50% of what?

I train hard when I dont have a lot of time.

Enjoy this flow chart I made a friend who I was trying to convince to add volume and ease intensity.

It's kind of a joke but kind of not

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"If it costs you 30 minutes at Maryland so what" -dwreal

Will you race at 50% as well?

I've actually personally found the 'train easier at lower intensities' a misleading fallacy as a typical non-maxxed AGer.

I can get really good gains from almost entirely easier effort training (almost all z1/z2), but it takes a lot of volume. And to be honest, I find the draining efforts of pushing through a long 2-3 hr z2 session when I'm not in great shape, just as hard if not harder than doing hard short Z4-5 intervals.

I do agree though that it's just a lot less risk to train at lower intensities, and also essential for the proper aerobic adaptations that you don't get by just doing short HIIT intervals with low overall volume.

The high intensity stuff for me is pretty important though for pushing up the high end of my speed in all disciplines. For me, the slow stuff lets me hold my high speed a lot longer than I'd otherwise be able to, but without the Z4-5 intervals, the top end isn't as sharp even if I can hold it a long time.

Since you mention anaerobic, I assume 50% is referring to intensity? If so I think you're missing a lot of the equation.

You can easily incorporate high-intensity work with no risk of overtraining and it is extremely helpful, even for Ironman triathletes. (And you can do it while keeping your overall training load at 50% of what you could.handle as a full time athlete)

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Could you try to be a little more precise?

As mrtri123 said....50% / 70% / 80% / 100% of what? VO2max, LT, maxHR, RPE?

Regardless....I don't think that any single intensity is "the answer". It takes a spectrum of intensities in appropriate doses to create a race-ready athlete. If all you want to do is "be healthy" then, yes your fuzzy "do 50% all the time" is probably the right answer, and good enough.

According to Matt Fitzgerald, you build mitochondria density better at higher efforts. The problem with higher efforts is that you cannot do as much of it.

There are a lot of things that are easy to build with lower intensity but you can do it all. I don't have my copy of the 80/20 book with me, maybe someone can quote it?

Also, 50% of what?

Functional Threshold?
VO2max?
Some other maximal value?

Perceived effort, heart rate, etc.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

Honestly, there are people who could beat me at 50% of their effort. There are also people I could beat at 50% of my effort. Think your missing my point.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

I followed the logic of your thread title and then opened it up, and my head is spinning trying to follow the actual posting, random percentages etc.

But, sticking with the title, I would tend to agree that IF you can train easier and achieve as many gains, you are better off doing so. That’s a big IF, though.

Thanks.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

Those are all different things...and 50% of one is nothing like 50% of the other.

You're choice. Except does choosing a maximal value skew things? Thank you for your previous answer too.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

Do you mean short yet intense intervals without too many of them?

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

LOL maybe I could go back and leave the title and delete the rest to be more clear.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

If a person picked one and stuck with the one measure, would we be ok then? And then train from there at 50%.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

Everyone’s definition of success is different. What you define as success for you could be failure to others.

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blog

You bring up another frequent reason. We train hard when we have less time. I can understand the concept yet wonder???

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

I've heard, but cannot find my source, that you need to train at 50% of VO2max to make any improvements.

Personally, the draw of this sport is the training. I like pushing myself, finding new discomfort zones and seeing how long I can stay there. There's a certain masochistic aspect that appeals to me, although this is about the only area of life where I enjoy any kind of pain...kind of a sissy everywhere else, lol.

Race days are just periodic reminders that I'm getting better, healthier, and how much I enjoy pretzels, warm Coke, and t-shirts I'll never actually wear.

Basically, yes, but there are different versions of intense, and different definitions of "short" depending on what you are working on. Neuromuscular recruitment or conditioning? Lactate threshold intervals?

You can incorporate 30 second long MAX effort intervals, 400m-1200m repeats on the track or 15-20 minute threshold intervals, without doing so much work that you wreck yourself. Each of those things serve different but important purposes in developing fitness. You could get in both your high intensity work, as well as z2 aerobic work and still only accumulate 300-400 TSS in a week, making it very relaxed and low-stress. You won't get close to your peak possible fitness, but you'll be quite fit compared to the general population.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Don't think I stated it very well. Maybe I'll go back and redo it.

Training easy does lead to increased adaptation and improvement.

Overtraining leads to failing adaption.

If we have patience with our training aren't we more likely to succeed by keeping it easy. Does going hard backfire like breaking the tip off a sharpened pencil?

It seems like there are top level athletes who race at a high level; yet train at lower intensities than their competitors. ???

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

Adding a little more to my answer before,

It sounds like the only variable you are considering in whether or not one will overtrain is intensity. But one must also consider volume and frequency. You can do all z1 and z2 work and still overtrain. You can do mostly high intensity work and not come anywhere close to overtraining. It's all three factors together that determine the training stress on your body.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook