December 3, 2025 • 49 mins
OVERVIEW
"How long is this going to take?!" Everyone wants to know how long it takes for the training you do today to result in performance improvements you can see and feel on the road or trail. To find out, we called upon Tim Cusick, an elite coach and one of the data gurus behind TrainingPeaks WKO product. Together, Coach Adam Pulford and Tim explain how training stress leads to physiological strain, which causes fatigue and then adaptation. In this episode they look specifically at how quickly aerobic training results in measurable improvements in VO2 max, along with improvements in neuromuscular and metabolic processes.
Topics Covered In This Episode:
- Stress vs. Strain
- Two responses to training
- Neural vs metabolic vs cardiovascular adaptations to training
- Time to adaptation for aerobic system
- How VO2 max increases from Zone 2 training
- Why Time-Crunched Cyclists need some intensity during base training
- Cadence workouts during base training
Resources
- Tim at Basecamp: https://www.joinbasecamp.com/tim-cusick
- Tim on IG https://www.instagram.com/tim.cusick_coach/
- Stress vs Strain: Difference Between Stress and Strain - GeeksforGeeks https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/physics/difference-between-stress-and-strain/
Guest Bio:
Tim Cusick is a world-class cycling coach, a leader in data analytics for endurance sports, an educator, and an innovative business leader. Tim works with Olympians, world champions, and more, including Amber Neben and Rebecca Rusch. As a data analytics leader, Tim is an acknowledged expert in the field for endurance athletes. He is the TrainingPeaks WKO product leader,
codeveloper of WKO5, and Instructor: Advanced Training with Data. As an educator, Tim has presented at USA Cycling summits, TrainingPeaks Endurance Summits, TrainingPeaks University, and more. Tim is also the founder of BaseCamp, which is driven by Tim’s philosophy of bringing together the science of data and the art of coaching. His values-based approach focusing on shared vision and team building allows for the construction of dynamic and purposeful organization development.
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
GET FREE TRAINING CONTENT
Join our weekly newsletter
CONNECT WITH CTS
Website: trainright.com
Instagram: @cts_trainright
Twitter: @trainright
Facebook: @CTSAthlete
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:06):
From the team at CTS, this is the Time Crunch
Cyclist Podcast, our showdedicated to answering your
training questions and providingactionable advice to help you
improve your performance, evenif you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPolford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches who makeup the team at CTS.
(00:27):
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
other coaches, and experts inthe field to provide you with
the practical ways to get themost out of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now, on to our show.
(01:15):
He's an educator, thoughtleader, and analytics guru at
WKO5.
And he's got a few worldchampionship titles as well.
Tim Cusick.
Tim, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01 (01:27):
Good to see you again, Adam.
Thanks for having me back on.
SPEAKER_00 (01:30):
Yeah, it's it's been it's been a minute since you've
been on uh the podcast, butyou've been on several times
before.
And you know, for our listenerswho may have missed those
episodes, uh first of all, shameon them.
Uh, but perhaps they arefirst-time listeners.
So um we'll give them a pass.
But could you tell us a bit moreabout yourself uh for those who
(01:50):
have missed the episodes in thepast?
SPEAKER_01 (01:52):
Sure.
Uh I've been coaching for over20 years.
As you stated, I've I'vedefinitely had the luxury of
working with some pretty eliteathletes, uh, have captured some
national and worldchampionships, guided some
athletes to the Olympics, uhkind of lived the coaching dream
uh to some degree.
So I've always had the pleasureand the luxury of doing that.
(02:14):
I also, on the other side, I'mthe training Peach WKO product
leader.
I have had the pleasure of uhbeing a giant nerd and digging
into a lot of data in the worldand endurance data, data
analytics really is actually mytrue background and and
specialty.
So to be able to blend those twotogether has been uh made for
(02:37):
some an exciting coachingcareer.
SPEAKER_00 (02:40):
This is true.
And you know, I gotta tip my hatto Tim and uh the folks at WKO5
because uh they've beeninstrumental in helping me as a
coach uh personally and a lot ofmy colleagues understand uh
complicated matters when itcomes to data analytics.
So uh Sheppo, Tim.
Um But at the start, uh, youknow, I provided some simple but
(03:03):
big and potentially complicatedquestions in the opening of this
podcast.
So these questions come from afew listeners, uh Jonathan and
David in particular, who wrotein uh with their curiosities.
And I'll admit I've takencourses in college that last a
semester on these topics.
But the answers, you know, wecan deliver them and they can be
a little bit complicated.
(03:24):
But do you think that we will beable to answer all of those in
20 to 25 minutes today, Tim?
SPEAKER_01 (03:29):
No.
There's the based on the listthat I saw, we're probably gonna
need a couple of episodes to beable to dig into it with some
quality response.
SPEAKER_00 (03:38):
Yes, yes, I agree with that.
So for you, our listeners, strapon your fun physiology hats over
the coming weeks because this isthe start of a four-part
mini-series I've entitled TheTime Course to Adaptation for
Endurance Training andPerformance.
And my head of marketing willprobably hate that title, so
we'll see what he actually comesup with.
Uh for now, let's dive into thefirst part where we'll look at
(04:02):
the time course of adaptation toaerobic endurance training.
But of course, if anyone knowsTim, we always have some caveats
and disclaimers before we getgoing.
Uh Tim, what do you want to tellour listeners before we answer
these things in particular?
SPEAKER_01 (04:17):
It's always great to start with the caveats.
Thanks for labeling me for that.
I'll forever be known as thecaveat dude.
Great.
It's true.
Real quick, right?
There's three here becausethere's a complexity we're going
to discuss.
And we're talking about humanperformance, which is complex.
Uh, caveat number one, there isvariance.
(04:37):
As human beings, we have somesimilarities, but we have a lot
of difference.
As we talk about timeadaptation, uh, load management,
and things like that.
There is some uniqueness, andthat could be genetic.
Uh, muscle fiber makeup has alot to do with that.
There's uh cardiovascularcapacity.
We vary as humans.
(04:58):
We're gonna talk in these inthis podcast series.
Really, we're gonna target thebell curve.
Probably 50 to 70 of 70, 75% ofus fit within that bell curve,
so this will be relevant.
But sure, there are peopleoutside of that where it might
be quicker, might be slower,might be different.
The second thing, we havevariance.
(05:19):
The second one, we havevariables.
There are a lot of things thatimpact training that are not
specifically training related,and they introduce variables.
Ones we commonly talk about lifestress, sleep, nutrition.
Like the answer might not be thesame for everybody because
you're dealing with a differentset of variables.
(05:39):
Again, we're gonna target thebell curve.
We're gonna target kind of thecommon performing athlete here
that resides within that bellcurve.
So you might be outside of thatdue to some life extremes or
those variables themselves, butwe're gonna talk about that bell
curve.
And three, and probably one ofthe most nuanced elements, and
(05:59):
in podcasts, sometimes it's hardto hit all the nuance.
When we start thinking about theresponse to exercise stimuli,
training load, and time toadaptation, we have to
understand in all adaptation andall response to training,
there's what's known as a law ofdiminishing returns.
So let's say you're born with acertain amount of capability.
(06:23):
So totally undevelopedcapability is zero, and totally
developed is 100%.
When you start training, andthat's time, right?
The first day you're training isday one, and if you train year
over year over year, uh youbegin to build training
maturity.
The curve is a reverse curve,meaning if you're untrained and
(06:45):
have never trained and yousuddenly start training, you
will see gains faster early.
Your capability will improvefaster early.
But the more you train overtime, we'll see a diminishing
return to the exercise stimuli.
The response simply gets harderto get.
(07:24):
So they might hear a point andbe like, wow, that doesn't seem
to apply to me.
That possibly there might beother reasons, be law of
diminishing returns.
So again, we're gonna target thebell curve.
You know, think about athleteswith a certain amount of
athletic maturity.
So basically, when it comes toanswering most of these
(07:45):
questions, we're gonna throw thefastball right down the middle
and understand that you might beon the fringes or outside of
that, but that'll save us a lotof time in saying it depends.
There are a lot of variables andhaving to discuss every nuance
in the answers.
SPEAKER_00 (08:03):
This is so true.
Uh, we will probably still sayit depends every once in a
while, but uh, those are goodcaveats, uh Tim.
I super appreciate that.
Uh another thing that I reallyappreciate is when is uh when we
were collaborating on thisoutline, uh Tim pointed out that
we should probably talk about uhthe impact of training to help
us understand how thisadaptation actually takes place.
(08:25):
And and what that means is likehow it hits to the body.
And that in turn shapes aresponse to the like our
physical selves of what werespond with.
So, Tim, I want to start with afew terms and I'm just gonna
like steal them from physics.
I'm gonna dumb them down here alittle bit too, but uh then you
can go wild on training impacts.
Or are you good with that?
(08:46):
Sure.
Okay.
So uh stress and strain.
People are probably veryfamiliar with uh training stress
score, talking about the stressof the ride and things like
this.
Strain, I think, is getting alittle bit more popularized
thanks to Dr.
Steven Siler uh and kind of hisevolution of promoting some of
these concepts as well.
But when it comes to like thescience of physics, we look at
(09:08):
stress and strain, and those arepretty established aspects.
And I'd say in general, stress,we can talk about an external uh
like kind of total amount offorce that's being imposed on
the body, is just like all thethings coming in.
But strain is the amount of likedistortion experienced to the
body from its original shape ofsome kind.
(09:29):
So it's like you can imposetraining stress, but how does it
how does it uh distort a body,you know, anaerobically or
aerobically, or uh some otheraspect or strength training?
It tears down the the musclefiber itself.
And so we'll leave it there interms of some generalities.
But when when you and I talkabout training impact scores uh
(09:52):
with our athletes, um can youstart to uh help us understand
what a training impact is andhow you use that to determine
training and talk aboutadaptation for your athletes?
SPEAKER_01 (10:04):
Sure.
So we think about training.
Training is this concept that ahuman being, uh, your body, you
uh you want to be and achievehomeostasis.
So we train, we're actuallybreaking that homeostasis, and
we're hoping that that breakingis a purposeful breaking and our
body reachieves a more higher,better, capable homeostasis,
(10:26):
right?
So we're always trying to comeback to some norm, but we want
to grow that norm into more andmore capable.
We do that through what's knownas the stress, strain, and
adaptation model.
Stress is external load verywell, exactly as you said.
It stresses in a quantitativemeasurement we put on the
(10:46):
system.
In this case, you, the humanbeing, is the system.
