We’ve been getting a ton of questions from listeners, and many of them have had similar themes. (We appreciate the feedback, look forward to your questions, and generate many future podcast topics from them, so please keep them coming.)
While you’re waiting for future episodes with deeper answers, we’d like to give you some short answers now to tide you over. Today we’ll answer questions about diet, the value of short easy rides, sub-threshold work in a polarized training model, and inflammation.
Let’s make you fast!
Episode Transcript
00:00
Welcome to Fast Talk, developer news podcast and everything you need to know to write a press.
Chris Case 00:11
Hello, welcome or welcome back to Fast Talk. I’m Chris case managing editor of velonews. joined today by a guy from the great white North with a deep voice. big belly. No doubt at this point. Welcome sant. Oh, Coach Connor, Coach Connor, you’re in the house today. How are you doing?
Trevor Connor 00:29
I’m doing good, and probably a little bigger than I should be. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Case 00:34
Yeah. How’s your urine red right now? Got a hat on?
Trevor Connor 00:38
I’m wearing green. Is that close enough?
Chris Case 00:41
Here? That’s more what an elf would wear rather than Santa, but I’ll allow it for today.
Trevor Connor 00:46
Well, you’d ever specified we’re in the pecking order in the North Pole. I lie.
Chris Case 00:51
That’s true. That’s true. Well, we’ve been getting a ton of questions from listeners out there. We appreciate that very much. Keep them coming. As an aside, many of our podcast topics come from questions and suggestions you all send us. So thank you again. And there have been some recurring themes that have been coming out of the questions you’ve asked. So today, we want to give you some short answers to those questions to tide you over before we might tackle them in full episodes. Today, we’re going to talk about diet, the value of short, easy rides, some threshold work in a polarized training, model, and inflammation. As always, if you have a minute, please take the time to rate us on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you get our podcasts. And keep those emails coming. We have a dedicated Fast Talk address Fast Talk@velonews.com. One last thing, we try our best to reply to all of your questions. We’re getting several a day now and it can be difficult to respond right away our recommendation. Keep those questions nice and concise. If you send a long email, it may very well go in the we’ll deal with that later box. Or we’ll have some elf out there try to respond to it at some point. But with the number of emails we get later is always longer than we’d like. So give us concise questions, we hope to get them on the air or have them spawn a particular podcast episode. Now, let’s make you fast.
Chris Case 02:26
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Trevor Connor 03:00
So we just want to give a quick correction in Episode 37. on nutrition I was talking about the importance of the folic acid cycle to vegetarians and vegans. It’s important to them because b 12 and B six are heavily involved in that process and that cycle, and you can really only get b 12 and good bioavailable forms of B six from animal sources. So if you’re vegan or vegetarian, you need to be supplementing with those. However, instead of saying b 12 and B six are part of the folic acid cycle I just said you need b 12 b six and full eight which you can only get from animal sources and that was my mistake. Full eight you can get from actually your best sources are vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables, so the only things you really need to be supplementing with if you’re vegan or vegetarian are B six and B 12.
Chris Case 03:57
All right, let’s dive into the first question which comes from Brian Adkins and it pertains to those shorter endurance rides. Hey, Trevor, the bottom line seems to be that 60 to 90 minute rides below vt one are beneficial IE what not a waste of time, but longer rides have some advantages. You just can’t get on the shorter rides. I usually get a three and a half hour ride on Saturdays. But during the week, I often will do a 90 minute workout on the kicker. I suppose that might be slightly more beneficial than a 90 minute outdoor ride due to the constant pressure on the pedals with zero coasting and the ability to keep heart rate in a very narrow zone if desired. What do you think, Trevor?
