And let's go into Rob's question.
Um, he has a question about via TMX training and I think
it's a really good one.
Uh, so Rob says VO, two max training.
How do I know if I'm doing it correctly?
Uh, via T max workouts are definitely the ones I struggle with the most in terms of
knowing if I'm doing the right thing and I've experimented with a few approaches,
short, short, Favorite of Chad.
Chad's mentioned that before.
What do we mean by short shorts, Jack?
We should describe that or explain that it's the only
yeah, it's better
than the only way I can do VO two max work, because it's the
least painful version of it.
So you worked for a short period of time and then you recover
for either a time match or a slightly shorter period of time.
And then just repeat ad nauseum.
Emphasis on nauseum.
Yep.
So we're talking.
Yes.
So we're talking like 30 thirties, right?
Something like that.
Yeah.
30 thirties.
Microbursts no 15 fifteens.
Um, all, all sorts of options.
Hard starts followed by, uh, Uh, proliferation of a bunch of repeated
efforts like we just described.
But the idea being is that you, over the course of these repeated
efforts increase your aerobic uptick
and how high are your bib shorts rolled up when you do this check to call?
That's great.
So Rob then also says there's the other side of doing things
which is long and low, like 106%.
Like you're just tipping up into VO two max range.
Likely also when threshold range, remember you're your body
is not a system of switches.
It's a system of faders, right?
So, but he's talking lower end, a VO two max.
Um, and he says, and recently he's also been trying hard starts.
So the concept of this is that you will start much harder than VO two max, and
then thereafter you'll settle into likely, depending on the duration, it might be
a higher percentage or lower percentage of via two max, but you'll spike.
And then after that, you'll settle in.
Settle in and in quotes here at VOT max, um, as comfortable as that can be.
So Rob says, and I first tried VO two.
All I did was try to maintain the power target, typically somewhere around 120%.
And that depends like a 120% is a commonly prescribed value, but
there's plenty of space that you can explore within the VO two max.
He says then on researching, it seems like power.
This is Rob's assumption.
I want to make this clear that this isn't necessarily like a takeaway or
something that we're saying as gospel.
He says, then on researching, let's get lots of responsibility and researching.
It seems like power is just a way to push your oxygen uptake
and you should gun for us.
Anything above 90%.
Max heart rate is a proxy for oxygen uptake.
This is when it gets really tricky is when you're starting to look
into heart rate and then power to be able to achieve the same outcome.
It gets complicated.
She says I've been experimenting with hard starts.
I go way over the power target for a brief period and get my heart
rate up really high above 90%.
Then back off the power and just keep my, my heart rate up.
There's a whole thread on the forum where he saw this being debated,
um, the forum train road.com/forum.
You can go there and have awesome discussions with
lots of different cyclists.
He says, but this does fatigue, my legs.
And often I'll end in an interval at threshold or sweet spot power.
Although my heart rate is still roughly somewhere around 90%.
So is this still VO two max training?
It'd be great to understand what I should be aiming for and any
physiological signs I can check to see if I'm on the right track.
A great show.
I've learned so much about cycling over the past couple of years, and
it was great help during the various lockdown periods and turbo training
was the only thing available.
Cheers from Rob.
Uh, Rob, I'm excited to answer this.
Uh, you Rob like me and like many others, we are incredible, incredibly
skilled at overthinking things.
Uh, and this is one, uh, great example.
Like when you're talking about looking for physiological markers to
see if you're doing it while you're literally doing VO two max training,
you're wondering if you're doing it.
So, um, this is once again a great sign of a cyclist.
We're fantastic at that.
And it's like,
Oh, I just said, this is part of why I love the podcast.
It's an outlet for my overthinking.
Exactly.
Yep.
I like that.
Um, so we, you covered this Rob, and we'll cover this too here,
but there are different ways to go about accomplishing VOT, max.
Totally.
Um, there are, it's a, it's a range that you have to work within and
there's different ways to do it.
Chad was talking about short shorts who talks about long or more extended ones.
There's ambers, absolutely favorite workout of five by five , uh,
which, uh, Amber has mentioned before is the least favorite thing.
Does not look forward to doing, uh, after doing it for so many years.
