Take a guess, which one of our all-knowing hosts is an expert on Baby Yoda, and who hadn’t even heard of him until this recording? Or, more importantly, what is a palindrome? Welcome to our second bonus episode of Fast Talk where Chris and Coach Connor are once again tackling your important questions! First is a question about training while fasting, then some goal–setting analysis, and finally some more discussion on the polarized training approach. We’ve included both email and voicemail questions in this podcast. To submit your own question to the guys you can call 719-800-2112 or email fasttalk@fasttalklabs.com.
Let’s make you fast!
REFERENCES
1.Terada, T., et al., Overnight fasting compromises exercise intensity and volume during sprint interval training but improves high-intensity aerobic endurance. J Sports Med Phys Fitness, 2019. 59(3): p. 357-365. 2.Stoggl, T.L. and B. Sperlich, The training intensity distribution among well-trained and elite endurance athletes. Front Physiol, 2015. 6: p. 295.
Episode Transcript
00:00
Welcome to Fast Talk developer news podcast. Everything you need to know to ride like a press
Chris Case 00:14
Welcome to Episode 94 we’re in the same room
Trevor Connor 00:17
Nice to be back in Boulder with you and we should for I got actually two emails about this about the axe murder. I am alive
Chris Case 00:27
You are alive you’re
Trevor Connor 00:28
I survived you’re
Chris Case 00:29
not bleeding at all.
Trevor Connor 00:30
No but part of this episode we will have an interview later with the x men. Oh got some really good he’s here.
Chris Case 00:35
Wow. All right, excellent. Well, we’ll have on episode 94 an interview a good exclusive interview with the axe murderer
00:43
Yeah,
Trevor Connor 00:44
we’re gonna be talking about one of the questions we’re gonna address today is about blood sugar levels. He has a surprisingly a lot to say about.
Chris Case 00:54
Oh, boy. Yes to you’ve hinted at what we’re going to talk about today we’re going to talk about bonking and different ways your body responds to fasting or not being fasted and glycogen levels and all of that. We’re going to talk a lot about goals ambitious goals, mindset, how to set goals. And finally, we’re going to talk about you know a little bit about our one of our favorite subjects the polarized approach and how much variance you see throughout the season. We’ve been receiving a lot of questions from from our listeners, we’d love it by email by voicemail, we want more, please send them to us. We’ve got an email address, Fast Talk at Fast Talk Labs.com and we’ve got that Google voicemail system set up for you to call us and leave a voicemail, the number is 719-800-2112. And I love the fact that 2112 is a palindrome.
01:52
Hey, there we go.
01:54
Anybody else left palindromes?
Trevor Connor 01:55
I don’t even know what a palindrome is racecar I was is a palindrome.
Chris Case 01:59
It’s spelled the same forward and backwards. Bob, mom, dad, those are simple ones. Another really good one. doesn’t really make that much sense. But go hang a salami. I’m a lasagna hog. There’s a palindrome for you. Boom, drop the mic. Chris doesn’t get out very much.
Trevor Connor 02:19
We’re actually talking before this episode. He’s never heard of baby Yoda. I have never heard that he knows that palindrome.
Chris Case 02:28
This is true. Baby Yoda. Yoda is like 1000 years old. He was never a baby. Baby Yoda is 50 years old. Okay, so we’ve got a question from Carol in Rhode Island. And I’m going to read it to you It came in via email. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning and without eating anything, go for a ride or run and feel great. Like I could do that ride or run a long time without bonking despite the fact that I’ve not eaten in 14 hours or more. Other times I’ll commute home on my bike. Leave the office at 5pm I’ve eaten you know, lunch four hours earlier. I’ve had a snack an hour before I leave the office. But halfway through my measly 40 minute 45 minute ride home. I’ll bonk Why is this happening? Am I in a pseudo state of ketosis after being fasted all night? And therefore I’m burning more efficient fuels on my morning rides. Whereas in my afternoon commutes I’m like glycogen depleted and suffering from a traditional bonk. What’s happening here, Trevor?