Trevor Connor 04:38
I think that’s a great question. This is one of those ones that we’re going to have at least one episode addressing this. We kind of hinted at it before and I’m really hoping that we can get Kevin poelten who was a guest on our trainer episode a couple episodes ago to come in and talk to us because he’s worked with some World Tour riders and and as a big believer in two days not doing the right thing. long ride, and has seen a lot of success with it. So hopefully we’ll have that episode at some point in the future where we talk about two days versus the long ride. I personally is still a believer in the long ride. And as are the full email from Brian, I believe he said that he reached out to Dr. Steven Siler and Dr. Seiler said the same thing, I do think there are benefits you get for the long ride, you can’t get any other way. And I’ll just give you the brief brief summary of that. The biggest one is fiber fatigue, when you go out at low intensity, and you’re fresh, you’re really just gonna rely on your slow twitch muscle fibers. But while we say those fibers don’t fatigue, they do, they get damaged. So as you continue with a long ride, those fibers can’t produce the same sort of power. So you have to start recruiting your fast twitch fibers even at low intensities, which is not very stressful on your autonomic system. So later in a long ride, you’re actually going to be recruiting those fast twitch to be or to a maybe some of the two B’s to do work, and to do a robot work, which has a lot of benefits, and there’s really no other way to get that effect. Another thing we’ve talked in previous episodes about lactate transporters managing lactate is really important to our aerobic engines. And it’s at low intensity that we really build those MCT one transporters which take up lactate out of the blood, I would say the last thing that’s a bit of a benefit is it takes a while to warm up your aerobic system. So initially, when you get on the bike and start pedaling, you’re relying a lot on anaerobic metabolism. As they always say fat burns on a carbohydrate fire. So you you need to get the anaerobic system going before you can get the aerobic system going. So if you’re trying to do a robot training, first 1015 minutes of a workout is kind of wasted time, there’s just an efficiency of if you go out and do a five hour ride, you only have 15 minutes a waste of time versus if you do a bunch of shorter rides, then those 15 minutes add up. So that’s a short, short version, we’ll have a longer episode on that. But I think the thing I want to emphasize here is there is a real value to that short ride. And I’ve been getting a lot of emails lately from people saying, Hey, I love the polarized model idea. I love love this 8020 principle. But Gee, would I have an hour and a half on the bike? What should I do? Should I do intervals every time should I be doing neuro work? Should I be doing this or that and when I tell them, no, just go out and do an easy hour hour and a half ride they can. But it doesn’t hurt. I don’t feel anything, there’s no gain to that I don’t have the time for that if there’s there’s no benefit to it. And that’s a really wrong way to look at those easy rides. so short, easy rides, there’s still benefits to them, even if they don’t hurt you. Again, we’ll cover this in a lot more depth in a future episode. But I think the first way you have to look at this is stop looking at individual rides, stop saying I got on the bike I did an hour it didn’t hurt. So I wasted time. Instead, you really need to look at your week. And when we talk about that polarize model, the polarization is over the course of a week. So you’re trying to add up time at that low intensity. So you really need to say, hey, if I’m going to do two interval sessions, I need to rack up some time at low intensity elsewhere in this week. And that’s where those those short rides can benefit you. The way I look at it is that’s where you do a lot of your recovery work. The short, easy ride helps your immune system, the big interval work, the long training rides, they actually suppress your immune system. And again, maybe we’ll cover this in a later episode. But the slow, easy short ride actually helps your immune system helps its function which is going to keep you healthy. But another key thing to remember is it’s our immune system that repairs our muscle damage and causes us to adapt or as a big part of the adaptation to exercise. So promoting the immune system or helping the immune system with those those short easy rides is going to theoretically, speed your recovery helped the adaptations from that interval session you did a day or two ago.
Chris Case 09:29
I know Trevor could go on and on and on about this, but we’re going to save it. We’re going to cut you off there, Trevor. For those out there that haven’t caught episodes 51 and Episode 54 with Dr. Seiler and the polarized training model. Those are two that you’ll want to check out because we go into a lot of information about some of the things that Trevor just mentioned in his answer to the question of the benefits of short endurance rides. All right, our next question comes in from Greg Bauman in this One has to do with one of Trevor’s favorite topics, food and wheat specifically. So here’s the question. A recent article took me to your Episode Number 37 podcast on nutrition. I’m on board with everything you say with exception to the issue of wheat. However, I am beginning to come around on the concerns regarding gluten and related impacts on gut health and immune function. Given the constant negative barrage, I’m in great shape, never get sick. He claims one cold in the past 10 years, which I find hard to believe, but I I hope it’s true. And I wish I was him. And I have been training intensely for most of those 10 years. The only wheat in my diet is a bowl of ancient grains cereal with fresh banana, fresh blueberries and beetroot powder with soy milk. He has an all organic diet. I do occasionally have a slicer to have whole multigrain bread. My question to you is, do you believe in light of my health history that I completely eliminate wheat from my diet? Or does the quote everything in moderation exempt us some of us with regard to concerns with wheat gluten?
