stulemanski

Peter, Many riders of a good amateur status (e.g. PPA league riders) would be able to complete 5 hour endurance rides day-in day-out. Although they will feel wrecked after doing this for a couple of days, it will be difficult to notice a drop off in performance during those sessions (what exactly do you use as a measure of "performance" during an endurance ride). I'm not saying that their performance (as measured by some objective testing criteria) won't drop off as a result of this sort of overtraining, but it would be very difficult to detect in such a circumstance. If you don't believe that this is the case, maybe we should consider Cape Epic riders who ride themselves hard each day and get up and do the same thing the next day and the next, etc. The vast majority don't end up racing at some amazing peak level by the end of the week - they end up riding at a level of diesel-like mediocrity. Fortunately, even Cape Epic is short enough that riders can recover afterwards, and with some decent time off they may even show overall improvements due to supercompensation. (A week of Epic is unlikely to lead to chronic long term overtraining) However, if these hypothetical Epic riders were to take he advice of this article and ignore feelings of fatigue "as long as they could maintain their performance" (thought process something along the lines of "hey, I've just finished the Epic yesterday and I feel lousy, but I know I can still turn out a 5 hour diesel-paced ride and as long as I can maintain that level of performance then that's what this article implies I should do") then they would in all probability eventually end up chronically overtrained. I'm not trying to "have a go at you", but the paper was published in 1994 - that is hardly the "most current thinking". Despite this article having been around for the last 13 years or so, the advice proposed by this article has hardly seems to have taken the cycling (or coaching) world by storm in that time. Of course, you and your clients are free to try this out. It would be great if you could keep us posted on how you all perform. - Stuart

Not sure I can do pictures - I think swimmers using a PM would look pretty stupid... Then again, the article doesn't mention powermeters at all (either for swimmers or for rowers, which are the only two sports mentioned in the article). Both swimming and rowing are highly technique dependent, hence the advice in the article to "demand consistent high quality technical performance at practices". Note - technical performances, not necessarily high quality physiological sessions. Having rowed at a reasonably high level (I was on the Cambridge lightweight trials squad for the 1997 boat race - though I didn't make the boat race crew itself) I can confirm that once the technique goes, then you might as well pack up and go home. The idea that "It works on the premise that if you are too tired to train effectively (for whatever reason) then you stop and rest" isn't going to help much for anyone doing sessions of, say, steady 5 hour endurance rides, or even a couple of hours at tempo. The article implies that athletes should train as long as they can maintain the required performance level - even though they may feel tired. Most people will be able to complete sessions like these day after day (irrespective of how they feel) without much noticeable drop off in performance, but would be chronically overtired by the end of a fortnight of this. Similarly, training in such a way that "athletes are encouraged never to enter excessively fatigued states" is (in my opinion) a recipe for mediocrity. The principle of overreaching and supercompensation is referred to widely in sports science literature and regarded as necessary to obtain optimal performance (see reference below). Whatever the aim of posting the article was, it really isn't much use to 99% of cyclists, but the fact that it is irrelevant isn't really my major objection. Anyone who just glanced at this article (which contains statements like "An athlete's ability to work to the fullest potential is compromised by anticipations of the symptoms and fear of overtraining" and advice to "not plan periods of decreased overload for "recovery" purposes") and tried to apply it to their cycle training (as is pretty likely on a cycling forum about power training) could be opening the door not only to overtraining, but to ignoring the condition until it became chronic. That's why I felt it important to post and point out the potential problems with article that was posted. If anyone is still interested, an article outlining the more widely accepted viewpoint on overtraining can be found at... http://coaching.usolympicteam.com/coaching/kpub.nsf/v/2SEPT0 3

While it is difficult to disagree with specifics of the above article - I think this is extremely risky advice to be offering to recreational cyclists. Check the source - US swimming's 1994 national team coaches meeting. A number of points will differ between the group of people about whom this study was written and the people likely to be reading this forum: 1. US national squad swimmers are full time athletes, so any time not spent in the pool can be recovery time for them. Most of the people on this forum have full time jobs as well as their sport. 2. I would debate whether many swimming events are "endurance sports" in the same sense that cycling is an endurance sport. Certainly swimmers spend a lot of time in the pool, but their races are phsyiologically very different to cycle races, and their training necessarily reflects that. This advice might be applicable to a cyclist who was training to become a pure track sprinter... 3. Swimming is generally a young person's sport - relatively few people remain in competitive swimming after their teens, which is (rather obviously) the time in a person's life when powers of recovery are greatest. (How many of us wish that we had the ability to heal/recover like we did when we were teenagers?) Those that do remain in competitive swimming are generally the ones that have already "made it" to elite level competition, and can hence benefit from not having the commitments of a full time job, etc. 4. The psychological traits that are common to endurance sports people are much more likely to lead to overtraining rather than undertraining (see Noakes, Lore of Running). This is why I think the advice given in the article above is so incredibly bad for cyclists, who are already at risk of overtraining. I do however, wholeheartedly agree with the idea that once you can no longer sustain the required intervals in a specific training session, then it is time to move on. For a cyclist, this would be if, say, you were doing 6x5min at 110% FT power, but after the 3rd interval, you couldn't manage to turn more than 100% FT power. There would be little point in trying to bang out further intervals at the lower than required intensity, as it would not provide the correct stimulus to train the response that you are intending to train. If anyone wants any training advice then please feel free to PM me. - Stuart

In my opinion, the best article on training with power was written by Andrew Coggan. You can download a PDF of it from here... http://www.midweekclub.ca/articles/coggan.pdf Extremely useful stuff - I'm so convinced by training with power that I no longer even use an HRM (although I will admit that HR data in conjunction with power data can give you additional insights). Many of the training sessions that various coaches, and organisations such as BikeMax will give you come straight out of this document. I use a Powertap (just the regular system), and have found it absolutely invaluable in training. The only downside is that it is wheel specific - you can have it on your training wheels, or your racing wheels, or you can buy two and have one on each. (Personally, I do all my training and racing on the same wheels - mavic open pro's). One thing that is important about using these sessions is that you need to be able to follow the required output. Levels 4, 5, 6 can be difficult to judge if you're not actually measuring your power. Similarly, if you have a 10% variable error in the measured power values from day to day, then you could be training at completely the wrong level. I know this has been a particular problem at BikeMax in the past, where the Cardgirus machines varied widely between different machines and also varied over time. Note: It doesn't matter so much if the level is wrong but consistently wrong. i.e. I don't much care if my TT power is 350Watts or 350 ChickenPower and my max is 420W or 420 ChickenPower - as long as my training levels are based relative to these performances. Final thing - there is already a very good "training with power" forum at www.cyclingforums.com Andrew Coggan posts there, as do many other top athletes and sports scientists. It's a very good place to get world class (and free) advice. In fact, I know that BikeMax (the hubber, rather than the institution) visits that forum to ask their advice for himself and for his clients. stulemanski38826.5114467593