Trevor Connor 03:39
A couple things in that question that are really important to answer to be able to give a appropriate answer. First one is it’s actually pretty hard to go into a state of ketosis. Remember that this is our bodies are very emergency system when you can’t get enough glucose. This is the way it fuels the brain body doesn’t naturally jump in and out of ketosis unless there’s a need. So just sleeping overnight, not eating for eight hours isn’t going to put you into a state of ketosis. So that’s not what’s going on in the morning. That said, Yes, you’ve usually overnight depleted your liver glycogen, you haven’t depleted your muscle glycogen. So that’s a little bit low. You are going to be burning a lot of triglycerides, they’re going to be mobilized insulin levels are very low. So you are going to have an ability to really rely on fat for fuel. If you get up in the morning and just get on your bike your body is because that sounds like a good thing machine. It is a good thing and now you have to be careful about what you do on the morning actually. So out of interest. I looked for some studies last night I did find one where they looked at the effect of doing different types of interval work after Fasting overnight, so that multiple groups had groups that did more of a traditional threshold type workout a group that did a sprint workout. And then the sprint workout group was divided into those who just did the Sprint’s fast, so they didn’t do anything special, they just woke up in the morning and did the sprints without eating another sprint group that consumes a carbohydrate drink before doing the sprints. So the things they found were the group that just got up, went and did the sprints, you saw a real drop in their peak power, you couldn’t put out that big power. The group that consumed some carbohydrates before doing the sprints, they perform much better. The thing that I was actually a little surprised about, but it makes sense going back to that being that good fat burning machine, the group that did the lower intensity work, so they trained at 85% of vo to peak. So that for a lot of people is right around threshold, maybe a little below Mm hmm. They actually saw improvements performed a little bit better. So yeah, you’re a bit of a fat burning machine. If you’re going to be doing low intensity if you want to do sprint workouts, probably not a good idea to do it fast. But if you’re riding to work, if you’re doing something lower intensity, is there
Chris Case 06:24
an adaptive process here so the more you do rides like this, the better your body is able to handle that.
Trevor Connor 06:33
I haven’t seen any research on that. But you know, my general opinion on this which is it is amazing what the body can adapt to generally whatever you throw at the body, it figures out a way to adapt to it right
Chris Case 06:44
probably Yeah.
Trevor Connor 06:45
If you got up one morning and tried to ride fasted and you’ve never done it before, probably going to be a little tough. If you do it every morning, you’re going to get used to it. Mm hmm. Another key thing to remember is bogging and being glycogen depleted are not the same thing. And this is a a square is a rectangle, but not all rectangles or squares, right? If you glycogen deplete, you will most likely balk. You are going to be miserable. Not a fun experience. But bonking you’re not always glycogen depleted when you Bok ducha following me? Yes, basically a bog is when there is a drop in your blood sugar levels. So you are not adequately supplying the brain with its typical fuel. So we’re not going to go right, this question. This is not somebody who’s eating a keto diet, this is they are not in a state of ketosis so that that’s a whole different discussion. Correct.
Trevor Connor 07:52
So this is somebody where they are in a state where the brain is reliant on glucose for fuel. Mm hmm. So what is happening when they are bonking on that easy 45 minute ride is there’s a drop in blood sugar? Mm hmm. There are a lot of potential explanations for this. There are health issue explanations like if this is something that’s constantly happening to you. Go see your doctor, get tested, see what’s going on, because there are health concerns that can lead to this. But let’s just for this question, address some of the normal ways right, and one of the most typical is what is called reactive hypoglycemia. And this is something to particularly Be careful of for races. Remember that when you have a spike in insulin, one things insulin does is cause so sorry, take a quick step back. All the cells in your body on their own are not able to take up glucose from the blood. Unless there is a stimulus they have what’s called a transporter called a glute four transporter. Normally, those transporters sit within the cell, they have to be motivated to go to the surface of the cell to allow the glucose to be taken from the blood into the cell. So this way, your body can very tightly control blood sugar levels. Insulin promotes glute four transporters to come to the surface of the cell. You spike insulin when you eat. So after a meal, insulin is going to be spike particularly after high carbohydrate meal, insulin is going to be spiked. So if you eat, say, 45 minutes an hour before your ride, you’re going to elevate your insulin levels. There is another way to get glute four transporters to go the surface of cells, muscle cells, and that’s exercise. Exercise will promote glute for activity without independent of insulin. Mm hmm. So reactive hypoglycemia is when you get on the bike or you go out for a run, your insulin levels are spiked. So you already have For transporters at the surface of many cells to bring down your blood sugar levels, and then you start exercising that promotes further glute for activity in the muscle cells. So all of a sudden, your cells become these giant glucose absorbers, your body can’t respond well to it, and your blood sugar levels tanked.
