On Coaching with Magness & Marcus
Avsnitt: 12 - Advice for a young coach (Part 1) and (Part 2)
Längd: 30:16 (Part 1) 37:47 (Part 2)
Släpptes: 2015-05 2015-06
Spotify-länk(ar):
1: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7x2vSuuvssmf22H9iGWq1G?si=144ff995a76a4d55
2: https://open.spotify.com/episode/31lzKeZGvg5X2kiutFPFym?si=5314e1f6ac79408d
Löparcoacherna Steve Magness och John Marcus är Collage-coacher i USA och bland de mest framgångsrika coacherna inom löpning. Deras podd "On Coaching" är en väldigt bra informationskälla för mig. Det jag personligen tar med mig från dessa två avsnitt är detta:
- Skriv offentligt på en blogg/instagram/twitter om träning och dina tankar, idéer och erfarenheter. Det var pg.a. Steves blogg och skriverier som han erbjöds jobb utan att behöva söka, inte att han var en fantastisk coach från start. Detta skapade sedan ett stort nätverk med kontakter där han tog sig vidare inom löparcoach-världen.
- Gör ditt för det lokala samhället, var passionerad och behandla människor med respekt och värdighet.
- Var glad för andra människors framgång. Vi överestimerar hur mycket andra människor bryr sig om vårt liv.
- Coaching är coaching och det handlar bara om utveckling oavsett om det är en amatör eller ett proffs. Men man kan inte applicera samma idé på dem.
- "En glad atlet är en snabb atlet"
- Jag är en tränare, inte en medicinsk rådgivare, fysioterapeut eller mental coach. Har du ont i ryggen? vänd dig till en fysioterapeut.
Nummer 8The Sonya Looney ShowAvsnitt: How to Make Habits that Stick with James
Clear
Längd: 62:28
Släpptes: 2020-10
Spotify-länk: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4w34KYZNPIJHROHh1HHAOV?si=2a7c02e0d5f44283
Wow, vilket avsnitt. Fullsmockat av visdom av James Clear, tillsammans med Sonya Looney.
Det känns som att jag ville anteckna varje sak de tog upp, men jag kunde avgränsa mig en aning.
Det blev trots det väldigt mycket matnyttiga citat och lärdomar från avsnittet från avsnittet.
Vi börjar med det som James bok är baserad på:
How to make a good habit: How to quit a bad habit:
Make it obvious - que Make it invisible
Make it attractive - crave Make it unattractive
Make it easy - response Make it difficult
Make it satisfying - reward Make it unsatisfying
Sedan fortsätter vi med spännande citat och annat matnyttigt från hela avsnittet:
“Whenever I feel like giving up, I think of the stone cutter that has a hammer and bangs
on the rock for 100 times without it splitting, but then on the 101 blow, it cracks open.
And I know that it wasn’t the 101st blow that cracked it open, but the 100 that came before.”
“Fix the inputs and the outputs will pretty much fix themselves.”
“Praise the effort rather than the outcome.”
“The people who get the rewards, are the people that enjoyed the process.”
“What is the suffering that you can handle more than most people can handle?
What seems like suffering for most people doesn’t actually feel that to you.”
“The heaviest weight in the gym is the front door.”
“It’s almost always better to do less than you had hoped, than do nothing at all.”
Measurement is really helpful. The problem is when measure becomes the target,
when you start to forget that all of these measurements are actually a proxy for what
you are really trying to achieve, they are little guidelines to try to keep you moving in
the right direction in the correct way. Rather than it becoming all about that,
it's like students forgetting that it's actually about learning and not just getting a good test score.
“As time goes on, I see it more and more in top performers, that people at the top of their game,
or at the top of their industry, they make mistakes like everybody else, nobody is perfect,
but they are very good at rectifying their mistakes and getting back on track quickly.”
”After I got done, I was like,'' Actually, I'm not really that hungry right now. And what I realized,
I didn’t actually want pizza, I just wanted a change of state, and I think of a lot of the times we
only wanna feel differently.”
“People think they lack willpower or motivation. What they really lack is clarity. They wake up and think
“I hope I feel motivated today”. Because I have that clarity about what I’m doing and where I’m doing it,
it's much easier to find motivation because you have already been determined.”
“We always hear things like “you shouldn’t care what other people think, don’t do things because everybody thinks you should. At a certain level you should do things that are right for you and not because everybody expects it from you.”
