Topics Covered In This Episode:
Guest:
Renee Eastman is a CTS Premier Level Coach and has been coaching with the company for more than 20 years. She has a master's degree in exercise science, has worked for USA Cycling, and is a 6-time Masters National Champion.
Show Links:
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
GET FREE TRAINING CONTENT
Join our weekly newsletter
CONNECT WITH CTS
Website: trainright.com
Instagram: @cts_trainright
Twitter: @trainright
Facebook: @CTSAthlete
Topics Covered In This Episode:
Guest:
Renee Eastman is a CTS Premier Level Coach and has been coaching with the company for more than 20 years. She has a master's degree in exercise science, has worked for USA Cycling, and is a 6-time Masters National Champion.
Show Links:
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
GET FREE TRAINING CONTENT
Join our weekly newsletter
CONNECT WITH CTS
Website: trainright.com
Instagram: @cts_trainright
Twitter: @trainright
Facebook: @CTSAthlete
From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now onto our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
Speaker 1:We're now in the long-awaited part 3 of a 3-part series on lab testing. If you missed parts 1 and 2, I'd hit pause and go back and listen in order, because there is a progression to our madness here, and you'll fully realize it when you go in order. I do believe so. As always, I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm alongside CTS Premier Coach Renee Eastman. Once again, today, we'll be pulling all the information from the past couple episodes, as well as some new stuff today, and we'll review the benefits of training and performance that you can glean from lab tests, as well as the health and longevity pieces that we talked about, and then specifically take all that information and apply it to your base training program with more confidence, setting the stage to fully develop your aerobic engine into next year and beyond. So, renee, you ready to go?
Speaker 2:I am let's do it.
Speaker 1:So let's start with an analogy first. Now think of your training as a physiology, something like that, as a house, okay, where we want to build a solid house where you can do whatever you want to do in it, according to your dreams, goals and the realities in your world. So, renee, what are the components of a dreamy endurance house looking like these days?
Speaker 2:You know, I love an analogy, adam.
Speaker 1:I'm sure we're going to hear them all today.
Speaker 2:When we think because I think an analogy can put into some maybe some better concepts that you can maybe pull into your own life. So if we're thinking about like building a house, your aerobic foundation which hopefully a lot of our North American cyclists are building right now is that foundation of your house. The bigger, stronger the foundation, the more capacity, the bigger your house can be. On top of that, then where your main floor is might be your performance and I would deem that like your threshold, your FTP, your zones three to four power the top floor. Or you know if your apartment building, the penthouse, might be your VO2 racks, where the roof, the top top part, would be maybe somebody's anaerobic capacity and really the biggest parts of your performance are going to be determined by how big that foundation, how strong that foundation is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's it. It's all about the foundation, right. Like throwing big chunks of concrete with a good rebar in there, that builds a strong foundation. So in terms, so we always start with that foundation. Aerobic power development we're talking time crunched athletes here too, so can you give us some realities of how big some of the foundations can be for some people versus other people? That may be more time rich.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there is a reality to that to an extent of, like you know, if you can only afford a $300,000 house, you only have that much time capacity. You can only build so big of a house. It doesn't mean it's not a nice house, but you might not be able to build a mansion because you're not able to spend six, $7 million on your house time available. So in that, the foundation in our analogy here is how much time can I spend in my aerobic training range is specifically, I would say, below that LT1 or your zone two range, Like the bigger capacity you have for that, the bigger your aerobic foundation is for that. And the training adaptations is really all about the mitochondria, the mitochondria in your slow twitch muscle fibers and your ability to use that as a fuel source. Like those are the training adaptations that come from a huge amount of volume at that intensity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's important for people to realize the reality of that, because when I'm working with athletes, it's as much as you want something it really for endurance sports it really comes down to time and I hate to simplify it down to that time meaning volume. I hate to simplify it there, but I take a look at some of these athletes I've been working with for like 10 plus years and some of the CEO types that are super limited on time, the six to eight hours that are just grinding it out Once they retire.
Speaker 1:I get so excited because I'm like okay, we are going to expand your foundation. We're just, we're going to like whole house reconstruction. And I tell them and they're like get excited. And then they do the training. They're like it's boring, Right, Because all their students ride their bike, Right. I mean it's kind of a funny joke. You then develop and then all of a sudden they realize how valuable this time is and you do cool stuff on the bike. But it is truly even at 50 plus, I'm having people realize higher FTPs and it's simply because we're riding our bikes more intelligently around this LT1, LT2, and then we build our house from there. But I do want to like stress home to some people, as a lot of this is built into the reality of volume.
Speaker 2:When people get, when they retire or maybe when their kids go off to college or whatever life change expands your time available. My analogy is like you've got more disposable income, more disposable income for disposable time to spend on training, and then you can buy your bigger house or your fans or your car or whatever analogy that you want to make here.
Speaker 1:And so, as we speak in these realities we'll bring it back down to physiology here, because the realities of a time crunched athlete, like we talked about in part two, you may just lean into that six to eight hours on an irregular basis. What we talked about was is my zone two training, working even at seven or eight hours of training, and that's what we're talking about lab testing, right, renee? And this is where you can actually see some of the changes happening or not happening in your own training. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:I think that's a great point, especially for the time crunched athletes, because we're talking about how great the zone two training is and all these like positive.
Speaker 1:The world is talking about that right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all these positive adaptations like oh, I'm better at metabolizing fat as a fuel source, my slow twitch mitochondria are really strong, and things like that. There is a limit that you can only. If you only have that eight hours a week on average, you can only get that engine so big. And here's my car analogy, and you'll know, adam, I know nothing about cars, but here comes analogy.
Speaker 2:Here's my analogy I drive a Ford Focus, I love my Ford Focus, but it's not a Porsche and right now I can't afford a Porsche. I can't afford the time to make my Ford Focus into a Porsche. So if I'm only training up to like I got my Ford Focus tuned up as best as it can be. It's only a four cylinder engine. I don't have the disposable income to turn it into a V6. So I've got that engine tuned up as much as I can and then I've got to move on. I've got to move on to like just make that Ford focus the best it can be, the most fuel efficient it can be, put some spoilers on there. Like tune it up and we're gonna go.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah, and it's time to move on.
Speaker 1:At that point when you just realize it's like, huh, I got a Ford Focus, time to race with your brunt, right.
Speaker 1:And when we say it's time to move on, like in a seasonality of training we're coming up on, you know, not right now, but like March, april, maybe May for some people, but like we're gonna have races or events, we got to get out of base phase of training and we get into the main floor of our analogy of building this amazing endurance house. Right, because you don't want to just go zone two for 11 months and then jump in SBT gravel or jump into the local crit or something like that, because you're not going to be as well prepared. So when we say it's time to move on from a phase, it's a bit of a timing in combination with making sure that we got all the time in zone that we were planning on in base phase. So can you talk about the main floor and maybe like a cue of when it is time to move on and how to maybe use threshold when we're talking about LT2 coming up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say we're not see the move on is I'm not seeing a response with the zone to work that I'm doing anymore. I've gotten my fuel economy, if we want to talk about that as best as I can get in that. We talked about this in our last episode about like looking at that heart rate response of I'm doing a steady zone to ride and maybe my longest zone to ride is two hours, three hours and that's all I got and my heart rate staying real flat and you know I've kind of capped out on the power I can do there. And there is like a timing aspect of it. If you're two, three months out, it's time to move on, even if your engine might not be tuned as much as you can go.
Speaker 2:Because at that point the main floor, the threshold, is stacking carbohydrate burn on top of that burning capacity for total energy expenditure. Because what's going to be your limiter on your performance with the engine you have or the house you have, what's going to be your limiter on performance is how much energy expenditure can I do, period. And at that point, like when we're like crunch time, two, three months before, the event is just I don't care how I produce the energy anymore. Carbohydrates, fat I just got to produce it and that's where the more heavily carbohydrate based intensity comes in. And that's your zone. Three to four, that's your tempo sweet spot. Steady state intervals and our CTS vernacular come in and I want to do as much of that work as my body can handle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did a podcast about this called fatigue resistance training, where it's kind of like full send in a very medium, hard way for a very long time, back to back to back sort of days. Those are the like blocks that we're doing, and so the mix of zone three, four. The ironic bit is called fatigue resistance training because it makes you resistant to fatigue but it also induces a lot of fatigue. You're just like going for it burn all the fat, burn all the carbohydrate and then ideally, hopefully, lay on the couch and recover from it. Otherwise you'll just be fatigued without the resistance.
