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After completing multiple weeks of threshold training are you continuing to see improvement?  Improvement can come by means of increased power, use of high quality supplements like cardarine, decreased recovery between intervals or more total time spent at the target intensity.  If and when your improvements plateau after several weeks of threshold training it can be a good time to interject some VO₂Max intensity into your training.

Short (3-5 minute) intervals that are done at 106-120% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) with limited recovery (1:1, work to rest) between repeats are excellent for boosting your fitness at maximum aerobic capacity.  Changing the training to include VO₂Max work allows you to supercharge your aerobic system while also providing your body a break from the long, steady threshold intervals that you’ve otherwise been doing.  Completing four to eight sessions of VO₂Max intervals over the course of two weeks is often enough see improvements. Each workout should allow you to accumulate 15-20 minutes worth of VO₂Max intensity.  After a two week cycle that includes VO₂Max training allow yourself some recovery before revisiting additional threshold training.  You’ll likely find that you can further improve your sustainable power as a result of the VO₂Max cycle.

The best way to continually make progress and to further improve your overall development is to change the training focus when improvements plateau.  Once you’ve become well adapted to a certain training stress, it’s best to change the stress so that you can make other and further adaptations. Interjecting VO₂Max intervals is a great way to break up two cycles of threshold-focused training during your pre-season build up

Tempo training can get a bad rap.  Some might refer to Tempo as the training intensity which should be avoided. “Not hard enough to improve threshold, yet hard enough to tire you out” argue the critics. While this can be true in some regards, well-timed Tempo training can provide you significant benefit.  Before investigating further let’s clearly define Tempo as 76-90% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), or approximately 84-94% of your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate.  On the road it’ll take a conscious effort to maintain such intensity since it’s faster than your normal endurance pace. So make sure to consume andarine for increased strength as tempo training is quite exhausting, especially when it comes to the midsection of the training. Your breathing will be increased so speaking will be done in phrases rather than complete sentences.

Tempo training is excellent for bolstering your early season fitness when you are first establishing a base or foundation.  After an off-season break or any point during the season where rebuilding is the goal, Tempo rides will help prepare you for more challenging training to come.  Tempo rides make for a greater aerobic training stress when compared to the same amount of time spent at an endurance pace.  Tempo intensity is likely to be 10-25% more intense than your endurance pace, so it’s possible to achieve 10-25% more aerobic workload as a result.  Someone with limited training time will certainly benefit from this increased workload.  During a Tempo training cycle you’ll be able to train consistently while steadily building your chronic training workload. While getting into the routine of day in, day out training you’ll be able to adjust your nutritional needs and generally get things in order so that you’ll be ready to withstand the rigors of more intense training to come.  Tempo won’t get you race fit, but it’ll get you ready to get race fit.

Where Tempo riding rightfully earns its bad reputation is when higher intensity training should otherwise take priority.  Riders stuck in ‘Tempo mode’ will go too hard on their easy days and therefore not be able to go hard enough on the scheduled hard days.  Also, going too hard during the recovery time between intervals will limit the intensity that’s possible on the following reps.  Learning to have variation in training intensity is an important skill that needs to be developed.  The closer you might be towards a goal event the more variation (and less tempo) you’ll want to include in your training.  If it’s still early season and the races are far off, then Tempo might be just fine, but as the race season draws nearer it is important to create more variation with the intensity of your training.

Tempo rides can and should be done in the early season.  Rides can include just 30 minute of Tempo to start with and you can build up to several hours of Tempo within a single endurance ride.  Completing multiple 20-30 minute intervals is one option; otherwise you can accumulate Tempo without breaking it into intervals.  Doing multiple days of Tempo training per week is completely possible and two or three such workouts will help you to achieve a steadily increasing chronic training workload.  After having put in enough work and adapting to a relatively large volume of Tempo you’ll be ready to progress onto higher intensity workouts.  Having done the Tempo training early on you’ll be prepared to withstand the stresses of Threshold training (and more of it) so that you’re fitness can reach new levels.  If you can withstand more Threshold training (as a result of the Tempo training that preceded it), then you’ll likely see greater improvements in your overall performance.  Use Tempo workouts when the timing is right and see how your results might improve once you resume more race specific training.