“Motion feels good but action actually delivers results. You need to learn more, but the way to learn
more is to take action.”
Som ni märker var det timmeslånga avsnittet fullsmockat med motiverande citat och det är svårt att inte
vilja bli en bättre version av sig själv när James Clear har pratat eller skrivit något.
Nummer 7The Physical Performance Show
Avsnitt: 302: Expert Edition: Olav Aleksander Bu. Triathlon Norway
Längd: 90:06 min
Släpptes: 2021-12
Spotify-länk: https://open.spotify.com/episode/39Iv6MPreDH8UplWp8wVkH?si=bf0312f36f854222
Fullsmockat avsnitt med triathleterna Kristian Blummenfelts, Gustav Iden och Casper Stornes tränare
Olav Aleksander Bu med mängder av insikter av hur världens bästa triathleter tränar.
Olav är otroligt kunnig och vet vad han pratar om. Det var svårt att begränsa sig kring vad jag ville
ta med från avsnittet. Har lyssnat på avsnittet ett par gånger och tar med mig mer och mer saker
för varje gång. Här har jag samlat lite av den lärdom jag har tagit med mig från avsnittet:
“Some athletes have a natural talent of fueling their intensity, or knowing when. Most of them will probably
just push too hard because they can, because they are strong enough mentally, physically, and that
means also that they get too much glycogen thirsty at too low intensities. You want to burn fat at as high intensity as possible, to save the glycogen stores to when it really matters in the end of a triathlon.”
“Key objective of the training block: Maintain a high VO2, and to develop fatigue resistance and to
keep the VO2 high and not just focus on efficiency. (Kristian has a really high energy expenditure,
so you are able to turn around a lot of calories into work and that makes it possible to actually…
if you don't have much sessions you have to prioritize ironman sessions, but the more work you
could do the more you can start to vary it a little bit. And I say, what you are trying to do is to try
to raise the ceiling and then the volume session or ironman specific we are trying to say "lift up"
the pace even faster than what we've seen before.”
“Speed is a function of power and efficiency, how much power you can produce at what efficiency.
At poor efficiency, a lot of that power is wasting into directions that are not bringing you towards
your finish line.”
“When they try to measure efficiency they normally go into a lab but the disadvantage with that is
that you normally go into the lab fresh and use a standard protocol. You don’t test it when you are
fatigued or when a certain amount of kilojoules are spent at a certain power output or a race specific
power output.“
“The ultimate ceiling of speed is power, you cannot go faster than 100 % of the power you are
producing, that can never be higher than the energy you are expending. A big portion of the energy
you are expending goes to heat and there is a portion of it that goes to mechanical work.“
“Ultra runners and Tour de France cyclists had a maximum energy expenditure of 2,5 times their
resting metabolic rate. Kristian and all of our athletes are higher. The more calories you can burn,
the more you can train without losing weight.”
“When we want to go faster we need to raise this up. This is a combination of your glycolysis
and your VO2max. Raise the VO2max higher up, and at the same time get the fractional utilization
of oxygen even higher so basically your race pace goes higher closer to VO2max.”
“The most important ceiling in physiology is VO2max.”
“We didn’t use the core sensor to measure the core body temperature. How the core sensor does
it is really cool. The core sensor measures thermal power (heat flux). The power meter on the bike
measures mechanical power. The way that it actually measures the core temperature is that it takes
the skin temperature and it measures the thermal power, and if you know the insulation value of
something, like the heat that comes from the core. How much heat it actually radiates from the body.”
“What sets Kristan apart from other athletes? It’s difficult to pick one, but one thing is that he is an
athlete that is really nice to work with, because he is so specific in the feedback, so he makes it
very simple to work as a strong team. It’s not like when I’m coaching him or writing a program, a lot
of times I sit down and discuss the content, the program with him. His ability to understand his body
like a formula 1 driver coming to the mechanic with a specific problem and I can fix it because he is
so specific.”
Ett OTROLIGT bra avsnitt tycker jag, norrmännen är sjukt kunniga och intressanta när det kommer till konditionsidrotter.