Chris Case 10:20
And then you bought this, this combination of the two factors leading to this
Trevor Connor 10:26
accumulation. This is why a lot of people have learned once you’re within an hour of a race, don’t eat. Now, you can start eating 1015 minutes before the race because that’s not enough time for the insulin response. And once you’re exercising, exercise shuts down, you’re not 100% but it really blunts the insulin response. So v 10 minutes before the race, you’re probably not going to have this rack, very unlikely you’re gonna have the reactive hypoglycemia response, right? If you are somebody who’s susceptible to this and you eat 45 minutes before a rider race, you can be bonking. It’s not that you’ve depleted your glycogen. It’s that you’ve tanked your blood, your blood sugar levels, great. And x murders they can really take your blood sugar, load your blood levels.
Chris Case 11:16
Yes, your blood levels especially just bleed you dry. All right, moving on from the axe murder. We’ve got a caller who left us a voicemail on our Google number. It’s Adam from Massachusetts. Let’s listen to Adams question.
11:39
Hi, guys, this is Adam shy of edge from Boston, Massachusetts. I’d like to hear you talk about the role of self acceptance as a cyclist and stretch goals, or ambitious goals. I’ve been a lifelong cyclist, and now in my 50s. And there’s certainly been many years where I’ve trained intentionally and, you know, I’ve gotten as far as I could get in that work. And that wasn’t very far as measured by, you know, cat, one or two cyclists but loved it. So you know, I had to learn how to accept my physiological limitations and still have a great time as a cyclist. I’m curious how you manage that in your own cycling lives, how you manage it with your clients, you know, again, this balance between self acceptance as a cyclist and maintaining stretch goals.
Chris Case 12:31
That’s a really interesting question, Adam. And I have a few points that I’d like to address. First of all, if you set ambitious goals, and you’re like me, someone who’s very task oriented, my brain, and hopefully others out there who are task oriented, their brain sort of naturally begins to fill in these, these gaps, how to get from where you are to where you want to go create this staircase, that takes you to that goal. Now, that’s of course, assuming that it’s a reasonable goal, this is a comes down to knowing yourself as an athlete, and there’s ways to know yourself through experience, through you know, analysis through questionnaires through different things, knowing what is achievable, helps you understand whether it’s ambitious, and achievable, or, you know, easy to achieve. So there’s different, there’s different parameters, they’re too small, and you’ll sort of easily get to it, and you won’t get that that true sense of achievement, that true reward from striving really hard to meet a goal to too hard and maybe you just never get to, to where you want to be, you never hit that goal and you get rejected. So you have to analyze things, you have to set appropriate goals for yourself, again, to to to understand where is the appropriate place for that goal to be, I’m gonna say, you know, working with a coach is going to be invaluable for that. But if you don’t have a coach, or you’re not interested in using a coach, just talking to a friend, I mean, we all have sometimes this inappropriate sense of ourselves. Sometimes it’s inflated because we got a big ego sometimes it’s the opposite. You know, we’re we’re we lack self confidence. So we, we don’t have this, this appropriate sense of, of where our skills, our strengths or weaknesses, all of that. So working with someone else that knows you well can help you get a good sense of who you are as an athlete. And then that helps you set appropriate
Trevor Connor 14:46
This is something that is really important when I’m working with my athletes and one of the most important steps that we take in the early season. And I think Chris is spot on. You need to know yourself and even though Cycling or any endurance sport is a competitive sport. You really need to individualize your goals and not make it about the competition. So meaning we live in Boulder step coos is one of the strongest guys in Boulder, I can say my goal this year is to beat up coos, I’m just going to be disappointed, right? That’s really not a goal, looking at what’s, what’s my age was my ability level, what sort of time do I have? So what I do with my athletes is a gap analysis to come up with goals, where and this takes that that self awareness that Chris is talking about where first, I have them identify their current job, and this can be relative to the people, right? And so you can say, my current level is I am a cat three, who’s at the back of the field struggling to hang on.
