March 12, 2025 • 25 mins
OVERVIEW
How do you know if your threshold value or FTP or the training zones you calculated from your field test or lab test are correct? The best way is to conduct a Verification Workout! Coach Adam Pulford walks you through his go-to verification workout and reveals how it can tell you if your training zones are set too low, too high, or just right.
TOPICS COVERED
- How to tell if your threshold test was any good
- Coach tips on training zones
- The FTP Verification Workout
- What to look for from a verification workout
- How to adjust training zones if necessary
- Scaling the Verification Workout for beginners
- When in doubt, here's what to do
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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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance even if
you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now onto our show.
How do you ensure that yourtraining zones are set up
(00:51):
properly for your currentfitness thresholds and ability?
How do you know when you had agood field test and what are
some of the best pro tips outthere to make sure that your
zones and FTP are indeedaccurate?
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
(01:12):
Today we'll build off of lastweek's discussion, where I went
over some common field testingprocedures and how to use them
to establish FTP and thresholdheart rate.
If you missed that one, be sureto go back and listen to it.
This episode will explain howto take that information and
customize it to your currentphysiology and get you training
right.
I'll answer all of thesequestions and more today, but
(01:33):
first let me recap one thingField test pacing.
I went over general pacingguidelines in last week's
episode, but the crucial part ismaking sure that you don't blow
up or finish too strong on yourfield test.
In other words, you want anevenly paced hard effort to
(01:55):
achieve your best and highestaverage power, heart rate and
effort in these field tests,like the 20-minute test
developed by Andy Coggin, or thetwo-by-eight time trial field
test developed by ChrisCarmichael and the team at CTS,
or some of those power durationtesting procedures that we do in
model-based approaches.
(02:16):
If you do a ramp test, pacingisn't as important, but it's
kind of baked into the testitself.
It's both a pro and a con.
Again, I cover all of this lastweek and much more so be sure
to listen to that if you haven'talready.
But here's a couple kind ofjuicy pro tips, if you will,
(02:36):
that I didn't cover in detaillast week, but it applies today
when it comes to ensuring thatyou had a good field test.
So a couple examples of maybewhen you didn't have a good
field test.
So a couple examples of maybewhen you didn't have a good
field test is probably a goodway to describe knowing when you
had a good one or not.
So first one if your powerspiked up hard at the very front
end and then fell off on theback end of the effort, no
(03:00):
matter how long that duration is, but just kind of like this
implosion and the power justdrastically goes down and you
blew up, simply do the testagain when you're fresh and you
evenly pace for the given effort.
Okay, now if you started alittle lighter and you finished
super strong in that final, youknow, minute or two with like a
(03:21):
big power spike up at the veryend, minute or two with like a
big power spike up at the veryend, simply do the test again
when you're fresh and, yep, youwant to pace more evenly
throughout.
Pacing is key here.
Okay, you should start prettymuch any field test at that nine
to 10 out of 10 and finish at a10 out of 10.
(03:42):
If 10 is a max effort, right,that's the scale that I use,
scale of one to 10, one beingsuper light, 10 being max effort
.
Now for sprints in anythingless than a minute, which you
know in most field testing, youwon't encounter too much.
But if you do power profiletesting or power duration
testing in model-basedapproaches, you'll have some
(04:02):
sprints like 10, 20 and 60second efforts.
So if it's less than a minute,there's not much pacing.
That goes on.
Simply go full tilt, full gas,don't worry about pacing.
But for the longer powerdurations, like the 20 minutes,
the eight minutes and even maybeeven a three minute, there's
there's pacing to it.
Get good at pacing and you'llget good at testing.
(04:23):
Then you'll get good results.
Now let's assume I drilled thatinto your head enough and you
paced well over the duration.
You gave a max effort.
It's time to calculate yourthresholds and set up your
training zones.
Okay, I went into some prettygood detail about this and how
(04:47):
the goal of really any goodfield test out there is to get
you a threshold power and athreshold heart rate that you
can use and apply to really anymethod out there.
So in setting up your trainingzones you use that FTP and
threshold heart rate from thecycling field test.
You plug it into the trainingzone calculator on training
peaks or whatever platformyou're using, and so long as the
(05:10):
platform even things like Wahooand Zwift and intervals to ICU.
You know if, if they're callingfor some sort of threshold to
generate zones, use FTP, useyour highest average heart rate
from the 20-minute test, use 93%of the percentage of the
highest average heart rate fromthe CTS test.
(05:31):
Again, all those little detailswere all last week.
But you want to use thosethresholds, plug it in,
calculate and voila, you havetraining zones.
Here's a couple of pro tips onyour training zones for power
round your zones to the nearestfive.
Why?
Because, as I've said in thispodcast before, human physiology
(05:54):
is not as precise or accurateas the devices that we're using
to measure it, ie power meters.
So what I tend to find is, whenI round off to the nearest five
, it's five and zero at the end.
So 286 would go to 290, forexample, and 311 would go to 310
(06:15):
.
I tend to find that myself, aswell as my athletes, have an
easier time remembering theirtraining zones when I round to
that nearest five.
It's just much easier toremember.
