How much Training do You Guys Do?

edewer · August 2012

Currently doing 3-5 trips out a week, between an hour and 2, and between 15 and 30 miles each time. Absolutely loving it, and if the Mrs would let me I'd be out a lot more!

symo · August 2012

Depends.

Normally I commute 30 mins each way to the office everyday, with every other day having a turbo session first thing before leaving for a work, so that is around 8 hours then one long ride at the weekend of 2.5-4.5 hours. According to Strava some weeks I did 18 hours!

However this week I will cycle to the office for 2 trips and I am currently in Denmark so can either use running machine at he the hotel or the gym bike, either is hellish so I did 30 minutes of excercise on the treadmill. Work is my big problem as I have to travel a lot as site is kicking off.

Also doesn't help that I have not long got back from Honeymoon and have to shed the weight from that, so taking it easy whilst my body readjusts to stress and training.

bahzob · September 2012

RandG wrote:

bahzob wrote:

Now average of 1.5 hours a day, 6 days a week, each session 20 mins or so warmup then hour or so averaging 80-90% threshold effort mainly through long threshold or short VO2 repeats. It's working pretty well so far, I've got back to around 95% of my previous best performance.

That is very interesting, cause all I have read recently is to train in the bottom zone for approx 80% and only spending 10% in the "no man's land" zone and 10% in the HIT zone :?

Afraid whatever you have been reading is 100% wrong. It may have been the received "wisdom" once for riders who had 20-30 hours to spend training per week. Even then it only made sense during the off season and you were training for events that took longer than 1-2 hours.

Reason this is wrong is that the fundamental basis of all training is that you need to put stress on your body. Only by doing this will your body realise something's amiss and adapt to reduce the stress if this happens again.

This adaptation is called "getting fitter".

Low intensity work puts little to no stress on the body. The only thing it really works out is your ability to use fuel. If you only do these you will never be able to go much faster, though you may be able to go a bit further on the same amount of food.

On the other hand high intensity workloads at or above threshold put massive stress on your body. They should feel hard when doing them and, very importantly, you should feel tired after. Indeed you should still feel the workout in your legs the day after. This is good news, it means your body is damaged, when it repairs this damage it will make it better than before > get a bit fitter. Only by doing high intensity exercise will you be able to go faster. And you will also be able to go further for the same effort as well.

thiscocks · September 2012

symo wrote:

Depends.

Normally I commute 30 mins each way to the office everyday, with every other day having a turbo session first thing before leaving for a work, so that is around 8 hours then one long ride at the weekend of 2.5-4.5 hours. According to Strava some weeks I did 18 hours!

Must be wrong then. 8+4.5=12.5

SBezza · September 2012

bahzob wrote:

RandG wrote:

bahzob wrote:

Now average of 1.5 hours a day, 6 days a week, each session 20 mins or so warmup then hour or so averaging 80-90% threshold effort mainly through long threshold or short VO2 repeats. It's working pretty well so far, I've got back to around 95% of my previous best performance.

That is very interesting, cause all I have read recently is to train in the bottom zone for approx 80% and only spending 10% in the "no man's land" zone and 10% in the HIT zone :?

Afraid whatever you have been reading is 100% wrong. It may have been the received "wisdom" once for riders who had 20-30 hours to spend training per week. Even then it only made sense during the off season and you were training for events that took longer than 1-2 hours.

Reason this is wrong is that the fundamental basis of all training is that you need to put stress on your body. Only by doing this will your body realise something's amiss and adapt to reduce the stress if this happens again.

This adaptation is called "getting fitter".

Low intensity work puts little to no stress on the body. The only thing it really works out is your ability to use fuel. If you only do these you will never be able to go much faster, though you may be able to go a bit further on the same amount of food.

On the other hand high intensity workloads at or above threshold put massive stress on your body. They should feel hard when doing them and, very importantly, you should feel tired after. Indeed you should still feel the workout in your legs the day after. This is good news, it means your body is damaged, when it repairs this damage it will make it better than before > get a bit fitter. Only by doing high intensity exercise will you be able to go faster. And you will also be able to go further for the same effort as well.

