Training To Your Level: What and How

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, Jared Donnelly. Last podcast episode we spoke about what we should be doing differently to the pros because we can't expect as age groupers, as amateurs, to be able to train as well as the pros. But what about age grouper to age grouper, amateur to amateur? Not all age groupers are created equal. So depending on your level of experience, your ability as an athlete, and many other factors, you need to be training differently to other athletes around you. So what do you need to change? What are the levers that you need to be pulling differently? We discuss all of that in today's episode. Dad, welcome back to the podcast. Let's start with our normal segment. What are you grateful for?

Yes, and as much as technology is just incredible advantage in the modern generation, you just realize how much you rely and depend on it. And at the unfortunate situation on the weekend, just gone by where my phone locked me out for a couple of days and on the weekend couldn't get any help from Telstra, just stuck with no way of communicating. I just felt so hamstrung. Had some great competitions happening over the weekend when normally I would be on the text message going, freaking awesome result, well done. I know Rachel was in doing the Sydney marathon and did a massive PB and you know, waiting for me to send a normal well done and she's got donuts and she's wondering what's wrong. And so I'm really, I'm really grateful for technology, but geez, it sucks when it doesn't work. But yeah, my gratitude is that life is really easy compared to what it used to be. We can keep communicate so much better. We can get our messages clearly across without causing anxiety. And the amount of anxiety that I was creating because I was out of contact was phenomenal in my opinion and only was saved by the fact that you sent an email out saying, hey, if you're wondering why you're getting no love back from me, it's because I can't actually communicate. So I'm grateful for it, but at the same time I'm a little bit unhappy that I'm relying on it so much. But it is the nature of the modern technology, modern technological world. But I am certainly grateful that I don't have to send SOS signals. But like we did back in the 80s and 70s and 90s when we had to try and find a red phone booth somewhere to get a phone call. You know, we were supposed to meet at the footy outside gate four and there was no one there and you didn't know where they were, they coming late or they'd been held up in traffic and you're standing there waiting with no possible way of communicating except if you went and found a phone booth and rang them, rang their home number. Of course they're not there because they're out. Trying to meet you is just so much easier.

Yeah, that's what they said would happen. They just said that this iPhone would slowly become more and more part of us. And it's only going to continue that path. I think it's going to, we're going to be more and more linked to our, to our phones now, handheld devices. It's like having a second brain next to us. I coincidentally watched a movie a couple of nights ago and it was a thriller and I don't really like thrillers normally, but this is award winning film and it was set in the 50s and the guy is Matt Damon playing it and he gets away with mur because he murders one of his good friends and no one realizes he's missing because phones aren't a thing back then. And it was just so weird to watch the contrast where the only reason he got away with it was because of the time, you know, where it took people a month to realize that the guy was missing. Whereas nowadays if they're not responding to a text message straight away, then there seems to be a problem. So it is very interesting. Anyway, we digress with our gratitude. Mine is quite simple. We experienced some warmer weather this month and it's always nice. To me it doesn't always happen on September 1st. Sometime the first couple of weeks of September you wake up and you go outside and there's not that cold bite to it. You know, you don't have to wear your puffer jacket or you can go outside in just a jumper or sometimes just a light jacket. And it's that first spring morning where you know that the weather's turned and it's. Instead of being 4 degrees outside or 6 degrees, it's, it's 12 degrees or 14 degrees and it's just a really nice feeling and it's a real sign that the, the weather has turned and there's only warmer weather coming, which everyone is happy about.

That's ironic from someone who spent a fair bit of the last winter in warm Temperature. I know that your gratitude is well founded because even though you're only spending a small amount of time in a winter Melbourne, that even when you find spring coming, you're still grateful. The fact that You've only spent 12 hours in Melbourne's winter, that's great.

The game, dad. If you can escape, escape Melbourne winter, then you gotta do it.

I'm all for it. Definitely.

What's caught our attention? What has caught your attention recently?

Funny, I just saw a photo on Instagram and it made me just think about what are we doing in triathlon in our bike leg of the, of the endurance event and have we let it get out of control? And I saw a photo and it would have had, I reckon, over 70 people riding almost two abreast in a beautiful peloton. And I just, it just made me think is that what our sport was, was really meant for, for a swim, a group ride and then who can run the fastest. And I don't think that's what the original goals and outcomes of, of the endurance sport of triathlon was meant to do. And I. And how do we get around this? What's caught my attention is every race seems to have more and more people in it. And some of the course selections, where you've got out and back, where you get a bit of a clear run with not having a lot of people around you on the first lap and then the second lap you've got the whole field on the course and that's where the issues happen. And, and there's people genuinely trying not to ride in bunches. Absolutely. 99% of the people are, and a small percentage are loving riding in the bunch because they know that they're getting a free ride and they're going to be able to run so much better because they haven't hardly blown out a match on the ride. But that's not what our sport's meant to be. It's meant to be an individual time trial swim followed by an individual time trial ride followed by an individual time trial run. And to see photos of bunches of 60 and 70 people kind of breaks my heart a bit. It's. It's gone away from, from what the sports you're testing and you're not meant to have help from anybody. And we. The event has rules and it is very hard for people to enforce the rules when the course selection doesn't help. If you have an out and back, you've got more chance in a 90k of there being less people gathered in a two 45k out and back, you know, or, or four laps or, you know, multiple laps might be good for your friends and family to see you a lot. But it's taken away the goal of being an individual sport. And, and if that's the way we want to go, then by all means make it all legal drafting. And, and that, that's, that's a different sport in my opinion. And I feel bad for the, the marshals trying to control a group of 60. What do you do? Do you just, you know, give everybody in the group 10 minute penalty? Well, my answer is yes, you do. It won't help that. It won't help that particular day, but the next time they line up for a race, they'll think, well, my time was, was different by 10 minutes because I had a drafting penalty. I'm going to do everything I can not to get a drafting penalty. So if a group form, I'll have to either let them go or, or get ahead of them. And, and that is a dilemma in itself because here I am as a coach saying don't spike your power. And you might have to do that to get ahead of someone. And there's a dilemma of, you know, you're riding against what you've trained at, which is trying to time trial with even power from start to finish and, you know, hold the same power and not fade. And if you're doing all these little match burning efforts to try and get past groups of riders, it's going to make for a harder ride in the end. Maybe we need to train a little bit more where we're doing some efforts in the middle of some, from some steady state race like power or running efforts. But that's what's caught my attention is the dilemma of the popularity of the sport to its own detriment. And I think the course selection has a lot to do with it and the amount of people who are allowed to enter. And we're in the unfortunate position here in the southern hemisphere where we have very few races, so we might have five major half ironmans in the whole year. Whereas you go to America or to Europe and you might have 500 choices, you know, and you can travel from state to state and almost every, every One of the 52 states in America has a race. So you know, you've got the possibility of having so many more options. So the fields can be, can be less, you know, less in size and therefore you get an opportunity to race properly. So it's not a complaint, it's just an observation and I really am looking for solutions as to. If you are making an example of people in races, you know, give them all time penalties so that they realize that, you know it's serious and you're going to get pulled up and it's in fact cheating. You're not writing as an individual, you're getting assistance and try to make the fields limited and make your course selection better where you're not going backwards and forwards on the same loop. And it's easy for us to sit here and say that, but you've got the issues of traffic. It costs money to block roads. It's not that simple.