And the goal really of of, uh,the training that I prescribe
and deploy to my athletes is toget them to look at that title
of the workout and get familiarwith their training zones and
(06:39):
look at, say like a three by 10threshold and 90 minute total
ride time, say like a three by10 threshold and 90 minute total
ride time.
What I want them to do is beable to know their zone for
their threshold zones over time,cause it's not going to change
once we get it established,especially like over the course
of an eight week trainingblockers or something like that.
You get comfortable with it,you remember it, you go out, you
(07:01):
do it, boom, super easy, supereffective.
Now with heart rate zones it's alittle different.
You want to keep those prettywhen you calculate them.
You don't want to round off onthat heart rate.
It's a little bit tighter onthat.
So plug those in, calculatethem.
Good to go.
Most on the upper end for theheart rate zones, most will just
(07:22):
automatically put it at 255.
What I would do is I'd look atthe maximum heart rate that
you've achieved over the past 90days or maybe a year and I
would just put my max heart ratein for that upper end there,
because 250, I mean no one'sgoing to be hitting 255 and be
around to talk about itafterwards.
So for the heart rate zonesdon't don't need a roundup, but
(07:45):
for the max heart rate.
You can just put that a littlebit more accurate to yourself
and then you have good, accurateand also realistically
deployable and memorable zoneswhen you're out there training.
So hope that helps on the protip on zones.
Now let's talk about ensuringthat the training zones that you
(08:06):
get from your field test areactually realistic and doable.
We want to make sure thatthey're achievable with your
current fitness, your currentphysiology, and you know the
best way I can describe this isI use something called a
verification workout, orsometimes verification workouts.
Okay, so multiple workouts tokind of suss this out.
(08:28):
Now, if you were to give melike just one workout to ensure
that the field test and thenumbers and the training zones
are set accurately, I would tellyou that the key workout I use
is a four by 10 minutes atthreshold, and the reason I use
(08:50):
a workout like this is it's it'stesting zone four and it's
testing the aerobic glycolyticenergy system.
More on that in a minute.
But if we, if we can suss outany issues on that system which
is the system that we use themost for training, racing,
riding and all things bikes ifwe can verify that everything
(09:13):
else takes care of itself.
All things bikes.
If we can verify that,everything else takes care of
itself.
Okay, so my workout is warm upand then get into four by 10
minutes, at threshold, like Isaid before 91 to 105% of FTP.
You want to take five minutesrecovery in between.
I tell my athlete to aim for themiddle of the power range, so
right around, call it a hundredpercent of FTP, okay, and simply
(09:36):
record the power, record theheart rate, record the cadence,
okay, and they choose their owncadence.
By the way, I'm not prescribingany of that too, and I tell
them that I want you to tell methe rate of perceived effort,
okay, so I'm not prescribing anRPE on this.
Keep in mind, I use a scale ofone to 10, 10 being a maximum
effort, one being super lighteffort, okay, so I'm not
prescribing an RPE on this.
Keep in mind, I use a scale ofone to 10, 10 being a maximum
(09:56):
effort, one being super lighteffort.
So I make sure to give themthat scale and calibrate our
brains accordingly to that.
And I don't tell them the RPEbecause I want to observe.
I just want them to hit thepower number, okay, to verify
the data.
And then we observe heart rate,we observe cadence and we
observe perceived effort, recordit afterwards and then, for the
(10:19):
perceived effort, I tell themto.
We either talk right on thephone or, better yet, you put it
in the comment section onTraining Peaks so that we have
that data for future andretroactively use.
Okay Now, in general, here'swhat I'm looking for.
I'm looking for power in zone oneach of the four intervals.
I'm looking for heart rate inzone on each of the four
(10:40):
intervals at zone four thresholdRPE.
Generally I want threshold tobe around seven or eight out of
10.
Okay, but I I encourage theathlete to go in open-minded and
just record whatever you feel.
Okay, think about that and beable.
And sometimes people just writeit down after they get done
with their efforts.
(11:00):
So it's like written down rightaway, unfiltered uh during the
workout itself.
Okay, if you're doing thisinside, for example, or put it
in your brain notes uh whenyou're out there on the road.
So if we hit these threeparameters powers in zone, heart
rates in zone, rpe is betweenseven and eight.
I would say zones arecalculated appropriately and
(11:22):
we're G to G for training.
If one or more of these are off,we can adjust training zones
slightly to get you trainingright without having to do
another field test again, causeif you're like many of my
athletes, uh, you don't enjoyfield testing.
Maybe a lot of anxiety.
You don't want to, you know.
(11:43):
Uh, go eyes bleeding on amultiple basis, okay, no, no one
that I have met really enjoysfield testing.
However, there's a time placeto test again to uh verify
ranges if you really have toOkay.
So there's a time place to testagain to verify ranges if you
really have to Okay.
So let's not talk about testingagain, let's talk about how to
adjust.
Here's a couple of scenariosthat I would typically see in my
(12:05):
athletes and when people areasking me questions about doing
a verification workout like this.
So the first scenario is theycouldn't hit the power, okay.
One classic example is notbeing able to hit the minimum
power.
So we're talking about 91% ofthat threshold, uh, at FTP, okay
, and you can't hit the minimumfor any of the intervals, but
(12:29):
typically maybe the final twointervals, okay.
