard in the pool pretty frequently. You'll be very exhausted for sure, but it doesn't. Doesn't impact the next day nearly as much. You don't. You don't have to have so many consequences from doing it, which is. Which is a benefit.

Absolutely. And the bike's the same. And. And on this podcast, we've mentioned many times that for people who can't cope with the running load, especially fast track work. And fast track work would include threshold running and VO2 work, where they're running way above their average pace that they would expect to do in a 5 or 10K. And on the bike, it's still impacting, but it's not as impacting as running because you've got the bike holding you up. So really, you know, the risk of doing the VO2 work on the bike is 50% less than doing it as a runner and as a swimmer. It's Even more because the water's holding you up and you know, you're not really using your legs the same way as you are on the bike. And as a runner, you're holding yourself up against gravity because there's nothing underneath you. There's no water and there's no bike. So every impact being felt by every step you take. So doing the VO2 work as a swimmer, as long as you're swimming with good technique is probably the best place to get your heart and lungs stretched to the limit. And you can be huffing and puffing in the water and still be okay two or three hours later to do the session the next day, because you haven't had the impact on your legs, the load's not on your legs.

One of my pet peeves of swimming is seeing the stock standard set of 10 by 100 or off the 2 minute or 10 by 100 off the 90, depending on how good a swim you are. Off for elite swimmers, 10 by 100, off 70, 70 seconds. You know, it's. Because it's really just. It just ends up being continuous swimming at the same pace. And, you know, let's say it's 10 by 100 after two minutes, you know, you're doing it a minute 45 and or minute 50, you're getting your 10 or 15 seconds rest. That's not VO2 work. You know, that's, that's a, that's a decent swim session, but it's not VO2 work. You know, VO2 work would be really, if you can. This is what we're talking about with stroke, pushing the pace a lot faster and then not limiting your rest periods to 10 or 15 seconds, which is so common across swimming programs, but giving yourself 30 seconds to really recover, that's, that's VO2 work. Where you can, if you, if your technique allows you to go faster, swim faster. So you need the full 30 seconds to recover from that. A lot of people report the experience that they just can't swim hard enough to warrant 30 or 45 seconds or rest or 60 seconds rest after a minute effort. And that's okay because that means their stroke needs some work. But that. So a lot of people, you know, they pull up after their hundred and after 15 seconds they're ready to go again because they just can't swim hard enough. And that's okay. But you have to understand the difference here with what VO2 actual stress response in the body is.

Yeah. And the more times you swim 10 or 15 or 20 times 100, you're going to not be able to do it at your maximum exertion. You're having to measure that effort. So you're better off doing, you know, five times 100 as hard as you can go in 130. If you're a 145 swimmer, try to swim 130s and have, as you said, 30 or 45 seconds rest. That's true VO2, where you're getting a rest ratio of one to one or one to two even. So that allows you to get that maximum VO2 stimulus when you're doing it as a repeat with the same pace. That's basically at threshold or, or slower. That's not a VO2 set. That's, that's just you training specifically for, for your threshold. So you need to differentiate between what actually the sessions you are doing. If you don't have any. And we have some sections where we're doing, you know, 10x25s where we're trying to swim as hard as possible with, you know, equal amount of time of rest. And that way you can keep the pace as high as you can. The longer, the longer you do this for like 10 or 15 or 20 times 100, you can't keep the intensity up so it becomes a less valuable VO2 set.

Yep. Moving on to the bike, because these are the money makers. And you know, one thing I want with every session we're about to mention in terms of kind of the VO2 work you can do, just know that when you look across studies, across the board, when any of these sessions are repeated, they basically, they essentially always result in improvement. There's not, there's very little sessions you get where athletes perform worse. You know, they do a certain, in the studies, they get them to do the same type of session after they get tested for whatever set period and then they, they retest them again in terms of their VO2 max or their 5 minute power output or 20 minute hour power output, whatever the study is looking at. Yeah, you don't really come across many studies where if the athletes have had to hear to the program that doing a certain type of session didn't result in improvement. So that's the first thing to realize is that, yeah, there's some good data on sessions, some sessions being more effective than others, but if you do any kind of VO2 work consistently enough, you're pretty much guaranteed to go up. That's, that's kind of a really big message here.

