The
two ways to get stronger, you can either increase your muscle
mass or what's termed typically measured as cross sectional area.
So just bigger fibers and this is hypertrophy, or you can go about it.
Via neural neural adaptations.
So how the brain communicates with the muscle, how the muscles work
nervously, anaerobic power contributes to endurance to you, stable a 70%.
And you think, well, I'm not even using any of my type two
fibers, but you actually are.
And, and, and there's still some anaerobic and glucose utilization going on.
Even at low workloads and anaerobic fibers, aren't entirely anaerobic and
predominant is the word that's always used here because they're predominantly
anaerobic, but your anaerobic fibers can contribute to highly aerobic work levels.
They're still in play.
So it's not really the worst thing to have plumper type two fibers, those,
those, those medium Twitch and those fast Twitch fibers, especially when it
comes to those situations in a race where you need power and you can't just rely
on endurance, you need to be able to.
Push out some big Watts for, for short periods of time.
one, I think in cycling, when you're talking about these big events, Nate
mentioned this earlier, it's just too hard to recover from efforts like this.
And so you're better off with consistency.
You know, as Chad said, targeting these specific systems and then making sure that
you can recover consistently from them.
And one of the things I want to, so the point is that you can actually handle
a really, really high TSS one day event doing a low volume plan that doesn't have
the same level of TSS week after week.
And one way of thinking about this is, you know, your FTP, it's your
functional threshold power is the power at which you can theoretically
effectively shuttle lactate really well.
Um, so think if you think about your FTT, FTP as a metric for shuttling,
it's not like you have a separate shuttling system for a one hour ride.
That's different from the shuttling system for a three-hour ride.
That's different from a shuttling system for a six hour ride.
It's all the same system.
So if your FTP is at a level where you know that you can shuttle it,
this particular power up, but.
That's the same, it's the same thing for a one-hour ride, as it
would be for an eight hour ride.
Now that's of course, subject to your pacing strategy in how
well you're fueling and staying hydrated, but shuttling is shuttling.
So you're, you know, when you train that system, even if you're training
that system at a low volume, it w it's there it's there, no matter how
long you want to go for a ride or, or how long your event is, um, That said
there are other metrics of endurance.
Right.
You know, the fueling I mentioned, that's going to be a really important one.
It's not just about making sure you're fueling enough and consistently
through the event, but also you have pallet fatigue, uh, focus.
So just maintaining a mental focus and the mental fatigue associated with being
on the bike for a really long time.
And that's of course, related to fueling.
And then you did mention being in the saddle and that's its
own special kind of endurance.
We all know.
Um, but honestly, like all of these things I think are very trainable.
On a low volume plan.
And if you want to, you can, if you toss in maybe a handful, a few longer
rides where you sort of test what it's like to be in the saddle for four
hours, maybe five hours, you don't have to go do nine hours on the bike
to prep for a nine hour event though.
Um, so just, you know, I think you can be confident that on a low volume plan, you
can train effectively for a longer event.
And if the low volume plan is the thing that you can do consistently.
And not get sick from and not get injured from that is your
absolute best bet for preparing for even a really, really big TSS
but try timing your breathing with your cadence.
So in spot you might breathe at a rate of, let's say 30 times for a minute.
If you wanted to simulate a climb during a sweet spot interval and
have like a really low cadence.
Let's say 60, then you'd be breathing every other pedal stroke, but then
you can try mixing it up, mix up your cadence, mix up your breathing
rate, try alternating sides.
So you're emphasizing both left and right pedal stroke.
Um, we used to do this in swimming.
We call it alternate breathing because if you only ever breathe on
one side, you can get a little bit lopsided in terms of your, your form.
Uh, but you can also try, um, experimenting with noticing
changes in your internal state.
So does a slower, you know, again, does slower breathing affect
your mood, your anxiety level?
Um, if you notice that you're kind of have a lot of tension in your shoulders,
does some belly breathing, help you relax and bring that down again and
then shift between narrow focus.
Um, so that's internal and then shift your focus out again to something external,
like looking at the screen, looking at, uh, how your knees are tracking on
the bike, picking a point on the wall.
Um, and then you can shift between narrow focus and broad focus.
So narrow focus would be like, If you're on train and really like focusing on
that little yellow line, um, and then shifting back out to a broad focus, a
broad focus away of doing this on the trainer would be just to S to, to try
to imagine the shape occupied by the empty space in your room, which is kind
of a funny mental exercise, but it's a way of opening your focus and being.
