Low Intensity Training

Charlie69

Hi all,

I started a training program with a coach a couple of weeks ago which requires me to cycle at low intensity (Zone 2 HR) pretty much all of the time.

He maintains you must train slower to get faster and is an advocate of the 80-20 method of endurance training which basically means 80% of training is done at very low intensity and 20% at moderate to high intensity.

My understanding of this method was that because training was done at low intensity it would allow for quick recovery and a higher volume of cycling but so far the volume of cycling has been very low, although it will apparently increase every week.

I'm finding the cycling at low intensity very difficult and very boring but I'm disciplined enough to stick with it if it results in improved performance so I suppose I'm wondering if any of you have experience of training in this way and if it was a success in the long term.

I had a vo2 max test done prior to starting on this program and my result was very good (73) so I must have been doing something right in my training up to now and I suppose I'm worried that I'm not doing enough at the moment and feel as if I'm losing fitness.

I'd love to hear from any boardsies with experience of this training method.

Cheers Charlie.

NiallBoo

I do a fair bit of low intensity stuff.

I do it all on the turbo and work my way through box-sets on the laptop, makes it pass by pretty quickly.

It's not something you'd do for love of cycling but you don't dread it and it does the job - don't think I could hack the boredom otherwise.

RayCun

this sounds like the Hadd training approach for distance runners - improve aerobic capacity as much as possible to support later harder training

http://www.fetcheveryone.com/article-view.php?id=434
http://www.angio.net/personal/run/hadd.pdf

diarmaidol

What are you training for ?

harringtonp

80-20 could sound right if the 80 is done at the right intensity and you can make time to do enough of it. "Low intensity" is a bit of a misnomer though, a lot of guys are cycle around in high Z1 or low Z2 when they see this and they are in no mans land training wise.

For proper low intensity training you should feel like you are working but without lactate build up or laboured breathing. I tend to do this at top end Z2 or sometimes even bottom end Z3 depending on the length of the session. They need to be along enough too, 30 mins of low intensity won't see you get too far, I'd aim for 2hrs minimum as much as possible.

fat bloke

I've been doing likewise for a couple of years under the instructions of a coach. Well maybe not low, but certainly medium intensity. It goes against a lot of the HIT (high intensity training) stuff that's all the rage at the mo. The idea is that to broaden your aerobic base. That's like living off your salary. It's sustainable. Once you go anaerobic you're on the credit card, it's short term and you're gonna pay for it!

At the end of the day whatever you practice, you get better at. So you can do lots of short high intensity stuff and increase your credit card limit / anaerobic capacity, not its better to increase your salary (aerobic base). The broader and deeper that base the more you can endure and delay the inevitable dipping in to the credit card debt.

I'm milking the analogy there but that's the thinking behind it anyway.

boege

A few years back my son was seeking to get out of the A3 category. Not so easy as he was racing against Dunbar et al at the time. He had just come out of Junior. He was mixing it up at the front but had not enough to go with the breaks (he is very light but a good climber).

He got tested at UL for lactate threshold and training advice. His figures showed good power but his lactate curve threhold curve was sub-optimal. In short he would go into lactate with modest levels of high intensity. The UL advice was to do lots of hours of low intensity training over the winter. He did over two months at 12-15 hours a week in Z2 keeping heart rate right down. Only in month three (January) did he lift the intensity and moved to a different (race) training regime (intervals, sprints, speedwork, etc).

In the first few races he was in top 15, including a 13th in the opening Lacey Cup. He got up to A2 in August, despite taking April and May off to study for college exams.

I noticed his performance improvement most at the Suir Valley three day race in early August. He was hanging onto the bunch each day which was unusual for a young a A3 rider. This requires endurance and recovery.

He came 7th in the National A3 champs that year. In the Charleville 2 day in early September he got in a break of 9 riders, three of whom were in the Irish junior team for the world champs two weeks later. The break put 2 minutes into the bunch in the following 50km. Had he not taken the break he would have made A1, no doubt.

Because of college commitments he has never been able to train with the same time commitment and has not been able to reach the same levels of performance.

