(rock music) (panting)
- Morning, Trainiacs.
You're next.
Just give me a second.
I'll explain what's up.
So, if you've started trying
to figure out your training zones,
what your low heart rate training should be,
what your high power should be,
you might be hearing, well,
you've gotta use the Maffetone Method,
or you've gotta use an FTP test.
And then you hear me talking about how important it is
to train in your proper zones.
But then you also hear me
and a lot of studies that say
that the Maffetone Method is inaccurate,
that it's off by as much as five to 10 beats per minute
or that an FTP test is off by as much as 20%.
So how then do you figure out accurate zones
without spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars
and trying to get into a lab wearing a snorkel?
Well, I just turned myself inside out
for a test that reports to be as accurate
as lab testing, if not more.
I suffer for you.
So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna explain
how that test works, how you can do it,
and then we're gonna see just how accurate it is
when we compare it to my lab testing.
I almost threw up there three times.
(upbeat music)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
All right, let me start off
by giving you the protocol of what this is.
This is the INSCYD test
that you do at home.
All you need is a power meter and heart rate,
and you do this test, send it away to them,
and it saves you from having to go into a lab.
And hopefully, reportedly, they get as accurate,
if not more accurate training zones than going into a lab.
What it is is a 15-minute warmup,
and in those 15 minutes,
you do two, five-to-10 second builds
with high power, high cadence.
Then you do a 20-second max effort,
has to be seated.
Then you do eight minutes of easy,
has to be continuous pedaling at around 1/2 of your FTP.
Then a four-minute max effort,
has to be seated.
Key to it is not peaking at the end.
It's okay to go out too hard and then slowly trickle off,
but you don't wanna surge at the end.
Then 15 minutes easy,
has to be continuous pedaling at half your FTP.
Then 2 1/2 minutes max, same thing, no peak at the end,
but it's okay to go out too hard and then try to hang on.
10 minutes easy at half your FTP.
Then 12 minutes max effort, again, no peak at the end,
but it's okay to go too hard at the start
and then putter out,
and then a 15-minute cool down.
There are some things that you gotta get right
to make sure the test is valid.
I have this on Zwift, as you can see,
but it's not actually the Zwift file that they need.
I was really just using Zwift as a display.
Where I actually recorded the session was on a head unit,
and I made sure that the bike computer or watch
or whatever it is was paired to my heart rate monitor
and a separate set of power pedals,
not the controllable Wahoo KICKR that I'm using.
So, that is going to give you an actual FIT file
that you have to then send to INSCYD.
Now, to set this up right, if you're putting Zwift
in front of you to keep your mind off the hurt,
you want a very flat Zwift course.
And you want it to all be seated.
So what I did was I chose the Watopia Fuego Flats,
and I just did circles of that.
Before you do this,
you'll also wanna calibrate your power meter
so that you're getting the most accurate data that you can.
And you wanna be basically well primed up for this.
I did this, even though I practice a low-carb approach
to training, I had carbs before this.
I had a UCAN bar right before taking the test,
and I used the S Fuels Race Solution
in here that has carbs in it.
So I wanna have max peak efforts,
and I wanna be able to get all of the data with this.
So that's what you do.
Now, let's chat with INSCYD about how this actually works,
and we'll see how accurate it was.
I tell you this, it sucked.
- So, here we are.
We have the results.
Across the top, you can see we have seven different tabs,
body comp, all the way to training zones.
What we'll do is go through each one of these.
Knowing your VLA max helps you understand what type
of athlete you are.
So somebody that has a very low VLA max is gonna be more
of the slow-twitch type of athlete.
Long steady-state efforts are gonna be more of their forte.
Somebody that has a very high VLA max,
that's somebody that's able to put out a really high wattage
in a short sprint effort.
So, they're much more anaerobic,
or just generically speaking,
if I'm gonna go out there and do a VO2 max interval,
what the effort or the intensity
that I'm gonna be going about it at
and what does my recovery look like.
So, for you, we know now based on your training zones,
if I skip ahead a little bit,
we can see your aerobic maximum
or your VO2 max number is gonna be 342 watts.
So, if we come back,
and we say all right, Taren's gonna go out
and do VO2 max work at 340 watts,
I can now start to see what your lactate production
and combustion rates are.
So a lot of times as a coach, you're gonna say,
hey, go out there and do three minutes on,
three minutes off.
Because you're doing the three-minute intervals,
your recovery is gonna be the same time.
And there's no too much thought given
to what is the intensity of the recovery
and even why we're doing three minutes.
- So, all right, Trainiacs (groans),
I feel like a little kid at the kids' table.
It's been a few weeks now actually since I did that test.
I had a number of questions about the test.
I had a number of questions about the results
because it seems fairly,
almost too good to be true
that you can do a test just on your trainer here
by yourself, unsupervised,
and have results that are as accurate, if not more,
than the hundred,
several $100 lab-supervised tests
with a bunch of people in lab coats around you.
And what happened in that call
with Greg from INSCYD is that on the surface,
a lot of their results that they gave sent up red flags.
I was like, huh,
maybe this isn't actually as good as it seems.