Chris Case 15:54
You have to be honest with yourself here. And you have to be Yeah, you have to be really honest. Right? And this is why sometimes I think it helps to have another person’s perspective. Because, you know, let’s face it, we’re not always the best judge of ourselves.
Trevor Connor 16:09
Yeah, I still remember when I was up in Victoria, we had a guy there who was a character. Mm hmm. And wasn’t good on the self awareness side. So he arrived and claimed he was the best climber at the center. Even though every time we’d hit a long climb, he’d be the last one up. Yes, so what happened was, it was great watching his his mindset with this. If we were doing a 30 minute climb, we’d usually take the first 15 minutes, pretty easy, all seated, and we’re gonna race it, it would be the second 15 minutes of the climb. So that first 15 minutes were all seated, he’d be at the front of the group driving the pace, right? Right. Then they they’re really strong guys in the group, what stand up attack and he get popped. So he revised his self assessment to I am the best seated climber at the center
Chris Case 17:01
qualifiers, yes.
Trevor Connor 17:03
So that’s not good. self awareness, you need to be aware of yourself and honest with with where you’re at, then the next step is the what is the next level. And it needs to be an achievable level. So you can make an ambitious, but it needs to be achievable. So if your current level is I’m at the back of the pack of the cat threes next level is not go the Olympics, right? Right.
Chris Case 17:31
Yes, that might
Trevor Connor 17:32
be in your future. But that’s not the next level. Next Level might be finishing in the front group at the cat threes. Mm hmm. And then next year, if you’re finishing in the front group of cat threes and say, winning cat threes, identify something that that’s achievable for you. And then the goals are set goals that show that you’ve achieved that next level.
Chris Case 17:56
Right, I would that that was one of the points I wanted to make was creating goals that are not subjective. Like, you know, for instance, creating a goal that is tied to a metric rather than a result. Because as we all know, bike racing is there’s factors that are out of our control, whether flat tires, these things that we cannot control, and if everything you have, for a particular goal is tied to the result, I must win this race or else, then you’re probably going to be disappointed more often than not, because, you know, that’s racing. Whereas if your metric is something more measurable, or sorry, your goal, if your goal is more measurable, there are some objective metrics you can apply to it, then you can have a better chance of assessing whether you achieved it or you need some work or, or something else. So be particularly careful when you’re setting goals that they’re not to. For that reason,
Trevor Connor 18:59
I always give my athletes both training goals and performance goals. Because we all want to perform we all want to get results I’m like okay, let’s have a little bit of that. Mm hmm. So you can have events that you can target but let’s also have those training goals so for example with that athletes as Okay, my next level for me is finishing the lead group of cat three a performance goal would then be I want to finish in the lead group and at least three cat three races. And I’m always reluctant to pick a particular race you get a flat tire. Yeah, exactly. So it’s better to say in a cat three race at some point in the season. Or as in this case, it feel you truly achieve that level finished in three, cat three races in the league group. Training goals are going to be what do you need to do with your training to be able to accomplish that performance goal, so it might be well so this is finishing the league group, I probably don’t need to worry about a sprint. But I need to worry about my sustainable power. So you might set a I want my FTP or mlss, or whatever metric you’re using to be 30 watts higher next year.
20:05
Mm hm. Right.