So.

So I get everything that that's causing it, but I'm just sort of reaching out to everybody to try not to allow the groups in your own mind to form where you are. And there's nothing worse than if you're actually at the front of that group towing 60 people the whole way and you think, what am I doing this for? You know. But you're doing it because you're trying to do an individual time trial and you're going to get a real result, a real outcome, and that's probably more important than the position you finish. But for some people, that's a dilemma, isn't it?

The race you're talking about is Sunshine Coast 70.3. And there was a lot of news about that because it was so blatant. It was. It has been the case in a lot of 70.3s we've seen here in a lot of recent races, but this was just the most blatantly obvious. And I watched a video recap of a guy's experience. He just, he just spoke about what was happening out there and he said, yeah, at one point he was just sitting in this big pack and he was just not even in the drops, just on his handlebars and his TT bike, chatting to the guy next to him. And they're both asking, what do we do here? Do, you know, do you drop off and, and, you know, let everyone else do a really good time or do you just sit in because everyone's doing it? And same thing. He said he felt so bad with the marshals. They just did not expect that. And they were shocked out on the course of what was happening and they didn't know what to do. And he said they ended up just, just penalizing people randomly. They would just go along the group and just put a red, red flag in front of someone, which is really unfair because one person out of that 60 is being punished. But he said that he felt bad for them because they didn't really know what to do either, to break it up. He said it was just ridiculous that he was, he said I was riding, you know, 140 watts, which is low for him, extremely low for him. It's like an easy ride, going faster than he would solo. So, yeah, it's definitely very interesting. And he, he actually did the maths on the video, which I liked. And he said it is exactly what you're saying, course design. Because if you, there was 2,300 people, I think, entered in the race and if you, you know, if you get those 2,300 people out in the bike course and you ask all of them to be 20 meters apart, that adds up to some absurd number like 15 kilometers, a 15 kilometer train or something for everyone to be equally spread out. And so it's just not really possible logistically for that to happen. And the race organizers do need to take that into account and understand that the course needs to allow for that. What's got my attention is Aussie Ash Gentle has just won the PTO US Open, which is really, I mean, she was already well on the radar. She raced at the Collins cup, she's, but she's now cemented herself as easily Australia's best triathlete at the moment. She's won her last three races in a row. But this was super impressive because she mowed down a seven minute lead on the run leg, which is just phenomenal against the caliber of athletes. And she beat Lucy Charles Barkley, who you have to admit is coming back from injury. It's only a second race back from injury, but she's still a world class athlete. And Taylor Nib, who was also just an absolute superstar talent from America. And so, yeah, Ash Gentle has really, really showed her strength and talent by not only winning her last three pro races as well as the Collins cup, but yeah, winning this PTO US Open, it was really an impressive performance and great to see an Aussie absolutely dominate like that.

Yes, it's, it is so good to actually finally see the Aussies back in, in the top echelon of triathlon. It's been a long time between, between the successes that we've had and we've had lots of successes over the last 30 or 40 years. You know, you can rattle off so many quality triathletes, endurance triathletes who have won, you know, the biggest races in the world and it's been quite a, a drought. So it's great to see so many Quality athletes coming back through the field and you know, this week where we're what's caught my attention. Second stage here, I want to add another one which is going against the grain a bit but you know, this is the, the UCI World Championships coming up in Wollongong. By the time this comes out they would have been one and done. And to see, you know, the individual time trial for men and women and to see finally Grace Brown get second in the time trial and only lose it by the smallest of margins. And the last rider, she sat on the, on the, the throne of first place for the whole race. And I think Van Vleuten. Oh no, it wasn't Van Vleuten, it was Van der Block. I think. I can't remember who it was who beat her because I was so intent on her winning the title. She was so close. But, but yeah, some of the really good talented female and, and male cyclists coming through and, and you know, Luke Platt finishing really well up there in the time trial, you know, just a young kid and seeing what happened this year in the Grand Tours with the Aussie, but youngster male and female, really dominating stage races and winning the Giro and you know, being in the top 10 in, in GC in every one of the three Grand Tours. And there's like 10 or 15 riders from Australia now, young kids who are, who are right up there with the elite riders of the world. And, and it's really great to see not only in triathlon, as you just mentioned, but in, in cycling as well that we're, we're back, you know, really leading the charge in, in, in producing some really great young cyclists and yeah, it's really impressive to watch. I can't wait to see what happens this week. It's going to be really exciting at the world road race titles coming up this weekend and you know who, who's going to take it out. It's, it's going to be interesting. The course is quite challenging. It's got 4,000 meters of climbing for the male, the male race and quite a lot of climbing in the female race as well. So you, you have to be a really good one day specialist to win this, that anyway to win a world title but, but to, to be able to get over 4,000 meters of climbing in a one day race is, is a lot of, lot of climbing. So the type of rider that will win this, you know, you, you wouldn't think a guy like Van Aert could win this, but yet he's won Vontu, he's Won time trial and he's won Champs Elyse. So he can do everything. You know, it's hard to go past a guy like him, but you know, you've got Al Philippe who's won multiple world championships, who recently crashed and I don't want to go through all the names, but it is going to be exciting to see just how it pans out and the tactics of the countries because here they are, they're so used to riding with their teams who are doing all the work for them and now you have to ride with your country, which is you're riding with riders who are in rival teams but now you're under the one umbrella. And I look at Remco Evenepoel with Wout van Aert from Belgium. You know, both world class riders and have the ability to win this race and who does Belgium put their support behind? And they're the. The intricacies of riding for your country as compared to riding for your team. So it's going to be exciting and so good to have it in Australia and show the world, you know, what sort of landscape you can ride around here. You know, Wollongong's spectacular harbour and beautiful scenery and, and a great course to have it on.

It's super exciting to have world class, the best cyclists in the world on Australian home soil. We can't wait to see how the race pans out. And a special shout out as well to the Aussies winning bronze in the mixed team time trial relay. That was unreal to see. I didn't even know that was event an event to be honest. So I just saw the result and went, whoa. I didn't. I saw some highlights of people going off in threes and I was going, what is going on here? I actually never heard of that event but. But super exciting. Regardless, let's get into the today's topic and we want to talk about how you should be manipulating your training compared to potential age groups around you and why you shouldn't just be doing the same program as people around you. And it seems obvious, but there are intricacies involved in this that we really want to discuss today and we want to discuss the things outside the obvious factors. Obviously you can't train as well as someone more experienced than you and there's difference between differences between beginners and experienced athletes. But we want to go into the nuances and, and figure out or help you figure out where you're at and what you need to be focusing on. And there's basically a hierarchy of importance. But I want to start by talking to you as a coach and say, how different is the level of programming you're giving a beginner athlete compared to one of our more experienced vets?

Great question to start off this topic with. And if you delve into this topic, it doesn't seem like there's much in it on the surface, but boy, the differences between the level of your own ability will dictate what you should be doing in the same program. So if I gave you the program that I was giving myself, I would be giving it slight variation to you. Compared to me, I'm older, I don't recover as well and I'm going to struggle with the repeated high intensity. So I would be, if I wasn't talking to myself, I would be saying to the older writer who's 64, 63, 64, you know, who cares at this stage? That's right.

I just take the piss out of your age.

74, 84, doesn't matter. The older writer is certainly going to struggle by writing, you know, three high intensity rides or two high intensity rides or one high intensity rides are going to be a variation there, depending on where your level is. So you can be a very experienced rider and cope with that as a 60 year old compared to a, a new newbie, someone who's new to the sport, hasn't cycled much, hasn't done many triathlons, hasn't run much, but they're just wanting to get into the sport. You just can't give them the same load. You give them a similar program structure, but the load has to be different. So what are we talking about here? We're talking about the level that you come into, or you've heard us say many times. The bank of fitness that you have is a determining factor in how you're going to cope with the structured program. So I'm forever asking, what have you been doing in the last six months, six weeks, six years? And the answer might be, I've swum twice if I'm a triathlete. I've ridden my bike 10 times and I've run a lot. So straight away I'm getting a picture of, well, this person needs to really think about doing some consistent swimming. Obviously everybody needs to do consistency across all sports, but we need to be more specific. Let the running be a little bit of a background back burner here. And it's concentrate on getting their fitness up in the pool, in the open water and concentrate on their strength on the bike and getting used to some volume into them. And as a cyclist, if someone comes along and they just got a new bike from the shop and they're looking for ways to improve and get improvement quickly and they've done no historical endurance riding, well, the first thing you want to do is to get them used to riding for some time. And that doesn't mean send them out on a three hour, four hour endurance ride in their. You would say what is your longest ride you've ever done? And they might come back with I did 30 minutes. And someone else might come back with I did two hours. So straight away your starting point with the 30 minute previous rider is 40 minutes, 50 minutes, 60 minutes and you gradually build it from there. And the same with the person who's done two hours, that's your starting point. And so therefore you could be on the same program but doing completely different endurance duration, volume. And that's just an example, obviously frequency of training, you're going to definitely be under the pump and feel so much more of the load. If you've never done structured training before, you're going to by day 7, day 14, day 30 be not coping so well as compared to someone who's done a lot of this. And day seven, 14 and 30, they're coping beautifully. Program.

Yeah, and I want to talk about that mental side of it as well because we get a lot of ex high level athletes, ex Olympians, even ex professional athletes, not necessarily professional in cycling or running, but they've come from a different professional background that come into triathlon or cycling or running. And when you hear that, that does mentally make you think about the athlete slightly different to someone who hasn't come from what you just said, a structured training background before. And even if they haven't done this amount of volume or frequency intensity in a cycling or triathlon specific world, if they've done some sort of structured training in a previous life, you are willing to be a little bit less conservative with them given that.

Absolutely. And I know one great example you're talking about with Nathan Jones. You came from playing football his whole career and wanted to go into doing a half and he was a breeze to coach because he, he had already been an elite athlete. Whether it's football, cricket, hockey, cycling, triathlon, doesn't matter. If you've been at the elite level, you understand consistency, you understand frequency of training, you understand intensity and you understand how your body can cope with the duration. So, so.

And you're also mentally prepared for it.

That's right. And you are up for it. It's not foreign to you, you're used to planning your day and planning your week. And so that was really easy for me. The hard part for him was saying you haven't done a lot of riding so let's just not expect that you can go for a four hour ride and even at your high level of fitness, you've got to struggle with that ride. Let's just start what's your longest ride? And I think it was something like he'd done two and a half hours riding, so that's where we started. We didn't try to fast track him, obviously he'd done shitloads of running as a footballer, but it was all 10 meter spurt bursts. And you know, relative to his game situation, he hadn't done a lot of steady state running because it's not really important. The most important thing in football is short bursts, higher, higher energy bursts and recover quickly. So he, not, he'd been right away from the endurance type of running. So we had to really allow his body to absorb the load of running for 50 minutes at the same pace or running for an hour and a half. So, so there's a whole lot of things there that are examples of even at the elite level, that person still needed to allow the load that we were giving them to be absorbed so that they didn't break down.