Yeah, it's so good to know because I'm not in the business of trying to do training, that's not going to get an outcome that I'm looking for. I want to know that if I do this hard work, because it is really hard to do mentally and physically, I want to know with confidence that if I do stick at it, I'm going to get the outcome that I want, which is to see improvement. And so digging deep into which sessions are the best. There's so many variations, and that's important too, to give your body a bit different stimulus. Sometimes the 3015s are appropriate for an athlete racing for a particular event. Sometimes the 60s, 30s, which are very difficult to do, they're more appropriate. Sometimes 4020s are sometimes 5 or 6. By 3 minutes or 2 minutes, they're more appropriate. So it depends on what the event you're training for will determine, what's the appropriate variation of those sessions. So we know that you can't ride for 60 seconds at the same power level as you can for 30 because it's a longer period. So, you know, there's been studies on, well, is 60 seconds better than 30 seconds? Well, you know, there's also. It's a very difficult one to measure. All the studies that you and I have looked at over the years have said that, you know, it depends so much on what the background of the person is, what they're doing in between. So many variables that you can't control. So all we know is what are you. My big thing is what. What is the athlete going to say about, oh, I've got 60, 30s and I don't want to do them, or 30, 15. Yeah, I can do them. So it might be that you, as a coach and as an athlete have to come to an agreement that, you know, which ones do you prefer? It's not you're not going to do the VO2, it's you're going to do them. But which one do you want to do? And as I said earlier, it does depend on what you. If you've got an event where you know that there's going to be a lot of 30, 40 second efforts, or there's an event where it might be two to three to four minute efforts, then you should be doing something that's similar to that.

Yeah, so many golden points you just raised. And that's before we go into some of the session specificity, I just want to reiterate some key things there. So you've got to always remember some shortfalls with the studies are how do they execute the tests at the before and after because we already know that most people don't execute tests well. We know that from our own data. And so what a lot of these studies don't show is the power output in these tests. They get them to do an FTP test at the start and then the FTP test at the end as an example. But we don't ever get to see how did that, I think perform. Did they go way too hard in the first five minutes and then completely collapse in the last 15 and therefore it's a very inaccurate result of what they're capable of. And in the second test, you know, they did a more even execution and that's why they improved. You know, it's a really, really big, big potential shortfall that we don't really get to see. The data of. Some studies do show it, which is great. But then the golden answer here is, is it depends for the athlete. And I love that you, you brought this up at the start because sometimes we can look at an athlete and go, what are you weak at? You know, maybe because you do so many bunch rides with punchy sprints, you're really good at 30 15s or you're really good at 30 30s, but you're actually not good at 60 30s or 60s, you know, where it's one to one compared to one to five. And so that's an area where we might go, well, maybe we want to give you that because we want to make you a more well rounded athlete. We want you to see that improvement there. Or maybe we give you more of what you're comfortable with because we want you to adhere to the program, you know, we want you to enjoy the experience. So I think those factors really come into play here when we're thinking about one, we know that the golden sessions are any one of those variations, whether it's, it's VO2 max intervals at a minute or under. And then it's a decision of are you doing two to one work to rest ratio or are you doing one to one or one to two, which does, it doesn't nearly happen as often where you go 30 seconds as hard as you can with, you know, a minute off or a minute as hard as you can with two minutes off. We do those sessions as well where athletes can really push it, but it depends on where the athlete is at, what their goal is, you know, where they're at as an athlete and what they need to work on. We have some athletes that are unbelievable threshold riders that just, you know, they can, they can ride 93% of their threshold for two and a half hours straight, but they can't hold 102% of the threshold for three minutes. You know, they just can't push that upper end. They've got such a limited range, so they need to do more short VO2 work. They need to do more work really pushing that, that top boundary of VO2 and getting that new stimulus response. So, yeah, I think the golden word you use there is, where's the athlete coming in? This is what the studies also are limited on, is we don't know the experience of the athlete coming into this work. You know, there's 18 athletes and they always try and make them as controlled as possible. That's the point of these studies, is to get as much controlled environment as possible. But what have they grown up doing? You know, have they had a whole lot of experience with VO2 work coming in and therefore they're better at these sessions or they have. They had a lack of experience and therefore they get major improvement because they're doing these sessions. So it's. Yeah, it's all very nuanced.