Now the power may just be, youknow, dipping on the third and
fourth and the heart rateremains high, or perhaps it's
even creeping up into zone five,okay, likely, rate of perceived
effort is also high, going fromyou know seven to eight on the
(12:49):
first one to eight, you knowalmost nine on the second one,
and maybe like eight to nine onthe third, nine, maybe 10, you
know you, basically andgenuinely, you're on the
struggle bus is what that means.
And if that's the case, here'sthe pro tips simply lower the
power by about 10 Watts acrossall zones, just lower it down
(13:11):
and then round it off again tothe nearest five.
And then you want to repeatthis workout again in two to
three days when you're fresh andready for it.
And what I'm guessing is thatall the stars will align, though
the Holy Trinity, the HolyTrinity of exercise monitoring,
will align.
The perceived effort will bebetween seven and eight.
Power will be in the zone,heart rate will be in zone again
(13:34):
for zone four.
So that's the first scenario,if you can't hit the power
numbers.
Second scenario is heart rateis going too high.
Let's say you hit all the powernumbers, okay, your time in zone
at the minimum or middle,whatever, but you're in zone for
the power.
Zone at the minimum or middle,whatever, but you're in zone for
(13:56):
the power.
However, the heart rate is onthe higher side of zone four or
it's going again up into zonefive.
This could be for a number ofdifferent reasons.
And remember heart rate.
It has the highest variabilityof any of the three metrics that
we're talking about here, power, heart rate being the other two
three metrics that we'retalking about here, power, heart
(14:16):
rate being the other two.
So if heart rate is high forthe given effort relative to
power, here's some pro coachtips.
Look at where you rode the powerat.
Is it on the high side of thepower zone or is it on the low
side of the power zone?
If it's on the high side, itmakes sense that heart rate
would be high.
Okay, more on that in a second.
But if it's on the low side forpower, check, perceived effort,
(14:39):
if that too is high eight ornine then you want to definitely
adjust the power down five to10 Watts.
If you're on the low side ofthe power and the heart rate is
going much higher, like in thezone five and more, okay, like
we're talking about, you want toadjust the power down at least
10 watts, maybe 15, again acrossthe board for every zone, and
(14:59):
that will set you up for bettersuccess.
So if that heart rate is highand the power is low, definitely
adjust the zones.
If you're on the high side ofthe power and the heart rate is
high not drastically high what Iwould do is probably stay the
course and just hang out on thelow end of the power zones
whatever zones that you're goingto be doing in your upcoming
(15:21):
training, because you probablyjust need some conditioning, you
probably just need training,aerobic development, okay, and
the heart rate is going to comedown over time.
So if that power and heart rateis high, probably don't need to
adjust too much.
But I would definitely suggestpacing lower on the lower end of
all training zones until thatheart rate comes down within
zone and the perceived effortticks down a little bit.
(15:44):
One quick note here on perceivedeffort.
I've talked about it quite abit in using it as a metric to
monitor exercise intensity.
But man, be honest withyourself.
Be honest with yourself of howthings feel.
Rpe is subjective.
It's based on your perceivedeffort.
(16:06):
Don't lie to yourself or yourcoach on what it felt like, just
to try to prove that you'retough or better than you are or
worse.
I suppose the whole point intesting and verifying these
tests is to get as close asaccurate to where you're at
(16:26):
currently with your physiologyand fitness to train properly.
Falsifying the records doesnothing for you.
It does nothing for your coach,other than make them frustrated
.
Now if you coach yourself oryou use some AI program, this is
probably even worse, becauseall that false feedback is going
into an echo chamber of sortsand stuff can get off the tracks
(16:49):
pretty quickly in a bad way.
So RPE is an excellentmeasuring tool so long as you're
honest with yourself and thescale is calibrated properly.
Let me say this again scale ofone to 10.
That's what I use.
One is super, super light.
10 is a maximum effort Okay.
There are other scales outthere, like scale of one to five
(17:13):
, five being a max effort, onebeing a lightest Okay.
But everything kind of gets alittle tighter in there.
I find that my athletes reallyenjoy a scale of one to 10.
Training peaks uses a scale ofone to 10.
Many systems use a scale of oneto 10.
There's the Borg heart ratescale.
It's a little bit out of dateIn my opinion.
I generally find that scale one10 is pretty simple, pretty
(17:34):
universal, and I don't reallycare what you use, so long as
there's some perceived effortscale out there and you and your
AI program or you and yourcoach or whoever's involved, is
talking the same language andeverybody's calibrated on effort
.
My best coaching tip here isstart ranking all of your
intervals and rides on RPE anddo it separately.
(17:55):
Okay, either in your head or ontraining peaks or however you
organize your training.
What this means is separateyour intervals from the total
ride itself.
Your intervals could be, say,these threshold intervals.
They could be at an eight outof 10, but with warmup and
recovery periods and maybe someendurance afterwards, maybe the
full day feels more like a six.
(18:17):
Okay, but the effortsthemselves felt like an eight.
Think about this If you do twomax efforts on a three-hour ride
max efforts so they were a 10out of 10, but you did a
three-hour ride and it was likea chill, like easy zone two ride
, the aggregates perceivedstress shouldn't be a 10, even
though you did some efforts at10.