11:04
Trevor?
Chris Case 11:05
Take it away.
Trevor Connor 11:06
So I gotta give a pretty short answer to this one. But I was really glad we got asked this question. And I think that’s an important thing with nutrition. I’m a big believer in the 85% rule. Meaning we need to have our 15% of the time where we have fun, eat our favorite foods and enjoy them. I’m personally a huge fan of popcorn. And as much as I try to eat really healthy, I can attest. Yes, Chris has gone to the movies with Pam and absolutely disgusted.
Chris Case 11:37
You see, you store up your love for popcorn and have it in one whopping dose at the movie,
Trevor Connor 11:43
I don’t have it as much as often as I used to. But certainly when I have it, I do like to say if you’re going to hang yourself, don’t skip on the rope. So yeah, if I’m gonna have my hot popcorn, I’m going to enjoy it. So I will say that generally. In fact, when I see somebody being 100%, religious about a particular diet, I get concerned, because the next step is eating disorders. And plus, whenever I see somebody being 100%, that’s very, very hard to maintain. And there are points where it’s just going to get to be too much, and you’re going to get completely off of the diet. So I think kind of staying at 5% is a good rule. That said, there are people with certain health concerns and and Greg certainly doesn’t sound like one of those who do pure, just need to say at least what certain foods I’m 100% all the time. My thesis was on people with autoimmune disease, we saw certain things that were triggers and people with autoimmune disease, we’ve been one, believe it or not other foods that seem to aggravate autoimmune, a lot of people thought immune conditions are bananas, tomatoes, and egg whites. So if somebody has an autoimmune condition, they might have to eliminate those foods and never touch them. Again. If you think you might have a food that’s triggering something in you either an allergy or an autoimmune condition or other health issues, that’s where I generally recommend an elimination diet where you eliminate common trigger foods, you keep them out of your diet for a month. Hopefully at that point you become your symptoms start to clear, or it would be great as if they completely cleared but that’s rare. And then once you feel you’ve seen some benefit to the elimination, then you start reintroducing the foods one at a time. So maybe each week you reintroduce a food, and watch to see how your body responds. And you’ll pretty quickly identify which foods are a trigger for you.
Chris Case 13:48
To to follow up on your initial point about the 85% rule, I think one thing that’s good about that is if you try to stick to that 100% and you’re very fastidious about that, and then you slip, and you’ve got this mindset that slipping, just 1% is is the end of the world, then you might start to have these feelings of guilt and all of that. And that just gets messy and it’s it’s unnecessary. I also would like to emphasize the fact that you need to, you need to be honest. And if 15% is actually 50%, then you’re not doing it the way Trevor is recommending, you have to think about your consumption and be honest with yourself and 85% is a hefty margin or up quantity, I should say. And if you’re not really hitting that you need to strive more towards that, to really reap the benefits of what he’s suggesting here.
Trevor Connor 14:47
Exactly. The other recommendation I give, there’s some people who say I’m going to be 85% every day and so every day they have their cheats and their rewards and that quickly leads to the 5050 that Chris was just talking about. I think it’s more effective to say I’m going to have several days in a row where I’m going to eat really well and congratulate myself for for my discipline and for being healthy and then have your day where you cheat.
Chris Case 15:13
Alright, the next question comes in from Tom Robinson and it has to do with inflammation. The question with recovery, how do you balance allowing inflammation to cause your body to react and get stronger versus trying to stay fresh enough to race and or complete workouts? For example, everything I’ve heard and read says we should use anti inflammatory agents post workout correct. And in my head that could include an Sai DS foods with omega threes, turmeric, etc. But do you throw this idea out the window when you’re in the heat of racing season, meaning you did the hard work to build fitness? Now it’s time to maximize your performance?