Speaker 2:And I know from your previous podcast and your athletes know when we're talking about more z-stone three and four workouts and you know full sand and all that that doesn't mean seven days a week, hopefully.
Speaker 1:I made that clarification.
Speaker 2:yes, Two or three days a week. That we're like stretching our limits. We're trying to expand the time that we can do this high carbohydrate burn. In a sense, that's why I think about as a physiologist.
Speaker 1:One quick qualification there. I will say just in the grand scheme of full sandness, you could do it seven days in a row. Okay, you could raise Cape Epic full sand on seven days, but then you just really need to put a nice recovery block in the backside of it. The human body can do some crazy stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:However, when it comes to long-term intelligent training, listen to Renee.
Speaker 2:Great point, adam so anyway.
Speaker 1:So to that point, when we're kind of we've moved on to that zone three, zone four training, we're stacking mixed substrate burning, meaning carbohydrate and fat, on top of whatever we had in base training. There's gonna come a point where we then move on to the top floor of the penthouse. We our analogy is now VO2 max, which means what Renee, Maximum oxygen uptake.
Speaker 2:That's what we're talking about, yeah, and that is there's two parts to that. Oxygen delivery, how much oxygen my send into the muscles. Oxygen uptake, how much am I uptaking by the muscles? And there's, you know, you know the cardio respiratory limiters of that and there's a muscular side limiters to that. And you know the take-home message is you've got to push both of those things to their limit to get a response on the maximum that you can do. And that is in those like two to five minute intervals a lot of times. Two to three minute intervals, basically parts you can go for two or three minutes, yeah, kind of intervals, power intervals as we call them in in TKS or, you know, zone five.
Speaker 1:We're gonna be focused more on, like this, base building. But we'll kind of move through all of this because I think it's important in building the house. But when we're doing these I mean these are definitely hard and we have done podcasts about this too where I do think block style training works very effective in driving adaptation with VO2 work like this. But I've also talked about polarized training being a very appropriate model, meaning like hard one day, easy the next, hard the next day, and that's that's what I'd recommend when we're building that top floor on a pretty good and for most time-trenched athletes. So, assuming we did VO2 our top floor very well, now we're on, we're putting our roof on the house. Renee talked to us about anaerobic capacity, functional reserve capacity. I've gone over that on the podcast before, so some people will know what that means. Tell us how to put the roof on.
Speaker 2:That is usually the last finishing touches for fitness and you know it's not the key of your house but it is very important. You know that. That functional reserve capacity is that ability to how much work you can do above FTP in a continuous fashion. And while it's not the limiter for most of the events, for a lot of our athletes it still is a deciding factor of like win or loss, podium or not podium. And this is a little bit more less aerobically limited and a little bit more musclarly limited. I'd say, like you know, just the intensity of the training is max Hard you can go and we're talking anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute, maybe two minutes, but like very, very intense intervals and very much limited by your muscular strength and power, strength being how much force can I do? And power is like force over time and very much specific training in these intensities, but also, you know, influenced by probably more influenced by strength training, like your gains in the gym and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the icing on the cake. I mean, some people think it's the best part and they would even take it without the cake itself, but just to use another analogy. But I do think when you're talking about the benefits to a time crunched athlete or the benefits to an aerobic athlete of developing FRC or anaerobic capacity, I find this like in my weekend warriors to be important, especially at the start of the race where everybody's together jockeying for position and like you're trying to get on wheels and get into a group and it's really squiggly right In the way that you're making your power, and there's a lot of anaerobic contribution. That goes into the first hour of off-road races and a lot of crits and road races and stuff like that. So this roof that we're talking about your ability to go hard one time for sure, but kind of also go again, and that's what we're talking about with some of this FRC, but don't forget it for sure, it's part of an important house, because we don't want rain leaking in on our penthouse VO2 Max, exactly.