(18:37):
It's going to be higher thanmaybe three or four where you
were riding throughout, butthose max efforts it's going to
change stresses right.
So you have to be able toidentify that as a rider when
you're out there doing yourefforts.
So again, my advice is to getreally good at perceived effort
(19:00):
and the whole process ofpracticing uh rank ranking your
perceived efforts will getreally good when it comes down
to doing uh efforts, uh, doingtesting, racing and all these
things.
Okay, just start thinking moreabout your effort, record
intervals and total ride timeseparately and you'll start to
increase the accuracy of yourinterval pacing gauge.
(19:21):
Okay, let me get off my soapboxthere on perceived effort.
Okay, but it brings me to mythird kind of scenario here,
where rate of perceived effortis too high.
So let's say that you'rehitting all the power in zones
but you're kind of hanging outat the minimum.
Call it 91% of FTP, heart rateshigh, but on average it's still
coming out to that zone fourthreshold.
(19:42):
When you look at the heart rateand you're analyzing the power
in the heart rate itself,perhaps the heart puts a toe or
two into zone five, but nothingcrazy, no huge spikes.
However, perceived effort ifyou're honest with yourself, is
that it has that eight going on,nine for each one.
My pro tip here lower yourpower zones five to 10 on all
(20:06):
zones across the board, nomatter what training is going to
do in the future, and just hangout on the low end of the power
zones.
Wait for the perceived effortto align with power and heart
rate.
You'll have a ton of success.
A couple of final points here.
It all starts with good pacingon a field test.
Listen to last week's pod ifyou hadn't already, and please
(20:26):
understand that pacing is askill, it's an art and important
aspect of becoming an athlete.
Cyclists, runners, swimmers,triathletes, really any sport
have some sort of pacing to it,especially in cycling.
Get good at pacing and you'llget good at bikes.
Get good at pacing and you'llget good at bikes.
(20:47):
And to get good at pacing,you'll need to get good at
honestly ranking your rate ofperceived effort across all
efforts.
I'll leave it there on that.
Now, using a workout like thisverification workout that I
described, four by 10,.
It stresses and strains theaerobic glycolytic energy system
and in my opinion, that's thebest system and that's the best
(21:07):
way to tease out these properzones.
This is the primary energysystem that we use across all
training, racing and everythingelse.
Like I talked about before,some key aspects here is you
want the total time of whateverthis verification test or
process should be.
You want the total work time inzone of 30 to 60 minutes at
(21:27):
threshold.
Now, it's kind of a long timescale, okay, and I usually
choose that four by 10 for manyathletes.
But let me give you someguidelines on how to scale this
down and scale it up All right,so for beginners and this would
be somebody who's new to cycling.
Scale it up All right, so forbeginners and this would be
somebody who's new to cyclingmaybe training three years and
(21:51):
less and you're still kind oflike new.
Okay, four by eight minutes atthreshold, 91 to 105%, with four
to five minute recovery inbetween.
That's what I would use.
If you're a little bit moregreen, okay, four by 10 minutes
with five minute recovery inbetween.
That's what I would use for themajority of people probably
listening to this podcast, theirintermediates, their masters
athletes You've been trainingfor, you know, three to five,
(22:13):
maybe a little bit longer years,okay, um, but you know what
you're doing.
You're crunched on time four by10, with five in between warmup
and cool down.
You can still get that done in60 to 75 minutes.
Okay, and it's going to bepressing on that gas pedal.
Enough in the aerobicglycolytic energy system to get
us the data that we need Now foradvanced riders, elites and
(22:34):
pros.
I'll generally use three by 20minutes with maybe six to 10
minute recovery in between.
I'm going to look at perceivedeffort, power time and zone.
Heart rate time and zone allthese things Okay, but use these
workouts to help scale up ordown for your verification
workout accordingly, based onyour training experience and
your fitness level.
(22:56):
When in doubt this is probablythe most important part of the
podcast when in doubt, loweryour zones by five to 10 Watts.
If you're going to error, it isfar better to error on the side
of less, I mean intensity, sothat you don't overdo it.
And overdoing it means too muchstress and you're just.
You're overstressing all theenergy systems, you're
(23:18):
overstressing yourself, you'reoverstressing yourself
Cognitively.
Overdoing intensity will notgive you better results.
Typically it's going to do theopposite and it's super
frustrating.
When you're the athlete tryingto do the training and you're
overdoing the intensity, itcompletely sucks and it will
usually end in a nose dive crashto the ground.
(23:41):
You can always test again insix to eight weeks of training,
you know if you think that youneed to up the zones a little
bit.
But if you go through averification workout and one of
those aspects are off and you'relike man, I don't know if this
is, if this is my FTP, justlower it five to 10 Watts, do
training test again in six toeight weeks.
(24:02):
That's it, super simple andthat's it.
That's it.
That's our show for today.
I hope you all got somethingout of it and, if you did,
please share it with a friend.
That's the best way to helpgrow the show and ensure that
you keep on getting good advicefrom sources like this.
Plus, you're helping yourtraining partner get better.
(24:22):
If anyone listening today has aquestion on all things
endurance training related,please head over to train
rightcom backslash podcast.