Broadening and softening at focus and then shifting between that, and then
going back into a really narrow focus and the whole time you're doing this,
you want to keep tabs on your breathing.
So keep counting your breaths, keep maybe breathing in time with
your cadence, whatever that is.
And then the other thing you can do is instead of counting your breasts, you
can always try substituting, counting with a mantra and see if that helps
and experiment with different mantras.
But these are all things that can help you tap into a good mental state that
will then in turn, help your performance.
And the key is that the breathing is grounding you in that
associative attentional focus state, which is super important.
So all of this, this is the goal of this is not to like identify what your
perfect sweet spot ventilation rate is.
There's no such thing.
There's no, there's no perfect rate of ventilation for any given effort.
But what it is doing is it's just teaching you, uh, more about how to focus.
So you're, you're you're training that attentional focus, that skillset,
you are learning how to modulate, where you are on that sympathetic
parasympathetic ladder with your breath.
And the whole time you're doing this, you're training all of those
muscles, just like Chad said.
So it's kind of a nice it's, it's kind of like a nice all-in-one and again,
that spot, those steady state efforts on the trainer are such a good time
to try and just experiment with this.
Okay.
So many people, I just saw somebody, um, in the forum, I said,
um, they're new to Trina road.
Okay, I'm going to do sweet spot based high volume ones.
She's probably high volume too.
Like if you've never done indoor structure, training stand is a whole
different world compared to outright.
Even if you ride a whole bunch outdoors, just try one block on low
volume and see how you do then go to mid volume and see your compliance.
Totally.
Um, and then when you start missing things back it off rather than.
Um, I personally think when you start to, like, I saw another, uh, YouTube video on
this and the person missed a whole bunch of workouts and, and, um, stopped them.
Shorts still had performance improvements, but I would say before you start like
lowering every workout where you deck every day, you're just like Loring it
and ending every workout, early switch to a lower volume, like mid volume or
low volume, get a recovery day and then hit your intervals on those other days.
I agree
completely.
Yeah.
And there's a common tendency.
If you're new to it, to look at your current volume and you alluded to
this, but just to be very explicit with it, look at your current volume.
Look at the training plans.
And in many cases, like a lot of people are like, well, then I
should follow a high volume plan, but it's important to remember.
This is purely structured time.
They're looking at a different experience,
exclusively ours, not necessarily the composition of the training.
So they're, you know, maybe writing eight hours a week, but they're just kind of.
Noodling doing a bit of tempo, riding, you know, coasting the downhills, maybe
even coasting some of the regular riding.
And that's very different from what you'll encounter when you train indoors.
And you're probably
not doing threshold for 20 minutes and that's
the other thing, the intensity and.
Chances are chances, are you have some sort of like, um,
bias in terms of what you see?
Like if you were to actually have a full report on how much was structured and
the ride that you did is of course the structured portion sticks out our mind.
And, but when we kind of let all the other stuff melt away and we don't
think about it, but when you look back it compromises or it can, it,
it composes as much smaller portion of our training time than you think.
If you're just.
Riding outside.
Um, so are you going to do a super quick recap of that?
Uh, so first of all, sleep get good sleep to focus on whole foods and reduce
the stuff that isn't necessary and probably isn't improve your performance.
And you're talking about . Yeah.
Right.
Um, in terms of timing, your food, make sure that you come into a workout
with sufficient stores on board.
Uh, carbon centric meals are great before then.
And during, when you're training on the bike and after, uh, then nail
the low, the low volume plan before you move up, uh, and start low.
And then you can write as much as you want.
Uh, on top of that, and then just start working in more structures.
He can cooling, make sure you cool yourself enough, make sure
you have the entertainment.
That's right.
For the sort of intensity you're doing.
And also what you enjoy.
Eliminate obstacles that stop you from getting on the bike and then
figure out things like caffeine and other substances that you take in
the stages of recovery also apply perceptually, and I guess you could.
Like in that to psychologically in that they're still subjective.
So, you know, all the things that influenced them on a physiologic level,
probably to some extent, influenced them on a, on a psychological level.
Um, I see it as kind of a process that you have to go through every
time you reach a recovery week and that the first day or two or three.
You're tired.
I mean, you're, you're obviously tired and nothing feels quite right.
You have general body fatigue.
You have like a Malays where you just nothing excites you or
affects you the way it does food.
Doesn't taste as good.
I mean, there's so many things that can be likened to mild depression.
And in some cases it is in fact that your motivation is low.
I mean, it's just this low point and you wonder what is wrong with me?
Why do I feel this way?
But.