What you're talking about really is risk mitigation and you're kind of weighing up the risk factor of an athlete at the start of the program. And for a beginner you just have to be conservative, which can be frustrating because the beginner can be so excited to be starting a new journey and there's so much energy and you're really having to hold them back. Which is also true for someone who's a motivated athlete. But with an experienced athlete you can afford to be a little riskier and really be toeing that line a bit more. That's one of the main differences in this theme of what we're talking about is that the experienced athlete can afford to take. I'm gonna, I'm going to use the word risks very lightly. But take, take some risks in training. I would also say take, be willing to experiment a little bit more in their training to try and get more out of themselves because they've, they've got a good base, they've been training for a while, that that principle of diminishing returns would have applied to them at the end. To clarify that it's basically you get the most gains the newer you are to a, to your sport. So basically a beginner will see dramatic improvement and that improvement continues to taper off because it can't improve at that rate forever. So a clear example here is, let's say someone comes to us and they first test at 200 FTP and they're a beginner athlete, their ability to improve is sky high in potential. Their next test, if they train really well over eight weeks, they could jump to 230 or 240 in FTP, which is just a massive jump. And then the next one they might jump to 260 and then every test after that, it's called diminishing returns because the return will slowly taper off. And so the next one might be 265 and then the next test might be 268. And then every single watt of FTP increase becomes harder and harder. And so this is why we talk about or why I'm saying that you can afford to push yourself a little bit more, toe that line a little bit more in terms of experimentation because if you're experienced athlete, your FTP is 300 watts and you're trying to get every single little 1% or extra gain in wattage, you can afford to do things a little bit differently and really toe that line compared to the beginner doesn't need to do that and they can still get those gains.

Yeah, totally agree. And while you were saying those examples, I was thinking clearly that I am absolutely willing to push someone who has got a great fitness bank more than I am with a person who I know is fresh and new. Then that is my decision that I've made right from the outset because I made the mistake of treating everybody who joined the same. Here's your program, see how you go. Not taking into account what the historical background was. And it was such a bad error on my behalf that not really taking enough notice of what they had done previously. And straight away I got got such variations in outcomes and now we don't get variations in outcomes, we get very predictable outcomes because we've taken such great intent on understanding where the athlete is at the current state. And so when we're trying to find out what level someone is at, I'm forever telling them at the start of their our program. I'm not trying to see how good or bad you are, I'm just trying to see where you are on the level of the fitness level spectrum. That's all I'm trying to find out. And if you test at 100 watts for your FTP, I'm not making any judgment about that. I'm just saying that's where you're going to start your program from and therefore we'll make less mistakes rather than me saying, geez, you're coming from a long way back. You know, that's, that's got nothing to do with it. It's, it's where we want to start the journey. And, and they're, they're the things that I really now hone in on in, in finding out what their previous experience is, what fitness they are currently at. They may also an example be they have done, as you mentioned, you know, elite level training, but they haven't done it for 10 years and they've got the motivation back. Do I start them as an elite level athlete? No, I don't. I'm absolutely going to start them as a beginner. And I apologize to them saying, I'm sorry, this is where you're starting. And generally they'll go, no, I understand, I get it. And because they've been a professional athlete, they understand how the load on the body won't cope. They will be probably injured or exhausted. So they get it. And, and it is all about where you start from, what level of fitness you come into. And we use a lot in the podcast if the preseason training for hockey or for football or for soccer or whatever sport you're playing, if you come in with a level of fitness that's 10% above the rest of the squad as a team event, you're laughing all the way. Your preseason is going to be so easy. But if you come in and you've done nothing from the last season to this season, you're going to have nightmares. You're not going to be asleep because you're going to go, oh no, tomorrow's session is going to kill me. And most of, the, most of the clubs aren't allowing for that. But they're getting smarter. You know, they're just saying, here's your preseason 16 week program. Everybody has to do this amount of work as a runner, yet they've got all these people coming in with different levels who are going to get injured straight away or burnt out and the fatigue they carry, they won't be able to train. So they're getting. I did that mistake in 1986 when I was only 19 at uni and my dad asked me to take the local Yallourn Soccer Club preseason training. And we had players who were 17 and we had players who were 40 and I was just young, naive, enthusiastic dad, your team's not fit enough they need to do more running. And so I gave them this brutal running program. And after two or three weeks of the eight week preseason, half the squad was injured. All the old guys couldn't cope. Boy, did I learn a lesson there. And you know, I made a huge mistake. I just, I treated everybody the same. The old guys needed nurturing. The young guys, I could push them as hard as I like, they were going to cope no problem. But that's an example of really making sure that you, as a person who's coming to this sport from a layoff, as a newbie or who's already elite and has a huge level of fitness, your program will be manipulated to suit where you are currently. Not what you historically have done and what you're proud of, but where you are right now.

It's so true what you say about what we've learned because I was listening to a podcast with Joe Watson and he's a professional footballer here in Australia and he was talking about his fitness was such a a inhibitor in his career and back in his early days of his career, I think this was 2003 or 2004 ish. He was turning up to each preseason and he was just so far behind the group. And their sports science was so bad back then that they just had everyone doing the same thing and they had everyone doing the same load and they weren't tracking it. And then he ended up going away and finding his own fitness coach and who got him super fit before the preseason. Then he came into preseason way fitter than normal and he ended up up, he was able to double with his training sessions because he was recovering so well and he had to do all that on his own. And then nowadays I know that at these football clubs their sports scientist, the exercise physiologist who's running the fitness program, actually is tracking the total load and pretty much total stress score, which is the equivalent of what we'd say for triathletes or cyclists, which we use in training. Peaks these tracking the acute total load of these players continuously throughout the week and deciding when they should train or not train based on that, which is such an advancement. Players are rocking up to training each day and he's saying, you can't do this volume today. You need to do half of this or 3/4 of this or a quarter or none. And that is just a much smarter way of going about it and shows how far sports science has really come since then. And I agree with you, I've made a similar mistake years ago helping a friend of mine do some running training and we talk about. This is the next part of the topic. We talk about the three levers a lot and we don't want to harp on about them again today because we have spoken about them a lot. And the three levers of training that you can manipulate are frequency, volume and intensity. And I made the mistake of, you know, he's a more of a beginner runner. I'll just give him slightly less frequency, slightly less volume and slightly less intensity. And he still got injured, you know, and albeit that's part of the programming, but also some pre existing things as well with running form. But it's really important to understand that you can't just, you know, take a copy and paste approach and just, you know, turn all these levers down a little bit each. That actually doesn't work. You have to think about what's happening with these levers and um, and what impact they're making. So I guess, you know, the obvious ones are beginners can't handle the frequency. You know, they, they really have to be careful with that. And that's why it's the first lever, lever that you need to get right first. And it's always the getting the frequency of training and building that up slowly is the number one thing. And then getting your volume up after that, once you're getting used to the frequency of training is second. And then what we want to really focus on today is intensity and understanding how your training intensity should differ depending on who you are, where you're at in your program, what your race is. And we do really want to dive into that. And what do you see as the key aspects of intensity that we need to be focusing on?