We do have an amazing array of responses to these sessions in our actual coaching group where some guys can eat these sessions alive. They. That's their bread and butter. They, they've grown up doing this stuff. Anybody who rides regularly in a bunch, you know, that's basically what you're doing in a bunch when you're R roll turns, you're just doing a quick 10 second effort and then, you know, might have 30 or 40 seconds off. And that's like a one to five ratio. And so you're quite good at that. And a lot of people who come to try and do three or four or five minute VO2 work, they are just absolutely left floundering. And I would say the majority of bunch riders in Australia, because there is a lot of bunches in groups at. And that's the area where their weakest is in that VO2, where it's two to three minutes. And then pushing into threshold, they just don't do any of that work. Threshold's the least amount of work that most Australians that I've found do. Whereas a lot of the other athletes that we coach around the world who don't get to ride in bunches, they're very much more improved at threshold work because they're so used to riding by themselves. So the minute you've got that on off feeling, you're getting used to that and you'll become very good at what you do a lot of. And if you do a lot of bunch riding where there's over under swapping turns, that's what you'll be good at. And that's what actually training is. You're trying to train the areas you're weak at, but at the same time keep that area where you're good at going as well. So the reason why we do VO2 work a lot of the time is to make sure that the people who don't get that opportunity in bunches, they actually get it to, to do that by themselves. So it's a really good stimulus, it's a really quick way to increase your FTP. And obviously that way if you increase your FTP, you're going to ride the bike faster as an average speed.

So the surprising advice for triathletes is do more of the short high intensity intervals. Do these intervals at 1 minute or under and whether it's a ratio of 1 to 1 or 1 to 0.5, it's going to be really good for you. Which I say surprising because as triathletes an, it's an endurance sport and we, and we're talking about for half Ironman and Ironman athletes, it's going to be good for you. You know, we're not saying only do that, but a lot of people would think that it's unnecessary because you're not trying to be a good one minute rider, you're not trying to be a good over under rider, you're trying to be a good endurance rider. But these are so good for your fitness to improve your VO2 max, your FTP, you know, your, your power at your lactate threshold. Yeah, it's phenomenal. And so we, we move from them to kind of the next level of VO2, which is that those longer efforts, two to four minutes, some would argue three to five, but it's hard to really say you're holding VO2 max at five minutes. And there was actually a study, I saw that they compared these two and this particular study showed that performance was improved in all areas in the shorter intervals compared to the five minute intervals. But that doesn't mean that shorter is superior in every way. They all have their place. That's a really, really important point. And then we move on from Ogo.

Oh no, I was just going to say that's so true, Jordan. And, and the biggest gains are in the shorter efforts because you can ride higher power. That's why there's big gains. But what happens if you're an event that has longer efforts that you need to. So that's where you need to be covering all bases. So it's good to do six by three minutes occasionally, just because that's what could happen in your particular sport that you've chosen. And especially in triathlon where we're doing the opposite. We were trying to ride in the ranges all the time and not outside of them.

Them.

We're not doing this training session for that aspect of it. We're doing it so that our FTP rises so that we can actually ride faster. And that's how you have to think differently about this. This session isn't for the actual race ready stuff that happens on a day, a race day. It's to get your actual speed high because your FTP is high. That's actually why we're doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. And so we move out of VO2 work and into the discussion about stuff longer than 3 to 5 minutes and threshold work. And, um, I know that's not the, the topic of the podcast, but it's worth mentioning that, you know, you start thinking about 4 by 8 minute efforts or 4 by 12 or 4 by 15, and that all has its place as well. So that's a really important part for triathletes to realize is that you can't just do purely VO2 work. We've spoken about the value of it, but if you just did VO2 sessions only as your hard sessions, you're actually not going to get to race day in the best shape as a triathlete. So the triathletes, these kind of VO2 sessions we mentioned, the shorter stuff, has their place and needs to be part of your program. But that's not the only part of your program you need to do.