So stress is a quantitativeload.
Let's say you and I, Adam, climba hill, we're riding bikes
together, we climb a hill, weboth go 300 watts.
That is a quantitativemeasurement.
The exact force we are doing,we're applying for, you know, uh
the exact watts we'regenerating, is the same, 300
(11:08):
watts, quantitative.
Now, when we apply stress tothat system, us, the system
undergoes strain.
We respond to that stress.
Um, the strain response is thatdistortion, that's a great way
to think about it.
But the strain is a directresponse to the stress in
(11:30):
relationship to our capabilityor fitness, that you know, where
we're at in the performingmodel.
So, again, if you go back, youand I climbing the hill at 300
watts, our stress is exactly thesame.
I'm probably hurting a whole lotmore than you are.
My heart rate is higher, I'mmoving higher uh stroke volume
(11:52):
of blood, I have a higher uptakeuh intake of oxygen, I'm using
more fuel, and I'm justgenerally a lot less happier
than you are.
So stress results in strain.
Strain becomes really where wesee a very quantitative impact
of stress having an impact onthat system.
Strain results in adaptation.
(12:14):
That's what that distortiondoes, particularly uh when
applied over time, load, andrhythm that gets us, changes our
body, readapts, and reachievesthat more higher uh improved
homeostasis.
So stress results in strain,leads to adaptation, is the
(12:34):
model we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00 (12:36):
Yeah, bingo.
And I think uh super importantto for everyone to realize that
is strain just can't happen withwithout that stress, right?
Correct.
And on this podcast, I you knowthe general form is uh stress
plus rest equals adaptation.
We'll get into the rest formingthat adaptation here soon.
Um but I will say if if Timsprints, though, my strain goes
(12:56):
up, even though I'm very happyclimbing hills all day long.
So let the record show.
SPEAKER_01 (13:01):
Got it.
Excellent explanation.
SPEAKER_00 (13:05):
So when we were talking, uh we also were
discussing how there'sessentially two responses to the
training itself.
Could you explain what those tworesponses are and why should we
care about them?
SPEAKER_01 (13:19):
I think this will really help the listeners as a
whole when we start because wetend to ask that.
Like you had listeners ask you,time to adaptation, right?
And basically we're saying, Iwant to get faster, faster.
That's what we really want.
We want to know how long we canexpect to happen before we start
questioning our life decisions.
When we think about that, wehave to understand that when we
(13:41):
introduce exercise stimuli, whenwe exercise, when we do a
workout, there isn't oneresponse, just one response to
consider.
What well, I'm getting fitter.
When can I really see it?
There's actually two responsesthat occur.
And this is very well explainedby the banister impulse response
model, which everybody canGoogle and spend a little time
reading that.
(14:02):
And the concept of this uh ofthe banister model is that you
have these two responses.
The first one is fatigue.
If I've been laying on the couchfor a year and suddenly I get up
today and I'm like, I'm gonna doa four-hour ride, and gee, I'm
gonna be fitter tomorrow, and Igo and I do my four-hour ride
and I try to ride tomorrow, I'mnot feeling any fitter.
(14:24):
I got news for you.
I'm at what I'm feeling is theacute response to exercise
stimuli, which is fatigue.
When fatigue stimuli response,when we track that response,
it's acute because it tends tolast, let's call it five to ten
days, probably seven to ten daysmore of a specific window.
(14:45):
So if we do that, if I do thatfour hours, I'm gonna feel it
somewhere.
And I might not feel it, feel itlike when I'm just walking
upstairs or something, but mybody is feeling it.
It's under the fatigue load inthat acute window.
So that's one response.
The second response is yes, I amgetting fitter.
(15:06):
So my fitness has increased, butthe time relationship to that
response is really three toeight weeks, with probably five
to six weeks being the overallsweet spot.
Your genetics, your currentfitness have impact on that.
But you could say five to sixweeks for that response.
(15:27):
And that really is going todrive the complexity of all the
tracking of this time toadaptation, because a coach or a
self-coached athlete, those aretwo distinctively different
responses that have arelationship.
But the struggle of managingthose two is the time response
is different.
(15:47):
So you're trying to figure out away to get optimized adaptation
in a system that's requiring youto measure an acute response
that's lasting seven to ten daysagainst or along with a chronic
response, which you're not goingto really get for about five to
(16:09):
six weeks in that sweet spot,anywhere from three to eight
weeks.
So managing those two makespredicting time to adaptation
complex and complicated, becausereally well-balanced
relationship of those two willspeed up time to adaptation.
(16:30):
Under stimuli, maybe of thosetwo will result maybe in faster
adaptation, but under-adapting.
Overload of those two mightactually slow down adaptation
and also lead tounder-adaptation.
So there's a complexrelationship between the two,
which the listener has toconsider both sides of that as
(16:53):
they head down the how fast canI adapt journey.
SPEAKER_00 (16:58):
That's exactly it.
And and in layman's terms, it'sbasically you do training, you
get tired, but delayedgratification is if you get
tired enough and rest enoughwith some good dosage and tips
from Tim here, you'll get fit,which makes you uh more
resilient, and then you can domore training and get more of
(17:18):
what you want in those forms ofadaptation.
So um when it comes to kind ofthose those adaptations that
we're talking about, we're gonnastart with aerobic, which it's
kind of the the long one, right?
Like the long form adaptation.
We'll get into the time coursesof that too.
But what's there's also a fastkind of like adaptation?
(17:40):
Um, and that's on the neuralside of things, and there's also
some metabolic things, okay.
Um but Tim, we always talk aboutlike base training and and do
your zone too and and all thiskind of stuff.
But would you say that if youdouble down on anything or focus
on something first, would it bethe neural and the metabolic
(18:02):
stuff first?
The quick responding, okay.
If I do this training, I get aquick response, and therefore
that's great because I'm I'mseeing it right away, or should
you focus on the aerobic, longerterm stuff?
SPEAKER_01 (18:15):
Poof.
I'm gonna go right to itdepends.
I've got to use it early.
Um understand the concept you'retalking, normal and metabolic uh
control adapts faster.
Like that's some of the fastestresponse when we start to think
about overschedule and time.
Peripheral structures will adaptslower.
So you're always kind of dealingwith what is adapting and what
(18:37):
is the time constraint of yourdemand.
So in endurance training, one ofthe reasons we call it base or
foundation is if you have allthe times to do it right, like
if you have the ability, youreally the answer would be it's
both.
And understand that as I go downthe journey of fitness,
metabolic and neural adaptationswill happen first because it's
(18:59):
just the way your body's wired.
Then as you get more into kindof the diminishing returns time
frame, you're talking aboutperipheral structures and gains
happening.
They're slowing, but they'restill building on top of each
other.
The point being is technicallythe best answer is they're
actually additive to maximumcapability.
(19:22):
So you need to put youroverarching training in some
predictable order of things toget the best benefit, but also a
certain amount of patience isrequired because you see some
early benefits, noral benefitsactually are the fastest,
fastest of them.
And then you kind of tend to gothrough a little time delay, and
(19:43):
then you start slowly adding inmore of the peripheral benefits.
SPEAKER_00 (19:47):
Yeah.
I mean, it's a perfect answer.
And I think, you know, kind ofcueing that up, and this is why
I liked him, is because hedoesn't view like he understands
reality, which is there's a lotof things happening all the
time, especially in physiology,right?
And so when someone says, Oh,I'm just doing base training,
I'm just doing zone two, I'mdoing and this is what I want,
(20:08):
it's like, yeah, but you're alsodoing a lot more than that.
Okay.
But when you organize trainingin in a way, it's almost like,
well, just kind of pick one andand have some sort of like logic
and structure to it, becausethat is generally better than
you know, blindfolded, throwinga dart at the wall and saying,
uh, VO2 today, uh, strengthtoday, uh, that kind of stuff.
(20:30):
So it from a periodizationstandpoint, tutor bump uh all
the way to now, uh, we generallytalk about base and foundation
phase.
Uh, let's start there withaerobic adaptation, and let's
talk about what are some of theadaptations that we expect if we
do foundation or base trainingproperly.
(20:51):
So I know there's probably gonnabe a pre-comment uh from you,
Tim, on this, uh, but but let'sstart to get into the uh time
course of adaptations here.
SPEAKER_01 (21:03):
Well, let's put one overarching concept on the
ground, like, and this is anoversimplification of science,
but it will help people setproper expectations.
Your aerobic system is takes themost work to respond, so it's
the hardest to build, but yetits decay rate is the fastest,
(21:24):
so it's the quickest to lose.
Um, that's kind of one of theironies of indoor sports, that
all kind of makes our life alittle bit harder.
So when you think about thisidea that we're moving into
aerobic training, it's theslowest to respond and the
fastest to be lost.
Your anaerobic, let's just putthat as one big above threshold
(21:46):
it, you know, kind of concept.
Um, that is the fastest to buildand actually the slowest to
decay.
So, and again, I'moversimplifying a lot of things
here, but when we think abouttraining and we think about
where we're investing our timeschedule, we tend, I say invest
a time schedule, you think howmany hours a week?
I think how many weeks a year.
(22:08):
Like, how are we gonna lay allthat out?
The development of your aerobicfoundation, why it's really
become is important because thatis one that takes the most
amount of time.
You fall behind on that, youdon't get it done in the right
time, it's hard to make up.
And then, two, it's actually uhwe tend to think about aerobic
and anaerobic being side byside.
(22:30):
It's not, you have to turn thatmental model upside down.
Your anaerobic system is builton top of your aerobic system,
and your aerobic system hasother peripheral benefits which
are important to invest in.
The other part of that is, likeI said earlier, um, your aerobic
system is uh, you know, it's anadaptive curve.
(22:51):
The rule of diminishing uhresults really plays in here.
You have to rebuild it everyyear to some degree, but it's
it's we tend to see the smallestresults in that area as athletes
that are mature.
We've been training three ormore years, four or more years
in a structured format.
We're doing a lot of work for asmall gain over time there, but
(23:14):
you can't skip that step oreverything moves backwards.
Um, I think you tend to see twoto three phases of growth here
aerobically.
Again, we're going down, we'rethrowing the fastball down the
middle and playing the bellcurve here.
Three to six weeks, you oftensee a first round of gain.
And I think it's great we saythree to six weeks, because the
(23:36):
first one or two weeks, youoften, and maybe even three
weeks, you'll see if you starttraining, you know, your winter
foundation time all fired up,December one's coming, November
one, whatever your kickoff date,you're in your new year.
