 five super high-intensity sessions in one week. This is the Hail Mary of training known as block periodization. Today I'm going to get into the science of block periodization to show you why it can be so effective and take you through my own training in the months of September and October of this year using this method that got me into the best shape on the bike that I've ever been in. Welcome back to another video. Block periodization is a training method in which you block very hard training sessions together over a short period of time. I've done videos on this before in the past, but in this video I want to show you how I implemented this strategy and show you the results that I got from it. First things first let's get into some of the science behind block periodization and this should give you a good idea of why I'm making such a big deal about this training method. If you're a regular viewer of my channel you've probably heard me talk about how just two high-intensity interval sessions a week is not only sufficient but optimal. More than this does not appear to be beneficial and may actually be detrimental as it may lead to overtraining. It's very tempting for cyclists to go too hard too often. Well what do you expect me to do with my email constantly blowing up about Rick stealing all my KOMs around town? I mean am I supposed to just let him take my spot as the fastest guy on that one quarter mile section of main street where you have to cross like three different traffic lights? That's a highly coveted title. Fatigue from overdoing it with intensity isn't something that's immediately noticeable. If you ride hard three or four times a week then you may feel fine at first but over time it'll catch up to you. When riders complain about constantly feeling tired or lacking motivation to train this is usually the underlying reason and it may have something to do with how our nervous systems respond to hard training. This study on autonomic recovery after exercise found that exercise below the first ventilatory threshold or zone two and below causes minimal disturbance in ANS balance. Further the first ventilatory threshold made demarcate a binary threshold for ANS slash HRV recovery in highly trained athletes because further delays in HRV recovery with even higher training intensities was not observed. What does this mean? Well basically if you keep your ride at zone two intensity or below in a five zone training model then you're not building up a lot of autonomic nervous system stress. However if you go over that threshold then you are building up stress and it doesn't really seem to matter whether you do a high quality vo2max interval session or just ride kind of hard with your friends because you didn't want them to drop you. If you do this day after day for most days for weeks on end you'll find yourself in a bad place. Now you may be thinking I thought you said you did five high intensity interval sessions in one week and now you're telling me do no more than two? What gives? Well block prioritization takes good training practices and chucks them out the window. Hmm all right you've got my attention continue but for just one week and it's imperative that you follow this week up with some solid recovery. Nope you lost me again. The reason I call this the Hail Mary of training is because it's easy to screw up and if you do you may find yourself over trained. However do it correctly and you may see the biggest bump in fitness that you've ever gotten from a single training week. Let me show you what I'm talking about. This study on block prioritization of high intensity intervals had the block prioritization group perform five high intensity sessions in the first week followed by three weeks of one high intensity session per week while a control group did two sessions per week each week. They found that the block prioritization groups mean power during the high intensity workouts increased with each session along with power at two millimolar lactate max power and maximal oxygen consumption. None of these changes occurred in the control group that stuck to a more traditional training pattern. Very promising results here but as always let's look at more than one study before we come to any sort of conclusion. This study looking at the effects of a 12 week block prioritization program had the block prioritization group perform five high intensity sessions every fourth week and one high intensity session per week during the other weeks while the traditional group did two sessions per week each week. The block prioritization group saw a greater increase in VO2 max power at two millimolar lactate hemoglobin mass and power during a 40 minute time trial. This study on cross-country skiers and block prioritization came to the same conclusion showing greater increases in maximal aerobic power maximal oxygen uptake and power at four millimolar lactate and these findings are backed up by a similar study on cross-country skiers that concluded that block prioritization led to better adaptations than traditional training. These studies all seem to show that having a very large training stimulus such as an intense training block was particularly effective. The 12 week study even explicitly states this. It's well known that the better trained the athlete is, the larger the stimuli needed to achieve further improvements and that the larger stimuli of higher intensity training during each hit block is likely to explain the favorable adaptations to block prioritization. This is a very important piece right here. If you're new to cycling or you've just started training seriously then it's probably best that you don't try block prioritization. However if you're well trained and you're starting to see a fitness plateau then the large stimulus that you get from doing block prioritization may give you the fitness bump that you need. I've personally seen both great results and terrible results from trying to use this method in my own training. Last year I got a little too ambitious about getting back to normal training after the block week. I didn't give myself enough time to recover. The result was chronically heavy legs, a complete lack of punch, and a reduction of my power in general. Towards the end of this shortened race season however I got the formula spot on and saw some new personal best power records as a result. My last race of this year was Belgian Waffle Ride Cedar City and I decided to implement block prioritization in the month before this event. The race was on October 17th so I decided to start my block week on September 14th to give me four weeks of recovery before race day. Let's break down exactly what that week looked like and then I'll get into what the weeks after that looked like in order to recover leading into the race. With a Monday rest day the training week started off on Tuesday with eight by five minute intervals with five minutes of recovery in between. The goal of this workout is to average the highest power possible across those eight intervals which for me was just over 400 watts. You'll know you did it right if you get to that eighth one and feel like vomiting. Intervals of this length and intensity are what are commonly referred to as VO2 max intervals however normally you wouldn't do this many of them in a session it's much more common to go with five by five minutes or four by five minutes so why did I step it up to eight? This study comparing different