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Always training at or near your maximum intensity is a very poor way to progress, even if it's based on a desire to do well. In most endurance sports, high-level athletes tend to practice what's called polarized training. What if you applied this method?
By Guillaume Judas – Photos: depositphotos.com
According to an empirical principle which states that in any field 80% of the effects are the product of 20% of the causes, we see that this distribution of efforts is applied by most high-level athletes in training. That is to say, they spend 80% of their time training in endurance, and 20% working in intensity. So if you read between the lines, you can consider that 80% of their progress is the result of 20% of the time they spend training..
Based on this observation, many people believe they can do without the 80% of the time they consider useless or almost useless, to focus only on the 20% that is "profitable." Practical. But this leads to failure most of the time, on the one hand because the intensities are often poorly chosen, and on the other hand because this method is not based on a sufficiently solid condition base, a bit like building the roof of a house on paper foundations.
Fast or slow: which speed should you choose?
If we follow this principle to the letter, the pace of training should be either slow or fast, but rarely in between. Because in between, it's often useless fatigue with no benefit. Besides, even if you enjoy riding at an intermediate intensity, chasing the average or enjoying the fast pelotons at Longchamp or the Wednesday or Sunday morning groups in any region, you're leaving your comfort zone very little.
In other words, and according to the 80-20 principle applied to sport, training at an average pace would gradually wear you out while bringing very little effect in terms of progress.
Obviously, the reality is a little more complex than that, and you need to distinguish three main areas of work to understand their effects: low-intensity training, medium-intensity training, and high-intensity training.
Low intensity training
This is the easiest concept to understand. It is about train below the ventilatory threshold, or in other words below the aerobic threshold. This is a pace that promotes the consumption of reserve fats, optimizes the functioning of the cardiovascular system, improves muscle oxygenation capacities, drains waste and produces what is called active recovery.
This type of training also has an impact on the development of VO2 Max and muscle power. Finally, it's also the most favorable intensity for maintaining good overall health.
Medium intensity training
You are located here between the aerobic and anaerobic thresholds, an intensity comparable to that which you naturally adopt to climb one or more passes in the day. You are very busy, but in balance between the intensity of the effort and the accumulation of waste at the origin of major muscular pain.
It's kind of the competitive look, the ideal zone for achieving the best performances in an endurance sport, the one where you have to be good. It's above all a training pace that reassures.
It makes you think you're in shape because you can achieve the best averages there. You're somewhere in the comfort zone. The zone is interesting because it's the racing intensity for most cyclosportives, but to make it progress it is better to supervise it rather than stay inside it.
High intensity training
…or in other words, the red zone. It's never pleasant to approach, but it's the intensity that aims to develop maximum muscular and cardiovascular capacities. We are talking here about PMA work, sprints, anaerobic efforts, which hurt the legs and sometimes give the taste of blood in the mouth.But it is these short, violent efforts that bring real benefits in terms of power gains and the ability to make a difference in the key moments of an event.
There are many examples of exercises and programs to improve in this area, but it is important to keep in mind that These workouts should never represent more than 20% of the time spent training each week. Beyond that, you recover poorly, you accumulate a lot of fatigue, and you limit your aerobic capacities by the principle of communicating vessels. Don't be surprised then if you don't progress, or even if you actually regress, because you are overtraining.
Slow down to progress…
To summarize, fast or slow, you have to chooseToo many of you are training in the intermediate intensity zone. It's fun, it's the pace of the groups, it's the demands that make you feel like you're making the necessary effort, but ultimately you're doing everything necessary to have what's called the "blocked meter." These sessions generate significant fatigue, but the intensity isn't high enough to allow the body to progress.
And as for the really intense sessions, essential for raising your level, you have to do just enough to avoid overtraining.
At the same time, a low-intensity training base allows you to acquire and maintain what we call the basics, work technically and regenerate the body to be perfectly prepared to work intensely when necessary.
The so-called polarized training, with the ratio of 80% endurance to 20% high intensity, makes perfect sense if we remember thatIn cycling, what is really difficult is not to ride for a long time, but to know how to ride fast at a given moment..
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