Those first two weeks, youactually performance will
decline.
Like you might not be becauseyou're just the short-term
response to exercise stimuli isfatigue, right?
(23:56):
So you're in that short-termresponse.
Fitness needs a lot of time tocatch up.
By three to six weeks, you'rereally seeing positive impact.
And there's a lot of thingsgoing on because you we tend to
think about foundation training,uh-based training as
cardiovascular.
We have this aerobic concept,and there's a lot of
(24:16):
cardiovascular fitness, but youhave metabolic things going on,
you have neuromuscular itemsgoing on.
Um, but the end of the day, weprobably are talking key drivers
in three to six weeks is themitochondrial response is really
important in that time frame.
That stimuli of actuallybringing more oxygen to the
mitochondrial is triggering theresponse in density and size and
(24:41):
enzyme response, and really uhbeginning to trigger um the
aerobic response, theimprovement in aerobic capacity
that we're driving.
Um, to support that, we haveincreased capillary densities
occurring at the same time.
We are, you know, actually, itmight be better to say it this
way to support that, our ourstroke volume begins to go up.
(25:05):
Our heart, we tend to think ourheart gets bigger, right?
It's the Grinch that stoleChristmas when we foundation
trained.
And technically that's true, butit's probably better to think
about it as your heart gets alittle more elastic.
It's able to pull in a littlemore blood uh volume, and
therefore each heartbeat ispumping more oxygen around the
system.
Typically, that's a plasma gainthat's going on.
(25:28):
So your stroke volume goes up.
That helps and drive theimprovement in capillary
density, um, which then isdriving more oxygen to the
mitochondrial level, which isgetting that cycle of
improvement really rolling.
Metabolically, we're seeingincreased fatty acid oxidation.
You know, we're seeing we'reutilizing fats as fuel better.
(25:48):
We're just turning that sideback on or improving that side.
That's a metabolic efficiencygain that you know is nice, and
you start to see in that threeto six weeks.
Um, and you're just having somesimple coordination impact, some
neural, like neuromuscular, howyour brain's taught you're back
on the train, or you're ridingyour bike in steady, even ways,
(26:09):
you're doing some cadence work,and your body's just saying,
Hey, here's you know how Irecruit motor units, here's the
brain signal talking to mymuscles better.
You often see that first wave inthe first three to six weeks.
SPEAKER_00 (26:22):
Yep.
Yeah, that's a great summationof everything.
And I and I think it'simportant, and that's why you
know we call it foundationaltraining or base training.
It is it is setting thestructure to build you know the
higher, bigger, taller, strongeruh pyramid of performance, the
anaerobic side of things, right?
And that's where we work.
(26:42):
But uh as you said before, is aswe put in you know another layer
of foundational work or uhaerobic foundation, is you you
kind of need to re-establish itevery year.
I would say you need to throwlike chip it out a little bit,
throw in some more rebar andsome concrete, strengthen it
back up, and then we can keep onbuilding.
(27:03):
And that first three to sixweeks, I mean, it is it's super
important.
It it kind of sucks because,like you said, you it's like
you're tired at first and you'relike, oh god, but then you start
rolling, right?
And once you start to see someof those benefits come, it's not
right away, but month and a halfor so.
Now we're like, oh yeah, this isgood.
And so I I I kind of I thinkabout the base training or the
(27:26):
foundation or base training kindof in two phases, base one, base
two.
That second kind of like basetwo phase, I technically am
using a mix of intensities atthis phase, but um we I I start
to see VO2 actually uh start totidy.
Yes, right.
Um and we're still like zonetwo, zone three here.
(27:47):
But when I tell people this, uhpeople are like, wait, what?
How can my VO2 max increase?
And I if I haven't done VO2intervals or zone five
intervals, Tim, uh, how doesthat work?
SPEAKER_01 (27:59):
Great point to be brought up because there is a
lot of confusion.
And I think this is finallystarting to get hurt enough that
maybe we're we're getting aheadof this curveball.
When you if you think about thefirst three to six weeks of
everything we just talked about,once that's established and that
system is now moving forward,where you're getting your gains
and your base or foundationtraining six to 12 weeks is your
(28:19):
VO2 max starts moving.
Like if you had regular accessto testing and stuff like that,
you will start to see change.
You know, assuming, by the way,all this assumes that you're
take doing a quality trainingprogram and everything is
generally going and you're beingconsistent.
Just having the plan doesn'tmatter.
You have to do the work.
Um, you'll see VO2 max increase.
(28:40):
I'll I'll make this asscientifically complex as
possible.
Zone two riding.
Riding under uh a moderate, lowto moderate aerobic stress
improves your VO2 max.
As a matter of fact, it's one ofthe best ways to improve your
VO2 max.
I actually, when you think aboutwhat's the greatest limiter to
(29:02):
VO2 max, medically, I guesswould be the right way to say
it.
Your stroke volume itself isusually what's the greatest
limiter.
Um base training, zone twotraining, pump stroke volume is
one of the best improvements youwill get.
That alone will be lifting yourVO2 max.
Now that we're stroke pumpstroking more, you know, we have
(29:26):
more oxygen rotating around thesystem, we then have a series
of, you know, we think aboutcardiovascular capability, that
is the intake of oxygen.
Like, am I breathing?
Am I bringing oxygen into thesystem?
More blood means more oxygenrolling around the system, but
there's also an uptake element.
What's happening at themolecular level?
(29:47):
That's the role of mitochondriaand some of the things that we
mentioned earlier.
That relationship between uptakeand intake is getting more
efficient.
So your stroke volume is goingup, you're moving more oxygen
around.
The system, and then in week sixto twelve, and all these things
are going on at once.
We're just talking about maybe alittle more focus of one versus
(30:09):
the other.
Um, now you're improving theefficiency of the uptake of that
oxygen at that well, at thatlevel.
So you've built that firstcouple of weeks of work, you're
three to six weeks in, thevolume, the stroke volume's
coming up, fatty acid oxidation,or your fat utilization is
improving, you have mitochondriagrowing and they're getting more
(30:30):
dense and you're having more,and capillaries are getting
density is going up.
Now we're improving efficiencyon top of that because we're
continuing to strain thatsystem.
Because if you go back to thatdual response model, you're
overcoming the short-termfatigue now.
Remember, let's say we said fiveto six weeks is the sweet spot
to true adaptation to the you'restarting to adapt to the load
(30:53):
you started four, five, sixweeks ago.
Now that you're adapting andfitness is coming up, the more
you know uh you can improve theefficiency.
I now have the fitness to dealwith that stimuli better.
Assuming you're progressing thestimuli, that means I'm
progressing my ability to dealwith that.
I'm improving efficiency indoing that.
(31:15):
That is driving the specificfitness improvement I want.
SPEAKER_00 (31:20):
Yes.
And and I think there I will saythat stick to the plan because
again, time course ofadaptation, we'd certainly need
time, time and zone, and volume.
And we'll speak to thetime-crunched athlete here uh
shortly about this kind ofvolume driver.
But that six to twelve weeks, Ido think is a pretty magic
(31:41):
window to keep pursuing, try tomaximize the volume as as best
you can to get those structuraladaptations in place.
Because once we start to dragthis out, if you if you drug out
just like pure zone twoendurance training into the uh
12 to 20 week sort of timephase, and you're a time
crunched athlete, I think thatthis is a no-go uh zone because
(32:06):
you'll you definitely start toplateau if it is just pure zone
two.
And you can correct me if I'mwrong or argue with me if you'd
like.
Um but one thing I did a podcasta while ago to because we had
some zone two questions and andwhatnot.
Actually, I what I did was Ijust took a you know, Joe Schmoe
example athlete on trainingpeaks, uh starting at zero CTL
(32:28):
or zero, you know, uh fitness.
And all I did was uh six toeight weeks, uh zone two, copy
and paste it and just built itout for 20 weeks to see where
that plateau by the numberswould occur.
And the the specific uh plateauhappened somewhere between 12
and 14 weeks, but the build ofCTL was very, very slow leading
(32:51):
up to that.
And so the point for atime-crunched athlete here is uh
building aerobic capacity withendurance training is very
effective.
But at some point, you need tochange your intensity, you need
to change your training becauseuh, even though it's very
important, like Tim said, uhprimary driver of increasing
stroke, uh stroke volume and uhincreasing VO2 max, at some
(33:15):
point you're gonna need tochange the stimuli to keep on
improving.
SPEAKER_01 (33:19):
Yeah, you know, you make a great point.
And just to add to this, so wethink about uh one of the things
you said that I really like, youbreak the idea of base training
down into some phases.
That's super important for tworeasons.
One, we have in periodizationmicro and macro cycles and all
types of ways of looking atblocks.
(33:39):
You need uh uh a couple weeks ofstimuli, then a little rest.
A couple of weeks of stimuli,then a little rest.
The build is a jagged line.
Even time-crunched athletes needa little rest in there.
And that's the concept ofsupercompensation.
You're kind of loading and thena short unload, then loading and
short unload.
And that's an important model.
(33:59):
And but everyone kind of againgets that.
We've learned the lesson ofstress pretty well.
The lesson we might not have isone of progression, which is the
principle that you're thephysiological principle that
you're talking about.
We only have so much in zonetwo, and we have time limits,
whether that's time crunched oryou maybe have six hours, 10
(34:20):
hours, 14 hours a week.
There's a point where we can'tprogress the stimuli anymore.
That point in foundation comespretty quickly.
I like the concept of, you know,you're somewhere in five to
eight weeks where it's like,wow, I need to, I've gotten
everything I've gotten out ofzone two that I'm not gonna get
much more.
I'm beginning to really seethose diminishing returns.
(34:42):
I need a new and improvedstimuli.
But then everybody goes to, oh,you mean I start doing anaerobic
work?
No.
Concepts like temp, when you'reriding tempo, you're still
aerobic.
Like we get confused about likeour LT1.
That's like endurance, right?
Your LT1 probably happens in formost of us, low tempo, maybe
high endurance, but most of usit's low tempo.
(35:03):
You can do tempo work and stillbe getting and driving aerobic
gains.
Um, you could be doing uh othertypes of neuromuscular
manipulation, other things inthere that you are getting.
So you can stay aerobic, addmoderate and occasional high
intensities, and continue tostimulate that aerobic response
(35:26):
and continue to build the thingsthat we associate with base
training while improving some ofthe other facets that are
important in performance.
You know, doing tempo helps yourneuromuscular fitness more,
builds fatigue resistance orendurance.
You might want to look at it.