I have no doubt that the low intensity training that winter was what gave him a platform on which he was able to develop.

harringtonp

Interesting, good read. When you say UL testing showed his lactate threshold as sub optimal does this means that it was a lower than normal percentage of his vo2 max level ?

boege wrote: »

A few years back my son was seeking to get out of the A3 category. Not so easy as he was racing against Dunbar et al at the time. He had just come out of Junior. He was mixing it up at the front but had not enough to go with the breaks (he is very light but a good climber).

He got tested at UL for lactate threshold and training advice. His figures showed good power but his lactate curve threhold curve was sub-optimal. In short he would go into lactate with modest levels of high intensity. The UL advice was to do lots of hours of low intensity training over the winter. He did over two months at 12-15 hours a week in Z2 keeping heart rate right down. Only in month three (January) did he lift the intensity and moved to a different (race) training regime (intervals, sprints, speedwork, etc).

In the first few races he was in top 15, including a 13th in the opening Lacey Cup. He got up to A2 in August, despite taking April and May off to study for college exams.

I noticed his performance improvement most at the Suir Valley three day race in early August. He was hanging onto the bunch each day which was unusual for a young a A3 rider. This requires endurance and recovery.

He came 7th in the National A3 champs that year. In the Charleville 2 day in early September he got in a break of 9 riders, three of whom were in the Irish junior team for the world champs two weeks later. The break put 2 minutes into the bunch in the following 50km. Had he not taken the break he would have made A1, no doubt.

Because of college commitments he has never been able to train with the same time commitment and has not been able to reach the same levels of performance.

I have no doubt that the low intensity training that winter was what gave him a platform on which he was able to develop.

68 lost souls

harringtonp wrote: »

Interesting, good read. When you say UL testing showed his lactate threshold as sub optimal does this means that it was a lower than normal percentage of his vo2 max level ?

I would imagine it is similar to the last vo2 test I had for running.

My peak is circa 200bpm and would expect a lactate threshold of circa 165 but my suboptimum threshold is 145 partly due to training too high an intensity. I was able to push on for a long time past my lactate threshold but if I shifted the curve of lactate build up I should be able to perform better for longer.

Since then I have been doing long runs exclusively at an average of 145 +-3 and included still some intervals training which can hit close to my limits for a short time or say 1 minute flat out 2 minutes recovery as I had a 55% recovery in 2 minutes and then go again. The aim of this is to shift the 145 to 165 but ultimately after a month of doing that training I knocked about a minute off my 5k pb while keeping the same heart rate zones.

Works the same on the bike as running

Charlie69

boege wrote: »

A few years back my son was seeking to get out of the A3 category. Not so easy as he was racing against Dunbar et al at the time. He had just come out of Junior. He was mixing it up at the front but had not enough to go with the breaks (he is very light but a good climber).

He got tested at UL for lactate threshold and training advice. His figures showed good power but his lactate curve threhold curve was sub-optimal. In short he would go into lactate with modest levels of high intensity. The UL advice was to do lots of hours of low intensity training over the winter. He did over two months at 12-15 hours a week in Z2 keeping heart rate right down. Only in month three (January) did he lift the intensity and moved to a different (race) training regime (intervals, sprints, speedwork, etc).

In the first few races he was in top 15, including a 13th in the opening Lacey Cup. He got up to A2 in August, despite taking April and May off to study for college exams.

I noticed his performance improvement most at the Suir Valley three day race in early August. He was hanging onto the bunch each day which was unusual for a young a A3 rider. This requires endurance and recovery.

He came 7th in the National A3 champs that year. In the Charleville 2 day in early September he got in a break of 9 riders, three of whom were in the Irish junior team for the world champs two weeks later. The break put 2 minutes into the bunch in the following 50km. Had he not taken the break he would have made A1, no doubt.

Because of college commitments he has never been able to train with the same time commitment and has not been able to reach the same levels of performance.

I have no doubt that the low intensity training that winter was what gave him a platform on which he was able to develop.

Thanks very much... that's very helpful, best of luck to your son in the future.

Thanks to all for the replies.

