Lets revisit Marco's LBP results for Tok's benefit.

[quote="Toks"][quote="marco"]Thats the figure my bloodwork and heartrate come out at using robs FACT system- its a complicated test to explain but it made sense to me bearing in mind the fatigue problems Id been getting. He computed the figure which seems to feel naturally sustainable to me. !

[Robh]

My friend Alan has a similar LBP figure as Marco. He didn't believe me his LBP was that low so a month ago I told him to ride above his LBP of 132 & ride for 45mins-75mins @ HR 140 and to stop the test once his watts started to drop significantly.

The idea is that riding @ LBP and below you can hold HR, watts & lactate stable for at least 45mins minimum if you have undeveloped structure.

So Alan started the test by ramping his HR to 140bpm, once it stabilised he noted his watts which 130W. 20mins later it had steadily over that period dropped to 95W, HR still 140.

Confirmation to me and Alan his LBP is not 140 it's below this HR as confirmed by the test.

Rob

[Toks]

[quote="Robh"]
Riding in Marco's BI-STF range which is 96-120bpm will allow him to train every day very long 3 - 5 hours and never see an incline in lactate after breakfast ( carbo loading or very minimal. )

[Robh]

Toks,

Hopefully Marco will come on here and answer the question as Isaid earlier in the other post I'm not coaching him.

Rob

[quote="Toks"][quote="Robh"]
Riding in Marco's BI-STF range which is 96-120bpm will allow him to train every day very long 3 - 5 hours and never see an incline in lactate after breakfast ( carbo loading or very minimal. )

[Toks]

[quote="Robh"]
This was a general statement to show the effects of rdiing in the Bi-STF zone regaridng to glycogen levels.

[Robh]

Please read :-

One should not paint the brush that the FaCT philosophy is that long slow training is the only way to develop great cyclists. The philosophy remains...
1) understand phsyiology
2) use proven testing to help identify weaknesses
3) develop training that specifically addresses the weakness
4) retest to measure progress and effectiveness of the program
5) share the ideas with others

I will try to post our recent tests from our High Performance riders, to show how 18 months has made an incredible difference in their power at all intensities. Do we ride ALL of our workouts below LBP...no. About 85-90% below LBP, with the rest very specific to our limitations. The results speak for themselves.

You will never convince anyone of this, but they should read the study that Juerg quotes often, which is the only long term study of elite athletes, done over a 3 year time period with each group training for similar durations, at different intensities. The high intensity group made the biggest changes, over the first 3 months, but then stopped improving, and eventually dropped from the study, with no athletes completing the three year program. The lowest intensity group showed no improvement over the first 3 months, but then showed steady improvement over the entire study period, with every athlete completing the study and continuing to race at an International level.

As I said before, the only athletes that will buy into your "crazy" ideas, are the ones with nothing to lose. The ones that have been so burnt out from what they have been doing, that they are willing to try anything. Or, the ones that are willing to open their minds to new ideas, and do a bit of honest research, rather than making assumptions about a program that looks form the outside like "LSD" training, but is really much more complicated than that.

Also Toks ask him what his goals are they are different to YOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The poor guy is dead riding 2 days in a row for 4 hours @ HR 140bpm...Do you not understand this Toks? It was explained clearly.

I/we believe he needs to focus on his STF for long term gain and to help with is recovery. If he wants to be better in a few months then he can ride above his LBP every day for an hour or 2, but will most likely suffer with UPS (under preforming syndrome). He already was...

Rob

[Robh]

Toks,

Please do keep asking questions...I don't mind ,it allows others to learn..

I know what your thinking well sort of? It goes against logic to ride slower...But you have to ask why what are you trying to do? Functional or structural change..Everybody is different and I'm seeing this on the 9 people I've tested so far.

If you said FaCT was a load of Bollox I wouldn't be offended...

But think for a second why I would stop riding with ACC in the 20/21 mph groups to ride in the country lanes at some silly low HR. Well for me it's 145bpm (LBP-20) aren't I lucky which still allows me to average 16-19mph on certain days...Reason why I want to learn more about my body by using tyhe FaCT ideas than simple hitting a power figure on my powertap.

Cheers

Rob

P.S The lucky person tonight who's getting tested I'm going to ask him at the start of the test well maybe halfway through to see if he can guess his LBP.

[Toks]

[quote="Robh"]Please read :-
Also Toks ask him what his goals are they are different to YOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Robh]

He sort of did say but I can't say...

[Robh]

LBP training is being done by non elite rider like oursleve who are seeing gains...

[Robh]

It's in bold as you seems to not to read certain points Toks...

[Robh]

Toks,

Your a fan of your 3 x 20mins intervals @ 95-105% of FTP. Well I was doing these last year but 3 x 25mins (31/12/07) and my stats looked like this on this particular session :-

267W/157BPM
267W/158bpm
267W/160bpm

Like you I just looked at the power meter and tried to hit the numbers with no real thought of what my body was doing physioligically. Well Juerg looked at my data and gave me some hints for next time :-

Hallo Rob . Thanks for your info , and it is very nice to see , how Watt and HR have a very clear connection , as long the intensity in below LBP. As well you are right , that in a workout , where you do intervals as in your example indoor wattage is an incredible nice objective way to see change in performance.

Exactly this is and example where wattage can nicely be integrated in workouts and put into connection with physiological bio-markers, like heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, and metabolic infos (like lactate and others).