So there's other benefits formoving along also.
(35:48):
In that six to 12 weeks, ifyou're consistent with the first
six, that is definitely whereyou tend to see some of the
bigger gains.
Like if you're testing everyfour weeks, you'll see them in
that window the most.
That's telling you, wow, the thethe train is rolling down the
track.
I need to keep adding somestimuli and keep that going in
(36:10):
this window.
SPEAKER_00 (36:11):
Yep.
Yep, completely agree.
And I think for our listeners,maybe they're shaping up their
annual plan or something likethis.
But you know, that base one, thefirst, you know, uh one to six
weeks.
I'm gonna be using just go rideyour bike.
But this is typically like 55 to75 percent of FTP.
Go ride your bike, and maybethere's some cadence intervals
in there where we're looking atyou know, working on both high
(36:34):
and low cadence and rate ofperceived effort, three to
five-ish.
Again, try not to overthink it,but go ride your bike in that
second like six to twelve weeks.
I'm just gonna open up the topend a little bit.
I'm gonna go 55 up to maybe 85%of FTP, right?
And so that's going up intotempo, but we're still
subthreshold.
(36:55):
And the RPE uh three to six.
So we're just nudging that up alittle bit.
And that that goes in line withwhat Tim said about the
progressive overload thathappens uh during the base
phase.
We just want to shift theintensity and keep on making
sure that we're improving theathlete.
And I don't know, exampleworkouts here, Tim.
I you know, personally I don'tprescribe zone two intervals,
(37:19):
but I have seen it and I knowcoaches who do it.
Um I don't I don't know if youdo or not, but what I do is I do
prescribe, and we've beentalking about some of the neural
adaptations and some cadenceintervals.
Could you maybe just share uhmaybe like a cadence workout
that would incorporate a mix ofzone two and three that you do
during a base one or two phase?
SPEAKER_01 (37:38):
Yeah, I'm very similar.
I don't like it's so funny, theindoor impact here, right?
We've gotten so used to seeinglittle blue box, and I can't do
a workout unless my little bluebox says go 142.5 watts.
That's a habit.
It's a great habit to break inthe first, you know, five, six
weeks of your base training.
Don't worry about the blue box.
(37:59):
Even if you're indoors, justjump on in whatever program
you're using and ride around,ride your time, and you know,
have a range and have a feeling.
Great time to dial in yourfeelings during that time frame.
And then as you move into thesix to 12, you begin to add some
structure.
There's where tempo, uniquetempo work, things like that
matter.
To answer your questionspecifically, I do a fair amount
(38:21):
of cadence work in that, in thein your base one, base two
phase.
Here's why.
I think what happens for us, wecall it neuromuscular
manipulation, I call itneuromuscular manipulation.
Because if you think about howwe make power, um, if we're
pedaling a bike, we know a wattis how fast times how hard we're
pedaling.
Um if we start at zero in a biggear, right?
(38:44):
We grind up and then we kind ofhit this sweet spot, then we
sort of lose control and power'scoming up, but torque is
actually going down as that'soccurring.
As our cadence comes up, torqueis dropping.
There's a very tight range thatif we don't work on enough
cadence work, we get efficientat making power only at a small
range of uh cadence.
(39:06):
And you said this and it wassuper smart.
It's like outside of that, whathappens when that's all we're
doing, we're making power in ourknown range.
When we go to an event andsuddenly we're climbing steep
hills or we're keeping up with agroup and we're forcing low gear
and some high gear and otherthings, we struggle to make
because we haven't worked onthat neuromuscular range or
(39:26):
versatility.
Neuromuscular manipulation, thereason you add cadence work is
to improve rate coding, improvethe efficiency of muscular
recruitment, but also broadenthe range that you're
comfortable making efficientpower at a more broad range,
because that will prepare youfor performance.
So I'll do it simple, like a lotof my cadence works.
(39:48):
We're doing five minutes highcadence, five minutes off.
Um, uh when it comes to highcadence, I tend to lead into
ramping better.
It helps neuromuscular coding,neural coding specifically, or
rate coding, the way your brainis sending the message.
Um, so I might do one minute at85, uh, one minute at 90, one
(40:10):
minute at 95, one minute.
So you're stepping the athleteup so their brain is absorbing
it better.
You know, you're you're you'rekind of drilling in the pattern
and the speed.
I also like to do a lot of hightorque training in that sense.
And we tend to say, well, ishigh torque training strength
training?
No.
Um, it's not enough resistanceto really call it strength
(40:33):
training, but you are improvingyour efficiency at torque level,
at applying torque.
You're again recruiting musclefiber different.
And actually, between highcadence and low cadence, you're
making a different biochemicalenvironment in your body.
When you high cadence work,depending, or when you low
cadence pedal, depending on yourpower, but assuming you're kind
of in tempo zone, you'reactually producing more lactate
(40:56):
than you are when you're fastcadence.
And that's a broad statementbecause there's a ton of nuance
to what I just said.
But that's also part of it.
You know, people don't thinkabout that concept that as you
engage more fastwitch fiber todo more torque work, you are uh
producing some lactate.
And to do that torque work inthis phase prepares the body for
(41:17):
more lactate uh response.
Let's just say the management oflactate later when we go harder.
So I'll often build in, and Ilike to do cadence work two to
four times a week.
I'll limit the high torque, youknow, the heavier load stuff
depending on the fatigue, but Iwant to do both.
And then I always get people whosay, Well, you're trying to make
my cadence higher.
(41:38):
And I always have this answer,no, but it might help you find
your real true natural cadence,and that might be a little
higher, usually is, to be honestwith you, but that's how I see
it.
SPEAKER_00 (41:50):
Yep, that's that's exactly it.
And I would say uh I pretty muchdo all of that, and I would say
I structure it more if theathlete is going to be inside
more often.
Yes.
Um, as I tend to see a lot of myathletes uh these days.
However, to make things evenmore simplified, here's what I
tell my athletes.
(42:11):
We want to make a strong chainfor your cadence, high and low,
and everything in in between.
And so I'm gonna train high andlow to make sure there's no weak
link in the chain so that whenwe do go bike racing, we don't
get the cramps, we don't getbogged down, we can bridge a gap
and things like this.
And we're gonna work on it inthe in the base phase.
Additionally, if people arelike, oh, I hate the trainer,
(42:33):
it's like, cool, go ride themountain bike.
Because you will naturally getthe highs and lows and high
torque and high cadence uh bysimply riding your mountain
bike.
And then I'll still give someintervals to make sure that
we're kind of shoring that up.
But that would be the the likethe dummies version, the
simplified version of uh gettingsome of this uh cadence work
(42:53):
done in in the base phase.
But I do think that especiallyinside, because of monotony and
and also the way people pedalinside.
I would say if you just sayendurance miles go, I don't
know, 75 to 85, 95, somethinglike that, people will stay in
that tight band versus dippingdown low, going up high.
And that's why I also manipulatethe cadence uh for somebody
(43:15):
who's riding inside quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01 (43:18):
Couldn't agree more.
I'm gonna steal your chain idea.
SPEAKER_00 (43:21):
Excellent.
Steal away.
I've stolen a lot of conceptsfrom Tim Cusick.
So um, so you know, we've beenpoking at zone two.
I just want to say a kind of ashort word on this, um, because
it's gotten pretty hyped, and Iand I've just texted to get some
of my frustrations out to Tim inthe past.
Um, when it w when zone two islike the the height of its hype,
(43:44):
it's coming down now, and I dothink that people are getting a
more balanced uh education aboutit.
Okay.
But Tim, how do things like thisget so hyped?
And and and hyped, meaning likepeople were just putting so much
emphasis on, oh, zone two, oh,do you want to learn how to go
to zone two?
Zone two is the best.
And meanwhile, I doing all thepodcasts, writing all the
(44:06):
things, it's like, no, it's notjust one intensity, man.
Like it's it's all theintensities.
Aerobic training is important,but it's not just zone two.
So how do things like get likethis get hyped?
And how can we be sure to siftthrough the bullshit of it all?
SPEAKER_01 (44:22):
Yeah, you know, and it's funny, and it's it is sift,
is exactly the right word.
Here's what happens, my opinion,everybody.
So just take it as my opinion.
Here's what I see in the worldof knowledge, of endurance
training.
Knowledge is not mastery.
We're in the age of information,knowledge is available in a lot
(44:43):
of different ways.
We go out on the internet and wefind knowledge, but mastery is
something different.
When we see what's on theinternet, we often have people
with really great ideas andconcepts.
But they present them in what Icall a reductionist format,
meaning they look veryspecifically.
Hey, there's a science studythat shows riding zone two uh is
(45:05):
has these improvements.
So suddenly we're like, wow, andwe reduce mentally, because as
we have all this informationfloating around and we're
searching for mastery, we wantto make it simpler to think
about.
We reduce our vision down tothat's the answer.
And then a couple of weeks laterwe hear about 8020, you know,
and it's like, oh, wait, thismakes totally sense to me.
(45:27):
And then that's the answer.
And then uh suddenly we hear areinvigorization of the
pyramidal training formats andmodalities.
Oh, that's the answer.
Here's my advice to everybodythere's quality knowledge out
there, and each one of thosesystems, which one of those
things we just mentioned, thosetraining modalities to give them
(45:48):
a name, all are highly effectivetools in a toolbox to train over
time.
You have to find out which theathlete responds to best, and
understand no one system getsthe athlete from untrained to
(46:09):
high performing.
It's a use of them all, in whichcase, time application, like
when in training you apply them,probably is the key.
And I think a versatile, thedevelopment of high-performing,
versatile athletes absolutelyrequire you to break the
reductionism model and applydifferent modalities if you're
(46:31):
going to want to optimize theirtraining.
Uh a whole bunch of reasons totalk about why stagnation,
adaptation, things like that.
But you need those differentmodalities to get the most out
of the athlete.
It's just what order you putthem in and apply them.
SPEAKER_00 (46:48):
Yeah, no, that that is absolutely it.
And I think, you know, in thatway, even as we try to uh throw
fastballs uh down the middle onpodcasts like this, there's
still conversations that can'tbe reduced down, which is why we
just need to talk a little bitlonger, kind of sort them out
(47:09):
and and help the athletes.
You know, everybody listeninghere who you know hasn't been in
the industry for 20 years uhworking with these uh, you know,
kind of complicated models ofsorts to try to get the results
is like we want to try todeliver the information to you
so that you're not confused.