So there's a lot of different things, but Chad, can you cover what the goal is?
So then we can kind of have like a common thing to understand, or an
objective for all these different ways to accomplish via TMX training.
What is the point of TMX training increase your
aerobic capacity?
So, so we're trying to be able to do as much work as possible.
By utilizing the aerobic system.
So the endurance system, and you mentioned all of the, the power levels,
you know, 1 0 2 to one 20 and beyond, and you can, you can improve your
rubber capacity working at 60% as long as you have for long periods of time.
So we're just trying to, if you think of a less in terms of.
Uh, the workout and the numbers and more in terms of the physiological
adaptations that are actually driving.
What we're after this, this is the nature of the two max
work, aerobic capacity work.
We're trying to improve the things we talk about often.
The oxidative enzymes that the mitochondrial health and
quantity and robustness the capitalization in the muscle itself.
So we can perfuse it with more nutrients, more oxygen, and we
can do this in so many ways.
We can run the whole spectrum from the easiest of work, extended out
over long durations to the hardest, to work for short, almost the
hardest to work for short durations.
And then for the truly hard work, but only done like in.
Just like we talked about with short shorts where you bury yourself and then
you ease up and you bury yourself and you ease up where you can use power
outputs at 150% threshold, which doesn't look anything like a real brick work.
But the outcome of the workout is a largely an aerobic
benefit.
That's a really important thing to get to on to understand there is that there's
ways to put yourself in that spot where you're getting aerobic benefit, that.
Just, uh, one specific zone.
I mean, that's, you got a rubbish benefit all the way down from G2 all the way up.
Right.
Um, so there's a lot of different ways to accomplish this 32nd sprints.
Yep.
Once you exhaust those anaerobic stores, you're just left with the
robot capabilities thereafter, right?
So that's in the
stimulus.
So on the aerobic fibers is still felt, I mean, it's, you can we
use the term and I see it in the notes, many ways to skin a cat.
And when it comes to aerobic conditioning, there are many.
Yeah, absolutely.
Amber, what does via TMX max training feel like?
Cause this is another thing we're talking about.
There's a lot of different ways to accomplish it, but what does VO two max
training in particular feel like for you?
Pretty
much.
That's how you know you're doing it right.
Honestly.
And the thing that's frustrating about these is even when you get
good at them, it just means that you have to put out more power.
It doesn't, it's that old saying of it.
Doesn't get easier.
You just get faster and it's true.
I mean, At your body's going to continue to adapt as you improve.
But that just means that in order to elicit the same stimulus, like we've
said before, you're going to have.
Push a little bit harder.
Um, and it's, there's, there's honestly, there's no easy
way to do VO two max efforts.
Um, because if it feels easy, it's not VO two max.
I was cracking up yesterday because one of the athletes, she commented on her ride.
Um, to me it was a VOT work workout that I gave her and she commented.
I did a good job on this, but I hate VO too.
And my comment back started with.
So you did the workout, right?
Yeah.
That's how, you know, you nailed it.
Exactly.
So Hannah, so there's, so once again, we're talking
about aerobic training, right?
That's the basis of it.
VOT max is a very like a, you can get a whole lot of it.
Um, in terms of, you know, a lot of focus time at that peak aerobic
uptake and everything else, um, takes a long time to get to that if
you're at lower endurance levels.
Um, but Hannah.
Do you change or periodize your VO to work, so to speak depending
on where you're at in the season.
In other words, do you VO two max, do you do different types of VO two max
intervals depending on the time of year?
Yeah,
I think there are so many different types of VO, two max and our
levels, you know, you can do.
Um, shorter ones, you can do longer ones.
You know, we're talking one minute, five minute type of things.
You can do.
Even shorter ones with shorter recovery, like 30 thirties, you can do
recoveries that are one-to-one rest.
You can do two minute intervals with eight minutes stress.
So there's just so many different types.
And I think it really depends what type of.
Adaptations you're after and what type of racing you're doing.
So I think, you know, a standard periodization would be to start at
shorter intervals with longer ES and then increase the duration of the intervals.
Um, and then there's also, of course you can go the direction
of decreasing rest as well.