Nummer 6The Drive w. Peter Attila
Avsnitt: Iñigo San Millán, PH.D.: Zone 2 Training
and Metabolic Health (Ep. #85 Rebroadcast)
Längd: 170:55 min
Släpptes: 2021-12
Spotify-länk: https://open.spotify.com/episode/67BtugqvsEJBR3gyjZRZlz?si=dc9701a98ce842e7
Väldigt långt och informativt avsnitt där med Tadej Pogacars tränare Iñigo San Millán där de pratar om
allt som har med zon 2 (lågintensiv) träning att göra. De är väldigt nördiga och går ned på djupet i allt.
Det är mycket man inte förstår även om man lyssnar mer än en gång, men det är fascinerande att lyssna
på någon som är så otroligt kunnig och duktig inom flera områden med samma utgångspunkt som
Iñigo San Millán har. Både träning för absoluta världstoppen och cancerforskning. En fantastiskt intressant
människa. Något de går igenom är detta:
Energisystemen och energi att använda under träning
Laktat som ett viktigt energisubstrat
Mitokondriell funktion
Atleter vs metabolt sjuka människor
Relationen mellan träning och insulinkänsligheten
Dosering av zon 2 träning och att balansera träning med nutrition
Doping inom cykling
Höghöjdsträning
Vill/orkar/hinner man inte lyssna på hela avsnittet så har de ett tidsschema i avsnittet där man kan
hoppa fram och tillbaka.
Nummer 5
Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast -
Presented by TrainerRoadAvsnitt:Habits and Traits of Successful
Athletes with USAC’s Jim Miller -
Ask a Cycling Coach 344
Längd: 48:44
Släpptes: 2021-12
Spotify-länk: https://open.spotify.com/episode/45nVIoFPaSHMOv6Y2LqQfQ?si=ba702e8e7ef14571
Jim Miller är coach till b.la Kristin Armstrong, Kate Courtney, Christoffer Blevins etc och arbetar med
USA Cycling. Jim är en otroligt erfaren och duktig coach och vet vad han pratar om när detta ämne
diskuteras, då han har 5 OS-medaljer, 10 VM-medaljer och upp mot 60 nationella mästerskapsmedaljer
som tränare. Jim diskuterar med podcast-hosten Jonathan Lee, som även han är en duktig cyklist.
Nedan är mina noteringar från avsnittet:
“To be the best, you need to have the full package: Genetics, right mindset/mentality and work ethics.”
- Jim Miller
- "Coaching is motivation, if you can't motivate an athlete you actually can't coach.
I think that motivation actually comes från a relationship. If you don't have a good relationship
between each other then you can't motivate them properly."
- “Goal-setting is really important, because that is your road map to where you wanna get and accomplish.”
- “Things happen with anybody that coaches anybody at any level, you have to have a few things
that you have to accomplish. And there are things that you have to give up to accomplish those.
If you give up something to accomplish something else that you felt was important, you can’t come
back to the things that you gave up and say “yeah, but I wasn’t any good here”.
Well yeah, of course not, that wasn’t what we were trying to do”.
- Q (Jonathan): Are there certain habits or traits of the successful athletes that you coach, because they are also
not immune to life getting in the way, contrary to popular belief. What do they do, when life gets in
the way of their training?
A (Jim): Life is life, and it happens to everybody. For me, I take a bigger picture of it. No single day of training
is going to make or break you. A week from now, that missed training hasn’t made you any better
or worse.
- High performers have an excellent ability to move on quickly from things, whether it is moving on
from winning, losing, a day going wrong, life etc… They always quickly move past and move on to
the next thing.
- Consistency is the biggest driver of improvement.
- Take the flu for example: If you get the flu, you miss a week of training laying in bed, the second
week you can just barely ride, the third week you start to feel okay, it’s not actually until the fourth
week that you actually can train. If you consistently get the flu year after year, and compare it to
someone that doesn't get the flu, after 3 years they have a 12 week training jump on you. You never
come back from that.
- “Poor fitness isn’t an excuse for poor effort”
- Q (Jonathan): How do you deal with the pressure to perform from previous results?
A (Jim): You lose way many more times than you win. When you win it’s more like “oh thank god”. Like I said previously, elite athletes move on from stuff way quicker than others. Elite athletes, no matter how good they have performed before, have to prove for themselves every day that they are not terrible. When you win, you forget how bad it hurts. If you would remember how much it hurt, you probably wouldn’t do it again. If you came 2nd or 3rd, you wouldn’t have the same reflection, although it was the same effort. Then it hurt.
