Raise Ceiling vs Aerobic Base - Offseason Training

Triathlon Forum
1

Which of these training methods for the offseason (or early season) do you believe in and why?

  1. Lower volume targeting to raise ceiling via top end work. Theory is increasing the ceiling for the top end zones will allow for greater increase of the lower zones when increasing volume later in the season.

  2. Higher volume aerobic base building via lower zones. Theory of increasing your aerobic base (“LSD”) which will allow for greater gains when throwing higher end work later in the season.

I think there are great arguments for both. Would love to hear some of those here, specifically for 70.3 and Ironman triathletes!

2

I think there are merits to both and some of it is athlete dependent.

In recent years I switch from the LSD off-season to the increase threshold with a lot of success.

I find that doing a lot of LSD training results in burnout. It sucks putting in lots of time in the dark/cold winter, it’s time away from the kids/family, and I find that I’m more injury prone when I start adding intensity on top of the volume.

Now, I get faster every winter with less time spent training, start my season feeling more ready / energized, and am able to add volume on top of the new speed.

3

This will kill a bit of your day: https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=4847211#p4847211

If that didn’t kill your love of reading this probably won’t either: https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=2765058#p2765058
.

4

This will kill a bit of your day: https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=4847211#p4847211

If that didn’t kill your love of reading this probably won’t either: https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=2765058#p2765058

Phew read 11 pages of some pretty seriously aggressive chatting for slowtwitch to find you are supportive of raising the ceiling and progressing to race specificity. I also found this quote from you funny considering that thread is 10 years old: “Much of what has been written 8,10,14 years ago is not really relevant, just like in 13 or so years much of what has been written today may no longer be relevant.”

I would assume you still have similar thoughts today.

It seems like the training world has progressed even more away from the classic LSD since then as training methodologies are even better spread across the web, but curious if people are still recommending it.

5

I’m more of a fan of #1. Raise the ceiling. You can still have some base riding, but VO2 max coupled with one lt2 workout (for those testing with blood lactate) seems to work very well for me as an athlete and for the 4 athletes I’m currently coaching. Any other riding can be easy base riding of 60-90 minutes. This is with about 5-6 hours of riding per week.

FWIW, I’m a 4:12 70.3 guy, hoping to close in on low 4 this season.

6

I would say the minutiae of what was written 10 years ago is often flawed, but the 90% is still the same.

-Train a lot at an intensity fairly well below your threshold (zone 1 of a three zone model).
-Train with higher intensity in a manner that is specific to your event
-Add more load as the season goes on, from more intensity or more volume or both
-Prioritize recovery by means of sleep and fuel first, everything else second.

7

I assume you’re talking about periodization of training. If so there have been many misconceptions about it over the years but originally periodization just means training from general to specific over the season towards races. Iow, whether doing doing higher volume first or higher intensity first depends on what type of races one does. If training for long distance it’s higher intensity first(general) to more volume/tempo(specific) later. If training for short races it’s the other way around. Doing a lot of high intensity close to a long distance race is usually not a good idea.

8

It depends. It depends on experience, it depends on race goals, it depends on talents and weaknesses. Two thoughts:

Specificity- LC tri is a sport entirely about high aerobic pace. So most build cycles are going to involve quite a bit of volume. 8 weeks out from an Ironman would be a crazy time to try to improve your mile time.

Weaknesses- The true off-season (not early season) is a great time to improve what you’re bad at. See 100/100, fish, etc. This will significantly raise your ceiling for a discipline, but may or may not be low volume/high intensity.

9

I’d agree with others that “it depends”. You can probably make good improvements with either.

I do question if macrocycle periodization is even necessary for the average ag’er. It’s a concept that made sense for pro cyclists that have a long race season (50+ days racing). But now you have the likes of MVdP that are racing rather than traditional off-season and base building. Similarly Bu made comments along the lines of the Norwegians not really having an off season and never being more than 6-12 weeks out of competition fitness.

For the average ag’er doing a handful of races a year, a small off-season after a-race and then pretty constant build with generalised focus on a bit of everything may be more optimal.

There is certainly research showing at the 4-6 week length cycles it seems to make little difference if intensity or endurance comes first. How relevant that is to longer 3 month cycles we may expect to see in triathlon is ofcourse questionable.

