It is always a challenge to tell cyclists who have been building their fitness all year to slow down and ride at a lower heart rate. They often don't understand why and feel that this advice is contradictory to achieving an improved year.
But slowing down during the winter months is crucial to optimal training. If you train hard all year, you will eventually either get sick, injure yourself, feel burned out, or fall prey to the syndromes of over-training. For best performance, you need to reduce the volume and intensity of your training for regular periods each year so your body can become stronger and then peak when needed. Our coaches can help design a program that best fits you and your goals for the next several months.
Situated in the heart of Woodside, we are pleased to notice that more and more riders on Cañada road are beginning to follow this important rule throughout the fall and winter months. They are not riding in large packs and hammering away. They are cruising by themselves or with another rider or two, having a great conversation, and supporting one another to keep it low. In the end, they are the ones who will reap the benefits.
There are two energy systems you use when training: aerobic (with oxygen) and anaerobic (without oxygen). It is best to think of training each system independently of one another if you want to build each system well. Avoid the in between no mans land.
At Physically Focused, we stress the importance of building your aerobic base system during the fall and winter training months. Your aerobic base system is your oxygen delivery system to the muscles, powered by capillaries, which transport blood to the active muscles, and mitochondria, which produce energy from fat and carbohydrate oxidation. These elements are what allow your muscles to contract. You need to build this base into a large platform, a process that occurs gradually and over several months, before applying speed and power. Once you have taken the time to build more capillaries and increase mitochondria density in the muscle cells, you can increase speed and power in no time at all. When your aerobic system is strong, you will be able to carry more blood and oxygen to the muscles, which will help reduce and buffer lactic acid, a precursor of muscle shutdown, and increase energy production and oxygen utilization. Don't expect results overnight, however. This takes time!
The aerobic system uses two fuels or substrates for energy. Fat is the primary fuel as it is burned with oxygen. How efficient we are at utilizing oxygen is measured by a VO2 (volume of oxygen) metabolic test and reflects our level of fitness. Fat is our most sustainable energy source because we have thousands of fat calories that lie in our body that can be drawn upon for energy over extended periods of time. Conversely, the second source of fuel our body may use is finite and less sustainable. This second fuel is glycogen (carbohydrates) and is burned at higher intensity levels. Muscle glycogen is a limited source of energy because the storage tank in the muscles only holds about 2000 calories of carbohydrates and depletes within about an hour if riding at a higher intensity. When the body burns glycogen for energy, the outcome is the accumulation of lactic acid, which creates the burning sensation in your muscles. So the less glycogen you utilize, the more efficient you'll be. The longer you train the aerobic system and stay out of the anaerobic system, the more you can train your cellular system to use fats as a primary source of fuel, and not just during exercise, but at rest as well.
Although high intensity training is critical to developing speed and power, base training is at least equally if not more important. So why not utilize these winter months to not only boost your fat-burning abilities, but your whole fitness level as well!
During the winter months, it is helpful to find a training partner who has similar goals, fitness levels, and discipline to help train this winter. You will have plenty of time to train hard and go for the sprint in the spring, which will be the correct time to build power and speed. Keep the ego out of your training for the next few months, let riders zoom by you.
Your best bet is to train accurately by knowing the exact heart rate zones for you. Specializing in metabolic testing and lactate threshold testing, we know that simply subtracting your age from 220 beats-per-minute is a poor estimate of target heart rate. Factors such as gender, height, weight, age, and genetics create a huge range of variability. We see clients whose heart rates are much higher or lower than this estimate. To train properly, you need to be working in zones based off accurate heart rates. For this reason, we highly recommend VO2 testing, an athletic performance test on a treadmill or your own bike. VO2 measures oxygen utilization and carbon dioxide production. From this test, we will know exactly the heart rate, speed, or power wattage where your body is burning fat as fuel and where it crosses over into the anaerobic energy system and utilizes glycogen (carbs) as fuel. We measure the exact number of calories the body burns for fuel per minute at any given heart rate. This is helpful for weight management or fuel replacement pre/during and post rides or runs. We then design the correct training zones for your individual base training period. Following the three months of base training, be sure to be re-tested so you can see your results! You do the work and we will show you the outcome!
See our metabolic and lactate threshold testing page for additional information.
WOODSIDE, CA. • PHONE: 650-851-2705 • ©2006 PHYSICALLY
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