Nummer 4Science of Getting Faster Podcast -
Presented by TrainerRoad
Avsnitt: Heat Training and Endurance Performance
with Dr. Chris Minson - Science of getting Faster Podcast Episode 1
Längd: 76:04
Släpptes: 2021-02
Spotifylänk: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3VVFvmDZgbJDL7jG0mM9Xk?si=2b2f6ea4ed494cde
Väldigt fascinerande avsnitt där Dr. Chris Minson dyker djupare in i hans välkända studie “Heat Acclimation Improves Exercise Performance”. Chris tar upp mycket bakgrund och anekdoter från studien och dess upplägg. Podcast-värdena Chad Timmerman och Nate Pearson är fantastiska på att ställa de frågor som man inte visste att man ville ha svar på. Studien de pratar om är denna: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20724560/
De tar upp ämnen som:
Varför påverkar värme prestation?
Vilken är den optimala temperaturen för aerob träning? Spoiler: ca 13C
Varför mycket svettande inte betyder att din kropp kyler ned sig själv bra.
Tajming mellan värmeträning och högintensiv träning
Resultat från studien - Does heat acclimation make you faster?
Värmeträningens effekt på VO2max
Hur blodplasma-volymen påverkar prestation (och laktat)
Hur länge sitter effekten från värmeträning i?
Varför hög luftfuktighet påverkar svettkörtlarna negativt.
De mentala fördelarna med värmeträning - Man kommer till en tävling som är otroligt varm och
alla “freaks out” över värmen, men har man adapterat sig och utsatt sig för värme och är van
att träna och/eller vistas i värme kommer man dit med ett mentalt övertag.
"Only about 25 % of the energy we create is turned into actual work, 75 % really is about converting all that energy usage, and the by-product is heat."
Studien:
Det var en 60 min TT i svalt och varmt klimat. Deltagarna var erfarna och fick endast se distans under
tiden.
De mätte kärntemperaturen via rectal temperatur 10 cm upp i rumpan under testtillfällena.
Resultat: Värmeadaptionen blev bättre, deltagarna fick ett ökat VO2max, förhöjd laktattröskel, förbättrade
tiden i standardiserat tempolopp med 2-7 % i svalt klimat för varje deltagare.
Andra matnyttiga citat:
- Sauna sessions should be around a 7/10 at a discomfort scale
- More (heat) is better as long as it doesn’t fatigue you
- If you are getting cooked up - it doesn’t benefit you at all
"I love hot races because it breaks mentally weak people” - Keegan Swenson
Nummer 3
On Coaching with Magness & MarcusAvsnitt: Episode 186: The New Laws of Lactate
Dynamics and Its Implications for Training.
Längd: 58:03
Släpptes: 2022-10
Spotify-länk: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6H5U0hbXahQkR9TfQX7YTj?si=7901b1b39b0f44b4
Löpcoacherna Steve Magness och John Marcus släpper varje vecka väldigt intressanta poddavsnitt
om träning, träningsfilosofi, fysiologi, erfarenheter, forskning etc. Men detta avsnitt sticker ut av de
jag lyssnat på senaste tiden. Efter tredje gången jag lyssnade lär jag mig fortfarande nya saker,
hur man kan formulera sig, hur man kan överföra deras syn på professionell löpning till cykling.
Hur laktat fungerar är likadant oavsett om du är på en 400-m löparbana eller på en MTB-bana eller
landsväg. Ett otroligt matnyttigt avsnitt om laktat där första halvan av podden är den största
rekommendationen. Nedan kommer lite sammanfattningar och matnyttigt från avsnittet:
Remember all those ideas of lactate being a by product, a waste product, and causing fatigue, whatever have you, is all wrong. But what does it actually mean? And how does it affect training?
There are 5 common myths about Lactic Acid that still persists among Coaches and Athletes:
1. “The burn” felt in the leg muscles during fast running is caused by a buildup of lactic acid
2. Lactic Acid provides soreness experienced the day after an especially tough workout
3. Lactic Acid is a metabolic waste product formed in muscles during vigorous exercise
4. Lactic Acid shows up in the muscles when athletes run to a point of oxygen debt
5. Lactic Acid is fatigue during intense running
Science tells us that all 5 of these assertions about Lactic Acid are untrue.
