What heart rate for winter training?

During the winter period, it is usually advisable to train at low intensity and by monitoring your heart rate in order to build solid foundations for the next season. A classic but effective method, however challenged by new technologies and knowledge brought by other sports disciplines than cycling or triathlon.

By Guillaume Judas – Photos: Santini, La Passione, Assos/DR

Traditionally, winter training is divided into three phases : a first devoted to regeneration after a long series of events or repeated intensities, a second devoted to long basic work at low intensity, and finally a third with the progressive introduction of efforts close to those encountered in competition to prepare for the start of the following season.

This voluntary reduction in the level of fitness and performance away from the objectives has several advantages. : recover deeply from the efforts of the previous year and follow the principle of overcompensation in order to allow the body to progress in the long term, and work on the foundations necessary for a solid physical condition for the following season. It is also a period which allows time to be devoted to technical work on certain weak points, such as speed or economy of pedaling for example.

Without substantial and progressive basic training carried out in advance, it is impossible to exceed certain physiological thresholds later. So you are limited in your progress. You do not recover enough between two qualitative training sessions or between two races, or even worse, between two successive efforts. The two main adaptations that you can expect from a basic training carried out in good conditions are a slower heart for a given intensity, and very good cardiac braking with pulsations that go down very quickly after an effort, which allows you to catch your breath more quickly. The level of endurance also plays a major role in the process of assimilating training loads.

A simple way to be sure you are doing a basic endurance effort is to monitor your heart rate monitor. When cycling, the right intensity for basic endurance is between 65 and 75% of the maximum heart rate, or between 115 and 135 beats per minute for an athlete whose max heart rate is 180, for example.

A relatively low intensity, especially since after a period of rest or voluntary detraining, the cardio tends to quickly disappear at the slightest difficulty. The goal of this type of training is also to accumulate volume, and therefore to manage the effort to gradually access all the desired physiological adaptations. Some activities other than cycling, which are interesting to practice in winter, such as running, swimming, cross-country skiing, or team sports, deserve special monitoring because they use several muscle groups and can be quite costly in terms of energy expenditure. If you are not an experienced runner, walking can be an interesting alternative to ensure that you stay in the right heart rate zone.

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Winter core training can be quite tedious.

A solid foundation

Many athletes wrongly believe that too low an intensity is a waste of time. This type of profile is mostly found among those who start endurance sports late in life and want to make up for lost time. They think that " if it doesn't hurt", they do not progress. We see them chaining together jogging at 14 km/h, races on Zwift at an average of 160 heart rates over an hour, or outings at an average of 34 as soon as they resume. However, this type of "intermediate" intensity brings nothing except fatigue. A lack of freshness which is then detrimental to recovery and to physical and psychological availability for achieving intensities which are really interesting for progression and performance.

This fundamental endurance should therefore not be neglected., whatever your level, and for all the reasons mentioned above. This is the foundation of your season, and even of your sports career if we consider the interest of alternating phases of poor form and great form to progress in the long term.

However, there are many requests today for those who do not like to engage in this type of monotonous and tedious preparation. They are all the more easily understood since the success of a season also depends on the level of motivation accumulated in the previous months. The winter period is therefore also ideal for varying sports practices.

Winter is also a time when motivation is built for the following season.

Reverse planning

Beyond the use of a tool like Zwift which offers more or less difficult virtual courses and which sometimes represent a real challenge, or even competitions accessible all year round, this principle of fundamental endurance is however called into question by other sports disciplines like running or swimming, or even by the practice of cyclo-cross which nevertheless allows runners like Mathieu van der Poel or Wout van Aert to perform all year round on the route. We then speak of training with so-called reverse planning, which consists of placing very intense exercises very early in the preparation, and programming the maximum volume rather at the end of the period.

This type of training has two advantages:tages: first it allows to start with short sessions that can be easily carried out indoors, which avoids certain weather-related constraints, and then it allows tochaining the intensities away from the competitions, therefore without accumulating too much fatigue. In addition, this type of programming allows for a better progressiveness of the increase in workloads, at least when endurance work must be carried out on the basis of long distances, such as 200 km events for example.

For runners preparing for multiple competitions of more than 200 km, reverse planning is interesting.

Reverse planning is therefore aimed more particularly at experienced athletes, who have several years of training behind them., and who very quickly return to an excellent basic level even after a break. In any case, they go through a short recovery period which allows them to get back in touch with the effort, with basic endurance, and before starting the intensities. This type of training with intensities programmed very early is not suitable for purely amateur athletes who need longer periods of adaptation to assimilate the workloads.

A little variety

What this method teaches us is thatIt is probably an exaggeration to spend several months training at very low intensity., and that interspersing basic training with a few short, very intense efforts that raise the cardio close to its maximum frequency is useful for maintaining strength and power.

The winter period is therefore ideal for working on your athletic abilities, such as maximum strength, physical coordination, speed or flexibility, in addition to fundamental endurance. Short, intense and spaced efforts which, if carried out in a good state of freshness, will ideally complete the basic foundation of your season.

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