Click on ask a trainingquestion.
Fill that form out and send itover to me and my team at CTS
and we'll do our best to answerit on a future episode.
Thanks again for listening anddon't forget to come back next
week to get more actionabletraining advice.
(24:43):
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
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Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
(25:03):
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
That'll help you take yourtraining 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 Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance even if
you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now onto our show.
How do you ensure that yourtraining zones are set up
(00:51):
properly for your currentfitness thresholds and ability?
How do you know when you had agood field test and what are
some of the best pro tips outthere to make sure that your
zones and FTP are indeedaccurate?
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
(01:12):
Today we'll build off of lastweek's discussion, where I went
over some common field testingprocedures and how to use them
to establish FTP and thresholdheart rate.
If you missed that one, be sureto go back and listen to it.
This episode will explain howto take that information and
customize it to your currentphysiology and get you training
right.
I'll answer all of thesequestions and more today, but
(01:33):
first let me recap one thingField test pacing.
I went over general pacingguidelines in last week's
episode, but the crucial part ismaking sure that you don't blow
up or finish too strong on yourfield test.
In other words, you want anevenly paced hard effort to
(01:55):
achieve your best and highestaverage power, heart rate and
effort in these field tests,like the 20-minute test
developed by Andy Coggin, or thetwo-by-eight time trial field
test developed by ChrisCarmichael and the team at CTS,
or some of those power durationtesting procedures that we do in
model-based approaches.
(02:16):
If you do a ramp test, pacingisn't as important, but it's
kind of baked into the testitself.
It's both a pro and a con.
Again, I cover all of this lastweek and much more so be sure
to listen to that if you haven'talready.
But here's a couple kind ofjuicy pro tips, if you will,
(02:36):
that I didn't cover in detaillast week, but it applies today
when it comes to ensuring thatyou had a good field test.
So a couple examples of maybewhen you didn't have a good
field test.
So a couple examples of maybewhen you didn't have a good
field test is probably a goodway to describe knowing when you
had a good one or not.
So first one if your powerspiked up hard at the very front
end and then fell off on theback end of the effort, no
(03:00):
matter how long that duration is, but just kind of like this
implosion and the power justdrastically goes down and you
blew up, simply do the testagain when you're fresh and you
evenly pace for the given effort.
Okay, now if you started alittle lighter and you finished
super strong in that final, youknow, minute or two with like a
(03:21):
big power spike up at the veryend, minute or two with like a
big power spike up at the veryend, simply do the test again
when you're fresh and, yep, youwant to pace more evenly
throughout.
Pacing is key here.
Okay, you should start prettymuch any field test at that nine
to 10 out of 10 and finish at a10 out of 10.
(03:42):
If 10 is a max effort, right,that's the scale that I use,
scale of one to 10, one beingsuper light, 10 being max effort
.
Now for sprints in anythingless than a minute, which you
know in most field testing, youwon't encounter too much.
But if you do power profiletesting or power duration
testing in model-basedapproaches, you'll have some
(04:02):
sprints like 10, 20 and 60second efforts.
So if it's less than a minute,there's not much pacing.
That goes on.
Simply go full tilt, full gas,don't worry about pacing.
But for the longer powerdurations, like the 20 minutes,
the eight minutes and even maybeeven a three minute, there's
there's pacing to it.
Get good at pacing and you'llget good at testing.
(04:23):
Then you'll get good results.
Now let's assume I drilled thatinto your head enough and you
paced well over the duration.
You gave a max effort.
It's time to calculate yourthresholds and set up your
training zones.
Okay, I went into some prettygood detail about this and how
(04:47):
the goal of really any goodfield test out there is to get
you a threshold power and athreshold heart rate that you
can use and apply to really anymethod out there.
So in setting up your trainingzones you use that FTP and
threshold heart rate from thecycling field test.
You plug it into the trainingzone calculator on training
peaks or whatever platformyou're using, and so long as the
(05:10):
platform even things like Wahooand Zwift and intervals to ICU.
You know if, if they're callingfor some sort of threshold to
generate zones, use FTP, useyour highest average heart rate
from the 20-minute test, use 93%of the percentage of the
highest average heart rate fromthe CTS test.
(05:31):
Again, all those little detailswere all last week.
But you want to use thosethresholds, plug it in,
calculate and voila, you havetraining zones.
Here's a couple of pro tips onyour training zones for power
round your zones to the nearestfive.
Why?
Because, as I've said in thispodcast before, human physiology
(05:54):
is not as precise or accurateas the devices that we're using
to measure it, ie power meters.
So what I tend to find is, whenI round off to the nearest five
, it's five and zero at the end.
So 286 would go to 290, forexample, and 311 would go to 310
(06:15):
.
I tend to find that myself, aswell as my athletes, have an
easier time remembering theirtraining zones when I round to
that nearest five.
It's just much easier toremember.
And the goal really of of, uh,the training that I prescribe
and deploy to my athletes is toget them to look at that title
of the workout and get familiarwith their training zones and
(06:39):
look at, say like a three by 10threshold and 90 minute total
ride time, say like a three by10 threshold and 90 minute total
ride time.
What I want them to do is beable to know their zone for
their threshold zones over time,cause it's not going to change
once we get it established,especially like over the course
of an eight week trainingblockers or something like that.