What does lactate do? 3 essential metabolic functions:
1. It's an (preferred) energy source over glucose in skeletal muscles and the brain
2. It’s a glucogeonetic precursor which means that gluconeogenesis is a metabolic pathway that results in creation or interaction of glucose from non-carbohydrate substances. Creating glucose fuel that doesn’t come straight from the carb.
3. It’s a signaling molecule, so it has a function to essentially send a message down the stream that says like “ hey, something is going on, we need to adapt in a specific way”.
Pyruvate is not an end product.
"If we produce lactate in our fast twitch fibers for example, we can then shuttle that in the bloodstream and then send it maybe slow twitch fiber and utilize that as fuel, or vice versa."
What does this mean from a training standpoint?
"The better we’re able to develop this delivery system. It is a lactate shuttle for a reason, it’s a
delivery system, but when you are delivering something, you have to essentially take it out, put it
in the bloodstream and then to another muscle or send it to the brain. If we can make it more
efficient it is better."
Lactate can stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis (creation/development of mitochondria).
Mitochondrial biogenesis and efficacy: Making sure there is a big population of them (mitochondria) and making sure they work well. That's why this stimulation is so important because now that we know that lactate is fuel, and we can get more energy of creating more lactate in a certain cell and that it can be shuttled across different membranes, other muscles that are working, so that you can also off-load it, that's why it is so so valuable and important to have this understanding cause if we can self-create this fuel without the need to draw on stored fuel that it not glycogen. Why don’t we just do more of that? It's like a self-sustained mechanism. But in order to get there, we have to understand high intensity training and high volume training both play a role, and this fluctuating training.
Go above and below instead of doing strict threshold work (Over/under).
Lactate in the blood number doesn’t reflect that balance equation of: Not really telling us how much
we are producing, but it’s telling us the balance between production and taking it up. And that can be
useful but I think we over generalize then I say “okay we can’t go over 2 mmol/L in this workout or this
race like it is a magic breaking point. Well there isn’t.
Train the body in a little bit of different ways, sometimes we work on that delivery mechanisms, sometimes we work on building a bigger bucket to carry, sometimes we are working on making sure it gets delivered to the right muscle etc. the only way to do that is to vary up the training stimulus with the workouts we do.
- Nummer 2
The Real Science of Sports Podcast
Avsnitt: Watt The FTP?
Längd: 85:09
Släpptes: 2020-07
Spotifylänk: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4X5yTE7e29CoiMS1B8KBYF?si=c62d1dd508004108
Ett helt otroligt bra avsnitt, som alltid när Professor Ross Tucker och sportjournalisten Mike Finch. På deras sydafrikanska dialekt pratar de igenom vad watt är, FTP (Functional Threshold Power). Ett måste-avsnitt för dig som är lite nördig, eller om du på ett enkelt sätt vill veta vad den mytomspunna “tröskeln” är, och problematiken med den. OBS! Kan behövas lyssnas på mer än en eller två gånger.
De går igenom b.la:
- What do you measure? Vad är det man mäter?
- How do you measure it? Hur mäter man det?
- What does it mean? Hur tolkar man resultaten?
- Varför att FTP ofta missförstått som ett verktyg för träning?
- De besvarar vad skillnaden mellan aerobt och anaerobt är på ett djupt, men lättförstående sätt.
- De redogör skillnader mellan de olika energisystemen.
- “Tröskeln” är en punkt där saker förändras. När vi tränar sker en metabol brytpunkt vid detta tillfälle.
- Laktat är ingen restprodukt, det är en essentiell slutprodukt av den glykolytiska vägen som tillåter oss att producera ATP (Adenosintrifosfat) som vi genom annat sätt inte skulle kunna göra, och det hade blivit problematiskt. Problemet med det är inte laktat per se, utan när laktathalten ökar, blir det en röd flagg för andra fysiologiska förändringar som antingen ökar eller minskar, som kommer att förutse utmattning. T.ex. ansamling av vätejoner som även de produceras när ATP bryts ned.
- Tömning av kalcium. Kroppstemperaturen ökar. Energisubstrat används och töms snabbare och snabbare.
- Vad betyder ordet “functional” i Functional Threshold Power, egentligen?
Spelar det någon roll om man multiplicerar sitt 20-min FTP-test med 0,95 eller 0,93?