(47:29):
Because I will say that kind ofshame on us in the industry for
just jumping on bandwagons andtrying to reduce things down and
sell something real quickbecause we have made it muddy in
the past.
SPEAKER_01 (47:41):
Yeah, and you know, what's good is I see now a
change in that it's not so muchpeople just have their idea and
they're promoting their idea,and it's hard to promote in
today's world and go on podcastsand stuff like that, and you
don't have enough time toexplain all the nuance, so you
tend to focus on your idea, andthat's what makes listeners at
times confused.
SPEAKER_00 (48:01):
Yes.
So we still got three moreepisodes, Tim.
So we're gonna try to makepeople uh less confused as they
listen to us uh more, but we'llleave it there for today.
Um so Tim, thank you for helpingto unravel some of these uh
bigger questions that our thatour listeners have.
And we got some really goodstuff coming up, including the
(48:24):
next uh podcast where we talkabout the adaptation to
threshold training.
So don't forget to come backnext week, folks, and uh listen
to more knowledge from Tim.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even more actionabletraining advice, head over to
trainwright.com backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
(48:48):
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast that'll help you take
your training to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
From the team at CTS, this is the Time Crunch
Cyclist Podcast, our showdedicated to answering your
training questions and providingactionable advice to help you
improve your performance, evenif you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPolford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches who makeup the team at CTS.
(00:27):
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
other coaches, and experts inthe field to provide you with
the practical ways to get themost out of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now, on to our show.
(01:15):
He's an educator, thoughtleader, and analytics guru at
WKO5.
And he's got a few worldchampionship titles as well.
Tim Cusick.
Tim, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01 (01:27):
Good to see you again, Adam.
Thanks for having me back on.
SPEAKER_00 (01:30):
Yeah, it's it's been it's been a minute since you've
been on uh the podcast, butyou've been on several times
before.
And you know, for our listenerswho may have missed those
episodes, uh first of all, shameon them.
Uh, but perhaps they arefirst-time listeners.
So um we'll give them a pass.
But could you tell us a bit moreabout yourself uh for those who
(01:50):
have missed the episodes in thepast?
SPEAKER_01 (01:52):
Sure.
Uh I've been coaching for over20 years.
As you stated, I've I'vedefinitely had the luxury of
working with some pretty eliteathletes, uh, have captured some
national and worldchampionships, guided some
athletes to the Olympics, uhkind of lived the coaching dream
uh to some degree.
So I've always had the pleasureand the luxury of doing that.
(02:14):
I also, on the other side, I'mthe training Peach WKO product
leader.
I have had the pleasure of uhbeing a giant nerd and digging
into a lot of data in the worldand endurance data, data
analytics really is actually mytrue background and and
specialty.
So to be able to blend those twotogether has been uh made for
(02:37):
some an exciting coachingcareer.
SPEAKER_00 (02:40):
This is true.
And you know, I gotta tip my hatto Tim and uh the folks at WKO5
because uh they've beeninstrumental in helping me as a
coach uh personally and a lot ofmy colleagues understand uh
complicated matters when itcomes to data analytics.
So uh Sheppo, Tim.
Um But at the start, uh, youknow, I provided some simple but
(03:03):
big and potentially complicatedquestions in the opening of this
podcast.
So these questions come from afew listeners, uh Jonathan and
David in particular, who wrotein uh with their curiosities.
And I'll admit I've takencourses in college that last a
semester on these topics.
But the answers, you know, wecan deliver them and they can be
a little bit complicated.
(03:24):
But do you think that we will beable to answer all of those in
20 to 25 minutes today, Tim?
SPEAKER_01 (03:29):
No.
There's the based on the listthat I saw, we're probably gonna
need a couple of episodes to beable to dig into it with some
quality response.
SPEAKER_00 (03:38):
Yes, yes, I agree with that.
So for you, our listeners, strapon your fun physiology hats over
the coming weeks because this isthe start of a four-part
mini-series I've entitled TheTime Course to Adaptation for
Endurance Training andPerformance.
And my head of marketing willprobably hate that title, so
we'll see what he actually comesup with.
Uh for now, let's dive into thefirst part where we'll look at
(04:02):
the time course of adaptation toaerobic endurance training.
But of course, if anyone knowsTim, we always have some caveats
and disclaimers before we getgoing.
Uh Tim, what do you want to tellour listeners before we answer
these things in particular?
SPEAKER_01 (04:17):
It's always great to start with the caveats.
Thanks for labeling me for that.
I'll forever be known as thecaveat dude.
Great.
It's true.
Real quick, right?
There's three here becausethere's a complexity we're going
to discuss.
And we're talking about humanperformance, which is complex.
Uh, caveat number one, there isvariance.
(04:37):
As human beings, we have somesimilarities, but we have a lot
of difference.
As we talk about timeadaptation, uh, load management,
and things like that.
There is some uniqueness, andthat could be genetic.
Uh, muscle fiber makeup has alot to do with that.
There's uh cardiovascularcapacity.
We vary as humans.
(04:58):
We're gonna talk in these inthis podcast series.
Really, we're gonna target thebell curve.
Probably 50 to 70 of 70, 75% ofus fit within that bell curve,
so this will be relevant.
But sure, there are peopleoutside of that where it might
be quicker, might be slower,might be different.
The second thing, we havevariance.
(05:19):
The second one, we havevariables.
There are a lot of things thatimpact training that are not
specifically training related,and they introduce variables.
Ones we commonly talk about lifestress, sleep, nutrition.
Like the answer might not be thesame for everybody because
you're dealing with a differentset of variables.
(05:39):
Again, we're gonna target thebell curve.
We're gonna target kind of thecommon performing athlete here
that resides within that bellcurve.
So you might be outside of thatdue to some life extremes or
those variables themselves, butwe're gonna talk about that bell
curve.
And three, and probably one ofthe most nuanced elements, and
(05:59):
in podcasts, sometimes it's hardto hit all the nuance.
When we start thinking about theresponse to exercise stimuli,
training load, and time toadaptation, we have to
understand in all adaptation andall response to training,
there's what's known as a law ofdiminishing returns.
So let's say you're born with acertain amount of capability.
(06:23):
So totally undevelopedcapability is zero, and totally
developed is 100%.
When you start training, andthat's time, right?
The first day you're training isday one, and if you train year
over year over year, uh youbegin to build training
maturity.
The curve is a reverse curve,meaning if you're untrained and
(06:45):
have never trained and yousuddenly start training, you
will see gains faster early.
Your capability will improvefaster early.
But the more you train overtime, we'll see a diminishing
return to the exercise stimuli.
The response simply gets harderto get.
(07:24):
So they might hear a point andbe like, wow, that doesn't seem
to apply to me.
That possibly there might beother reasons, be law of
diminishing returns.
So again, we're gonna target thebell curve.
You know, think about athleteswith a certain amount of
athletic maturity.
So basically, when it comes toanswering most of these
(07:45):
questions, we're gonna throw thefastball right down the middle
and understand that you might beon the fringes or outside of
that, but that'll save us a lotof time in saying it depends.
There are a lot of variables andhaving to discuss every nuance
in the answers.
SPEAKER_00 (08:03):
This is so true.
Uh, we will probably still sayit depends every once in a
while, but uh, those are goodcaveats, uh Tim.
I super appreciate that.
Uh another thing that I reallyappreciate is when is uh when we
were collaborating on thisoutline, uh Tim pointed out that
we should probably talk about uhthe impact of training to help
us understand how thisadaptation actually takes place.
(08:25):
And and what that means is likehow it hits to the body.
And that in turn shapes aresponse to the like our
physical selves of what werespond with.
So, Tim, I want to start with afew terms and I'm just gonna
like steal them from physics.
I'm gonna dumb them down here alittle bit too, but uh then you
can go wild on training impacts.
Or are you good with that?
(08:46):
Sure.
Okay.
So uh stress and strain.
People are probably veryfamiliar with uh training stress
score, talking about the stressof the ride and things like
this.
Strain, I think, is getting alittle bit more popularized
thanks to Dr.
Steven Siler uh and kind of hisevolution of promoting some of
these concepts as well.
But when it comes to like thescience of physics, we look at
(09:08):
stress and strain, and those arepretty established aspects.
And I'd say in general, stress,we can talk about an external uh
like kind of total amount offorce that's being imposed on
the body, is just like all thethings coming in.
But strain is the amount of likedistortion experienced to the
body from its original shape ofsome kind.
(09:29):
So it's like you can imposetraining stress, but how does it
how does it uh distort a body,you know, anaerobically or
aerobically, or uh some otheraspect or strength training?
It tears down the the musclefiber itself.
And so we'll leave it there interms of some generalities.
But when when you and I talkabout training impact scores uh
(09:52):
with our athletes, um can youstart to uh help us understand
what a training impact is andhow you use that to determine
training and talk aboutadaptation for your athletes?
SPEAKER_01 (10:04):
Sure.
So we think about training.
Training is this concept that ahuman being, uh, your body, you
uh you want to be and achievehomeostasis.
So we train, we're actuallybreaking that homeostasis, and
we're hoping that that breakingis a purposeful breaking and our
body reachieves a more higher,better, capable homeostasis,
(10:26):
right?
So we're always trying to comeback to some norm, but we want
to grow that norm into more andmore capable.
We do that through what's knownas the stress, strain, and
adaptation model.
Stress is external load verywell, exactly as you said.
It stresses in a quantitativemeasurement we put on the
(10:46):
system.
In this case, you, the humanbeing, is the system.
So stress is a quantitativeload.
Let's say you and I, Adam, climba hill, we're riding bikes
together, we climb a hill, weboth go 300 watts.
That is a quantitativemeasurement.
The exact force we are doing,we're applying for, you know, uh
the exact watts we'regenerating, is the same, 300
(11:08):
watts, quantitative.
Now, when we apply stress tothat system, us, the system
undergoes strain.
We respond to that stress.
Um, the strain response is thatdistortion, that's a great way
to think about it.
But the strain is a directresponse to the stress in
(11:30):
relationship to our capabilityor fitness, that you know, where
we're at in the performingmodel.
So, again, if you go back, youand I climbing the hill at 300
watts, our stress is exactly thesame.
I'm probably hurting a whole lotmore than you are.
My heart rate is higher, I'mmoving higher uh stroke volume
(11:52):
of blood, I have a higher uptakeuh intake of oxygen, I'm using
more fuel, and I'm justgenerally a lot less happier
than you are.
So stress results in strain.
Strain becomes really where wesee a very quantitative impact
of stress having an impact onthat system.