Chris Case 20:09
Now, having said all of this, I think athletes are naturally, a lot of them are naturally prone or pronouns, not the right word, but they want to set really big goals. They want to set ambitious goals, I want to win nationals, I want to win this race, I want to win that crit, whatever it might be. And that’s can sometimes be great, because given the right person that is going to motivate them to work really hard. And as we both know, cycling, takes a lot of work and working hard, you know, reaps rewards. That being said, you’re going to be disappointed if all you do is set really big goals was something I’ve learned the very best athletes out there. Get past failures really quickly. And the very best athletes out there, take what they learn from those failures, and make improvements and learn a lot more from those failures than they do from any successes they’ve had. Would you you’ve probably seen it.
Trevor Connor 21:15
Yeah, one of the tricks I do myself is whenever I go to a really important race, the first thing I do is write down what is my next race to remind myself, this is not the end all be all. Cycling, endurance sports, they are mean. Yeah, companion, if you really, really care about a race. Often, the gods of endurance sports have a way of knocking it down a little bit. As a matter of
Chris Case 21:45
fact, a lot more people lose than win on race day.
Trevor Connor 21:50
I every time down with my athletes, I ask them to prioritize their races and A, B, and C. So a you get like one a race a year. That’s the really key race if you get a couple B races. And then most of the rest of races are See, I find most athletes, if they’re going to win, it’s going to be a sea race. And they want to make everything a and b they’re like, Well, you know, see race, that means I don’t care about it. And it’s that not caring that sometimes they then go in and give their best performance. I have rarely ever seen athletes when that a race something. Either mindset gets to them. Or something just happens. You get a flat tire, something goes wrong. You fly to the event in your bike doesn’t arrive.
22:41
Yeah, there’s so many things.
Trevor Connor 22:42
The worst example I’ve ever seen of this was a friend Aaron willock. who spent and a story of her getting to the Olympics is it would just make your jaw drop. But she went through right to when she got the Olympic selection for 2008. One of the other women who did not get the selection sued her. And it’s better spending the month before the Olympics preparing for the event. She spent it in court. Mm hmm. Right. So this unbelievably tough journey. She got to the Olympics, the Olympic core, she was a climber, fantastic climber. the Beijing Olympics had a big climb right near the finish. This was a race tailor made for her. She hit that climb going into the finish seventh wheel. She was in place for probably getting a medal. It was raining. A woman from a less experienced country who didn’t know how to handle this sort of pace is sort of knocking the shoulders that sort of thing. panicked, slid. So she was riding on the painted line in the rain crashed took Aaron out. That was that that was that? Yeah. And I remember talking to Aaron afterwards, and the only thing she said to me was I will never target a single event like that again.
Chris Case 24:09
I’ve made this mistake. You know, like two seasons ago in cyclocross. I didn’t care about any race except nationals. I said to myself, and this was the season I said, Hey, Trevor, I’m taking it seriously this year. Will you work with me? Will you be my coach? Yes, I will work with you Chris. Let’s
Trevor Connor 24:27
do this. To Tim for getting me as coach.
Chris Case 24:31
I had an incredible season. I was winning everything. Honestly, it didn’t matter to me I had done I had I don’t want to come off like a you know, an arrogant person or anything but I had done that before with less training. Those races this that particular season, were not my goal. It was nationals I had come in second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth at Nationals. I said, you know like this is this is a I want to do this thing finally. And I tied everything to that show up on race day. Conditions are miserable. This is for those out there who are listening. It’s Louisville. I’m just not the greatest in certain conditions, we don’t have tremendous mud. It just wasn’t my day, it was a little off. And I came in seventh instead of the first place that I hadn’t gotten before I got the seventh place that I haven’t gotten before it was the last place I want it to be. And it sucked really bad. You tie everything to that you put all your eggs in one basket, you break all the eggs, you know, like, that’s what happened. Well, what happened? I didn’t even race cyclocross this year. And I’m not saying it was directly tied to that particular event. But it had a big impact. there hadn’t been more depressed after that
Trevor Connor 25:48
nationals, and you basically didn’t touch a bike for a long time. Right?