So I had to think a lot about it,
and I had to review the data
that we had from my lab test last November,
basically as I started serious training,
and compare it to now after three, four months
of really good training.
I actually just now got off the phone with Greg
and Sebastian Weber, the head sports scientist of INSCYD,
the founder, and going through the data.
And he started calculating,
all right, here's what you did in November in a lab.
Here's what you did in our test.
And we started back testing all
of the intervals that I've done
when I would do like 30 second on, 30 second off workouts
and four-minute workouts, and five-minute workouts.
And we started looking at like how did it feel,
and we actually figured out
that the INSCYD test is tremendously accurate.
And if anything, the lab test
that we had back in November was off.
And that's all part of the problem here,
that when I talk to my coach, Dr. Dan Plews,
who is the one that wants me to get into the lab,
he says, well, the problem
with these tests is that they're all wrong.
FTP tests, the Maffetone Method test,
the percentage of heart rates,
even getting into a lab with the snorkel, the INSCYD test,
they're all somewhat wrong in some way.
But the question is,
are we able to pull out data that we can use?
And that's the big question.
And the question that was just answered for me
on the call with INSCYD is that yes,
this is absolutely data that you can use.
But what it doesn't give you
is a sports scientist in a box.
If what you're expecting to do is do this test
and have, boom, exactly how to create a training plan,
you aren't gonna get that.
So what you're gonna get is the ability to understand
at a certain effort level how much lactate
and how much essentially fatigue are you accumulating
and how long is it gonna take for you to flush that out
and how hard can you push it,
how deep can you go before essentially you max out,
and you need a bigger rest
or you need a rest the next day.
You start getting actual metrics of how hard is hard enough,
how easy is the proper amount of easy.
And it starts giving you really good training zones
that are much more accurate
than just some calculator that you've got online.
My calculator, I admit that it's not as accurate
as I would like it to be.
But this is really quite accurate.
Now it doesn't mean that everyone has to now go
and do this test.
The guidelines that I give
about how to train with zones
with as little as a heart rate monitor, they still apply.
But if you want to take the next step,
and you want to know exactly how many watts
you specifically need for your individual physiology,
what exact heart rate you need to be at,
this is a way to start getting it closer
and closer and closer.
And what I think we're gonna do on Team Trainiac
is allow athletes to perform an INSCYD test,
get their training zones,
and then have those zones port over to the app.
And what I think we're gonna do on teamtrainiac.com
and in that app is for the athletes that want to get down
to that last one to 2% accuracy level
to know exactly how many watts for exactly how many seconds,
which can be beneficial for the more advanced athletes,
but I would say isn't necessary for most athletes.
But for those athletes that want that,
we are then going to build that in.
So, if that's the kind of athlete that you are,
that you want to get into a lab,
but you don't have access to a lab,
you don't how to interpret the data from a lab,
this is a way that you can do it, with a caveat.
You still have to know how to create a training plan.
Just knowing your zones isn't going to tell you
how long an interval should be,
when to do long intervals, when to do short intervals,
how to manage a weekly amount of fatigue,
how to manage a yearly amount of fatigue.
You still need some sort of a training plan.
So, whether that's a coach who understands all of that,
whether that's Team Trainiac
that has that overall load management built in for you,
you have to have someone that understands
how to create the training plan
'cause just knowing your zones isn't a training plan.
The training plan that is properly designed
is always going to trump proper, bang-on
to-the-last-percentage-point zones.
The last percentage point zones is just the icing
on the cake to essentially know yourself
if you are training properly, if your zones are accurate,
have some confidence that what you're doing is correct.
So final question of what is my review
of the INSCYD test,
well, A, it's really hard.
Make sure that you are well rested coming into it,
and you don't have anything key in the days coming after it.
Two, make sure that you have a way
to actually translate the results
that you have into a proper training plan.
Just getting these results,
it's not gonna be a magic bullet whatsoever.
But you can take them and translate it into a training plan,
but you need to know really what you're doing.
I needed some coaching to understand
how to take this information.
It's not super simple,
but if it was all simple, would coaches even exist?
But the final piece is, is it accurate?
I mean, as far as what I can tell
and what we went over today, I would say yeah.
It's probably going to get you as close
to what your zones are going to be as getting into a lab is.
And that is a very, very powerful thing.
So, good on you, INSCYD.
I know it was several weeks ago that I did that,
but I remember how much that hurt over there.
That left a mark on my soul.
So with that said, Trainiacs,
if none of you have ever tried out teamtrainiac.com,
go and check it out.
There's a 14-day free trial that you can check it out.
It's getting better and better by the month.
We have a team of Ukrainian developers
that are constantly tweaking it.
We're constantly improving the workouts
with the help of Dr. Dan Plews and Dr. Paul Larson.
And with the input of INSCYD
and all these things that we're learning,
we're trying to translate all
of that really sophisticated proper training science
into something that's easily accessible
for the average athlete.
So if you haven't checked it out yet,
or you checked it out a long time ago,
and you're like, eh, this seems a little new,
it's a lot better now.
It's constantly improving.
Teamtrainiac.com.
Kick around.
See if you like it.
I'm digging it.
Lots and lots of good stuff.
And if you aren't already subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below.
Later, Trainiacs.