So not true, you need a mixture of training, try doing loads of High Intensity with no aerobic base endurance and you will likely burn out, not complete the sessions at a high enough level to achieved desired adaptions, or just get plain bored. If you really do HIIT properly and did several sessions a week, you would probably end up not recovering properly, unless you have great recovery powers, and as such training might end up being far from optimal. High intensity is one facet needed to go fast, but it certainly isn't the only thing needed.

If you don't think low intensity work, and by that I mean above recovery paced L1 rides (these are fairly pointless for the majority of riders), puts little or no stress on the body then you obviously don't do them long enough or hard enough. Endurance rides need to be off sufficient duration to bring about adaptions, I will admit doing 2 hours at L2 is pretty pointless and would mean very little stress, but 5 hours at a high L2 will bring on quite a bit of stress of the body.

bahzob · September 2012

"If you don't think low intensity work, and by that I mean above recovery paced L1 rides (these are fairly pointless for the majority of riders), puts little or no stress on the body then you obviously don't do them long enough or hard enough. Endurance rides need to be off sufficient duration to bring about adaptions, I will admit doing 2 hours at L2 is pretty pointless and would mean very little stress, but 5 hours at a high L2 will bring on quite a bit of stress of the body"

Thanks for the advice but I used to do loads of 5 hour hard endurance rides (and much much longer), more of them and harder than you I'd guess. I had good reason to since my main events are long distance ones like 100/12 hour TTs.

So I know what sort of benefit these rides have. The main one is to train the body to get used to doing long steady sub-threshold work and keeping going when feeding becomes an issue.

This is great if your main event is 100mile+TT. For most people it's not though. If you look at the sort of numbers people are posting here its pretty clear they are not doing this sort of event.

Even for folks like me: if the objective is to get fit 5 hour sessions are a waste unless you have unlimited time or are just doing it for fun. If your threshold is 300W 3 hours at 260W will be more useful than 5 hours at 220W.

I am training again after a 3 year lay off. I can compare my performance with previous seasons and finding that, by focusing on short 60-90 minute over threshold sessions, I am getting fitter much faster by focusing on quality rather than quantity (ditto goes fore other important things like how I pedal)

I am pretty sure this rule will apply to 99% of the people here.

DavidJB · September 2012

I defo do not agree with bahzob's way of training.

I used to zoom around in z4/z5 all the time and all that happened was I was constantly tired and never got any better. Early this year I started training the correct way and my fitness has massively improved, got a few race wins and lost weight.

Spending 80% of your time hammering it is a bit mental.

vorsprung · September 2012

DavidJB wrote:

I defo do not agree with bahzob's way of training.

I used to zoom around in z4/z5 all the time and all that happened was I was constantly tired and never got any better. Early this year I started training the correct way and my fitness has massively improved, got a few race wins and lost weight.

Spending 80% of your time hammering it is a bit mental.

I thought he explained quite well what he did and it wasn't getting "constantly tired" by "Spending 80% of your time hammering"

ICBA reiterating the obvious points that more patient people than me ( bahzob ) have spent time carefully explaining

DavidJB · September 2012

vorsprung wrote:

DavidJB wrote:

I defo do not agree with bahzob's way of training.

I used to zoom around in z4/z5 all the time and all that happened was I was constantly tired and never got any better. Early this year I started training the correct way and my fitness has massively improved, got a few race wins and lost weight.

Spending 80% of your time hammering it is a bit mental.

I thought he explained quite well what he did and it wasn't getting "constantly tired" by "Spending 80% of your time hammering"

ICBA reiterating the obvious points that more patient people than me ( bahzob ) have spent time carefully explaining

Oh sorry I didn't express my points of view in a language you approve of.

Fundamentally I would not train the way Bahzob does, but maybe he does train a better way than me. Different people react to different training in different ways. I'm no expert, I pay someone to tell me how to train, someone with a lot more experience than most forum posters.

