Low Volume Cyclist Training
I had some questions from people regarding the polarized training video that I put out in regards to some more specific low volume cyclist training plans for time crunched cyclists. I realize ten hours of training is a luxury to some folks, so let’s get into what you should focus on with your cycling training if you only have 6 hours a week to train?
Read our Polarized Training Guide to learn more about polarized training.
Low Volume Cycling Training
Lactate Threshold Training to Increase Your FTP
VO2Max Training to Increase Your VO2Max
Endurance Rides to reduce lactate production
Strength training to increase strength and create more watts
I have never received an email that said “I started to focus on true endurance rides, made my hard workouts as VO2Max training and proper lactate threshold training, and I've gotten slower.”
However, I have received numerous emails from time crunched cyclists along the lines of: “I did a sweet spot plan, and while it seemed to work for a while, now I'm totally burned out, I've stopped making gains, and I’m not sure where to go from here.”
This is not about bashing Sweet Spot (it’s just a training zone!), but bringing to light that overdoing Sweet Spot is not constructive. If you only have 6 hours of riding, sweet spot is not worth your time when you have limited hours to train. The exact opposite of what people are marketing to you is where you should spend your time.
Low Volume Sweet Spot Plan
Low volume sweet spot is NOT how I would train, but this is where a lot of time-crunched athletes fall into the trap: “I have less time, therefore I need to ride harder.”
That is not the correct method to follow for endurance sports, even if on low volume, because you end up training your glycolytic system too much (instead of having more energy created from fat oxidation). This training concept is not just for athletes that train a lot!
If you have less time, you need to train smarter!
To be fair, Why would someone ride at Sweet Spot? Oftentimes athletes decide to train here because they can put a lot of time in this zone and it anecdotally feels like you are working hard. That is true! Sweet spot training is tough.
While there are some benefits to sweet spot training (muscular endurance, mitochondrial increase, Type IIa fiber recruitment, muscular strength), since you only have 6 hours a week to train, it doesn’t make the list of the Top 4 Areas that I would train if I was on a Low Volume Plan.
There is a lot of online marketing specifically aimed towards time-crunched athletes to ride Sweet Spot all of the time. While they aren’t doing this with malice, it’s a great way to get someone on board with their “plan” for 18 months, only to leave them stagnated and flat at the end.
See Also: Top Tips For Cycling Interval Training
Lactate Threshold Training
We'll talk more in detail but we really want to focus on over unders here.
Training your lactate threshold will help you improve the equation of how much lactate you produce minus how much can you clear. When you can clear more lactate effectively, you can ride at threshold power for longer, and over time you will see yourself being able to raise your threshold power. What used to feel like “above threshold” becomes your threshold power. A lot of riders find that they become to the “over” power in over unders, and eventually they are able to put out watts for long periods of time at that intensity.
When you have more lactate produced than you can clear, that is when you have that feeling that you need to ride under Functional Threshold Power so that you can recover. You physically have no other choice but to ride at zone two or zone three to clear some lactate and fatiguing metabolites before you can ride harder again.
Sweet Spot training does have benefits to the mental side of putting out a lot of power just below threshold for long periods of time, however there is not much backing up the idea that it actually decreases lactate production or increases your lactate threshold; therefore I would spend more of your time increasing in your lactate threshold with over under.
This is not saying that sweet spot is a complete waste of time, but when you are time crunched and only have 6 hours to train in a week, it is not the best use of your time.
VO2Max Training
VO2Max training is important so that you reach your highest aerobic capabilities. If you are unsure about VO2Max training, you can learn a lot more about them in our blogs or in our YouTube Videos.
You can definitely achieve a lot in terms of VO2Max training if you are a time crunched cyclist with only 6 hours per week to train. Your entire workout could be 45-60 minutes, with tons of high quality intervals.
I mention this in the other blogs, but I would only do 1 of these sessions per week to start. More intensity is not always better!
Low Volume Endurance Training
People will always ask me “Why would I waste my time riding endurance when I only have 6 hours to train”. Definitely check out the Why Ride Endurance Video and this endurance training blog to get a better understanding of how massively beneficial endurance training is. It is the foundation of all your cycling and will provide the most benefit to you over the long term. I realize that this is counterintuitive since it isn’t “hard”, but there is so much to gain from endurance riding.