Well, intensity generally people think that that's our hard training day, but we're not using it in that term terminology, we're using it as what's your intensity in your recovery ride? What's your intensity in your zone 2? What's your intensity in your VO2? What's your intensity in your thresh or sub threshold? So once you understand that's what we're talking about, it'll help you get to figure out that in every one of those specific types of training sessions, the intensity is really got such a range. So as a recovery ride, you would think there isn't much in the intensity range, but there is. I just experienced it literally 3 hours ago where the group that I currently riding with, they all agreed that we were doing a recovery ride. And yet on some of the rolling undulations and my Recovery ride. The intensity for my recovery ride needs to be less than, I'm saying 150 watts. That's about the maximum I want to see on my screen, whether I'm going up a hill or down a hill. But to keep up with the bunch of. I was seeing 250, 300 watts up some of the hills and just getting so angry with myself going, why am I riding with these guys? But I still want to be social. And so that dilemma of I've got the wrong intensity for this session straight away. And so once I get away from the hills, I know that it's only going to be three or four hills. On this particular day, they'll go back to riding where I want them to be riding. And I can't force people to ride what I want to do when there's 14 people in the group. So I'm better off off just riding separately or just putting up with it for a couple of little efforts on the hills. And then when they get on the flat, make sure that I'm sitting in and not on the front. And so the intensity on the recovery ride can be from 20% to up to 50%. So if I'm feeling shattered from an incredibly big training block, I will be down as low as I can. And that's whether I'm experienced or whether I'm a beginner. I'm using that particular session as recovery. So it doesn't matter if you're really fit and you can cope with the load. This is one of the sessions where intensity has to be as low as possible, whereas all the other sessions we're trying to see where we can push ourselves to the top of the range for intensity. So that's got rid of recovery. Recovery. So the Zone 2 session, again, it's a really gray area of what's acceptable and what's not. And we use. For Zone two, we use a secondary data point, which is heart rate. So if you're doing Zone two for endurance as compared to Zone two for a short ride, there's quite a different level that's going to happen. Fatigue will occur over two hours. Three hours of a Zone two ride, you might have a Zone two ride that goes for four hours. So your ability to ride Zone two for four hours compared to Zone two for one hour is going to be hugely different in the power that you're going to push, because you are creating fatigue over hours of riding. You're burning fuel, your heart rate's rising because the temperature of the day and your body is Rising because you're doing a constant effort. So your intensity can be dictated to by the power number that you're trying to stay under the ceiling of. And also your heart rate is a really good level up of the example I'll use is one of the Wednesday rides I did. It was three hour ride and I know that my heart rate can't be over 137 beats. I think we've talked about this example once before. And so my power in the first hour was okay at 220 watts for 137 beats. I'm looking at both of these metrics and then after an hour and a half, the temperature's gone from 15 to 25. I've burned a fair bit of fuel. I've gone, you know, 45K. I'm heading to 90K. And I can see that my heart rate's going in 138, 139. So, okay, I have to now drop my power down to 210 or 205. Right. It's now stabilized back at 137, but already I've dropped 15 watts. And I'm, I'm experienced. I'm, I've been doing this a long time, so, so I'm really manipulating the intensity of this session in one session. And so in the two hour mark, I'm now at 190 watts for 137 beats. I'm still not on a very hard course. It's the same course I've been on for the whole ride. But the fatigue and the load that I'm now created from three hours is causing my heart rate to really spike. If I kept 220 watts. So now I'm only allowed to ride at 190 watts because if I do, I'm going to be outside the range range. So there's a really good example of even from an experienced rider knowing the intensity can vary in one ride.

This is a great example and I want to dive into this a little bit more because there's a lot of decisions that could be made here around this session. The fact that. How long was this ride would you say? Three hours, four hours?

It was a three hour ride.

Yeah. Now most people aren't fitting a three hour Zone 2 ride into their week unless you're up that upper end of the experience scale, which you are. And so, you know, with things this, with the context of this discussion, you do want to figure out where am I on the scale of complete beginner to super experienced intermediate in the middle, Whereabouts am I Am I somewhere between beginner and intermediate? Am I pretty much bang on the beginner, but not, not complete beginner who's never ridden before? Am I up towards the experience end? Because that would dictate a lot of decisions here. And one is, okay, you're doing, you're fitting a Zone 2 ride in into your week. How long is it going to be? Because for a lot of people they haven't done that before. So just fitting an hour zone two ride will be tough without getting that heart rate rate drift or that heart rate correction that you were speaking about. That heart rate drift is that after the first hour, hour and a half, suddenly your heart rate was creeping up for the same power. And so if that was happening, there would be a strong argument for someone who's more towards the beginner end of the scale to stop the session. Because you're actually going to be creating too much fatigue, your body can't handle it and it's going to impact the rest of your week. And you shouldn't be trying to hit a two hour or three hour zone two session, whether it's a ride or a run run. The run comparison would be 60 to 90 minutes. For example, you're not going to be doing a three hour zone two run. But the point is understanding you know where this can fit inside of your program and your ability. And Joe Friel actually has, I think it's, Joe Friel has a rule that you shouldn't complete your base period of training until you can do a 2 1/2 to 3 hour plus zone 2 ride without that heart rate correction, without that heart rate drift. So he wants you to build up to that point where you can do the three hours ride at 220 watts and for your example, stay at 137 beats per minute and your heart rate doesn't creep above that even though the ride's going longer. In that example, I imagine you might not have been at peak fitness and that's why that creep was probably happening. Is that correct?

And also George, the temperature went from 15 to 30. So the hands. Yeah, consider was really forcing my heart rate to go through the roof and my heart rate was protecting me from riding too hard.

So in that example, it might not have been a fitness thing, it might have just been a temperature thing.