You get comfortable with it,you remember it, you go out, you
(07:01):
do it, boom, super easy, supereffective.
Now with heart rate zones it's alittle different.
You want to keep those prettywhen you calculate them.
You don't want to round off onthat heart rate.
It's a little bit tighter onthat.
So plug those in, calculatethem.
Good to go.
Most on the upper end for theheart rate zones, most will just
(07:22):
automatically put it at 255.
What I would do is I'd look atthe maximum heart rate that
you've achieved over the past 90days or maybe a year and I
would just put my max heart ratein for that upper end there,
because 250, I mean no one'sgoing to be hitting 255 and be
around to talk about itafterwards.
So for the heart rate zonesdon't don't need a roundup, but
(07:45):
for the max heart rate.
You can just put that a littlebit more accurate to yourself
and then you have good, accurateand also realistically
deployable and memorable zoneswhen you're out there training.
So hope that helps on the protip on zones.
Now let's talk about ensuringthat the training zones that you
(08:06):
get from your field test areactually realistic and doable.
We want to make sure thatthey're achievable with your
current fitness, your currentphysiology, and you know the
best way I can describe this isI use something called a
verification workout, orsometimes verification workouts.
Okay, so multiple workouts tokind of suss this out.
(08:28):
Now, if you were to give melike just one workout to ensure
that the field test and thenumbers and the training zones
are set accurately, I would tellyou that the key workout I use
is a four by 10 minutes atthreshold, and the reason I use
(08:50):
a workout like this is it's it'stesting zone four and it's
testing the aerobic glycolyticenergy system.
More on that in a minute.
But if we, if we can suss outany issues on that system which
is the system that we use themost for training, racing,
riding and all things bikes ifwe can verify that everything
(09:13):
else takes care of itself.
All things bikes.
If we can verify that,everything else takes care of
itself.
Okay, so my workout is warm upand then get into four by 10
minutes, at threshold, like Isaid before 91 to 105% of FTP.
You want to take five minutesrecovery in between.
I tell my athlete to aim for themiddle of the power range, so
right around, call it a hundredpercent of FTP, okay, and simply
(09:36):
record the power, record theheart rate, record the cadence,
okay, and they choose their owncadence.
By the way, I'm not prescribingany of that too, and I tell
them that I want you to tell methe rate of perceived effort,
okay, so I'm not prescribing anRPE on this.
Keep in mind, I use a scale ofone to 10, 10 being a maximum
effort, one being super lighteffort, okay, so I'm not
prescribing an RPE on this.
Keep in mind, I use a scale ofone to 10, 10 being a maximum
(09:56):
effort, one being super lighteffort.
So I make sure to give themthat scale and calibrate our
brains accordingly to that.
And I don't tell them the RPEbecause I want to observe.
I just want them to hit thepower number, okay, to verify
the data.
And then we observe heart rate,we observe cadence and we
observe perceived effort, recordit afterwards and then, for the
(10:19):
perceived effort, I tell themto.
We either talk right on thephone or, better yet, you put it
in the comment section onTraining Peaks so that we have
that data for future andretroactively use.
Okay Now, in general, here'swhat I'm looking for.
I'm looking for power in zone oneach of the four intervals.
I'm looking for heart rate inzone on each of the four
(10:40):
intervals at zone four thresholdRPE.
Generally I want threshold tobe around seven or eight out of
10.
Okay, but I I encourage theathlete to go in open-minded and
just record whatever you feel.
Okay, think about that and beable.
And sometimes people just writeit down after they get done
with their efforts.
(11:00):
So it's like written down rightaway, unfiltered uh during the
workout itself.
Okay, if you're doing thisinside, for example, or put it
in your brain notes uh whenyou're out there on the road.
So if we hit these threeparameters powers in zone, heart
rates in zone, rpe is betweenseven and eight.
I would say zones arecalculated appropriately and
(11:22):
we're G to G for training.
If one or more of these are off,we can adjust training zones
slightly to get you trainingright without having to do
another field test again, causeif you're like many of my
athletes, uh, you don't enjoyfield testing.
Maybe a lot of anxiety.
You don't want to, you know.
(11:43):
Uh, go eyes bleeding on amultiple basis, okay, no, no one
that I have met really enjoysfield testing.
However, there's a time placeto test again to uh verify
ranges if you really have toOkay.
So there's a time place to testagain to verify ranges if you
really have to Okay.
So let's not talk about testingagain, let's talk about how to
adjust.
Here's a couple of scenariosthat I would typically see in my
(12:05):
athletes and when people areasking me questions about doing
a verification workout like this.
So the first scenario is theycouldn't hit the power, okay.
One classic example is notbeing able to hit the minimum
power.
So we're talking about 91% ofthat threshold, uh, at FTP, okay
, and you can't hit the minimumfor any of the intervals, but
(12:29):
typically maybe the final twointervals, okay.
Now the power may just be, youknow, dipping on the third and
fourth and the heart rateremains high, or perhaps it's
even creeping up into zone five,okay, likely, rate of perceived
effort is also high, going fromyou know seven to eight on the
(12:49):
first one to eight, you knowalmost nine on the second one,
and maybe like eight to nine onthe third, nine, maybe 10, you
know you, basically andgenuinely, you're on the
struggle bus is what that means.