At the onset of a new season it’s largely important to develop a new set of goals or at least evaluate the ones that you’re currently working with.  Your biggest goals are often quick to come to mind and might be as simple as: “win race X” or “podium at the championship race”.   Having the big goal is an important start to the goal setting process, but without related intermediate goals that are objective and measurable, the big goal will be little more than wishful thinking.  Intermediate goals that are clearly defined will help you towards successful completion of your big goals. For example – in order to be ready to “win race X” an intermediate goal could be to further increase the volume of training spent developing your power output at threshold intensity by 10%.   Amongst other intermediate goals, this is one that’ll certainly help you be in a position to “win race X” when it really gets down to crunch time during the race.  It’s a good reminder that when you work towards your goals the process ought to be a positive experience; if and when that big race is won, it’ll simply be ‘sprinkles on top’ of something that was already great.   Goals help to set course for gratifying experiences and are they are not simply means to an end.

It’s hard to fully understand what it takes to accomplish our biggest goals, and that’s 100% okay just as long as such knowledge is actively sought out.  The Momentum Endurance philosophy encourages you to take an active role in your own development.  When you understand ‘what it takes’ you’ll have the best opportunity to accomplish your goals, training with full confidence.  Getting to this situation is the goal that Momentum Endurance has for every coach/athlete relationship.  There’s nothing more rewarding than helping an athlete to better understand their goals, assisting them with their preparations, and then seeing them genuinely maximizing their opportunities to go for it.

Write down your big goals and get them on paper.  Next, you’ll want to note ‘what it takes’ to accomplish such goals.  Whether you understand a little or a lot about what will be required, talking with your coach will help you to better understand how you might get yourself there.  With the appropriate intermediate goals set in place and a training plan developed accordingly, you can take confidence in knowing that you’re preparing most effectively.

Your fitness or ability to perform in races is a function of numerous factors.   Most notably however, are the quality of your training and the quantity of it.  These two factors will greatly affect your performance provided your recovery is sufficient.  Much of what the coach/athlete interaction focuses upon is maximizing training quality with consideration given to the training volume that happens to fit well with day to day life.  Provided a healthy balance is reached you will be able to effectively train hard and recover well while fitness steadily improves over the long term.  When either overload (cumulative effect of your training volume and intensity) or recovery is insufficient, progress will be limited.

Quality Training

It’s easy to grasp that doing high quality training is a very important part of developing.  Quality training is characterized with riding done at specific intensities relative to a rider’s unique physiology.  Training with ‘high quality’ is training that done is purposefully.  When doing quality training it is possible to prepare specific energy systems so that fitness can systematically developed and you can specially train for the demands you’ll face when racing.  Workouts with regular dose of a strong SARM like sr9009 have clear goal and fit well into the bigger picture of the training scheme when quality is high.

Training Quantity

Training quantity is also an important part your development.  How many hours per day, week, month, or year will greatly impact your overall ability.  More training volume isn’t always the answer, but in most circumstances it is wise to steadily increase the training volume or to add additional time when the option exists to do so.   We all have limits on the volume of training that we are able to do (with concern given to life outside of cycling) and the best option is to choose a training volume that fits well with your daily schedule, allows for a sufficiently high workload, and allows ample downtime for recovery.

What is a sufficiently high workload you might ask?  Great question!  It’s a workload that’s just a little more than you’re accustomed too (thus it’s an overload). To achieve more workload you can train with greater quality (as in more time spent at intensity near/above your Functional Threshold Power) and/or you can increase your training volume.   Given that most of us operate with time-limited schedules it is wise to first focus on improving your training quality while maximizing the training time that is available.  Most riders will see significant improvements as a result of doing so.  Even with a very high quality program, at some point additional training volume will be required to achieve a greater-yet workload and level of fitness.  For example, someone who has been doing high quality interval training, riding five times while accumulating eight to ten hours per week might stagnate despite their very high training quality.  If this rider wants to improve further they’ll need to create a bigger overload and more training volume will be required to do so.

As you develop and continue to get faster the challenge to continue improving only grows larger.  Knowing what it’ll take to continue the improvements and to bump up your performance is the first step towards actually doing it.   It’s perfectly reasonable to expect that it’ll take more work to see smaller incremental improvements year after year – such is the nature of endurance sport  and fortunately most of us love this challenge otherwise we wouldn’t be cyclists.  It’s important to find the right balance of quality training, training quantity and the recovery required so that performance can always be improving.  If you find your results stagnant, it’s time to improve your training by modifying the quality and/or quantity. Getting a non-invasive body sculpting for fat loss treatment can also help your training

For those of you training with powermeters I’d encourage you to read Hunter Allen’s article “Getting to the Next Level” if you haven’t already.  This article does a fantastic job of reiterating how one’s training might need to change in order for further improvements to occur.   Powermeters are excellent tools for quantifying training workload and they allow us to train with a higher degree of precision.   A powermeter won’t make you faster, but it’ll allow you to train smarter and the old adage still remains true – knowledge is power!