Temperature thing, yeah. And it was. And I knew that and I felt fine, you know, and was able to do the rest of the week comfortably. But you're right, we don't want the athlete who can't cope with that load to put themselves through that. And this example I would be talking about would be not a midweek ride, this would be a weekend ride, a Zone 2 weekend ride where you've got got, you've got the opportunity and you're trying to improve your endurance so you need to push the duration. Whereas the example you thought I was talking about was a midweek one where we're in between the two hard training sessions. So that's completely, that's another great example of a zone two ride. Between what sessions? Zone two ride after a recovery day, Zone two ride that's got endurance component or zone two ride that's only in between high intensity. So straight away we've got intensity being different in the one zone two ride.

And yeah, I mean, taking that example one step further, you know, in a more experienced athlete who's got their high intensity day on a Tuesday and it's got their high intensity down a Thursday, might be able to afford a three hour hill ride on a Wednesday at Zone 2 and it not impact their recovery from the Tuesday or their performance on Thursday. Because they're that experienced, they've built up to that. It would take, it takes a long time to get to that. And they might be able to go for a Zone 2 run on a Friday day where they run for 45 to 60 minutes at Zone 2 compared to just a recovery day or a recovery session and handle that. And that is the top end of age group athlete that we're talking about. But that's a clear example. Whereas the more beginner or intermediate might only be able to handle on a Wednesday half an hour at zone two and the rest needs to be zone one recovery. And Friday might have to be pure recovery. They can only handle one potential extra or two potential extra zone two sessions a week, whether it was the Wednesday and the Saturday that you're talking about. So this is where you think about these intensity factors and whether levers can be be pulled and pushed.

Yep. And so we haven't even got to what everybody thinks intensity is. The intensity session, the high intensity session. So you know, recovery is low intensity, zone 2 is medium intensity. Sub threshold and tempo are really medium to high intensity. But mainly in that sweet spot. That's what we call it, sweet spot. It's under threshold and above zone two a little bit bit. But the high intensity is generally threshold and above. And so when this topic comes up, people think, oh, they're going to talk about just the high intensity sessions. Well, so we want to make sure that we got those first clarity things through about the other intensities aspects of your other sessions. So now we're talking about the high intensity session. And that can be anything from threshold to VO2 to Entero, which is, you know, something at last, super high power.

Yeah.

15 second efforts compared to 30 seconds to 4 minutes, compared to 5 minutes to 60 minutes, which is what threshold is. So in that high intensity session, let's just take threshold as an example. If you're a beginner, you probably could ride at the top of the range because you've tested to your number. But will that affect you the next couple of sessions? Will it exhaust you that much? Will it cause unbelievable problems for three weeks? And let's go.

This is the question what we mean by that. So you take a threshold session or maybe just above threshold session where you're going five by eight minutes and the range that would be set for that would be a wide range. We wouldn't go this wide. Would be 96% to 108% of your FTP. And you're saying that, that a beginner could probably push up towards that 108% because it's their numbers. So you can hit the top end and the lower end of your range because it's your numbers, but continue with what you were going to say next about that.

Yep. So. So understanding that you probably should and could be at the top of the range and if you're highly motivated and you want to get, get fitter faster, which is the whole point of training, I want to do it every second, but that's not necessarily going to be a benefit to you. You need to think the big picture here. And so that's why we're talking about the contrast between someone who's done this for a long time, who could classify themselves as a top age grouper, someone who's talented but hasn't done it in a long time, I wouldn't put them in this category. I would put them in the medium to beginner. Even though they've got talent, they still don't have the experience of how to manage their load. And that's what we're talking about. So you've got the range that the coach has given you. It may be use the example you gave riding 96% of your threshold up to 108% of your threshold for a threshold training session, it could be 5 by 5, it could be 3 by 8, it could be 2 by 15, it could be 2 by 20. Whatever the coach has put down for you, you have that opportunity to ride between the ranges between 96% of your FTP that you tested to or 108% of your FTP. And good luck if you want to do 108% for the first two or three sessions because you might find that you are going to really struggle to get out of bed in 10 days time and you don't think about that was the cause. You think I'm stressed from work or things aren't going well, but it's actually that you've trained too hard in the beginning of your program. Why? Because you're so keen to get there quick, quicker. So don't have that thought process. Have the thought process that this is going to be a journey and I need to take my medicine from day one and that is just to stay in the ranges and be really conservative early, no different to when I say when we do the test session. Don't start your FTP way above what you think you can get as your final outcome. Start way below and finish strong and get your mindset to understand that it enjoyed the experience. I don't know how you can enjoy an FTP test, but you can enjoy the experience of finishing strong rather than the experience of starting way too high. Because you want to prove that you're a better rider than you are and at the 15 minute mark of the 20 minutes you want to sell your bike, you're feeling that bad. So it's really important that you are understanding that you you where you are in terms of your experience and your current fitness level and you need to train your intensity to match that. So if the coach has given you the range at 96 and whether you've been an elite rider and you've had 10 years off, whether you've just come back from illness or injury or whether you're a beginner or whether you're just a mid packer, start low through the start of your program and try to give yourself room to go to rather than starting high and the only place you can go is where down. So that's my advice and I think you will be so much more benefited from training that way and not trying to get the quick fix. The quick fix never works. It's the person who can do the long journey that's at the end of the day. The three little pigs who built the house. The guy built it flat out with the bare minimum. His house blew over. The guy who spent weeks doing it with bricks. His house stood the test of time. He's got the base, he's got everything right that's the way we should look at it and not try to take shortcuts, that if I train flat out like this and in four or five weeks I should be where I want to be, well, that's just rubbish. It's just not going to happen.

And I really like this example of the range that we're talking about, 96 to 108% because theoretically 96% should be too easy. But if you're somewhere on that beginner to intermediate scale, don't shirk that percentage because I say theoretically it should be easy. Because if you can hold, if you're 100% FTP number, which is what you should be able to hold for an hour, if you're riding at 96% of that to 98% of that for five by five, which is a 25 minutes worth of work, or, or what you said, two by 15, which is half an hour's worth of work, that's below what you should be able to hold for an hour. So it should feel easy. But when you put that in the context of a brand new program where you're now training 5, 6, 7, maybe if you're a triathlete up to 10 times per week, that frequency is way higher than you used to. You have to put this session in the context of that. And yeah, you could push higher, but when you're suffering from fatigue because you're not used to this training frequency or this training volume, plus you're trying to do these sessions, suddenly 96% is a little bit of a relief and it should be at the start of your program. And that's why it's so important for the beginners to be looking at that potential range, even though it's probably not the ideal stimulus, like you said, that's going to get you the training benefit. We're happy to sacrifice that potential training stimulus and potential training benefit earlier in the program to get these other things right to build this base, which is what you're talking about compared to the experienced athlete who has proven that in these five by five minute efforts, they can hold 108% of, they can hold that very top of the range for five minutes. They need to start thinking about, okay, can I push 109%, can I push 110% and not only do that once, but do it for a block and not be overtraining, do it for a block for two, four, six, eight weeks and hold that and look for those potential gains without ruining their week without overtraining that session. And affecting other sessions. So they're the two contrasting positions you could find yourself in with the same session.

