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The Stripped Down Experiment
words and images: Kraig Willett
I've been racin' bikes competitively since 1991
– during that time, I've tried lots of crap when
it comes to training and performance. For
example, I've used a sledgehammer (25+hrs a
week) - I've limited my HR below a certain level
"building my base" and laying a foundation for
the "hard stuff" to come. I've done 3 wks
on 1wk off – 3 days on 1 day off.
Macrocycles, microcycles – dun that! I've
done vo2's before threshold - threshold before
vo2's. I’ve periodized, reverse-periodized,
rubbed my lucky charms on a necklace around my
neck while chanting... stretched, lifted
weights, done high cadence intervals, vo2's in
the winter, low cadence intervals, SE,
2x20, 4x20, 6x4 min VO2’s. I've used high
tech fuel and energy replacements, lived on
beans and rice for a few months, scarfed down
toasterettes (too cheap to buy Pop-tarts!) -
blah blah blah - lived, breathed, ate bike
racin'. In other words, I've tried lots of
stuff!
Interestingly,
I thought I'd reached my genetic potential
as a cat 1 bike racer back in the day when I
used all the tried and true methods currently
discussed on the internet, or laid out
historically in popular books, and in the
scientific literature...
Since gettin' a powermeter, radically changing
my perspective on what actually drives
performance, and thinking critically about a lot
of the different, complicated, old and new crap
out there in regards to training and
performance, I've basically thrown it all out
for now and decided to keep things simple.
Essentially, I've stripped down my training to
the bare bones in an attempt to gain insight on
what is truly responsible for my performance.
The original thinking in this continual n=1
training experiment, was, that if you strip out
all the unnecessary junk, the only thing that
one is left with is what actually drives
performance. With the stripped down
approach, there is no guessing or estimating, or
relying on unnecessary assumptions to justify
what one “believes” to be responsible for
things. When there is only three to five
hours of exercise a week, it becomes pretty
obvious what is driving performance…
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This concept of minimizing training is kind
of like the challenge of instrumenting a
mechanical system with sensors – one seeks to
have a high signal to noise ratio in both cases,
since that will mean more conclusive data.
In my current particular training style case, I
have almost no noise to contaminate the very
weak signal that might be produced by any kind
of prescribed training.
As a result of my performance paradigm shift
(where I’ve decided to focus on “going hard and
resting hard”), I’ve re-discovered what I now
believe to be the true
base of performance and continue to seek out
the most efficient ways to build my
aerobic engine. Keeping things simple
like this, I've gotten myself to a place I've
never thought possible in terms of going fast on
a bike - and I’ve done it with about 20% of the
time I used to invest back in the day when I
thought I was going to be a pro bike racer.
Results?
Ya know, I don't have a real big motor, and I'm
carrying a few extra kg's these days, so I don't
win bike races (never did, really, even back in
the day!) - for me, at this point in my life,
performance is all relative and I'm having fun
enjoying the process, learning along the way,
and yes, going faster than I've ever gone
before.
Despite my meager engine, and keeping with the
internalized relative performance metric, I've
recently managed to set lifetime bests at a
local 20k distance TT I've focused on… I did
this for two years in a row (simultaneously
setting PR TT bike power numbers for the
duration). I also had fun while taking 15
minutes or so out of my overall half-ironman
time, despite swimming slower in my second
attempt at the distance (I don't do just short
bike ridin’ TT's! :-) )...
Interestingly, I've managed to do this on
approximately 3-5 hours of bike ridin' per week
for the last couple years (longest week was
6h35m). I reckon I'm as powerful (or more
so!) in my current areas of focus as I've ever
been in my 15+ years of competitive bike racin’.
How
Here's the simple, "secret", recipe that has
helped me focus my efforts over the past couple
years (thanks Kirk!) -
1)raise the left
2)fill the right
3)scatter the plot
4)run what you brung
5)have fun
Raise the Left
If you want to improve your bike ridin’ power,
you’ve gotta go hard (while being mindful of
also resting hard!). I think this has
always been true, even when I was training with
a sledgehammer. 10 years ago, I was just
too naïve, inexperienced, and didn’t have the
right tools to realize what was really driving
my performance back then. With a
power meter (and some guidance from a skilled,
experienced bike racer whose overall goal was to
teach me to be my own training advisor) it
became clear pretty quickly to me that during my
25+hr weeks back in the day, that I was wasting
lots of time doing unproductive work, and
generating unnecessary long-term fatigue that
adversely affected my performance. In my
experience, there is just no reason to be
carrying 6 weeks of fatigue – it only serves to
diminish performance. But hey, it’s
impressive to talk on the internet and to your
buddies about
how much training volume you’ve been doing
lately, isn’t it?
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Personally, I’ve found that goin’ hard is
simply a way of describing the intensity which
forces aerobic adaptations. I take the
position that if an effort doesn’t have a
significant anaerobic contribution (i.e, goin’
into the red zone), you really aren’t
efficiently forcing the body to adapt or
maintain that adaptation. For me, I’ve
pretty much narrowed down my goin’ hard cut-off
point to be 95% of my maximal 20-ish minute
power. For reference, my 20MP to 60MP
ratio is typically in the 1.10 to 1.15 range.
Identifying this goin’ hard cut off point has
simplified my training from a conceptual
standpoint and also from a practical
perspective. It’s pretty darn easy for my
caveman brain to schedule in two or three rides
a week that get me 10-15 minutes above 95% of my
20MP during each ride. Why do I try to get
10-15 minutes per ride 3 times a week?
Well, I’ve found that if I don’t spend at least
30-40 minutes a week above 95% of my 20MP, I
start to lose fitness (as documented by a 20MP,
or longer duration, maximal effort field test).
A case in point regarding this 30-40 minutes
above 95% of 20MP threshold, that was
eye-opening to me at least, is my recent
training – I am still riding the same number of
hours a week as I generally do, but at “tempo”
average power for the ride. These rides
also contain significant chunks of time around
my 60MP. As a result of this style of
ride, I don’t wind up getting much time above my
goin’ hard cutoff, and as a result, my 20MP is
suffering. I am getting better at burning
kilojoules though!
In short, raising the left is all about going
hard enough in order to stimulate or maintain
aerobic adaptations. A stripped down
approach to training facilitated the
understanding of this concept for me and my
caveman brain. The approach, when used in
conjunction with a power meter made it simple to
objectively quantify the idea that if you go too
easy, well then, you really aren’t being very
efficient with your training time.
Here are a few of the core left raising rides
that have been successful for me:
The 20MP:
The classic VO2:
The Chunk Ride:
Details of these rides can be found
here.
(The fine print from Kraig: This is not training
advice -it's simply my perspective. It's my
opinion and is an accurate reflection of my
current thinking. It does not necessarily
reflect anyone else's opinion on the topic of
training for bike racin'. Of course, I'm
flexible enough in my personality to change my
opinion based on new information. The
experiment continues!)
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