Trevor Connor 15:52
So I’ve actually got to start my answer with a bit of an unusual answer to that question. Would I hear about people talking about using a lot of anti inflammatories after exercise? Or they’re telling me they’re always in pain? They’re always tired? Shouldn’t they be using anti inflammatories? I’m actually going to take a step back and say, How well are you balancing your training and your recovery. So if you are feeling like I need to take anti inflammatories, because I’m still sore, and I can’t do the next day’s workout, I got the intervals planned today and my legs are wrecked. And to blunt the pain is the only way I can get through those intervals, I’m going to say you were ready yet to do those intervals, you are out of balance. And all you’re doing by taking those anti inflammatories is hiding the fact that you’re damaging your body, you’re not repairing, and you’re probably not adapting and you’re heading bad places. So keep that in mind that the first answer is how well are you balancing recovery. And a lot of us are really bad at the recovery side of training. And we’ve said that 100 times, going specifically to the anti inflammatory. So here we’re talking about the nae sets the non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs. Most of them are what are called Cox two inhibitors. So we have what are called I’m going to try not to go too much in the biochemistry here. But our body produces things called prostaglandins. They serve a whole bunch of functions. There are a series of prostaglandins, these cyclooxygenase, or Cox, which have a variety of functions in the body in particular is this Cox two. Basically, it’s what causes pain. So when you take an anti inflammatory, it’s trying to block it from causing a lot of the pain we feel in the body. It’s not the only cause of pain. But it’s certainly a big cause. It’s when we feel pain from inflammation, it’s one of the big causes. So you can blunt that pain by taking an anti inflammatory. The problem is, as they’ve improved the research on how muscle repair and adaptations occur after training, they discovered that Cox two is plays a very, very important role in rebuilding our muscles after training. So they play a key role in the training effect. So if you take a lot of anti inflammatories, you are going to blunt your ability to adapt from your training. So that’s something to try to avoid. And I do remember reading a study I don’t have in front of me, where they took cyclists, they had half just train and take no anti inflammatories, they had another group that would train and then take an anti inflammatory after training, otherwise, they were doing the exact same training. And the group on the anti inflammatory saw half of the training game, so the people on the nascence there that weren’t on the day sets, so something to avoid. Now in the email, Tom asked about omega threes, because they’ve been shown to be anti inflammatory. And that’s very true. prostaglandins are made from fatty acids, where we eat a lot of omega six fatty acids, we produce a lot of Cox two. And if you overproduce Cox two, that’s when you start having inappropriate inflammation and in inappropriate pain. If you eat more omega three fatty acids, then you tend to stay more in balance of the different types of prostaglandins that you produce. And quite literally, your body decides what type of prostaglandin to produce by what type of fatty acids you’re you’re consuming. So if you consume a better ratio of omega threes to omega six, you’re going to keep a better balance. I don’t think I’d still looking for research on this, but I don’t think it’s going to hurt your training effects, but it’s certainly going to help to keep the pain down potentially
Chris Case 20:00
Very good, which actually leads pretty well, I believe into our next question. Yes. Which comes from very hair. Very hair. Let me get that right. So this one references our episode with Dr. Noakes, which I’m not sure what episode number that was. But very another very popular episode that we recorded it in the last six months. Dr. Noakes mentions that, quote, vegetable oils are really toxic. Now, Barry wants you to define vegetable oils, because he sees conflicting information on the on the internet about that. He asks if that involves olive oil than I am screwed. So what is the inflammatory basis for these vegetable oils, the product itself or the process to make the oil,
Trevor Connor 20:49
Trevor? So this is one of those ones where we could do an entire episode on this and it will get quite complicated. So I’m going to try to give the short answer here. There are a bunch of vegetable oils out there. There’s a bunch of oils out there. And it seems like every time we go on the grocery store, there’s a new one to explore and try. We’re not going to dig into each one because that would like I said, that could be a whole episode on its own probably a couple episodes. What I will say is, I think there was a point where there was a belief that these vegetable oils were healthier because we were very anti saturated fats. And most of these vegetable oils are very high in Omega six fats, which we were just talking about. So which is omega threes and omega sixes are your polyunsaturated fats and so so I think at some point, they look to these vegetable oils and said they’re very high in polyunsaturated fats, they have no saturated fat. So this is a great thing. I’m actually going to argue that the that ratio of omega six to omega three is more important than the ratio of saturated fat to polyunsaturated fat. And again, that would be a whole episode in itself. But if you consume too much poly or too much omega six, that’s where you can start causing inflammatory issues like that overproduction a Cox two. Generally, we want to eat about a ratio of two to one polyunsaturated or sorry, omega six to omega three fatty acids. A lot of these vegetable oils on the market are 10 to one.