And we've got to be a little bit careful, George, because we don't want to ride outside that range because it will affect definitely other things down the track. So we're saying that if you get to a point and you are able to ride 108%, five by five, and could possibly ride 109, that's a great outcome. Why? Because you need to be retested and your FTP is slightly too low now because you've improved. And so you shouldn't really be able to ride more than 108%. If you can, you need to retest as soon as possible. So there's a couple of really good, good things that you've raised up in that, in that last sentence. And at the end of the day, that's all we're after, is, okay, great, if I've got to the top of this range, I need to be retested. And that is one of the things we talked about way back in the beginning of our podcast, was if you don't retest and you start to ride at 100, 910% and you can ride 112%, well, your FTP is way out of whack. You should not be able to ride 5 by 5 or 2 by 15 at 112% or 113% of your FTP. And if, if you didn't test, you would find yourself eventually stale, stagnating, and not improving because you haven't set the bar higher by retesting yourself. So, so, you know, they're good examples of, of, yes, it's okay to be at the top of the range, but the minute it becomes too comfortable, then before that happens, we would be testing you anyway.

But anyway, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The whole goal of training stimulus is to be able to keep doing that progressive overload. And so if you mind block, your 108% is 350 watts, you'd hope that you could keep improving in the next block. Your 108% is 352 watts or 354 watts. And that's where that overload is going to come in. I guess to finish off, we kind of want to summarize by just looking at the mindset and understanding or giving athletes an understanding of what they need to be focusing on, which will really help you in your training program. If you're clear, clear that if you can, if you can get really clear that okay, this is my goal of where I'm at right now. And you're really big on this, dad. You, you always get. Want people to think about where they're at in their program. How far away from your race are you? But a lot of frustration or disappointment or resistance to sticking to a program is because you feel like you should be doing something different. You know, beginners kind of getting frustrated because you feel like you're holding them back or they're going too slow. But if they change their mindset to, okay, this is where I'm at right now. Now the things I need to be focusing on are getting used to training consistently and showing that I can do a really good base period and complete these sessions without overtraining, without creating too much fatigue, without getting injured, getting in my zone 2 sessions, plus my high intensity sessions, plus my endurance sessions consistently and frequently, and getting that volume up before worrying about getting the intensity up. That's the mindset of that beginner in that base period compared to, to the experienced athlete is asking themselves, okay, I've got all this down pat. Where can I find incremental gains? Where can I be pushing myself a little bit more at the top end? Where can I be fitting in more of a Zone 2 session where I'm pushing that time out a little bit more and I can do that midweek ride you're talking about on a Wednesday, that's, that's three or four hours in the hills where my heart rate stays down and it doesn't impact my other sessions. I think, yeah, this is a real kind of final point we want people to realize, is to understand what type of athlete you are and then where you are. And if you can understand that, you'll have more congruency in the type of training that you're actually doing.

There's a lot you've said there. And I suppose you need to separate the two types of athletes. Once you've identified or even the three types of athletes. Are you at the pointy end with lots of experience? Are you at the pointy end with no experience, but you're really talented? Have you been in the sport very long? Have you been in the sport for one minute and you've just started? So definitely the consistency thing is that person, they just need to let their body slowly and incrementally absorb the load. And so it's a hard question to answer simply because when I'm talking to someone who's unbelievably talented and very experienced, very fit, they're looking for those 1 percenters and often they will think I need to train hard, harder. And, and that's true to, to a point. But you need to still have the other things happening with recovery. And, and the example would be if you could extend your zone two or your endurance rides and keep your intensity as it is. Don't muck with your intensity sessions, don't make your zone 2 rides harder, make them longer. Make your endurance rides harder, make them longer. Then your fitness aerobic capacity will go through the roof. We've got so many examples of runners that we've coached who, who have not necessarily done any more intensity, but they've just run a lot more volume with strength as their key thing and yet they're still coming out and running, smashing 5 KPBS, 10 KPBS in their training for marathon or ultramarath marathon. Yet they're still able to run fast, but they're not running fast in training. So doing more intensity, you know, from all the testing we've done and examples of athletes we coach, doesn't necessarily correlate with improvement. So keep the intensity in the zones for the sessions that have high intensity. Keep the intensity in the zones for the sessions that are recovery and tempo and sweet spot, but do them for longer. Add more volume to that. So if you're trying to do a hard high intensity session that's got VO2 component where we're trying to do 120% of your FTP up to 140, don't go and do 40 minutes of it instead of the 20 that you've been given that's just going to kill you. Do 20 minutes of it and do an extra 15 minute warmup and cool down. That will give you an incredible fitness aerobic boost to know burning fats, you know, body learning how to cope with a load of the nutrition that it needs. Just the leg strength and fitness that you're gaining from, you know, the cell breakdown and, and the muscle repair that's happening with the warmup and the cool down. Don't underestimate that. You don't have to ride more intensity in the intensity session to get fitter. You just have to add extra duration to it. And so the zone one ride instead of you've mastered the one hour, you know, do that for an hour and a half. The zone two ride you, you now be able to do an hour 15, an hour 20 if you've got the time, do the zone 2 for, for an hour 45 if you can. If you don't have the time, make Those rides, like the weekend ride, where you have the time or whatever day you have the most time available, where you're not working, add more time to those rides. Not intensity, not high intensity. So they're the things that, whether you're elite, whether you're a beginner, or whether you're in the middle, you don't want to add high intensity to each session. Extra to think that that's going to fast track you to be a better athlete, whether you're a runner, swimmer, triathlete or a bike rider, you need to just stick with the small percentage. And you've heard the 80, 20 rule, been bandied around many times, that 20% of your training should be really hard and the other 80% should be building your aerobic capacity. And these are the things I'm talking about with the level of intensity of each session.