And if that's the case, here'sthe pro tips simply lower the
power by about 10 Watts acrossall zones, just lower it down
(13:11):
and then round it off again tothe nearest five.
And then you want to repeatthis workout again in two to
three days when you're fresh andready for it.
And what I'm guessing is thatall the stars will align, though
the Holy Trinity, the HolyTrinity of exercise monitoring,
will align.
The perceived effort will bebetween seven and eight.
Power will be in the zone,heart rate will be in zone again
(13:34):
for zone four.
So that's the first scenario,if you can't hit the power
numbers.
Second scenario is heart rateis going too high.
Let's say you hit all the powernumbers, okay, your time in zone
at the minimum or middle,whatever, but you're in zone for
the power.
Zone at the minimum or middle,whatever, but you're in zone for
(13:56):
the power.
However, the heart rate is onthe higher side of zone four or
it's going again up into zonefive.
This could be for a number ofdifferent reasons.
And remember heart rate.
It has the highest variabilityof any of the three metrics that
we're talking about here, power, heart rate being the other two
three metrics that we'retalking about here, power, heart
(14:16):
rate being the other two.
So if heart rate is high forthe given effort relative to
power, here's some pro coachtips.
Look at where you rode the powerat.
Is it on the high side of thepower zone or is it on the low
side of the power zone?
If it's on the high side, itmakes sense that heart rate
would be high.
Okay, more on that in a second.
But if it's on the low side forpower, check, perceived effort,
(14:39):
if that too is high eight ornine then you want to definitely
adjust the power down five to10 Watts.
If you're on the low side ofthe power and the heart rate is
going much higher, like in thezone five and more, okay, like
we're talking about, you want toadjust the power down at least
10 watts, maybe 15, again acrossthe board for every zone, and
(14:59):
that will set you up for bettersuccess.
So if that heart rate is highand the power is low, definitely
adjust the zones.
If you're on the high side ofthe power and the heart rate is
high not drastically high what Iwould do is probably stay the
course and just hang out on thelow end of the power zones
whatever zones that you're goingto be doing in your upcoming
(15:21):
training, because you probablyjust need some conditioning, you
probably just need training,aerobic development, okay, and
the heart rate is going to comedown over time.
So if that power and heart rateis high, probably don't need to
adjust too much.
But I would definitely suggestpacing lower on the lower end of
all training zones until thatheart rate comes down within
zone and the perceived effortticks down a little bit.
(15:44):
One quick note here on perceivedeffort.
I've talked about it quite abit in using it as a metric to
monitor exercise intensity.
But man, be honest withyourself.
Be honest with yourself of howthings feel.
Rpe is subjective.
It's based on your perceivedeffort.
(16:06):
Don't lie to yourself or yourcoach on what it felt like, just
to try to prove that you'retough or better than you are or
worse.
I suppose the whole point intesting and verifying these
tests is to get as close asaccurate to where you're at
(16:26):
currently with your physiologyand fitness to train properly.
Falsifying the records doesnothing for you.
It does nothing for your coach,other than make them frustrated
.
Now if you coach yourself oryou use some AI program, this is
probably even worse, becauseall that false feedback is going
into an echo chamber of sortsand stuff can get off the tracks
(16:49):
pretty quickly in a bad way.
So RPE is an excellentmeasuring tool so long as you're
honest with yourself and thescale is calibrated properly.
Let me say this again scale ofone to 10.
That's what I use.
One is super, super light.
10 is a maximum effort Okay.
There are other scales outthere, like scale of one to five
(17:13):
, five being a max effort, onebeing a lightest Okay.
But everything kind of gets alittle tighter in there.
I find that my athletes reallyenjoy a scale of one to 10.
Training peaks uses a scale ofone to 10.
Many systems use a scale of oneto 10.
There's the Borg heart ratescale.
It's a little bit out of dateIn my opinion.
I generally find that scale one10 is pretty simple, pretty
(17:34):
universal, and I don't reallycare what you use, so long as
there's some perceived effortscale out there and you and your
AI program or you and yourcoach or whoever's involved, is
talking the same language andeverybody's calibrated on effort
.
My best coaching tip here isstart ranking all of your
intervals and rides on RPE anddo it separately.
(17:55):
Okay, either in your head or ontraining peaks or however you
organize your training.
What this means is separateyour intervals from the total
ride itself.
Your intervals could be, say,these threshold intervals.
They could be at an eight outof 10, but with warmup and
recovery periods and maybe someendurance afterwards, maybe the
full day feels more like a six.
(18:17):
Okay, but the effortsthemselves felt like an eight.
Think about this If you do twomax efforts on a three-hour ride
max efforts so they were a 10out of 10, but you did a
three-hour ride and it was likea chill, like easy zone two ride
, the aggregates perceivedstress shouldn't be a 10, even
though you did some efforts at10.
(18:37):
It's going to be higher thanmaybe three or four where you
were riding throughout, butthose max efforts it's going to
change stresses right.
So you have to be able toidentify that as a rider when
you're out there doing yourefforts.