Yeah, and you know, everybody who's under our program knows that we do both. So we want to bring both your Threshold and your VO2 along together at the same time. And then once the VO2 set has finished for your particular stage of your. Of your build to your race, then obviously a lot more threshold work comes into play. But we do variations of that as well. And that's a whole other topic. Where is 4x8 better than 4x5 or 5x5 or 3x10? You know, that's the same argument with the experiment that labs are doing with controlled environments. And there's no one. Right. I think that's the summary for this. As a bike rider, everything has its place. There's not one that's better than another. And it's determined by what your goals are as a bike rider or as A triathlete, as a time trialist or as a hill climber, as a sprinter or as a, you know, someone who rides for their team as the, as the domestique. So, you know, depending on what your goals are, would. Should determine what you have in your program.

I'll give a funny example because I saw a study that actually compared 4 by 8 to 4 by 12, 4 by 16, and the 4 by 8 was superior for that study. But we replicate the same sort of session in running, and this is just an example of some potential study shortfalls. You know, training for a half marathon, we do those kind of threshold efforts running, and I did that for a previous half marathon. And you start at 4 by 8 and you progress through to longer efforts. And if I just stayed at 4 by 8, even though that might be a potentially superior session individually, I would not feel confident coming into race day because that total workload is 32 minutes. Um, and it's just I'm. I'd be really confident for holding that workload for 30 minutes out of the half marathon. But the, the session that gave me the most confidence for what I could hold on race day was the 4 by 15. Even though I couldn't run as fast, you know, show me what I could do for an hour out of, you know, out of my half marathon. So there's just that aspect too to think about.

Yeah. And giving the athlete confidence, mindset wise is part of, you know, the process of being trained properly. And, and I think that that is a lot of the time it's underestimated.

So moving on to the run, we're not going to repeat the same Message We've said 100 times with VO2 work. We know the message is that you don't have to get intensity from the run because it's very risky for triathletes. So if you're going to do VO2 work with running, be really careful. But I think the message we want to say that's a bit different here is that if you're going to do any, make sure that it's a super, super slow build and that you are really confident if it's going to be part of your program, you can handle it. And put measures in place to make sure you can handle it. And don't just do a V2 session off the bat because you feel like it.

Yeah, look, we've talked at the start of the program about some of our top athletes, the pros that we coach now. And, you know, I've given a lot of good hard running sessions, but we very rarely give them a lot of 200, 400, 8 hundreds on the track. The risk for reward is not there. And if they've been running for 5, 10 years and done a lot of that work, there's still risky sessions for people to be injured and not make it to the start line. Don't forget, as a triathlete, you're getting so much work from the pool at VO2 and on the bike at VO2. So in actual fact, it's probably detrimental to do another session at VO2 as a runner when you're already getting your cardio system stimulated enough on the bike and in the water. It's really your legs that are going to struggle on race day. It's not your cardio system that's going to hold you back, it's can your legs endure the half marathon or the marathon you're about to run? And that's the thing that you should be actually pushing as a runner rather than the VO2 work. Sure, we give hill repeats, but we do that so that the athlete's not striding out fast. Running up a hill, you can still, as you know, anybody goes up a set of stairs or runs up a hill, all of a sudden you're stimulating your heart and lungs, you're huffing and puffing because running up a hill takes a different stimulus to you generating the run along a flat track. You know, you don't get as tired as quick on the flat track as you do running up a hill with the same effort. And that's the reason why we use one of the reasons why we use hill repeats. The other one is to build strength and stamina in your legs so that you are strong enough at the back end of half marathon in a 70.3 to keep the pace that you're going to try to hold the whole day. If you just aren't strong enough at the end, then you will fade. So the VO2 work as a runner, it's just so risky to do and only should be given to athletes who have got a lot of experience and have got a lot of kilometres in their legs and are less known for their injury.