“What you are gonna end up doing is that you are gonna use that outcome. That power output, whether it’s a 20 minute or a 60 minute. You are using that as an anchor point to then adjust training in the future. So, as long as you understand what you have measured, and how it impacts the training and the decisions that you’ve made, it probably doesn’t really matter if it’s off by 5 watts or 10 watts.“
Vad är Critical Power?
Det leder till ett av de mest fascinerande koncepten, Anaerobic Work Capacity, eller W’prime. Power duration curve. Storleken på batteriet (W’prime). 10 joules per second.
"If you know W’prime, if you know CP, you could predict fairly accurately when a person is gonna fatigue. How much work can you do, beyond, or above, CP. For every second that we are over that CP we are using that battery, the second we are below that CP we are recharging that battery."
CP/AWC predicts performance, because it predicts fatigue.
- “Most people makes that mistake, they train at their so called sweet spot or threshold or FTP och CP because they think that’s gonna make them the best, but actually what you wanna do is polarize your training so that you do a lot more at low intensities, because you get the same benefits that is gonna effect CP. The mitochondria, the capillaries, the enzymes, the fat oxidation ability, you are still stressing those systems at lower power outputs than FTP, and then you spend 10 % of your time above FTP because that where you are learning lactate tolerance and really dealing with the glycolytic side effects of exercising. You don't have to train the middle to shift the middle."
- "Lactate isn’t a waste product, it’s an essential end product of a glycolytic pathway that allows us to produce ATP which we would not otherwise be able to, and that would be catastrophic. The problem with it is, not lactate per se, but when lactate levels are going up, it’s almost a flag or a marker for other things in our physiology changing in such a way, either up or down, that it’s going to predict the onset of fatigue. So for instance, hydrogen ion accumulation. They are produced, also as a consequence of breaking down ATP. Calcium depletion. Body temperature going up. Energy substrates are being used up at a faster and faster rate."
People would be surprised how boring it is, the training of an elite athlete. It’s not gimmicky, it’s not fancy, it’s just “do time”. It’s what it boils down to.
Polarized VS Pyramidal
Depending on how you measure the training zone you can have exactly the same training described by any of those two models. Because, if you describe your training sessions by pace. Ex. pace (1h @ 5 min/km). Or HR (130 - 140 bpm). Or sRPE (1h @ 6/10). Depending on which of these three training mechanisms you use, your training distribution can look quite different. If you define your sessions per RPE, about a third of your sessions is zone 1. If you do it by heart rate most of it, about 70 % is zone 1, 20 % in zone 2 and 10 % in zone 3 (pyramidal distribution). If you do it by pace, you get about 70 & in zone 1, 2-3 % in zone 2, and a lot more in zone 3 (polarized). RPE is blunt. HR is lagging. Pace is zone 3.
When we talk about monitoring load, we talk about internal monitoring, as in what is happening in the body. Heart rate, breathing rate, measure lactate, ventilation, gas exchange etc. External load is power output or pace. It’s what I’m doing, measured from the outside. And then there is perception. How do I feel while doing this external load with the internal changes?
You want three points, a triangular, to triangulate what that whole thing actually means. Two things don't tell you.
Andra halvan av podcasten pratar de om olika idrottare och hur de tränar, b.la. marathonlöparen Eliud Kipchoge, “the norwegian model” av Marius Bakken, samt såklart även vår Nils van Der Poel.
Av 10 av världens bästa maratonlöpare som tränar i snitt 190km/vecka är:
168 km zon 1
17 km i zon 2
5 km i zon 3
Nils van Der Poel would never be able to do that threshold block without the aerobic block preceding it. That aerobic block is creating him so much resilience for that stress that he can handle it. That's the point, you have to earn the right to do it. That's the other key or principle to take with you.
It is about this constant “unless you are killing yourself you are not gonna get better”. What we know is that the top athletes of this world do not do that. They get better by consistency, by training easy when they should train easy, which is most of the time, and by training hard when it matters. They recognise, that their performance is a function of their aerobic capabilities and a function of sustaining a high speed, a high percentage of max for a long time, VO2max absolutely matters, but can I go at 85 % of that VO2max to be competitive to people that I wanna be competitive with?
You first build that aerobic base, the engine. You put the foundation. Then the threshold training starts to come in, cause thats when you are at or near that CP (or FTP). You earn the right to train there, and then you use it. And then you do a very small proportion of your training above that.