Chris Case 22:22
And And just to clarify, when you you’re talking vegetable oils, we’re talking everything from veggie things labeled vegetable oil, but corn oil, are we talking about olive oil are we talking about. So I get a high oleic
Trevor Connor 22:36
I will go ahead get to olive oil. Like I said we can’t address all of these. So I am talking in general about the most common vegetable oils. So there’s literally you go on the grocery store, you’re gonna see a lot of stuff that just labeled vegetable oil. corn oil is obviously a very popular one there, there’s a bunch on the market that is most of what you’re going to see in the grocery store that are this these lines of vegetable oils that are very high in Omega six fatty acids. The other issue with them is they’re very nutrient poor. Really all they are is calories. There’s no micronutrients in the oils at all or very, very little. So if you use any vegetable oil, or any oils in general, you need to make sure that you’re you’re eating it with nutrient dense foods. So vegetables, lean meats, fish, eggs, those sorts of foods, otherwise, you’re just getting a lot of calories and not much else. If I had to recommend one oil to cook with it is olive oil. Olive oil is actually low and polyunsaturated fats, both omega six and omega three, it’s very, very high in monounsaturated fats, which are also quite healthy early, particularly the type and olive oil are quite healthy. What do you have to be careful about with olive oil is cooking. You don’t want to cook it on high heat because it will denature so stay medium or below and slow cook your food when you’re using olive oil and oil that used to get mentioned a lot because it was high in omega threes and lower and omega six was canola oil. And there was actually a point where we recommended that but have moved away from it because unfortunately, it has a lot of alpha lentil Sorry, I was struggle with the pronunciation so these but it’s very high in alpha linolenic acid. And there have been studies that show correlations with prostate cancer. So at this point, I would say until there’s research to point in other directions or to counter that canola oils probably want to avoid so my recommendation is olive oil.
Chris Case 24:50
What’s the canola by the way?
Trevor Connor 24:54
Sure, I’m gonna get this wrong, but I believe canola oil is made from rap seed.
Chris Case 24:59
Yeah, rape. rapeseed oil. Yes, I believe it is. Yes. I always thought that was interesting, would you? And I heard somebody put it this way, like, Okay, I understand olive oil and some of these others. But what is a canola? Would you really want to be eating something called a canola? I, you know,
Trevor Connor 25:17
I cannot tell you the cannoli. That’s that’s a very good question. So I think the other but you kind of reminded me of an important point, there have been issues lately with olive oil, where there are companies that are putting together pretty unhealthy vegetable oils and just slapping olive oil on the side of the bottle. So you do need to be careful that if you’re using olive oil that you look for a reputable brand, and you know that it actually is olive oil.
Chris Case 25:47
Yeah, that’s probably another interesting question How, how things can actually be technically labeled olive oil, what percentage must be made from all of us, etc, etc. We could. We could go on and on about this, I’m sure. But I think that does a good job of answering Barry’s question.
Chris Case 26:09
So, Trevor, I know you’re sitting up there shivering in the cold Toronto right now. But you you made a visit to Colorado not too long ago. You stayed with me and you brought in multiple bags to my home. What was that all about?
Trevor Connor 26:24
I don’t know if I should be embarrassed about this or not. But I packed up my stuff for Colorado is down there for five weeks. And I had a choice. I could either cut some stuff, or I could take two bags, and I had my enormous tax in the pile. And it was basically they were what I was going to have to cut so I kid you not a paid for a second bag to take my normatec out there. And if you want to see the dorkiest thing in the world, the week I was staying at Chris’s house, we sat there in his living room every night doing our normal attacks. And my
Chris Case 26:55
daughter was like, Daddy, Daddy, why are you a Spaceman?