Chris Case 25:52
Right, exactly. So ambitious goals are great. Just make sure they’re not too ambitious. They’re not tied to something that is out of your control in a way that a particular one single race, the more I have seen with athletes, the more I discourage targeting a single event.
Trevor Connor 26:11
I don’t care what the event is, I don’t care if you’re going to the Olympics, right. It’s a get to the Olympics still write down what your next race is, right? Yep. Because you just don’t know what’s gonna happen.
Chris Case 26:27
You know, it’s worth mentioning too. We did an episode on mindset. We talked about task oriented, versus goal oriented athletes and approaches. For those that want a little bit more on that check out Episode 55. All right. Our final question for today’s episode comes from Norway from Ricard Osman son. I’m 48 and have been commuting for almost 10 years and have been training more regularly for the last two years. I like the polarized approach. I don’t race but I try to train as if I did. From all I’ve learned there is one thing missing with polarization. And that is variation throughout the year. When I hear about the sweet spot approach, there is a lot of talk about base build race specificity, and the structure seems very easy. When it comes to talk about polarized training. It is all about a low lt one and above lt two and the distribution between them. I would love to hear about using polarized training throughout the whole year when it comes to variation in specificity. Trevor, I know you’ll have plenty to say about this
Trevor Connor 27:35
incredibly simple answer I’m going to give to this is there is a study that really helps to answer this question that’s got some great visuals so and it’s open source, anybody can grab it. So I would recommend go check out this study. The references in the show notes. So the name of it is the training intensity distribution among well trained and elite endurance athletes. The primary author is Thomas Vogel, this is a colleague of Dr. silos and As matter of fact, this study was reviewed by Dr. Silas right. And it has a great chart showing basically summarizing all the research that has looked at the remember polarized when we’re talking about polarized style of training there, there’s the three zones the zone one which is your low intensity, where in polarized training, you should be spending 80 plus percent of your time, zone three is that high intensity where you should be spending 10% can vary percent of your time. And then that in between, which is a lot of different names for it. That’s where a lot of the sweet spot work is polarized model says very little time there. Right. So this particular study a review took all the studies that looked at a three zone distribution among high level endurance athletes, and showed what the various stages of their seasons look like. So you can see both the what the base or pre what they’re calling the preparation period looks like they have the what the pre competition period looks like what the competition period is, like in multiple different sports. It’s a great graph. A few things to point out one is there is some variance through the season, but not all that much at the lowest point that zone one training and and they are doing it by time in zone. Dr. Tyler’s frequently talked about percentage of your workouts right so this particular study is it time zone. And I’m just going to talk about cycling you can look at the other sports Cycling is a little different from a lot of the other sports. I’ll address that in a second. zone one is still dominant throughout the year at its lowest it’s 70% of time added highest, it’s about 80% of time. So it really only varies between 70 and 80%. What do you see in cyclists in the preparation period? So we call the base period is you’re going to see a little less true high intensity zone three. So in one particular study from 2007, they were only seeing cyclist spending. So I’m looking at graphs here, it doesn’t show the exact percent but eyeballing it, I would say 3% of time, right, right. Yeah, they are just staying low intensity, they’re doing almost no intensity in the preparation phase. Where Cycling is a little different from the other sports is you do see more time in that zone too. So they do some sweetspot work throughout the year. A couple explanations for that one is there, we spent a lot of time racing there. So there is some benefit for cyclists to be there. You also have to think of other sports. So for example, skiers or runners, they don’t go out and do five hour runs, or five hour ski sessions, their sessions are all shorter. So it’s easier to be a little purist, right, you go out for a two hour run. It’s all zone one, you do intervals, it’s you warm up, you do your rifles, right, you cool down, you’re done. Yep. When you’re out doing a five hour bike ride with rolling hills and everything else.