Speaker 1:So, as it pertains to, I would say, the seasonality of where we're at right now, renee, where what we're trying to do is create this messaging to our athletes of hey, you've been using individualized training zones for a long time, maybe with a coach, maybe you've been doing it yourself. Could be the time to get a lab test done, right. So we want them to go get a lab test and then apply what is gleaned from that lab test into their base training. I'm going to go kind of off script here. I guess the question, renee, is one where can people find a good, legitimate lab test? And if they can't, what's our messaging to them? How do they take this information and apply it?
Speaker 2:That's a good question, adam. As you know, we do lactate threshold testing with a metabolic cart and the blood lactate in our Colorado Springs lab. But I know a lot of our athletes are not in Colorado Springs or near Colorado Springs. So you can Google physiological testing. You're going to find a fair amount of labs around universities and things like that. Some individual coaches have labs. They may or may not have a metabolic cart. Maybe they're only doing blood lactate, because that's a pretty low bar to get into is just lactate. The metabolic carts are the expensive part of these tests. You look at universities and a lot of them are just doing wellness testing so they might not have a protocol that's really appropriate for an endurance athlete. So you can talk to them about that and at the end of the day, I think more often than not it's not going to be available to everybody on a broad scale. So we should talk about field testing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's talk field testing. But I'll also say talk to your friends, the people who you're riding with, because maybe they do know a pretty legit place to go get a lab test that Google doesn't. So just talk to your friends. We may have some criticism about what their actual protocol is and whatnot, but it could be a good next step in learning how the body functions and things like that. So talk to your friends, Go pursue a lab test. But if not, Renee, how do we do some of this field testing at home, out on the roads? How do we do it?
Speaker 2:Don't be afraid to test at the end of your off season and your 20 minute power is probably going to be down or your eight minute power whatever field test you decide is best for you, it's going to be down and use that number and bring your ranges down first of all, and then those ranges.
Speaker 2:We say 95% of a 20 minute test is your estimated FTP and 75% of that FTP is top of your zone two. What I'd like to say to people is like don't be a hero with your training. There's nothing wrong with training at 65% of your FTP, normally the top of your zone two. We're going to call it 75% of your FTP and just testing people in a lab, I see it's often lower than that, especially if you're not in peak form. And I'm also going to add it's more so for the time crunched athlete the time unlimited athlete usually has a can operate at a higher percent of their FTP in zone two before that first lactate response, just due to the volume of work they're doing. So at the end of the day, I say more is not better With zone 2 training.
Speaker 2:I mean power or the higher end of to know more volumes, great, but more power, not like don't be a hero in your, your zone to training, yeah, like right at 65% of your FTP and that's for a lot of time. For encyclists that's probably closer to your map. Peak fat oxidation yeah, and 75 is. And when you do more in More power and more intensity, when you go harder in your zone to what for most people that is doing is actually Suppressing your fat oxidation and increasing your carbohydrate oxidation. You might be working aerobically, but you're, you're getting a greater competition from carbohydrate.
Speaker 1:Yep. What oftentimes tell my athletes in training peaks is a. You know it says endurance miles, three hours, and I'll say ride how you feel today, but know that you're getting the same benefit at the low end of zone two. Then you are at zone at the top end, but you're gonna add more fatigue at the top end. So it's the messaging is you got some lateral here right as you wish. However, don't shame yourself into 75% only.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know All of my athletes can ride hard in the zone to. And that's not the point in this specific goal. If the goal is improved fat oxidation, improved mitochondrial function, the point is not more intensity. Until you can do the more intensity and the more intensity over time comes easy it comes. I'm doing the same heart rate but all of a sudden the five watts higher and ten watts higher at the same heart rate. You know not pushing it in. You know the pushing it comes more in the threshold development part.
Speaker 1:And so I guess, just to kind of wrap wrap things up, there is Having that lab test. Is is gives great confidence and it's a good I would say, somewhere between luxury and a good thing to do when it comes to a serious endurance athlete who wants to take it to the next level. And and, however, you don't need the lab testing to do it, we can take this information kind of modeled out of the lab and apply it to everybody's training. You just have to be very disciplined. Without a number to tell you that you need to go 65% According to this lab test that was done for you we're just telling you to do that.