Charlie69

boege wrote: »

A few years back my son was seeking to get out of the A3 category. Not so easy as he was racing against Dunbar et al at the time. He had just come out of Junior. He was mixing it up at the front but had not enough to go with the breaks (he is very light but a good climber).

He got tested at UL for lactate threshold and training advice. His figures showed good power but his lactate curve threhold curve was sub-optimal. In short he would go into lactate with modest levels of high intensity. The UL advice was to do lots of hours of low intensity training over the winter. He did over two months at 12-15 hours a week in Z2 keeping heart rate right down. Only in month three (January) did he lift the intensity and moved to a different (race) training regime (intervals, sprints, speedwork, etc).

In the first few races he was in top 15, including a 13th in the opening Lacey Cup. He got up to A2 in August, despite taking April and May off to study for college exams.

I noticed his performance improvement most at the Suir Valley three day race in early August. He was hanging onto the bunch each day which was unusual for a young a A3 rider. This requires endurance and recovery.

He came 7th in the National A3 champs that year. In the Charleville 2 day in early September he got in a break of 9 riders, three of whom were in the Irish junior team for the world champs two weeks later. The break put 2 minutes into the bunch in the following 50km. Had he not taken the break he would have made A1, no doubt.

Because of college commitments he has never been able to train with the same time commitment and has not been able to reach the same levels of performance.

I have no doubt that the low intensity training that winter was what gave him a platform on which he was able to develop.

@ boege,

I was wondering if you know if your son's weight went up or down during the low intensity phase of his training??, the body will apparently use fat for fuel at zone 1-2 heart rates but I've actually gained weight so far but that's probably down to the drop in training volume.

NiallBoo

Charlie69 wrote: »

@ boege,

I was wondering if you know if your son's weight went up or down during the low intensity phase of his training??, the body will apparently use fat for fuel at zone 1-2 heart rates but I've actually gained weight so far but that's probably down to the drop in training volume.

But what are you eating?

Your body won't lose fat unless it has to.

boege

harringtonp wrote: »

Interesting, good read. When you say UL testing showed his lactate threshold as sub optimal does this means that it was a lower than normal percentage of his vo2 max level ?

They did not do VO2 measurements. They took blood samples and recorded blood lactate and different power levels.

I found the report - some extracts below:

The aim of using the above zones to train smarter is to shift the lactate curve to the right – where we won’t see the increase in your lactate until you have reached higher powers.


A further comment:

Although the sessions in the Extensive aerobic zone (long slow cycles) will feel slow this will be more beneficial to improving your aerobic base than going out and cycling hard. A better aerobic base will allow you be more efficient as well as allowing you to recover better between intervals when you come to those sessions. While it may seem frustrating initially, you should see rapid improvements over a short period of time with some specific training.

boege

Charlie69 wrote: »

@ boege,

I was wondering if you know if your son's weight went up or down during the low intensity phase of his training??, the body will apparently use fat for fuel at zone 1-2 heart rates but I've actually gained weight so far but that's probably down to the drop in training volume.

His race weight is about 56-57kg. Out of training he might go to 59kg. He eats like a horse and never really has to watch his diet. However, (and this is a big but) he is a food science student and eats very well. He takes of fruit and drinks lots of water. He would take rice and pasta over potatoes. He keeps the sugary foods to a minimum although his one weakness is savoury snacks. He does not drink or smoke (he was a chroinic asmathic as a child but I notice his asthma improves further as his fitness dials in)

He is well up now on the science as he is studying food science and health. He told me long slow cycles are fat burning. Higher intensity tends to just burn the carbs in your stomach.

boege

NiallBoo wrote: »

But what are you eating?

Your body won't lose fat unless it has to.

I lost over 5kg last spring. I did a lot of sportives in the spring but I had done similar amounts in previous years and not lost (much) weight. I lost weight this time by reducing my food intake. The exercise provided me with motivation.

I have managed to keep the weight off purely by changing my eating habits (cut out the sugars). I read that 1kg of body weight is is 7500 calories. That's a lot of training hours!

I do find that when I get back into training that the weight can often creep up over the first 3-4 weeks before it starts to fall off but you have to watch what you eat.

harringtonp

Great information provided on fat burning in:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057564401

Work a dream for me last summer