Trevor Connor 27:00
I thought she just gave us a really frightened look and kind of backed into the kitchen.
Chris Case 27:07
Well, she did that too.
Trevor Connor 27:08
Well safe to say Chris and I are big fans of Norma tech and that’s why we have them on the show. So if you’re working on your holiday wish list this year, Norma tech is the ultimate athlete gift. And they are for a limited time. Having a special $200 off and get free shipping on the pulse recovery system. And extensive body of research shows that normatec increases circulation reduces muscle stiffness. The result is that you can train harder and race faster. Norma tech is the official supplier of USA Cycling is also the same technologies that riders like Tom skycouch, Taylor Finney, and the BMC racing team all rely on.
Chris Case 27:56
Alright, so our next question comes from Kenneth Peterson, and has to do with again those episodes 51 and 54. With Dr. Siler his question is, I’ve truly enjoyed Episode 5154 with the in depth discussions of the three zone model that Dr. Seiler, Coach Connor and others advocate. It is simple it makes a lot of sense. Having listened to Episode 56 a couple of times regarding the our record preparation and attempts by Colby Pearson others, I got really interested in the training program that Neil Henderson designed for Rowan Dennis in the prep for his our record attempt. The focus on sustaining a near FTP threshold for an hour is relevant, I think, for anyone focusing on 25 mile TTS. The reason for this email is that I’m trying to reconcile the polarize model with the upper zone to slash threshold program that Henderson design for Rowan. I’ve been myself focusing my efforts primarily on TTS from two from 25 mile to six hour TTS. Therefore I am wondering if I should design my training less on a polarized program but more on zone one endurance training four to six hour efforts, combined with a couple of weekly near threshold intervals primarily on my power trainer, Allah Henderson. In other words, the quick the key question is a whether zone three anaerobic high intensity intervals, combined with my long endurance rides in mid upper zone, one of the polarized model provides a better foundation for my long individual time trials versus be replacing the zone three high intensity intervals with near threshold intensity intervals. Let’s pick that one apart. Trevor,
Trevor Connor 29:39
this is such a huge question. And we have received this question from I think, what 10 people now that we actually have three episodes that will come up in the next year where we address this question in one form or another so we’re hoping to get Dr. Seiler back for a part three where we’re going to actually ask him this exact question. We are at some point going to have Sebastian Webber, join us who is Tony Martin’s coach and Peter zygons. Coach. And we had an off the mic conversation with him that we said, we need to turn this into an episode where he’s basically said, thresholds unimportant, you don’t really raise the threshold, or at least FTP, which was a really interesting perspective. And you have to look at his success with his athletes and go, cap write that off. And also Chris and I, at some point soon are actually going to do a cut a pull it all together episode, because we’ve touched on a whole bunch of these things multiple times in episodes and we felt it’s it’s time soon to just do a what does all this mean? What is our overall recommendations in training, where we’re certainly going to address this? So hey, Trevor,
Chris Case 30:53
when are we going to quit our day jobs and just become professional podcasters?
Trevor Connor 30:57
I thought this was my day job.