A couple of days later, you start to work your way out of it.
And the next couple of few days are this gradual return to normal.
And, and this I think is the temptation much like coming back
from illness or injury is where people jump into things too soon.
I think I'm ready to hit it again.
I'm going to do it.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn't though.
So what I look for in me, especially since I'm not personally training anybody, but
when I did train individual clients was I wanted to detect some indication of
an eagerness to return to training it.
Wasn't just that they could do the workout.
I kind of wanted to do the workout.
I wanted like.
A visible joie to be.
If I wanted to see, you know, an actual zest for life, I wanted them to want
to train and to be excited about that prospect, that to me said recovery has
run its course, and now is the time to, to up the load and get after it again.
Yeah.
There's um, I, I remember a while back, I was coming back from illness and was
finally to a point where I was like, man, I can't wait to get on the bike again.
And I said it out loud, my husband one day.
And he goes, yeah, it probably means you need at least another day off.
And I was like, wait, what?
And he's like, I mean, you want it, you really want to stoke the fire.
You want to really see.
Continually, um, keep that, you know, that hunger and that enthusiasm,
like you said that to be right.
I think that's such a great way to put it in frame it, because it is so important.
It's a really crucial component of, of training.
Yeah.
And that what happens too, is that doesn't always, to me that's like Saturday or
Sunday or sometimes even Monday or the recovery week when that comes back,
it is definitely not Monday, Tuesday.
Monday Tuesday.
I'm like, I went way too deep.
Like this is, I should give up cycling all the time.
Right.
Sorry for the barking dog in the background.
Once again, we're all in this together, uh, such as the time that we're in.
So, um, one thing to add to this too, is that a lot of these feelings, I
could see somebody listening to this and being like, Hey, I feel like that.
Not just in a recovery week, sometimes I feel like that emits like a
training week, like last week, for example, I had a huge amount of other
training or other load in my life with getting a ton of yard work done.
It's still going on, but maybe I've adapted.
I don't know what the change is, but it was really tough.
Like last week was really hard to go through and hit all my marks and training.
And it was like over the weekend, I was just like, Oh man, or
coming into the weekend, I was like, I'm just not fast anymore.
I'm I'm like dropping down.
Something's going on.
Everything is wrong.
I need to question everything.
Right.
And then once I made it through and I got, I had a great ride on Saturday, I
actually took the day off of structure and I went out and just rode my mountain bike.
It had been a long time since I had done that.
Um, which in our local area it's safe to do so, and also legal to do so.
Um, And the place I picked was one where I wouldn't be
overlapping with a lot of people.
So I went through and did that and had a great ride and got a bit of that
enjoyment of riding back and man bike.
It's been killer like this week.
My workouts have been so good.
I've been like hitting all my marks.
I'm eager to train.
So sometimes even the, you know, this can happen in the middle of
a training week and it's really finding your way to do it for me.
It wasn't stepping away from structure.
That's like the red herring, really what it was was just, I needed to, to make
sure that I, or I was putting too much emphasis and freaking out too much on all
the small things that were going on and then said, I just needed to calm my mind
down and do it and having that day off and then having another one just helped a lot.
Cause I think a lot of the time we were good at sabotaging ourselves
and not being successful at training.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
I I'm doing a high volume, uh, short power, high volume build right now.
And I was with a writer, um, from four eyes.
She's, uh, she's in charge.
I forget what her exact title is, but really cool person.
And she was saying she went to sleep and she was, had a negative mindset.
Cause she's like, man, I am so tired.
My legs hurt all of this.
Like I am too deep.
And we talked about, I said, no, that's that was after a really hard workout.
The other mindset you could have is, wow, this is exactly what I want.
Like my I'm tired and my legs hurt going to sleep after a hard workout.
I went, I put it in there.
I put the effort in, and I know that if I recover now and the next day was
easier, uh, that I'm going to be faster.
And that's the kind of state I want to be in.
If I've never in a tired state where my legs hurt, I'm probably not training
hard enough, or I could probably hire some, um, get some more volume.
It's all about that mindset, right?
Because one is a, yes, I'm doing it.
This is perfect.
Another is, Oh my gosh, I'm panicking.
Um, I'm never gonna be able to finish this training plan.
Yep.
Couldn't agree.
Exactly.
So that's why I said, you know, I, I hesitate to even call it
psychological so much as perceptual.
It's how you want to look at it.
It's how you interpret it, which you know is psychological.
But I think if you frame it as, you know, I can perceive this any way I want to.
Then it makes it perceptual and maybe a little more relatable.