And it really depends on who you're talking to. And the flip side of that coin, which only applies to a much smaller percentage of the athlete population of who we're talking to and who we know the audience to be. What you're talking, talking about applies to majority. But there's a minority of athletes who have been in the sport long enough and are up towards that more experienced end who do exactly what you say and spend the time, spend the years even building that base. And this is what we really push at Trivelo. And you push especially, it's one of your key coaching philosophies is doing this work. And suddenly two, three, four years down the track, so many of our athletes, and we would say a smaller percentage of athletes around can handle this kind of volume, can handle what you're talking about. Extra 2 hour, 3 hour, 4 hour sessions can go out on, on weekends and ride for six hours till the cows come home and recover well and be strong. And those are the type of athletes that need to do a little bit of the opposite of what you're saying. And they need to actually push the intensity more in their zone two sessions and push, push it up more in those high intensity sessions and do more top end VO2 max work and more. We have spoken to the guys in the labs that talk about this and the type of athlete that ends up getting tested in the lab are generally the ones that are at that top end. And we get comments that so many really good age group cyclists or triathletes come in and their fitness right up until that first threshold point is so good they can ride at that zone 2 intensity. Basically it seems like forever. And then once that Intensity gets up, they really struggle and the graph goes haywire. And that's a clear sign always ways that they need more intensity work in them at the top end. But also that almost indication of pushing those zone two rides, for example, where, let's say their zone two threshold range is 220 to 250 watts, you're saying for majority of people stay at 220 and do it for longer, which is definitely the case. And then once you, you've become this kind of almost mastery age group athlete where your fitness base is so good, then it's your job to push more towards 250 for shorter periods and really see if you can push those, those thresholds along that graph a little bit more, if that makes sense.

That's a great summary. But I'd also add that, you know, when you're doing your VO2 or threshold high intensity sessions, as compared to your intensity sessions with zone 2, you will still be better off keeping the zone 2 lower and trying to ride the high intensity session intensity section harder. So they're the things then you and I just spoke about that when we're talking about our own individual training. You know, for me, I need to ride some more VO2 sessions where I'm going to be stimulating my cardiac output way much further than it's been pushed before, because I can ride all day, all night with the base that I've got. And I need not to do more time at VO2 or Threshold.

Exactly. Yeah.

But higher effort, higher output for the time that's set. So If I'm allowing 18 minutes of VO2 in my hour training session, I'm not going to ride 36 minutes of VO2. I'm going to still ride 18 minutes, but I want to ride higher power. So that's going to help me really improve a lot quicker than if I tried to add more, but at a lower intensity. So you've got to compromise there. And, and you know, I'm still, I'm still saying if the fatigue of zone two when you ride at 250 watts is the example we gave instead of 220 is going to prevent you from riding 410 watts for one minute efforts instead of four 420, then I would be going 420 and 220 rather than 250.

For sure.

And 400.

Yeah, for sure. It's a good way to finish. We do throw a lot of caveats in there. Consistently throughout the conversation, it's always think about this, but watch out for this, you know, and, and maybe do this, but watch out for this. And, and that's just the nature of the conversation. That's just the nature of sports science. It is riddled with probably inconsistencies and we're so, we hope that throughout this conversation you can get a grasp of where you're at and the lessons that can apply to you. And we always want to give counter examples as to what could work or what might be a mistake because you might hear a bit of advice, but that' actually not designed for you. You know, you're more of a Y type athlete who should be doing that instead, instead of the X advice we just gave.

Yep. And I, I'd like to finish by saying to everybody, just because the books and the science journals and all the, the scientific experiments that have been done with, with you know, specific subjects that are really trying to find out information, that's what, that's what scientific experimenting is. That doesn't mean that that works for everybody. So you, I'm, I'm actually encouraging people. If you're trying to do threshold writing, you know, you've got the choice of we, we use the examples 5 by 5, 3 by 8, 2 by 10, 2 by 15, 2 by 20. Whatever length of time that's available that you can cope with, you should be trialing those things. And you might find that the 5 by 5 brings you up better than 2 by 20 or 3 by 15 or 4 by 10 or 4 by 8, whatever that. But try them all. Don't just say because the science journal has said 5x5 is the best bang for your buck. Well that's good for some part of the population. And all the scientists agree, the exercise physiologists agree that there, you know, I've heard countless and read countless books where they don't really know. They're saying generally this is the best session. Five by five beats three by eight. Let's do the five by fives. Well, that's true for a percentage of the people, but you may not be in that percentage. So don't just do that one session. Try the sessions in different phases of your training early on in the program. Maybe you're doing a 28 week program to an event trial the, the 15 minute efforts compared to the 5 minute efforts and see how your FTP improves or doesn't improve and see what works better for you. And it's no different to seeing what taper method works for you when you experiment with one campaign to an event compared to another campaign where you trial this and you actually perform better. So you're trying to find out what your type of physiology is best stimulated by. And, and so there is no right or wrong is what we're trying to say. We're trying to propose examples for you to understand that it's not like a rule book where if you follow this rule this will be the outcome because there's so many variations to each human being that one size doesn't fit all. So be very careful when you just see that that worked for Chris Froome or for Pocket character are. That might not necessarily work for you.

The variables do complicate things a lot because you might even try the 5x5 and then next block you try the 3x8. And 3x8 feels way better because you've just had a really good five by five training block and you're. And you're fitter, you know, or three by feels better because you're now more used to the training and so the frequency feels easier. So you do have to weigh up a lot of these factors consistently. And yeah, I think self experimentation is the hardest to get objectively right. But you're spot on. It's about not being constrained by potential pieces of advice of this is the best way to do things compared to this way.

Yep. I think we could keep talking about the variations as long as the cows come home. But I think the message is getting across that, you know, we talked about, I suppose, getting the most bang for your buck in your program. And there are in each individual session opportunities to be at different intensities. And that's the message that we're really trying to get across here. That intensity is just not related to high intensity training. It's related to every single session. And if you can understand where you sit in that intensity so that you can actually fulfill the requirements of your program day in, day out, then you will get to the line in great detail shape.

That's a great way to finish. This has been a long one. As always, we love talking about this stuff and we end up dissecting and discussing it till the cows come home. As you said, dad. But that is it for this episode. Thanks as always for listening and we'll see you next time.

It.