Chris Case 31:00
Right? Try
Trevor Connor 31:02
to get paid this first day job. Okay. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? It would. Okay, so let’s try to take what is three episodes worth of stuff, and get it down to five minutes. So this is going to be very cursory. First, just a reminder, Dr. stylers polarized approach to training is based on three zones. So a lot of a lot of you out there might have five, six training zones. Dr. Siler simplified it down to three zones. So zone three is above your your lactate threshold, or kind of FTP up to your vo two Max, he doesn’t really focus above that. zone one is very low intensity, what you think of is that those base slow miles type intensity that’s below what’s called your aerobic threshold. And then zone two is in the middle. And the polarized model basically says spend very little time in zone two, spend about 80% of your time in zone one and 20% of your time in zone three. Now that 8020 is based on workout. So if you go and do an interval session, it’s not how much time you spend a particular intensity is that whole workout counts. So meaning if you’re doing 8020, that means for every two interval workouts that you do you need to do eight low intensity workouts, if you actually do it by time, so if you distributed your power, it would actually be closer to 9010. Believe it or not. So the question that we got asked is, there are people out there like Neil Henderson, who have had a ton of success at very high level with trading just sub threshold, which would be zone two, which the polarized model is saying avoid. So how do we address this? First, let’s go back to Dr. Siler. Remember, he comes from a running scheme background, which is part of why he doesn’t really focus on the above vo two max because in certainly in scheme, there isn’t that much sprinting there isn’t that much attacking because there really isn’t that much drafting. So it’s going to be much more doing you’re racing at threshold or in your vo to max range. Another important thing to remember is how you’re defining that threshold. So we in the cycle world gotten very used to this concept of FTP. Most of us use this 20 minute power times point nine five to come up with that number. I can tell you my experience with athletes, my experience with myself is that number tends to be higher than what your true physiological threshold is. I know that using that way of calculating my FTP, my FTP is about 30 watts above my, my actual in lab measure threshold. So for a lot of you out there, if you’re trading just below FTP, and you think you’re in zone two, you’re actually not, you’re still well in that zone three range. There is a huge value that’s been demonstrated to training just below threshold. So I’m going to get away from Dr. Seiler for a minute and then get back to him. It has been showing that, you know, again, for you time trials out there, your ability to clear lactate is critical to your success. And it has been showing that we max maximally clear lactate at about 95% of our lactate threshold. I’m talking now about our inlab measure lactate threshold was put to the at that high end of silos Dr. silos zone two that’s also about the point where you seem to maximally burn fat for fuel. So there are real benefits to training right at that intensity and that’s what role hunts do and that’s what a lot of very good coaches I know have athletes who are focusing on time trialing Breaking Away. They spent a lot of time training there.
Trevor Connor 35:04
Interestingly, Dr. Seiler did some studies on different types of intervals. And he explored for three types four by four minutes, four by eight minutes, four by 16 minutes. And what he the most recent of those studies, which actually looked at our body’s inflammatory response, so he actually measured blood markers of inflammation. He discovered that there there were big games of this four by six teens, but they didn’t have nearly the stress on the body, that the the higher intensity intervals had. And I just actually Dr. Seiler was just at a conference over in Europe, where he talked about this and said, the issue with these really high intensity intervals, especially when you start talking about 15, second intervals, 32nd intervals, is they’re very, very stressful on the body. He did say, yeah, cyclists need them. But you don’t need a lot of them, there’s kind of something to top off your form as you’re getting into the peak of your season. So he talked about these four by six teams that said, you seem to get the same gains without the same stress. Now in the study, they had the so this was experienced cyclists, they did the intervals at self selected intensity. And so they were instructed, do the intervals as hard as you can, but you know, at an intensity where you can get through all four intervals. And when these cyclists did the four by 16 minute intervals, they tend to be right around 85% of their maximal heart rate, which for most of us is just below threshold. So now I’m just giving my opinion, but this is based on everything I just told you and a whole lot more that we’ll cover in future episodes. I do think there’s a big value to training just sub threshold I have my athletes do it. And I am very much looking forward to having Dr. Seiler back on the show. But I think he’s going to agree that that just sub threshold that 95% of your threshold training there still fits in the polarized model. And you really want to think of that more as zone three training. That was another episode of Fast Talk. Normally Chris reads this, but like usual, he forgot the script, and I haven’t so don’t embarrass Chris right now. As always, we love your feedback. Email us at Fast Talk at Bell news.com Subscribe to Fast Talk on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play. Be sure to leave us a rating and a comment. While you’re there, check out our sister podcast developer news podcast which covers news about the week and cycling. We also have a brand new tech podcasts which is pretty cool. So check that out as well. Become a fan of Fast Talk and facebook@facebook.com slash velonews and on twitter@twitter.com slash felon news. Fast talk is a joint production between Bella news and Cotter coaching. The thoughts and opinions expressed on Fast Talker those are the individual. For Chris case, I’m Trevor Connor. Thanks for listening