Strain results in adaptation.
(12:14):
That's what that distortiondoes, particularly uh when
applied over time, load, andrhythm that gets us, changes our
body, readapts, and reachievesthat more higher uh improved
homeostasis.
So stress results in strain,leads to adaptation, is the
(12:34):
model we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00 (12:36):
Yeah, bingo.
And I think uh super importantto for everyone to realize that
is strain just can't happen withwithout that stress, right?
Correct.
And on this podcast, I you knowthe general form is uh stress
plus rest equals adaptation.
We'll get into the rest formingthat adaptation here soon.
Um but I will say if if Timsprints, though, my strain goes
(12:56):
up, even though I'm very happyclimbing hills all day long.
So let the record show.
SPEAKER_01 (13:01):
Got it.
Excellent explanation.
SPEAKER_00 (13:05):
So when we were talking, uh we also were
discussing how there'sessentially two responses to the
training itself.
Could you explain what those tworesponses are and why should we
care about them?
SPEAKER_01 (13:19):
I think this will really help the listeners as a
whole when we start because wetend to ask that.
Like you had listeners ask you,time to adaptation, right?
And basically we're saying, Iwant to get faster, faster.
That's what we really want.
We want to know how long we canexpect to happen before we start
questioning our life decisions.
When we think about that, wehave to understand that when we
(13:41):
introduce exercise stimuli, whenwe exercise, when we do a
workout, there isn't oneresponse, just one response to
consider.
What well, I'm getting fitter.
When can I really see it?
There's actually two responsesthat occur.
And this is very well explainedby the banister impulse response
model, which everybody canGoogle and spend a little time
reading that.
(14:02):
And the concept of this uh ofthe banister model is that you
have these two responses.
The first one is fatigue.
If I've been laying on the couchfor a year and suddenly I get up
today and I'm like, I'm gonna doa four-hour ride, and gee, I'm
gonna be fitter tomorrow, and Igo and I do my four-hour ride
and I try to ride tomorrow, I'mnot feeling any fitter.
(14:24):
I got news for you.
I'm at what I'm feeling is theacute response to exercise
stimuli, which is fatigue.
When fatigue stimuli response,when we track that response,
it's acute because it tends tolast, let's call it five to ten
days, probably seven to ten daysmore of a specific window.
(14:45):
So if we do that, if I do thatfour hours, I'm gonna feel it
somewhere.
And I might not feel it, feel itlike when I'm just walking
upstairs or something, but mybody is feeling it.
It's under the fatigue load inthat acute window.
So that's one response.
The second response is yes, I amgetting fitter.
(15:06):
So my fitness has increased, butthe time relationship to that
response is really three toeight weeks, with probably five
to six weeks being the overallsweet spot.
Your genetics, your currentfitness have impact on that.
But you could say five to sixweeks for that response.
(15:27):
And that really is going todrive the complexity of all the
tracking of this time toadaptation, because a coach or a
self-coached athlete, those aretwo distinctively different
responses that have arelationship.
But the struggle of managingthose two is the time response
is different.
(15:47):
So you're trying to figure out away to get optimized adaptation
in a system that's requiring youto measure an acute response
that's lasting seven to ten daysagainst or along with a chronic
response, which you're not goingto really get for about five to
(16:09):
six weeks in that sweet spot,anywhere from three to eight
weeks.
So managing those two makespredicting time to adaptation
complex and complicated, becausereally well-balanced
relationship of those two willspeed up time to adaptation.
(16:30):
Under stimuli, maybe of thosetwo will result maybe in faster
adaptation, but under-adapting.
Overload of those two mightactually slow down adaptation
and also lead tounder-adaptation.
So there's a complexrelationship between the two,
which the listener has toconsider both sides of that as
(16:53):
they head down the how fast canI adapt journey.
SPEAKER_00 (16:58):
That's exactly it.
And and in layman's terms, it'sbasically you do training, you
get tired, but delayedgratification is if you get
tired enough and rest enoughwith some good dosage and tips
from Tim here, you'll get fit,which makes you uh more
resilient, and then you can domore training and get more of
(17:18):
what you want in those forms ofadaptation.
So um when it comes to kind ofthose those adaptations that
we're talking about, we're gonnastart with aerobic, which it's
kind of the the long one, right?
Like the long form adaptation.
We'll get into the time coursesof that too.
But what's there's also a fastkind of like adaptation?
(17:40):
Um, and that's on the neuralside of things, and there's also
some metabolic things, okay.
Um but Tim, we always talk aboutlike base training and and do
your zone too and and all thiskind of stuff.
But would you say that if youdouble down on anything or focus
on something first, would it bethe neural and the metabolic
(18:02):
stuff first?
The quick responding, okay.
If I do this training, I get aquick response, and therefore
that's great because I'm I'mseeing it right away, or should
you focus on the aerobic, longerterm stuff?
SPEAKER_01 (18:15):
Poof.
I'm gonna go right to itdepends.
I've got to use it early.
Um understand the concept you'retalking, normal and metabolic uh
control adapts faster.
Like that's some of the fastestresponse when we start to think
about overschedule and time.
Peripheral structures will adaptslower.
So you're always kind of dealingwith what is adapting and what
(18:37):
is the time constraint of yourdemand.
So in endurance training, one ofthe reasons we call it base or
foundation is if you have allthe times to do it right, like
if you have the ability, youreally the answer would be it's
both.
And understand that as I go downthe journey of fitness,
metabolic and neural adaptationswill happen first because it's
(18:59):
just the way your body's wired.
Then as you get more into kindof the diminishing returns time
frame, you're talking aboutperipheral structures and gains
happening.
They're slowing, but they'restill building on top of each
other.
The point being is technicallythe best answer is they're
actually additive to maximumcapability.
(19:22):
So you need to put youroverarching training in some
predictable order of things toget the best benefit, but also a
certain amount of patience isrequired because you see some
early benefits, noral benefitsactually are the fastest,
fastest of them.
And then you kind of tend to gothrough a little time delay, and
(19:43):
then you start slowly adding inmore of the peripheral benefits.
SPEAKER_00 (19:47):
Yeah.
I mean, it's a perfect answer.
And I think, you know, kind ofcueing that up, and this is why
I liked him, is because hedoesn't view like he understands
reality, which is there's a lotof things happening all the
time, especially in physiology,right?
And so when someone says, Oh,I'm just doing base training,
I'm just doing zone two, I'mdoing and this is what I want,
(20:08):
it's like, yeah, but you're alsodoing a lot more than that.
Okay.
But when you organize trainingin in a way, it's almost like,
well, just kind of pick one andand have some sort of like logic
and structure to it, becausethat is generally better than
you know, blindfolded, throwinga dart at the wall and saying,
uh, VO2 today, uh, strengthtoday, uh, that kind of stuff.
(20:30):
So it from a periodizationstandpoint, tutor bump uh all
the way to now, uh, we generallytalk about base and foundation
phase.
Uh, let's start there withaerobic adaptation, and let's
talk about what are some of theadaptations that we expect if we
do foundation or base trainingproperly.
(20:51):
So I know there's probably gonnabe a pre-comment uh from you,
Tim, on this, uh, but but let'sstart to get into the uh time
course of adaptations here.
SPEAKER_01 (21:03):
Well, let's put one overarching concept on the
ground, like, and this is anoversimplification of science,
but it will help people setproper expectations.
Your aerobic system is takes themost work to respond, so it's
the hardest to build, but yetits decay rate is the fastest,
(21:24):
so it's the quickest to lose.
Um, that's kind of one of theironies of indoor sports, that
all kind of makes our life alittle bit harder.
So when you think about thisidea that we're moving into
aerobic training, it's theslowest to respond and the
fastest to be lost.
Your anaerobic, let's just putthat as one big above threshold
(21:46):
it, you know, kind of concept.
Um, that is the fastest to buildand actually the slowest to
decay.
So, and again, I'moversimplifying a lot of things
here, but when we think abouttraining and we think about
where we're investing our timeschedule, we tend, I say invest
a time schedule, you think howmany hours a week?
I think how many weeks a year.
(22:08):
Like, how are we gonna lay allthat out?
The development of your aerobicfoundation, why it's really
become is important because thatis one that takes the most
amount of time.
You fall behind on that, youdon't get it done in the right
time, it's hard to make up.
And then, two, it's actually uhwe tend to think about aerobic
and anaerobic being side byside.
(22:30):
It's not, you have to turn thatmental model upside down.
Your anaerobic system is builton top of your aerobic system,
and your aerobic system hasother peripheral benefits which
are important to invest in.
The other part of that is, likeI said earlier, um, your aerobic
system is uh, you know, it's anadaptive curve.
(22:51):
The rule of diminishing uhresults really plays in here.
You have to rebuild it everyyear to some degree, but it's
it's we tend to see the smallestresults in that area as athletes
that are mature.
We've been training three ormore years, four or more years
in a structured format.
We're doing a lot of work for asmall gain over time there, but
(23:14):
you can't skip that step oreverything moves backwards.
Um, I think you tend to see twoto three phases of growth here
aerobically.
Again, we're going down, we'rethrowing the fastball down the
middle and playing the bellcurve here.
Three to six weeks, you oftensee a first round of gain.
And I think it's great we saythree to six weeks, because the
(23:36):
first one or two weeks, youoften, and maybe even three
weeks, you'll see if you starttraining, you know, your winter
foundation time all fired up,December one's coming, November
one, whatever your kickoff date,you're in your new year.
Those first two weeks, youactually performance will
decline.
Like you might not be becauseyou're just the short-term
response to exercise stimuli isfatigue, right?
(23:56):
So you're in that short-termresponse.
Fitness needs a lot of time tocatch up.
By three to six weeks, you'rereally seeing positive impact.
And there's a lot of thingsgoing on because you we tend to
think about foundation training,uh-based training as
cardiovascular.
We have this aerobic concept,and there's a lot of
(24:16):
cardiovascular fitness, but youhave metabolic things going on,
you have neuromuscular itemsgoing on.
Um, but the end of the day, weprobably are talking key drivers
in three to six weeks is themitochondrial response is really
important in that time frame.
That stimuli of actuallybringing more oxygen to the
mitochondrial is triggering theresponse in density and size and
(24:41):
enzyme response, and really uhbeginning to trigger um the
aerobic response, theimprovement in aerobic capacity
that we're driving.
Um, to support that, we haveincreased capillary densities
occurring at the same time.
We are, you know, actually, itmight be better to say it this
way to support that, our ourstroke volume begins to go up.