Your 3 x 25 min on a wattage trainer or with any type of wattage device is a great way , to see under what conditions and intensities your body response first. ( meaning , which bio-marker will give you a first trend information on upcoming changes due to the fixed wattage.

This is where we use the bio- harness as a nice tool to give this information.

If you have the time and the chance, repeat this 3 x 25 min exactly the same way , but no fan to cool yourself down and post the results.
Interesting would be to see with the bioharness, how your repiratory rate and your body temperature and your heart rate will change. Which bio marker show the first trend to a change and which one the last.

Example take lactate after 12.5 and 25 min in the series , as well as the respiratory rate and the HR is anyway there.

This way you realy will see, that if the "outside" situations, which is a big part in cycling change the physiological system may need to counter some of this stimuly ( like heat , change in the incline or downhill ( rpm) on the road , head wind tail wind and so on.

So the change due to the above can change the way the body will create ATP and use ATP. Or more easy to explain. If you drop RPM you may actualy change the co-ordination (intra muscular as well as intermuscular ) and possibly the "balance" requirement for body stabilization.

So this is a very nice example if we can compare the 2 versions and it may be anice example , where we can see , that wattage is great for certain aspects .
Now to make it an example.

We use with our athletes wattage on the trainer as you do or outside , as it reflects more accurate the physical overall performance.
. Once we see that there is a clear trend of any of the biomarkers.

Practical example with your 3 x 25 min workout.
In your case there was a minimal "shift of HR " after the 3rd interval, which means , there is no clear trend in HR as a sign of a shift in the balance of the cardio system.
We would consider this as a not "finished " workoput, as for us the definition of a workout is , that you will be worse .

In your case HR and wattage are stable.

So we would consider this as a cardio maintenance workout. If the goal would be to push the cardio system , you would have to add another set and see , whether the heart rate climbs now clear or not and than stop if it climbs.

Problem you don't know why the heart rate climbs if you only take heart rate / wattage.
It could be:
a) because you really start to "fatigue " cardio wise.
b) it could be because you "fatigue +" CNS ( co-ordination wise
c) it could be the body temp went up and you "fatigue" temp. wise
d) it could be your respiratory system may fatigue.

So any of the above could contribute to a rise in heart rate, but we do not know yet which one . So in case of wattage or heart rate , if taken completely alone, we have only the info , that something is not oin balance anymore.

What to do?

Here we take the ideas of FaCT IRIS.
Which is , taking different bi markers to see, what system starts to show the first trend of out of balance and will therefore contribute to a possible climb of the heart rate at a somewhat later stage.

Example:
You have a slightly cold and after the first intervall you will see in the second a higher respiratory rate after 3 - 4 min from 25 in the first set to 30 now in the second set. You may still have same wattage and heart rate , but you see a trend in change of respiratory rate.

The simpler version now will suggest , that you need more O2 for the respiratory work , and assuming you maintain the same TV ( tidal volume) this additional O2 usage by the respiratory system , may start to change the way the working leg muscles can supply ATP. % of FFA usage to glycogen. This will change the whole dynamic and at the end of set 2 your heart rate may be 5 - 10 beats higher , that without cold. Now again the question :

Is the fixed wattage still the same physiological workout, or is the increased heart rate and the change of the respiratory rate perhaps a sign , that the respiratory system may be the limitation today and therefor you may have to make a decision to stop the workout or just simply negelct the bio markers .

My suggestion would be to stop , as the bio-marker tells you , that the performance loss is based not on a workout loss as a the goal of the training ( getting ) worse, but rather a sign of your body , that something is already worse before the workout and to "stress" a cold to get cold resistance is unlikely the goal of this workout.
Okay let's take another example.

Same sets . RPM 95 , but in the second set you see the RPM drop and becasue you like to hold the wattage and the HR is still stable you just simply drop the RPM further.
Now if you try to maintain the RPM your HR will likely go up due to the higher O2 demand of the brain ( co-ordination ) as well as the loss of efficient co-ordination ) in your leg muscles.

This will lead to higher heart rate by the same wattage.
Now the question here is what to do ?

is the limiting factor caused by something you like to improve or not ?

Well give this idea a thought and come back and I will be back as well. Juerg

[Robh]

Using biomarkers another case:-

Saturday rode 4 hrs, average HR that day 138. The first 2 hours was on my own, 2nd hour was doing co-ordination workout for 40 mins. Then joined up with the 17's to talk with MarkyMark because my HR was low in this group I had to use cadence to get the HR up so was doing 110-130rpm a lot of the time for the next 1hr15mins.

Took Sunday off.

Today's 2hr indoor trainer ride, resp rate was 19 on the Bioharness, power was stable, Hr was stable @ 145, was alternating cadance between 100/90 rpm every 10 mins. After 1hr30 started to feel no longer comfortable @ 100 rpm Hr was starting to drift, was more comfortbale @ 90rpm. 20 mins later even 90rpm was a struggle as my co-ordination was tiring so ended workout.

Usually this workout would be no problem but I don't usually do nearly 2hrs of co-ordination workouts, so this system was still tired.

For neurological fatugue (co-ordination) we use cadence to determine fatigue in this system.

[-Adam-]

Why is using cadence a good marker for neurological fatigue?

Cadence varies wildly on the road, especially while racing. So a steady cadence of 100rpm, but if thats not comfortable, then why does this mean you are nurologically fatigued?