To try to answer your question I’d always go with traditional base/endurance first. Some of that thinking is just following tradition - it’s certainly built some excellent cyclists, so no reason to think it doesn’t work. Also there is the thought that long endurance rides will increase mitochondria, which improves lactate clearance, therefore improving interval performance. Whereas I don’t see such a clear link from raising vo2max to improving endurance performance - in fact we see athletes that sacrifice LSD training with lots of HIIT have pretty awful aerobic performance i.e. very poor LT1 threshold (coined aerobic deficiency syndrome by the authors of uphill athlete).

Again to the “it depends” thing. The Norwegians said their vo2 max got lower when moving to ironman distance. So if ironman is your goal any vo2 max improvements you make early season might just be lost anyway - which makes the training seem rather useless. Of course going back to “it depends” if your an aerobic monster with relatively awful vo2max YMMV.

I think Bu actually said most long distance athletes don’t ever need to work on vo2 max as it’s almost certainly not their limiting factor.

I think the best argument for high intensity first is that long rides in winter suck, and short intense rides are preferable to most of us non pros without the luxury of warm weather training camps. If it’s the difference between compliance with a program and skipping sessions that might be enough.

Definitely an interesting topic. Unfortunately I don’t think we will ever have a hard answer.

10

I’d agree with others that “it depends”. You can probably make good improvements with either.

I do question if macrocycle periodization is even necessary for the average ag’er. It’s a concept that made sense for pro cyclists that have a long race season (50+ days racing). But now you have the likes of MVdP that are racing rather than traditional off-season and base building. Similarly Bu made comments along the lines of the Norwegians not really having an off season and never being more than 6-12 weeks out of competition fitness.

For the average ag’er doing a handful of races a year, a small off-season after a-race and then pretty constant build with generalised focus on a bit of everything may be more optimal.

There is certainly research showing at the 4-6 week length cycles it seems to make little difference if intensity or endurance comes first. How relevant that is to longer 3 month cycles we may expect to see in triathlon is ofcourse questionable.

To try to answer your question I’d always go with traditional base/endurance first. Some of that thinking is just following tradition - it’s certainly built some excellent cyclists, so no reason to think it doesn’t work. Also there is the thought that long endurance rides will increase mitochondria, which improves lactate clearance, therefore improving interval performance. Whereas I don’t see such a clear link from raising vo2max to improving endurance performance - in fact we see athletes that sacrifice LSD training with lots of HIIT have pretty awful aerobic performance i.e. very poor LT1 threshold (coined aerobic deficiency syndrome by the authors of uphill athlete).

Again to the “it depends” thing. The Norwegians said their vo2 max got lower when moving to ironman distance. So if ironman is your goal any vo2 max improvements you make early season might just be lost anyway - which makes the training seem rather useless. Of course going back to “it depends” if your an aerobic monster with relatively awful vo2max YMMV.

I think Bu actually said most long distance athletes don’t ever need to work on vo2 max as it’s almost certainly not their limiting factor.

I think the best argument for high intensity first is that long rides in winter suck, and short intense rides are preferable to most of us non pros without the luxury of warm weather training camps. If it’s the difference between compliance with a program and skipping sessions that might be enough.

Definitely an interesting topic. Unfortunately I don’t think we will ever have a hard answer.

Bu is one of the reasons I made this topic because I was a bit surprised he basically was suggesting no/little VO2 work (Lionel’s experience with Mikal would also agree with this). In the past few years it seems more people switching away from that style of training and more of the year-round intensity.

My counter argument to his thoughts would be that the Norwegians have most likely doing high end work for 10+ years in prep for short course triathlons so of course it makes sense they don’t work on it during long course training. They most likely also have high VO2 naturally. So it could almost be an argument that HIIT work leads to better gains when transitioning to specificity/volume for long course. Of course Lionel would maybe debunk that, but hard to say if he was fully bought in/followed the plan.

11

I’d agree with others that “it depends”. You can probably make good improvements with either.

I do question if macrocycle periodization is even necessary for the average ag’er. It’s a concept that made sense for pro cyclists that have a long race season (50+ days racing). But now you have the likes of MVdP that are racing rather than traditional off-season and base building. Similarly Bu made comments along the lines of the Norwegians not really having an off season and never being more than 6-12 weeks out of competition fitness.

For the average ag’er doing a handful of races a year, a small off-season after a-race and then pretty constant build with generalised focus on a bit of everything may be more optimal.