(25:05):
Our heart, we tend to think ourheart gets bigger, right?
It's the Grinch that stoleChristmas when we foundation
trained.
And technically that's true, butit's probably better to think
about it as your heart gets alittle more elastic.
It's able to pull in a littlemore blood uh volume, and
therefore each heartbeat ispumping more oxygen around the
system.
Typically, that's a plasma gainthat's going on.
(25:28):
So your stroke volume goes up.
That helps and drive theimprovement in capillary
density, um, which then isdriving more oxygen to the
mitochondrial level, which isgetting that cycle of
improvement really rolling.
Metabolically, we're seeingincreased fatty acid oxidation.
You know, we're seeing we'reutilizing fats as fuel better.
(25:48):
We're just turning that sideback on or improving that side.
That's a metabolic efficiencygain that you know is nice, and
you start to see in that threeto six weeks.
Um, and you're just having somesimple coordination impact, some
neural, like neuromuscular, howyour brain's taught you're back
on the train, or you're ridingyour bike in steady, even ways,
(26:09):
you're doing some cadence work,and your body's just saying,
Hey, here's you know how Irecruit motor units, here's the
brain signal talking to mymuscles better.
You often see that first wave inthe first three to six weeks.
SPEAKER_00 (26:22):
Yep.
Yeah, that's a great summationof everything.
And I and I think it'simportant, and that's why you
know we call it foundationaltraining or base training.
It is it is setting thestructure to build you know the
higher, bigger, taller, strongeruh pyramid of performance, the
anaerobic side of things, right?
And that's where we work.
(26:42):
But uh as you said before, is aswe put in you know another layer
of foundational work or uhaerobic foundation, is you you
kind of need to re-establish itevery year.
I would say you need to throwlike chip it out a little bit,
throw in some more rebar andsome concrete, strengthen it
back up, and then we can keep onbuilding.
(27:03):
And that first three to sixweeks, I mean, it is it's super
important.
It it kind of sucks because,like you said, you it's like
you're tired at first and you'relike, oh god, but then you start
rolling, right?
And once you start to see someof those benefits come, it's not
right away, but month and a halfor so.
Now we're like, oh yeah, this isgood.
And so I I I kind of I thinkabout the base training or the
(27:26):
foundation or base training kindof in two phases, base one, base
two.
That second kind of like basetwo phase, I technically am
using a mix of intensities atthis phase, but um we I I start
to see VO2 actually uh start totidy.
Yes, right.
Um and we're still like zonetwo, zone three here.
(27:47):
But when I tell people this, uhpeople are like, wait, what?
How can my VO2 max increase?
And I if I haven't done VO2intervals or zone five
intervals, Tim, uh, how doesthat work?
SPEAKER_01 (27:59):
Great point to be brought up because there is a
lot of confusion.
And I think this is finallystarting to get hurt enough that
maybe we're we're getting aheadof this curveball.
When you if you think about thefirst three to six weeks of
everything we just talked about,once that's established and that
system is now moving forward,where you're getting your gains
and your base or foundationtraining six to 12 weeks is your
(28:19):
VO2 max starts moving.
Like if you had regular accessto testing and stuff like that,
you will start to see change.
You know, assuming, by the way,all this assumes that you're
take doing a quality trainingprogram and everything is
generally going and you're beingconsistent.
Just having the plan doesn'tmatter.
You have to do the work.
Um, you'll see VO2 max increase.
(28:40):
I'll I'll make this asscientifically complex as
possible.
Zone two riding.
Riding under uh a moderate, lowto moderate aerobic stress
improves your VO2 max.
As a matter of fact, it's one ofthe best ways to improve your
VO2 max.
I actually, when you think aboutwhat's the greatest limiter to
(29:02):
VO2 max, medically, I guesswould be the right way to say
it.
Your stroke volume itself isusually what's the greatest
limiter.
Um base training, zone twotraining, pump stroke volume is
one of the best improvements youwill get.
That alone will be lifting yourVO2 max.
Now that we're stroke pumpstroking more, you know, we have
(29:26):
more oxygen rotating around thesystem, we then have a series
of, you know, we think aboutcardiovascular capability, that
is the intake of oxygen.
Like, am I breathing?
Am I bringing oxygen into thesystem?
More blood means more oxygenrolling around the system, but
there's also an uptake element.
What's happening at themolecular level?
(29:47):
That's the role of mitochondriaand some of the things that we
mentioned earlier.
That relationship between uptakeand intake is getting more
efficient.
So your stroke volume is goingup, you're moving more oxygen
around.
The system, and then in week sixto twelve, and all these things
are going on at once.
We're just talking about maybe alittle more focus of one versus
(30:09):
the other.
Um, now you're improving theefficiency of the uptake of that
oxygen at that well, at thatlevel.
So you've built that firstcouple of weeks of work, you're
three to six weeks in, thevolume, the stroke volume's
coming up, fatty acid oxidation,or your fat utilization is
improving, you have mitochondriagrowing and they're getting more
(30:30):
dense and you're having more,and capillaries are getting
density is going up.
Now we're improving efficiencyon top of that because we're
continuing to strain thatsystem.
Because if you go back to thatdual response model, you're
overcoming the short-termfatigue now.
Remember, let's say we said fiveto six weeks is the sweet spot
to true adaptation to the you'restarting to adapt to the load
(30:53):
you started four, five, sixweeks ago.
Now that you're adapting andfitness is coming up, the more
you know uh you can improve theefficiency.
I now have the fitness to dealwith that stimuli better.
Assuming you're progressing thestimuli, that means I'm
progressing my ability to dealwith that.
I'm improving efficiency indoing that.
(31:15):
That is driving the specificfitness improvement I want.
SPEAKER_00 (31:20):
Yes.
And and I think there I will saythat stick to the plan because
again, time course ofadaptation, we'd certainly need
time, time and zone, and volume.
And we'll speak to thetime-crunched athlete here uh
shortly about this kind ofvolume driver.
But that six to twelve weeks, Ido think is a pretty magic
(31:41):
window to keep pursuing, try tomaximize the volume as as best
you can to get those structuraladaptations in place.
Because once we start to dragthis out, if you if you drug out
just like pure zone twoendurance training into the uh
12 to 20 week sort of timephase, and you're a time
crunched athlete, I think thatthis is a no-go uh zone because
(32:06):
you'll you definitely start toplateau if it is just pure zone
two.
And you can correct me if I'mwrong or argue with me if you'd
like.
Um but one thing I did a podcasta while ago to because we had
some zone two questions and andwhatnot.
Actually, I what I did was Ijust took a you know, Joe Schmoe
example athlete on trainingpeaks, uh starting at zero CTL
(32:28):
or zero, you know, uh fitness.
And all I did was uh six toeight weeks, uh zone two, copy
and paste it and just built itout for 20 weeks to see where
that plateau by the numberswould occur.
And the the specific uh plateauhappened somewhere between 12
and 14 weeks, but the build ofCTL was very, very slow leading
(32:51):
up to that.
And so the point for atime-crunched athlete here is uh
building aerobic capacity withendurance training is very
effective.
But at some point, you need tochange your intensity, you need
to change your training becauseuh, even though it's very
important, like Tim said, uhprimary driver of increasing
stroke, uh stroke volume and uhincreasing VO2 max, at some
(33:15):
point you're gonna need tochange the stimuli to keep on
improving.
SPEAKER_01 (33:19):
Yeah, you know, you make a great point.
And just to add to this, so wethink about uh one of the things
you said that I really like, youbreak the idea of base training
down into some phases.
That's super important for tworeasons.
One, we have in periodizationmicro and macro cycles and all
types of ways of looking atblocks.
(33:39):
You need uh uh a couple weeks ofstimuli, then a little rest.
A couple of weeks of stimuli,then a little rest.
The build is a jagged line.
Even time-crunched athletes needa little rest in there.
And that's the concept ofsupercompensation.
You're kind of loading and thena short unload, then loading and
short unload.
And that's an important model.
(33:59):
And but everyone kind of againgets that.
We've learned the lesson ofstress pretty well.
The lesson we might not have isone of progression, which is the
principle that you're thephysiological principle that
you're talking about.
We only have so much in zonetwo, and we have time limits,
whether that's time crunched oryou maybe have six hours, 10
(34:20):
hours, 14 hours a week.
There's a point where we can'tprogress the stimuli anymore.
That point in foundation comespretty quickly.
I like the concept of, you know,you're somewhere in five to
eight weeks where it's like,wow, I need to, I've gotten
everything I've gotten out ofzone two that I'm not gonna get
much more.
I'm beginning to really seethose diminishing returns.
(34:42):
I need a new and improvedstimuli.
But then everybody goes to, oh,you mean I start doing anaerobic
work?
No.
Concepts like temp, when you'reriding tempo, you're still
aerobic.
Like we get confused about likeour LT1.
That's like endurance, right?
Your LT1 probably happens in formost of us, low tempo, maybe
high endurance, but most of usit's low tempo.
(35:03):
You can do tempo work and stillbe getting and driving aerobic
gains.
Um, you could be doing uh othertypes of neuromuscular
manipulation, other things inthere that you are getting.
So you can stay aerobic, addmoderate and occasional high
intensities, and continue tostimulate that aerobic response
(35:26):
and continue to build the thingsthat we associate with base
training while improving some ofthe other facets that are
important in performance.
You know, doing tempo helps yourneuromuscular fitness more,
builds fatigue resistance orendurance.
You might want to look at it.
So there's other benefits formoving along also.
(35:48):
In that six to 12 weeks, ifyou're consistent with the first
six, that is definitely whereyou tend to see some of the
bigger gains.
Like if you're testing everyfour weeks, you'll see them in
that window the most.
That's telling you, wow, the thethe train is rolling down the
track.
I need to keep adding somestimuli and keep that going in
(36:10):
this window.
SPEAKER_00 (36:11):
Yep.
Yep, completely agree.
And I think for our listeners,maybe they're shaping up their
annual plan or something likethis.
But you know, that base one, thefirst, you know, uh one to six
weeks.
I'm gonna be using just go rideyour bike.
But this is typically like 55 to75 percent of FTP.
Go ride your bike, and maybethere's some cadence intervals
in there where we're looking atyou know, working on both high
(36:34):
and low cadence and rate ofperceived effort, three to
five-ish.
Again, try not to overthink it,but go ride your bike in that
second like six to twelve weeks.
I'm just gonna open up the topend a little bit.
I'm gonna go 55 up to maybe 85%of FTP, right?
And so that's going up intotempo, but we're still
subthreshold.
(36:55):
And the RPE uh three to six.
So we're just nudging that up alittle bit.
And that that goes in line withwhat Tim said about the
progressive overload thathappens uh during the base
phase.
We just want to shift theintensity and keep on making
sure that we're improving theathlete.
And I don't know, exampleworkouts here, Tim.
I you know, personally I don'tprescribe zone two intervals,
(37:19):
but I have seen it and I knowcoaches who do it.
Um I don't I don't know if youdo or not, but what I do is I do
prescribe, and we've beentalking about some of the neural
adaptations and some cadenceintervals.
Could you maybe just share uhmaybe like a cadence workout
that would incorporate a mix ofzone two and three that you do
during a base one or two phase?
SPEAKER_01 (37:38):
Yeah, I'm very similar.
I don't like it's so funny, theindoor impact here, right?
We've gotten so used to seeinglittle blue box, and I can't do
a workout unless my little bluebox says go 142.5 watts.
That's a habit.
It's a great habit to break inthe first, you know, five, six
weeks of your base training.
Don't worry about the blue box.
(37:59):
Even if you're indoors, justjump on in whatever program
you're using and ride around,ride your time, and you know,
have a range and have a feeling.
Great time to dial in yourfeelings during that time frame.
And then as you move into thesix to 12, you begin to add some
structure.
There's where tempo, uniquetempo work, things like that
matter.
To answer your questionspecifically, I do a fair amount
(38:21):
of cadence work in that, in thein your base one, base two
phase.
Here's why.
I think what happens for us, wecall it neuromuscular
manipulation, I call itneuromuscular manipulation.
Because if you think about howwe make power, um, if we're
pedaling a bike, we know a wattis how fast times how hard we're
pedaling.
Um if we start at zero in a biggear, right?
(38:44):
We grind up and then we kind ofhit this sweet spot, then we
sort of lose control and power'scoming up, but torque is
actually going down as that'soccurring.
As our cadence comes up, torqueis dropping.
There's a very tight range thatif we don't work on enough
cadence work, we get efficientat making power only at a small
range of uh cadence.
(39:06):
And you said this and it wassuper smart.
It's like outside of that, whathappens when that's all we're
doing, we're making power in ourknown range.
When we go to an event andsuddenly we're climbing steep
hills or we're keeping up with agroup and we're forcing low gear
and some high gear and otherthings, we struggle to make
because we haven't worked onthat neuromuscular range or
(39:26):
versatility.
Neuromuscular manipulation, thereason you add cadence work is
to improve rate coding, improvethe efficiency of muscular
recruitment, but also broadenthe range that you're
comfortable making efficientpower at a more broad range,
because that will prepare youfor performance.
So I'll do it simple, like a lotof my cadence works.
(39:48):
We're doing five minutes highcadence, five minutes off.
Um, uh when it comes to highcadence, I tend to lead into
ramping better.
It helps neuromuscular coding,neural coding specifically, or
rate coding, the way your brainis sending the message.
Um, so I might do one minute at85, uh, one minute at 90, one
(40:10):
minute at 95, one minute.
So you're stepping the athleteup so their brain is absorbing
it better.
You know, you're you're you'rekind of drilling in the pattern
and the speed.
I also like to do a lot of hightorque training in that sense.
And we tend to say, well, ishigh torque training strength
training?
No.
Um, it's not enough resistanceto really call it strength
(40:33):
training, but you are improvingyour efficiency at torque level,
at applying torque.
You're again recruiting musclefiber different.
And actually, between highcadence and low cadence, you're
making a different biochemicalenvironment in your body.
When you high cadence work,depending, or when you low
cadence pedal, depending on yourpower, but assuming you're kind
of in tempo zone, you'reactually producing more lactate
(40:56):
than you are when you're fastcadence.
And that's a broad statementbecause there's a ton of nuance
to what I just said.
But that's also part of it.
You know, people don't thinkabout that concept that as you
engage more fastwitch fiber todo more torque work, you are uh
producing some lactate.
And to do that torque work inthis phase prepares the body for
(41:17):
more lactate uh response.
Let's just say the management oflactate later when we go harder.
So I'll often build in, and Ilike to do cadence work two to
four times a week.
I'll limit the high torque, youknow, the heavier load stuff
depending on the fatigue, but Iwant to do both.
And then I always get people whosay, Well, you're trying to make
my cadence higher.
(41:38):
And I always have this answer,no, but it might help you find
your real true natural cadence,and that might be a little
higher, usually is, to be honestwith you, but that's how I see
it.
SPEAKER_00 (41:50):
Yep, that's that's exactly it.
And I would say uh I pretty muchdo all of that, and I would say
I structure it more if theathlete is going to be inside
more often.
Yes.
Um, as I tend to see a lot of myathletes uh these days.
However, to make things evenmore simplified, here's what I
tell my athletes.
(42:11):
We want to make a strong chainfor your cadence, high and low,
and everything in in between.
And so I'm gonna train high andlow to make sure there's no weak
link in the chain so that whenwe do go bike racing, we don't
get the cramps, we don't getbogged down, we can bridge a gap
and things like this.
And we're gonna work on it inthe in the base phase.
Additionally, if people arelike, oh, I hate the trainer,
(42:33):
it's like, cool, go ride themountain bike.
Because you will naturally getthe highs and lows and high
torque and high cadence uh bysimply riding your mountain
bike.
And then I'll still give someintervals to make sure that
we're kind of shoring that up.
But that would be the the likethe dummies version, the
simplified version of uh gettingsome of this uh cadence work
(42:53):
done in in the base phase.
But I do think that especiallyinside, because of monotony and
and also the way people pedalinside.
I would say if you just sayendurance miles go, I don't
know, 75 to 85, 95, somethinglike that, people will stay in
that tight band versus dippingdown low, going up high.
And that's why I also manipulatethe cadence uh for somebody
(43:15):
who's riding inside quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01 (43:18):
Couldn't agree more.
I'm gonna steal your chain idea.
SPEAKER_00 (43:21):
Excellent.
Steal away.
I've stolen a lot of conceptsfrom Tim Cusick.
So um, so you know, we've beenpoking at zone two.
I just want to say a kind of ashort word on this, um, because
it's gotten pretty hyped, and Iand I've just texted to get some
of my frustrations out to Tim inthe past.
Um, when it w when zone two islike the the height of its hype,
(43:44):
it's coming down now, and I dothink that people are getting a
more balanced uh education aboutit.
Okay.
But Tim, how do things like thisget so hyped?
And and and hyped, meaning likepeople were just putting so much
emphasis on, oh, zone two, oh,do you want to learn how to go
to zone two?
Zone two is the best.
And meanwhile, I doing all thepodcasts, writing all the
(44:06):
things, it's like, no, it's notjust one intensity, man.
Like it's it's all theintensities.
Aerobic training is important,but it's not just zone two.
So how do things like get likethis get hyped?
And how can we be sure to siftthrough the bullshit of it all?
SPEAKER_01 (44:22):
Yeah, you know, and it's funny, and it's it is sift,
is exactly the right word.
Here's what happens, my opinion,everybody.
So just take it as my opinion.
Here's what I see in the worldof knowledge, of endurance
training.
Knowledge is not mastery.
We're in the age of information,knowledge is available in a lot
(44:43):
of different ways.
We go out on the internet and wefind knowledge, but mastery is
something different.
When we see what's on theinternet, we often have people
with really great ideas andconcepts.
But they present them in what Icall a reductionist format,
meaning they look veryspecifically.
Hey, there's a science studythat shows riding zone two uh is
(45:05):
has these improvements.
So suddenly we're like, wow, andwe reduce mentally, because as
we have all this informationfloating around and we're
searching for mastery, we wantto make it simpler to think
about.
We reduce our vision down tothat's the answer.
And then a couple of weeks laterwe hear about 8020, you know,
and it's like, oh, wait, thismakes totally sense to me.
(45:27):
And then that's the answer.
And then uh suddenly we hear areinvigorization of the
pyramidal training formats andmodalities.
Oh, that's the answer.
Here's my advice to everybodythere's quality knowledge out
there, and each one of thosesystems, which one of those
things we just mentioned, thosetraining modalities to give them
(45:48):
a name, all are highly effectivetools in a toolbox to train over
time.
You have to find out which theathlete responds to best, and
understand no one system getsthe athlete from untrained to
(46:09):
high performing.
It's a use of them all, in whichcase, time application, like
when in training you apply them,probably is the key.
And I think a versatile, thedevelopment of high-performing,
versatile athletes absolutelyrequire you to break the
reductionism model and applydifferent modalities if you're
(46:31):
going to want to optimize theirtraining.
Uh a whole bunch of reasons totalk about why stagnation,
adaptation, things like that.
But you need those differentmodalities to get the most out
of the athlete.
It's just what order you putthem in and apply them.
SPEAKER_00 (46:48):
Yeah, no, that that is absolutely it.
And I think, you know, in thatway, even as we try to uh throw
fastballs uh down the middle onpodcasts like this, there's
still conversations that can'tbe reduced down, which is why we
just need to talk a little bitlonger, kind of sort them out
(47:09):
and and help the athletes.
You know, everybody listeninghere who you know hasn't been in
the industry for 20 years uhworking with these uh, you know,
kind of complicated models ofsorts to try to get the results
is like we want to try todeliver the information to you
so that you're not confused.
(47:29):
Because I will say that kind ofshame on us in the industry for
just jumping on bandwagons andtrying to reduce things down and
sell something real quickbecause we have made it muddy in
the past.
SPEAKER_01 (47:41):
Yeah, and you know, what's good is I see now a
change in that it's not so muchpeople just have their idea and
they're promoting their idea,and it's hard to promote in
today's world and go on podcastsand stuff like that, and you
don't have enough time toexplain all the nuance, so you
tend to focus on your idea, andthat's what makes listeners at
times confused.
SPEAKER_00 (48:01):
Yes.
So we still got three moreepisodes, Tim.
So we're gonna try to makepeople uh less confused as they
listen to us uh more, but we'llleave it there for today.
Um so Tim, thank you for helpingto unravel some of these uh
bigger questions that our thatour listeners have.
And we got some really goodstuff coming up, including the
(48:24):
next uh podcast where we talkabout the adaptation to
threshold training.
So don't forget to come backnext week, folks, and uh listen
to more knowledge from Tim.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even more actionabletraining advice, head over to
trainwright.com backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
(48:48):
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast that'll help you take
your training to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.