I was giving my experiences of training in a similar way to him previously, but sorry for expressing a difference of opinion on an internet forum...I'll have myself shot immediately.

mattshrops · September 2012

Maybe i'm a bit thick (quite possible) but bahzob is claiming to do 60-90 mins over threshold. Now i believe your threshold is the max level you can work at for 60mins. not 60-90 and certainly not "over" at 60-90 mins.So that makes it impossible, no??

HIT has its place i'd agree(others can add more to that then i can) but i believe 2 threshold style sessions per week is about max to avoid overtiredness. (I've deliberately avoided saying overtraining cos i think thats a whole other can awaiting opening)

SBezza · September 2012

bahzob wrote:

Thanks for the advice but I used to do loads of 5 hour hard endurance rides (and much much longer), more of them and harder than you I'd guess. I had good reason to since my main events are long distance ones like 100/12 hour TTs.

Not sure of that too be honest, as the BBAR is my main focus of a season I have quite an in depth knowledge and appreciation of long hard rides. I wouldn't go around suggesting you train harder than others, you have very little knowledge of how other riders train

As to what is better 3 hours at 260w or 5 hours at 220 watts, in terms of an overall loading on the body they are probably very similar. You still need good base endurance even for a 10 or 25 mile TT if you want to progress and not just stagnate, hell even the pursuit guys do a hell of alot of endurance work, without it they wouldn't be able to handle the HIT stuff as well. There are many reasons for long hard endurance rides rather than just creating a base.

If you can do 60-90 mins OVER threshold, then you threshold power is set wrong

bahzob · September 2012

mattshrops wrote:

Maybe i'm a bit thick (quite possible) but bahzob is claiming to do 60-90 mins over threshold. Now i believe your threshold is the max level you can work at for 60mins. not 60-90 and certainly not "over" at 60-90 mins.So that makes it impossible, no??

HIT has its place i'd agree(others can add more to that then i can) but i believe 2 threshold style sessions per week is about max to avoid overtiredness. (I've deliberately avoided saying overtraining cos i think thats a whole other can awaiting opening)

Yes you are being thick. You are forgetting the need to warm up, take rests between intervals/sets and, ideally, cool down. This will leave you around 40-70 mins of actual work time.

So, by definition, if you do the work intervals for such a small amount of time at less than threshold they will result in little stress which in turn means you will not get much fitter.

For many people 60-90 mins is the most they can regularly reliably allocate for training. Which is why for them its a no brainer, their sessions should all be at or above threshold.

bahzob · September 2012

"As to what is better 3 hours at 260w or 5 hours at 220 watts, in terms of an overall loading on the body they are probably very similar."

Er?? that's my point. Why spend 5 hours training when you can get the same benefit from 3?

Fine if its a fun ride but it makes no sense if the goal of spending time on the bike is getting fitter unless you have unlimited time available for training.

SBezza · September 2012

bahzob wrote:

"As to what is better 3 hours at 260w or 5 hours at 220 watts, in terms of an overall loading on the body they are probably very similar."

Er?? that's my point. Why spend 5 hours training when you can get the same benefit from 3?

Fine if its a fun ride but it makes no sense if the goal of spending time on the bike is getting fitter unless you have unlimited time available for training.

Things like recovery come into play here as well, personally I could race fairly well the day after the 5 hour ride, 3 hours of hard tempo would leave racing pretty mediocre the following day or even a couple of days later. I could quite happily do several days in a row of long endurance rides at a pretty high intensity, but would struggle to to 2 days back to back of 3 hours at tempo of sufficient quality. So although you might have a similar load from the one training session, getting fitter means riding very regularly and at a sufficient intensity to promote adaption. If you have to take a couple of days to recover properly from one ride, or subsquent training session are on poor quality, it hasn't achieved as much in the long run. I would suspect those not used to long tempo rides and those not really that fit probably wouldn't be able to do that intensity for the duration anyhow.

There is no one type of training that will make you better, it needs an all round approach. I would suggest people training at different intensities to get fitter, and structure their training based around their goals and the time they have available. I suspect even those that say they only get 7 hours to train a week, actually spend more time watching TV. If you want to get the best out of yourself, you have to put the time in, there are no shortcuts really.

I have weeks when training is less than 7 hours, and correspondingly it is very intense training, but when I need to get the hours in I make sacrifices to ensure I get both the quality and quantity in, and I work full time with a family as well as a lot of others on here so it is possible, all it takes is desire (and a understanding partner I suppose). I think I would plateau very quickly if all I did was the shorter more intense sessions.

springtide9 · September 2012

Probably get 6-10 hrs in per week, depending on whether I get a weekend ride in or not. In the summer can also get an evening ride in.

Family life and work are the sticking points, especially if you have more than one child and are at an age where they start getting their own (multiple) evening activities during the week, but are not old enough to take themselves.

An understanding wife is one thing, but this does work when two children need to be at different places at the same time :-)
But I see as the children get older, they'll be able to take themselves to their activities.

SBezza · September 2012

Children can be an issue, but they are probably home by 8pm and that leaves some time for training, or getting up early to get out training before the family wakes up. Not easy I know, and if I didn't race I certainly wouldn't do it I will admit, but certainly it is possible.

I am lucky I suppose I have 1 child, and my wife takes him to activities as she has the car. Then again we only have 1 car as well, so we would only be able to take them to one location at a time.

springtide9 · September 2012

SBezza wrote:

Children can be an issue, but they are probably home by 8pm and that leaves some time for training, or getting up early to get out training before the family wakes up. Not easy I know, and if I didn't race I certainly wouldn't do it I will admit, but certainly it is possible.

I am lucky I suppose I have 1 child, and my wife takes him to activities as she has the car. Then again we only have 1 car as well, so we would only be able to take them to one location at a time.

Two children makes a huge difference... as does once they start going to school (especially if you have two parents working full time)
I can generally get out at lunchtimes for about 1.5 hrs during 'lunch', but this time is made up in the evening - as I work a lot with the USA (and have activities that have to be done out of hours).

But you are right, if there is a drive to do it, you can manage it! I have a friend who trained for an IM last year in a similar situation to me, and he managed it peaking at about 20 hrs training per week, but it wasn't sustainable for him (or should I say his wife and family)
Once he completed the IM, he had to back off his training to maybe 2-4 hrs per week to avoid a devoice, but has slowly been increasing the hours again for a Half IM this year :-)
My wife is much less understanding than my friends, and even with my current training commitments. it causes a strain on our marriage.

For me, it's much easier to do 4x pretty hard 1.5hr 'lunchtime' sessions than longer sessions at an easier pace. And obviously can usually get in a decent ride on the weekend, although not lately for various health issues with the other half (but this isn't a long term health issue, so just temporary!)

I have thought about a turbo trainer, but I enjoy riding a bike in the outdoors, not sweating in a room in the house watching a video.

But I don't race 'properly' - just for a bit of summer fun; there again it has only really been this year that I've given it a go as I haven't had the fitness previously, so my attitude might change :-)
I also guess at 43yrd old, I'd be pretty happy getting to Cat3 next year as a goal, and think that's easily possible with my current weekly training.

mattshrops · September 2012

bahzob wrote:

mattshrops wrote:

Maybe i'm a bit thick (quite possible) but bahzob is claiming to do 60-90 mins over threshold. Now i believe your threshold is the max level you can work at for 60mins. not 60-90 and certainly not "over" at 60-90 mins.So that makes it impossible, no??

HIT has its place i'd agree(others can add more to that then i can) but i believe 2 threshold style sessions per week is about max to avoid overtiredness. (I've deliberately avoided saying overtraining cos i think thats a whole other can awaiting opening)

Yes you are being thick. You are forgetting the need to warm up, take rests between intervals/sets and, ideally, cool down. This will leave you around 40-70 mins of actual work time.

So, by definition, if you do the work intervals for such a small amount of time at less than threshold they will result in little stress which in turn means you will not get much fitter.

For many people 60-90 mins is the most they can regularly reliably allocate for training. Which is why for them its a no brainer, their sessions should all be at or above threshold.

So its not 60-90 mins over threshold then is it. When i did a 10 mile time trial today i did not do an 18 mile tt (allowing for warm up and cool down) it was a 10. Me thick? :roll:

How much Training do You Guys Do?

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