There is certainly research showing at the 4-6 week length cycles it seems to make little difference if intensity or endurance comes first. How relevant that is to longer 3 month cycles we may expect to see in triathlon is ofcourse questionable.

To try to answer your question I’d always go with traditional base/endurance first. Some of that thinking is just following tradition - it’s certainly built some excellent cyclists, so no reason to think it doesn’t work. Also there is the thought that long endurance rides will increase mitochondria, which improves lactate clearance, therefore improving interval performance. Whereas I don’t see such a clear link from raising vo2max to improving endurance performance - in fact we see athletes that sacrifice LSD training with lots of HIIT have pretty awful aerobic performance i.e. very poor LT1 threshold (coined aerobic deficiency syndrome by the authors of uphill athlete).

Again to the “it depends” thing. The Norwegians said their vo2 max got lower when moving to ironman distance. So if ironman is your goal any vo2 max improvements you make early season might just be lost anyway - which makes the training seem rather useless. Of course going back to “it depends” if your an aerobic monster with relatively awful vo2max YMMV.

I think Bu actually said most long distance athletes don’t ever need to work on vo2 max as it’s almost certainly not their limiting factor.

I think the best argument for high intensity first is that long rides in winter suck, and short intense rides are preferable to most of us non pros without the luxury of warm weather training camps. If it’s the difference between compliance with a program and skipping sessions that might be enough.

Definitely an interesting topic. Unfortunately I don’t think we will ever have a hard answer.

Bu is one of the reasons I made this topic because I was a bit surprised he basically was suggesting no/little VO2 work (Lionel’s experience with Mikal would also agree with this). In the past few years it seems more people switching away from that style of training and more of the year-round intensity.

My counter argument to his thoughts would be that the Norwegians have most likely doing high end work for 10+ years in prep for short course triathlons so of course it makes sense they don’t work on it during long course training. They most likely also have high VO2 naturally. So it could almost be an argument that HIIT work leads to better gains when transitioning to specificity/volume for long course. Of course Lionel would maybe debunk that, but hard to say if he was fully bought in/followed the plan.

I think there are a few things to consider:

  • Yes the Norwegians likely have much greater vo2max than regular ag’ers so certainly a confounding variable.
  • You can get decent bump in vo2 max with a targeted 4-6 week block. On the other hand it’s really hard to maintain, especially while trying to do a high volume plan. In that regard base first then a “peaking” block before the race seems to make sense.
  • Anaerobic threshold is a better predictor of long distance performance than vo2max. So unless your threshold is 80%+ of vo2max (unlikely for most amateurs) you probably have the ceiling already. Also threshold work is much easier to fit into a high volume program and generally less fatiguing than pure vo2max work. So it would make sense to focus on threshold (which supports the finding that many endurance athletes have pyramidal intensity distribution).
12

An interesting blog post from Alan Couzens on the question.

https://alancouzens.com/blog/optimal_periodization.html

13

I think there are a few things to consider:

  • Yes the Norwegians likely have much greater vo2max than regular ag’ers so certainly a confounding variable.
  • You can get decent bump in vo2 max with a targeted 4-6 week block. On the other hand it’s really hard to maintain, especially while trying to do a high volume plan. In that regard base first then a “peaking” block before the race seems to make sense.
  • Anaerobic threshold is a better predictor of long distance performance than vo2max. So unless your threshold is 80%+ of vo2max (unlikely for most amateurs) you probably have the ceiling already. Also threshold work is much easier to fit into a high volume program and generally less fatiguing than pure vo2max work. So it would make sense to focus on threshold (which supports the finding that many endurance athletes have pyramidal intensity distribution).

Another point is that Blu/Iden came off training for the Olympic distance race and then went into full distance. They were pretty specifically trained for an event that should require more VO2max work.

I also agree with the above sentiments that for 99% of athletes the focus should be less on specifics of periodization and on 1)recovering better, 2) getting in more total hours, and 3) getting in more total intensity hours. Fundamentals, you know.

14

An interesting blog post from Alan Couzens on the question.

https://alancouzens.com/...l_periodization.html

Well that’s interesting…Almost just proves rest is more important than anything.

15

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=at3MPoK53dU

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dBbK-0vh-d8

I found these videos very interesting. The interviewee is a big proponent of zone 2 training, and he seems to know a thing or two. According to him a zone 2 workout is still useful even if your training sessions are only an hour long.