So again, my advice is to getreally good at perceived effort
(19:00):
and the whole process ofpracticing uh rank ranking your
perceived efforts will getreally good when it comes down
to doing uh efforts, uh, doingtesting, racing and all these
things.
Okay, just start thinking moreabout your effort, record
intervals and total ride timeseparately and you'll start to
increase the accuracy of yourinterval pacing gauge.
(19:21):
Okay, let me get off my soapboxthere on perceived effort.
Okay, but it brings me to mythird kind of scenario here,
where rate of perceived effortis too high.
So let's say that you'rehitting all the power in zones
but you're kind of hanging outat the minimum.
Call it 91% of FTP, heart rateshigh, but on average it's still
coming out to that zone fourthreshold.
(19:42):
When you look at the heart rateand you're analyzing the power
in the heart rate itself,perhaps the heart puts a toe or
two into zone five, but nothingcrazy, no huge spikes.
However, perceived effort ifyou're honest with yourself, is
that it has that eight going on,nine for each one.
My pro tip here lower yourpower zones five to 10 on all
(20:06):
zones across the board, nomatter what training is going to
do in the future, and just hangout on the low end of the power
zones.
Wait for the perceived effortto align with power and heart
rate.
You'll have a ton of success.
A couple of final points here.
It all starts with good pacingon a field test.
Listen to last week's pod ifyou hadn't already, and please
(20:26):
understand that pacing is askill, it's an art and important
aspect of becoming an athlete.
Cyclists, runners, swimmers,triathletes, really any sport
have some sort of pacing to it,especially in cycling.
Get good at pacing and you'llget good at bikes.
Get good at pacing and you'llget good at bikes.
(20:47):
And to get good at pacing,you'll need to get good at
honestly ranking your rate ofperceived effort across all
efforts.
I'll leave it there on that.
Now, using a workout like thisverification workout that I
described, four by 10,.
It stresses and strains theaerobic glycolytic energy system
and in my opinion, that's thebest system and that's the best
(21:07):
way to tease out these properzones.
This is the primary energysystem that we use across all
training, racing and everythingelse.
Like I talked about before,some key aspects here is you
want the total time of whateverthis verification test or
process should be.
You want the total work time inzone of 30 to 60 minutes at
(21:27):
threshold.
Now, it's kind of a long timescale, okay, and I usually
choose that four by 10 for manyathletes.
But let me give you someguidelines on how to scale this
down and scale it up All right,so for beginners and this would
be somebody who's new to cycling.
Scale it up All right, so forbeginners and this would be
somebody who's new to cyclingmaybe training three years and
(21:51):
less and you're still kind oflike new.
Okay, four by eight minutes atthreshold, 91 to 105%, with four
to five minute recovery inbetween.
That's what I would use.
If you're a little bit moregreen, okay, four by 10 minutes
with five minute recovery inbetween.
That's what I would use for themajority of people probably
listening to this podcast, theirintermediates, their masters
athletes You've been trainingfor, you know, three to five,
(22:13):
maybe a little bit longer years,okay, um, but you know what
you're doing.
You're crunched on time four by10, with five in between warmup
and cool down.
You can still get that done in60 to 75 minutes.
Okay, and it's going to bepressing on that gas pedal.
Enough in the aerobicglycolytic energy system to get
us the data that we need Now foradvanced riders, elites and
(22:34):
pros.
I'll generally use three by 20minutes with maybe six to 10
minute recovery in between.
I'm going to look at perceivedeffort, power time and zone.
Heart rate time and zone allthese things Okay, but use these
workouts to help scale up ordown for your verification
workout accordingly, based onyour training experience and
your fitness level.
(22:56):
When in doubt this is probablythe most important part of the
podcast when in doubt, loweryour zones by five to 10 Watts.
If you're going to error, it isfar better to error on the side
of less, I mean intensity, sothat you don't overdo it.
And overdoing it means too muchstress and you're just.
You're overstressing all theenergy systems, you're
(23:18):
overstressing yourself, you'reoverstressing yourself
Cognitively.
Overdoing intensity will notgive you better results.
Typically it's going to do theopposite and it's super
frustrating.
When you're the athlete tryingto do the training and you're
overdoing the intensity, itcompletely sucks and it will
usually end in a nose dive crashto the ground.
(23:41):
You can always test again insix to eight weeks of training,
you know if you think that youneed to up the zones a little
bit.
But if you go through averification workout and one of
those aspects are off and you'relike man, I don't know if this
is, if this is my FTP, justlower it five to 10 Watts, do
training test again in six toeight weeks.
(24:02):
That's it, super simple andthat's it.
That's it.
That's our show for today.
I hope you all got somethingout of it and, if you did,
please share it with a friend.
That's the best way to helpgrow the show and ensure that
you keep on getting good advicefrom sources like this.
Plus, you're helping yourtraining partner get better.
(24:22):
If anyone listening today has aquestion on all things
endurance training related,please head over to train
rightcom backslash podcast.
Click on ask a trainingquestion.
Fill that form out and send itover to me and my team at CTS
and we'll do our best to answerit on a future episode.
Thanks again for listening anddon't forget to come back next
week to get more actionabletraining advice.
(24:43):
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
over to trainrightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
(25:03):
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
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