Chris Case 31:15
Yeah, you just naturally end up,
Trevor Connor 31:17
you’re going to do on some time in zone two Exactly. unavoidable. Once you get into the pre competition period, you see zone one dropped down to about 70% of time, you see an increase in zone three, to about 8% of time. And that zone two looks like it stays approximately the same. At about for cyber for look at the cycling. One study shows, cyclists spending about 20% of their time in zone two of the other one looks at looks like about 11 12%. Once you get into the competition period, zone one actually comes back up, almost back up to 80%. The high intensity, zone three stays about 8%. And so you’re seeing during the competition period, cyclists become pure in terms of polarization. Yeah. So what you see is a reduction in that time zone too.
Chris Case 32:17
And it seems logical to me because you’re, you’re shorter rides, you keep them really low and keep them really easy, because you’re just going to be going full gas when it comes race day. And the it just makes sense.
Trevor Connor 32:31
Yeah. And also during the competition periods, as you’re tearing yourself apart on the weekend, you do a more recovery. Right, exactly. I think that’s why you see a bit of a bump up in that zone. One, right, once you hit the competition period. Other thing to be aware of that this doesn’t really show is that zone three work? Well, it looks like the cyclists are doing very, very little zone three work during the preparation phase, but they’ll do a little bit mm. The type of work can vary. And certainly what I do is, you know, there’s a lot of different philosophies on this. But certainly what I do with my athletes, is something very similar to the the research of Dr. Seiler did with that more those more threshold type animals. So I do. He has that sequence of the four by fours than the four by eights and the four by 16th. I actually, even before I read that, that’s what my old coach gave to me and what I’ve always given to my athletes, and that might be where you’re also seeing some of the zone too, because that threshold work and can sometimes be in zone two. Zone three is right at the edge. Yeah. When you get into that pre competition period in the competition period, that’s where you might see more really high intensity work such as Tabata intervals coming. Yep, Dr. Tyler’s addressed that and said, yeah, that that work is valuable. I’ve seen many studies showing that with that type of work, it takes about six to eight weeks, eight sessions to see the full gains. That’s not much, which is not much so with my athletes. I’ll give them some Tabata style work or some really high intensity work. But they’re racing say in April, I’ll start that work in March, right as a build up, do a little more through the season that the height of the race season, most of your intensity is coming from racing,
Chris Case 34:19
right? It’s kind of like right before race season your your training starts to look more and more like the racing you’re about to do right. You don’t want to overdo that.
Trevor Connor 34:28
That goes back to that. We did that episode with Joe Friel. And that was his big philosophy on the periodization is as you get closer and closer the race season, you’re trained to look more and more like racing. Yep. So if you are a road racer, and a breakaway specialist, you probably still want to keep up a lot of threshold work. You want to be doing some lot a lot of longer work. If you’re a crit writer, you want to be doing really high intensity, you want to be doing sprint work, you want to be doing training crits Mm hmm. So what That zone three looks like as you get closer to the season is dependent, as you said on the type of race that you’re doing. Yeah.
Chris Case 35:09
So it sounds like to answer Rickards question in a very simple sentence like you started off, there isn’t really a ton of variation,
Trevor Connor 35:21
right? All through and particularly in that zone one exactly what you’re seeing from the least these studies is the zone one during that pre competition period dropped down to 70%. The rest of the time, it’s up around 80%. Yeah, that’s a small variance.
Chris Case 35:41
And it’s, it’s definitely worth noting for those of you out there who have not already listened to our previous episodes about the polarized approach. We have some great episodes with Dr. Siler who is sort of the person who has popularized that approach and done a lot of research in the field. Episodes 51 and 54 will give you a great overview of that approach in more detail. So check those out.
Trevor Connor 36:10
That was another episode of Fast Talk. As always, we love your feedback, email us at Fast Talk at Fast Talk Labs comm or call 719800 to 112. That’s a palindrome for anybody who cares. I just got a big thumbs up from Chris.
36:32
Thank you, and you called me.
Trevor Connor 36:37
Again, that’s 719-800-2112 and leave us your questions in a voicemail. And if we answer it on the show, we will play your question. Subscribe to Fast Talk and iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcasts. Be sure to leave us a rating and a review while you’re there. The thoughts and opinions expressed and Fast Talk are those of the individuals for Chris case, the axe murderer. I’m Trevor Connor. Thanks for listening.