Sweet Spot Riding feels enjoyable and feels hard, but you’d be much better off riding easier for some sessions, and harder (Lactate Threshold or VO2Max) for others.
It's not just me talking about this, listen to Iñigo San Millán (here and here), Tom Bell and a ton of other bike coaches that are out there talking about endurance training, and how it will take you farther than overdoing Sweet Spot training.
A big thing to remember as we talk about higher intensity training while training at this intensity we are creating a lot of energy through glycolysis because of this we want to ensure that we have adequate endurance training to continue to work on our fat oxidation energy production so that we are not just creating a ton of fatigue metabolize when we create power I talk a lot more about this in the anaerobic training blog which you could read about here.
I know this sounds crazy, I didn't believe it at first either, but after years and years of coaching athletes, being coached by other coaches, and completing over 160,000 miles of training, I know that endurance riding is more beneficial than Sweet Spot riding.
Strength Training
This is a wild card, and you might not even want to count this towards the 6 hours, because you might be able to just squeeze it in somewhere else.
The biggest benefits that strength training provides is that having more muscle means more watt production.
Having more muscle and training these muscles means more muscular engagement across the board while riding.
More muscle means more glycogen storage, or more energy available to ride hard, above threshold, later in the ride.
Strength training includes a lot of hormonal benefits and will keep your energy up.
You can have a very valuable session in only 30 minutes. Get up early before work, jump into the gym at work at lunch, skip happy hour and lift on your way home, or lift at home with your teenage kids.
Other Workouts To Substitute
I didn't mention any Tempo riding or constant power Threshold training, simply because of a lack of time, and they aren’t as valuable to developing your Lactate Threshold or VO2Max. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t EVER ride at these intensities.
Tempo and Low Cadence Cycling Training
Tempo riding can increase muscular strength and muscular endurance. If you perform Tempo cycling rides with Low Cadence, it can help to recruit some of the muscle fibers that are not utilized until very late in an endurance ride. Since there isn’t much time for long rides on a low volume training plan, Low Cadence / High Torque tempo rides could be beneficial.
As you move through your training you might find a few days where you need to work out like this and it would be a great substitution to put in there.
Anaerobic Training
If you start heading to some group rides before your events and notice that you’re missing some pop, or just can’t seem to handle the hard surges, it could be a need for some anaerobic training. But fair warning, it could also just be a limitation from a lack of training since you are a time-crunched athlete.
If you’re falling off a group ride at hour 2, it could be because you just don’t have the time to put in longer rides, and performance might suffer in longer events or rides.
If you’re noticing that you’re missing out of moves very early on, you might need some anaerobic training. Check out this blog that dives into a ton of detail on this topic.
Workout Variability
One thing to keep in mind with your VO2 max cycling training and your over unders is that there are a myriad of ways to perform these, so it would be really beneficial to get six to eight workouts that you execute well, and rotate through these. As some get stale, sub them out with different ones! There are many different ways to train these efforts, and just make sure you're still enjoying the training, seeing results from the training, and feeling prepared for your upcoming events
Low Volume Cycling Training Schedule
We just need to find a balance among all of this training and while 6 hours is not a ton of training volume, you can still get a lot accomplished; you just need to be focused.
Use Monday and Friday as a rest day, to really focus on everything off of the bike.
Tuesday and Thursday are the harder interval days.
Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday are the endurance days, and you can use one of them to hit some sprints.
Remember that endurance is beneficial. If we’re constantly going hard, we are too focused on intensity and not reaping the benefits of training our fat oxidation through endurance training.
Pipe dream: Maybe you can throw a long ride in and only have 4 days of riding that week. Or maybe you can work out a long ride once every month, of 3-4 hours in duration. See what you can do!
Try To Add Hours!
Without getting crazy here, let's talk about increasing your training time. If you increase your training time from 6 hours to 6h30 minutes, that is an 8.3% increase in training!
If you went from 6 hours to 7 hours, that's a 16.6% increase in training! That is humongous.
All of this time spent training really matters; it all adds up in the long run, especially if you stay in the sport for a long period of time. One more hour per week for the next 10 years is 500 hours of training; that's monumental!
Best of luck!!
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