Speaker 1:Go. Oh, don't be a hero. Like Renee said, a Be patient, stick to your zone to training, get it done and then, when you can creatively get a little bit more volume, just know that that's gonna help move the needle forward when it comes to building that foundation of your house, throwing a bunch of concrete in there to shape up the bigger, bigger batter pad for 2024. So I guess an in summary, to build base properly, we're really saying that you need to ride aerobically. That means Zone to or below or around that LT one if you're getting a lab test right.
Speaker 1:Yes okay, what else? What else can we add to that in summary points for me?
Speaker 2:The. I think the value of the lab test really comes from information that, like said, gives people confidence To ride easier. Know that they're doing themselves some good, because I think we always want more when we're riding. If 180 watts is good, 185 watts is better, 195 watts is better and the. The trick with the zone two versus I'm tipping into zone three is you can do zone three for most of your two three-hour rides, no problem, like you can do that, but you might not be doing what you think you're doing. You're not doing Aerobic training better. When you go into zone three, you might be tuning your engine in our car analogy, might be tuning up that engine better, but is that the goal of the day? So know what your goal is and you know when it's appropriate to do the Longer rides harder or the longer rides easier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll, you know, add in there and say, like your best engine that you build or the house that you build. The reality is is it's a combination of intelligent work that you do based on all the information that you have Combined with the actual time that you have, right, the time that you have in your life, combined with the rest of the duties you have in your life, and so you have volume works, but you have to operate, operate in the confines of the volume that you have to work with. So, all this fancy stuff that we're talking about and, and you know, going full, send on on zone 2 for your base building. You know, if you're a six to eight hour type of person, lean into that, that's great. Keep on building that base. Find creativity when you can to get a little bit more, but it's okay, that is absolutely okay to have six to eight hours. But just build it as best you can by not being a sugar burner and sticking to zone 2.
Speaker 2:Exactly right. And you know, going certainly all the way back to our car analogy like all I can afford in my time budget. My Disposable time budget is a Ford focus. Right now I can't forward push, yeah. But my Ford focus does pretty good. I drive it all over the place like good cross-country trips I take in the bike races I put my dogs in the back and put my car in the back. We go all sorts of places. It's a good car. So even if you have a limited budget, you can still work really well within that budget, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, agreed, and like I said with some of the athletes that I work with, you know there, there might be a time later on in life when you've got a bigger time budget, where you can start to do a home remodeling session right, and then we can, and then we can Change the foundation, but for now, that Ford focus or the ranch that you have might be just okay. So, renee, we're gonna wrap it up right there. Thank you again for your time. Coming on the podcast three different times, which is kind of bonkers. But the last questions I have for you are if people were listening today and they're like, oh, I need to get a lab test and, hey, I live in Colorado, I'm gonna reach out to Renee, how, how would they do that? How would they find you?
Speaker 2:They can contact athlete services at train right comm. Just go to our website. There's a little link to fill out a little form. Can email me directly our Eastman at train right comm Do we can get you set up for testing great, great men, kind of a little bit of a curveball here too.
Speaker 1:But let's say, one of our athletes gets a lab test and they have the information from it and they're still scratching their head. Do you, do you consults where? Say, here's my lab test coach. Tell me what I need to know from it.
Speaker 2:I actually have done that for a few of our you know, linked through coaches that we work that they got a lab test from their athlete. They couldn't make sense of it and that is a service I could do for for people as well as help interpret their lab test.
Speaker 1:Cool, great, all right Well to our audience members. Thank you for enduring a three-part series focused on lab testing, where we got to really nerd out on some of our vernaculars here in the physiology world. And to Renee for making good sense of all the crate, all the craziness that we Do enjoy as coaches Taking the information from the lab and in applying it to the field. So thanks again, renee, and thank you to everyone who tuned in. Thanks for joining us on the time crunch cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actual training advice, head over to Train right comm back slash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.