One thing I will say is that lots of athletes could go about by implementing a proper strength and plyometric program in the gym for first before trying to run a VO2. You know, you could, you could really spend some quality base period time building up your leg strength, you know, doing your calf raises, doing. Building up your plyometric work so that you can handle the load of running and any good, good exercise scientist or physio or PT that specializes in, in that specific work for endurance athletes could help with that. But then it begs the question for the age grouper, you know, there's a lot of things you could do in your program that could help you be better, but do you have time for this? You know, if, if you're, if you're not short on time and you can implement a gym program on top of all the training you need to do, which we obviously encourage, then, then go for it. But if you're short on time, which most age groupers are, it may not be the priority, especially when it's not necessary and there's workarounds to get the same stimulus and get the strength you need to run well at the back end of a triathlon.

Yeah, just reiterate, Jord. To summarize, you know, the risk factor for running is the biggest, the least is bike. So we tend to push most of our athletes to do a lot of their VO2 work on the bike. And, you know, we've also got injured athletes. You know, we do have that issue. Everybody does possibly face being injured at some stage in their athletic career. And so I say to our athletes, you know, if you're not injured enough to ride the bike, then you should be getting your VO2 work as a runner, as a marathon runner or a half marathon runner. I'm not talking about triathlons, but it's still, as a triathlete, you're already riding the bike. But, but as a runner, you would be better off, you know, giving your body a rest from the injury and trying to do some VO2 work in the pool or on your bike, that.

Kind of sums up the three disciplines. And in conclusion, you know, when you think about these VO2 types of sessions, especially the specific ones we spoke about on the bike, they alone will not make you a better triathlete. That's just one aspect of your program. They will help improve your VO2 max, as I said, they will help you improve your FTP. They will help improve, you know, definitely short time trials and many maybe 20 minute time time trials. But there's a whole other aspect to your program you need to get right for to be a good triathlete. And I want to talk about just briefly, the, the concept of fatigue resistance. And Matthew Vanderpoel's coach said that, you know, in terms of raw power, there's plenty of athletes on his team that are actually better at him in terms of the testing numbers. But his secret Weapon and magic is that he will outdo anyone with power output at the end of 200 km in the legs. You know, no one can go with him for a minute. Minute. Now I can keep up with these watts per kilo for a minute or 30 seconds or 2 minutes after 200ks in the legs. And that's a really good thing to think about for our triathletes. You know, we're not just trying to improve your 20 minute number all the time and, and your VO2 max and your FTP. We are trying to improve those, but we're trying to improve those under resistance as well. And how do you perform, you know, in the second half of your triathlon leg on the bike? And how do you run off the bike under that? Fatigue resistance. I think that's a really important point to remember.

Yeah, I think fatigue resistance is going to be a word that's going to be spread a lot in the, in the coming years because a lot of endurance athletes are really understanding that concept now. It's, it, you know, it's all, it's all great to be a hero early in the, in the, in the event, but who, who can stand up and actually match the power or the pace at the latter half of their event? And that's what, that's what having good fatigue resistance is, is really saying, you know, can you keep the same performance level at the end as you can comfortably at the start? And everybody will say, obviously you can't. But that's what makes the good athletes better than the average athletes, the guys who can resist that fatigue longer. And I think Inga Bridson said everybody can run fast, it's just who can run faster at the end. And I thought that was unbelievably accurate about that's what fatigue resistance is. All those athletes in the 1500 or the 800 or 3K, 5K, doesn't matter what event. Everybody on that start line has got the ability to run fast. But who can do it at the end when it counts?

Yeah, that's, that's a whole, a whole other awesome topic that he said that we, we said to each other straight away about his concept on conserving energy in the race. And he's just so adamant that the best performers in a race are the ones that conserve the most energy. And we just couldn't be more true for, for triathlon. So, so that's it for this episode. We hope you've enjoyed listening to this one and if you'd like help with implementing some VO2 sessions into your own program and getting the balance of your own program right, you can go to our website trivelocoaching.com and apply to be coached there. As we mentioned at the start of the episode, we coach athletes of any level beginner all the way through to pro in Australia and internationally around the world. And we have a guarantee that if you don't improve your FTP with us in the first six weeks of the program, it's money back. That's our money back guarantee. So go to our website trivalocoaching.com and apply to get coached there. And otherwise we'll see you in the next episode. Thank you very much for listening.