durations and intensities of intervals found that an eight by four minute interval session was among the most effective intervals tested. With this in mind though more is not always better this is the advice I usually give when somebody's trying to determine how many intervals they should do. You should go until you can no longer stay in the zone you're targeting. For example in this workout I was able to hold the first seven at my target of just above 400 but on the eighth one I finally cracked and that interval only ended up being three and a half minutes and then I knew I was done. The entire ride ended up being three hours and 15 minutes with warm-up and cool-down and some zone two after the intervals. Tuesday was four by 15 minute intervals done right at or slightly above FTP which for me was right at 360 watts and the total time for this ride was four hours. Believe it or not this second day may be the hardest one to get through because you're obviously going to be pretty cooked from the previous day. After this though something interesting happens you actually start to feel really good on the bike. Now don't get me wrong you will likely feel soreness but strangely enough it doesn't really seem to have a big impact on your power. This happens during stage racing too you've been pounding yourself day after day but the power doesn't really seem to drop off. I call this the stage racing effect and it's not really too much of a surprise why pro road racers will do week-long stage races in preparation for grand tours. Essentially what they're doing is block periodization. That being said I didn't do five days in a row during this week I did throw in a recovery ride on Thursday to gear up for a solid Friday Saturday and Sunday. Recovery ride during your Hail Mary training week I don't even do recovery rides on a normal training week unless of course I get dropped in which case I was just trying to take it easy today guys give me a break. Friday was 30 30s and as the name suggests this workout requires doing repeated 30 second sprints with 30 seconds of recovery in between. The short rest period is critical because this workout is not about targeting your max sprint it's about improving your repeatability and again it's been shown to be one of the most effective high intensity intervals. Going back to the previous study on intervals the only other type of interval that was on par with the eight by four minutes was 12 by 30 seconds. This style of on-off interval is known as Tabata training and has a fair bit of research to back up its effectiveness. For this workout on Friday I did two sets with 12 minutes in between. In the first set I did 11 sprints and in the second I did 10. There isn't any rhyme or reason to 11 and 10. I simply did the intervals at my power target which was 550 to 650 watts until I was ready to fall off the bike. Again expect to be lightheaded and nauseous towards the end of this one. Total ride time for this workout was two and a half hours. This brings us to Saturday which was not an interval session but a race. I like to throw this in at the end of these weeks because it gives you motivation to push harder than you normally would. Hard group rides are also great for this. This particular race was a local 45 mile gravel race and fortunately the competition here was very solid meaning that it would make for a great workout. I managed to get the win but more importantly I had some really solid training numbers from the day. The race lasted two and a half hours with a lot of attacks and hard digs leaving me with a normalized power of 321 watts and an intensity factor of 0.93. Very high quality day there. Finally we get to Sunday which was the last day of the training block and on this day I decided to do something a little more specific to what I was training for which was a 125 mile gravel race that I knew would take around six hours and likely have long sections where sustained high power was needed. This ride was five hours and 45 minutes in total and in that ride I did three 40 minute long intervals at 310 to 320 watts. My plan was to do as much time at this intensity as I could and three was it before I finished out the rest of the ride at zone two and did two 15 second max sprints at the end. I'll often put sprints at the end of a ride like this because in a race scenario you're never sprinting for the line fresh and this gets you used to that plus if you're not a dedicated sprinter but you still want a decent sprint putting the sprints at the end of the ride won't take away from the intervals that you have to do earlier in the ride. I include these lower intensity intervals in the lead up to ultra endurance races because getting in race specific intensity along with higher intensity seems to produce favorable results on race day. For example this study on specific intensity for peaking stated that the combination of both high intensity training and specific training may lead to a higher training response. That's the block week in total I did 20 hours of riding and had a tss or training stress score of 1200. Now came the recovery process the week after was a straight up recovery week Tuesday through Friday I just rode easy in zone one or two for no more than two hours and it's during this time that fatigue starts to set in as your body realizes what you just put it through by Saturday I was feeling pretty good though and had my first hard training session since the block week which was supposed to be four by 12 minutes at 360 watts but as you can see I was struggling a little bit and had to reduce the interval time down towards the end of the workout. It's not uncommon to feel this way towards the end of a recovery week especially if you're recovering from a very high training load. The next few workouts should feel a lot better though and they did the next two weeks after this leading into the race I did just under 22 hours and 19 and a half hours of riding with two solid high intensity workouts each week. This was more than I had anticipated doing but I really took that recovery week after the block week seriously and was feeling great during these two weeks. During this time I was seeing some of the highest power numbers I'd ever seen and while I wasn't able to get in an FTP test during this time because it didn't quite fit in with the training Zert which I used to track my progress estimated my FTP at 371 watts and I was able to do threshold intervals at that power. This is 10 watts higher than I've ever seen it and a week out from the race I put out a new PR on a local climb at 417 watts for just under eight minutes and this was after I had already done 30 30 intervals earlier on the ride. Yo I checked and you're still second on the Strava leaderboard on that climb kind of made this whole thing pointless if you ask me and obviously most importantly I showed up to the race with great legs which was the end goal of doing this. I've had block prioritization completely fail me before and the big takeaway from getting it right this time was to take the recovery afterwards very seriously. If you get too eager to get back to normal training it could be disastrous however if you take your rest seriously you may end up with some really good form. Thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video be sure to give it a like subscribe for weekly science-based cycling videos just like this one and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.