I also think that it's valid to note that it depends what you're measuring and.
And that's going to influence how you feel or what you're looking at.
So there's, I mean, we could measure VO two, just based on heart rate.
We could measure it just based on power zones.
We could even get blood lactate testing going and in all of these cases, you
know, for example, if you're just using heart rate and you're doing two minutes
on two minutes off, you might be at.
You know, V O two range the whole time and achieving some
type of cardiovascular element.
If you looked at your power for those though, you might be decreasing 20 Watts,
every interval where at the end of that workout, you're not in your power range,
you're in your threshold power range.
And so.
You know, is a really interesting one in that regard, but I think it
depends, you know, are we getting muscular the muscular effect or are
we getting the cardiovascular effect?
And the golden area is where we can get all of those.
And I think that's when you're really, at least for me, I feel like that's
when you're really doing a great job with your VOT work is you're able to
do all of those successfully in one.
Workout, but that's why personally, I like to view VO two as an energy
system, because I feel like when I do VO two max work more than any
other type of, of, um, training zone.
I know that if I'm at least achieving one of those things in the workout,
I'm getting some sort of benefit.
So unlike threshold, where if.
Not hitting the numbers, but my heart rate is through the roof.
I'm not really achieving threshold, but if in via two, I'm going to the
absolute, best of my abilities and I'm still not hitting the numbers.
I know that I'm still stressing my cardiovascular system appropriately.
Uh, Hannah, you just built out the perfect advertisement for adaptive training.
Cause that's exactly how it works.
I'm glad to hear it.
Thank you.
Break these female.
Exactly.
We don't have advertisers on the spot guests.
So that was it.
That was fantastic because, but that's just the thing of.
Keeping yourself in that, in that.
And I can't use the word sweet spot because it would complete
here in this case, but, and keeping yourself in that VOT, max productive
zone, you can't just go out and do five by five, right off the bat.
You have to work your way into it.
And that's why we built out progression levels with these workouts.
And then they're all calculated and analyzed via AI so that you're
stepping up at the right amounts.
You're always in that bandwidth, they have.
Well, this is the way to do it.
Um, also welcome to DC Rainmaker who's in our live chat.
I'm sure he's here for protein.
I'm sure.
That's what he's super interested in hearing us talk about today.
So that's why everyone's here.
Yeah, exactly.
Um, uh, so it's, it's really easy to get in the weeds with via to max and honestly,
any type of training, but via to max in particular, it's really easy to get.
Wait, but we get in the
weeds
on join us.
The water's fine.
But here's the main thing that at least I personally keep in mind,
I'm going, I'm going after trying to accumulate time of peak aerobic uptake.
Like, and that's what, so when it's taken care of, whereas before I'd
like just cherry pick a workout, I'd be like, Hey, that looks great.
I can do it.
And.
But for me, what I end up end up prioritizing is at
that peak aerobic uptake.
And the one thing I will say is as I get closer to an event,
I will specialize further.
So my VO two max work might look a little bit more variable if I'm going toward
like a crit or something like that.
And it's more repeated or something, you know, it might be more a specific.
But those hard starts that you mentioned in this case, Rob can be
really difficult to be able to achieve a lot of time at peak aerobic uptake.
And the reason for that is because you'll exhaust anaerobic stores and you'll just
work yourself on those short efforts.
Let's just say, theoretically, that you could hold five by five
So you get 25 minutes roughly.
I don't know.
Let's just say 20 minutes out of that at peak aerobic uptake,
if you're going to sprint.
And then settle in.
You might not be able to hold that 20 minutes or whatever else by the
end of that workout, you might not have accumulated quite as much.
You might get to peak aerobic uptake.
But you might be able to sustain it for less time thereafter.
So it's just something to keep in mind.
Um, typically what Chad is thinking about when Chad is designing all
the plans and when we're going about our training is he wants you to
be really good at dwelling there.
And he knows that really good things happen when you're at peak aerobic
uptake in terms of adaptation.
So it's just trying to find the best way to get you there and keep you there.
So you're on the right track.
Rob.
Don't overthink it.
You know, use it after draining and it'll solve everything for you.
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