 Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome to another video. My name is Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at CTS. And today we're going to be talking about block periodization. Block periodization is a way of organizing your training so that you preload the intensity for your training month at the beginning of the month. So for example, in the first week, you might have five high intensity sessions and then the remaining three weeks, you might just do one session per week. This somewhat an orthodox training method actually looks really promising according to the scientific literature. I'll be going into the science and also my own experience using block periodization and the improvements that I saw from it. So be sure to stick around for that. If you're new to this channel, I make weekly training, racing and gear related videos going over tips and tricks that I've learned in my 12 years of racing experience that have got me to the top of the ultra endurance mountain bike game in the U.S. and as a cycling coach at CTS. If you want to learn how to get faster or just more about the science of training in general, be sure to subscribe. And if you have a training question or a topic you'd like to see me cover in a future video, be sure to leave it in the comments section down below. I do my best to get to all the questions in the comments. All right, let's jump into today's topic, which is block periodization. Now there are multiple ways to perform block periodization, but most of the studies done on block periodization for cycling have subjects perform a high intensity block during the first week of the training month. For example, in this study on block periodization of high intensity intervals, they had the block periodization group perform five high intensity sessions in the first week, followed by three weeks of one high intensity session per week, while the control group did two sessions per week each week. Five interval sessions in a week, huh? Sounds pretty much like what I've been doing on Zwift all winter. The key here is that after the overload week, the following three weeks have a reduced workload to compensate. Not taking this critical detail into consideration could have you easily on the path to overtraining. This is one way to organize block periodization, but it's not the only way. For example, in a five week study on block periodization on elite cross-country skiers, they had the block periodization group perform five high intensity workouts in the first week and three high intensity workouts in the third week, with just one session per week in the second, fourth, and fifth week. The control group for that study stuck mostly to two sessions per week. I'll get into some different ways that you can incorporate block periodization in your training later on in the video, but let's get to the most critical question here, which is, will block periodization actually make you faster? Let's go back to that first study I mentioned. They found that in the block periodization group, 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. Block periodization is starting to look pretty promising, but that study only observed effects after a month of training. What are the effects if you employ block periodization for a longer period of time? A study looking at the effects of 12 weeks of block periodization on performance in well-trained cyclists took 18 competitive cyclists and divided them into a block periodization group or a traditional training group. The block periodization group performed 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 periodization group saw a greater increase in VO2 max, power at two millimolar lactate, hemoglobin mass, and power during a 40-minute time trial. And going back to the study on cross-country skiers and block periodization that I mentioned earlier, they came to the same conclusion with block periodization showing greater increases in maximal oxygen consumption, 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 periodization led to better adaptations than traditional training. All right, time to smash myself every day for a week. My Strava followers are gonna be freaking out. The science on block periodization is very promising, but before you hop on the bike and bust out five days of VO2 max intervals back to back, let me make this disclaimer. Blocked periodization is an advanced training technique and should only be attempted by well-trained cyclists. There's a substantial risk of overtraining when you're doing block periodization if you do it incorrectly or when you're not ready for it. If we go back to the 12-week study, they found that cyclists reported heavy legs during the high-intensity blocks while the control group did not experience this. And this is exactly what I found with block periodization too. As you can imagine, after doing a week of five days of high-intensity intervals, your legs are heavy to say the least. For cyclists who aren't well-trained, this could easily put them in a hole that they can't get out of. However, if you are a well-trained individual, a high stimulus like this might be necessary. The study goes on to say that it is well known that the better trained the athlete is, the larger stimuli are needed to achieve further improvements and that the larger stimuli of high-intensity training during each of the high-intensity blocks is likely to explain the favorable adaptations to block periodization. There's the science on block periodization, but I'll also take a minute to talk about my own experience with block periodization. I decided this year to employ block periodization in the second week of March. This was because it was a month out from the PISCA stage race, which was a goal race for me, and it gave me plenty of time to recover from the overload week. At this point too, I had also been training all winter, so I was well conditioned to handle the training load. I didn't just jump into block periodization the first week after the off season. I also did this immediately following a rest week so that I'd be well rested for it. Going into a high-intensity block with a substantial amount of fatigue already could be a recipe for overtraining. Alright, so here's what my week looked like. On Monday, I did two 12-minute and two 8-minute threshold intervals. On Tuesday, I did a hard road group ride with attacks and sprints and a whole lot of pulling. I tried to minimize the time I was sitting in as much as I could. On Wednesday, I did three all-out 8-minute efforts. Thursday was a recovery ride. Friday was four 7-minute all-out efforts, and Saturday was the Croatan Buck 50, which is a 150-mile gravel race. I have a whole video analyzing my power file from that race that I'll leave in the description if you want to check it out, but basically during that race, I tried to conserve energy as much as possible until critical sections in the race, in particular the last 20 minutes which was basically a time trial at threshold. This week ended up being a little bit under 21 hours and 1100 TSS. The volume for this week is pretty typical for me, mainly because the Croatan was such a long race. Now, typically, I'd probably cut the volume for a week like this down a little bit, just because the intensity is going to be so high. The TSS for this week is actually not off the charts. I've done many 1000 TSS weeks before, and earlier this year, I did an 1100 TSS week that I think highlights where TSS falls short. Because of the volume of time spent above FTP during the block periodization week, the perceived fatigue level was much higher than the other week that I had 1100 TSS. For comparison's sake, let's take a look at that week. Right off the bat, we can see that I accumulated TSS for this week with volume and not intensity, as I've got almost 30 hours of riding. Now, in theory, after this week, I should feel more tired because the TSS was a little bit higher, and the acute training load was also higher. This was definitely not the case though. The fatigue from the high intensity week had a more delayed onset, but definitely hit a lot harder. What's interesting is that during the week, I actually didn't feel that tired even though I was doing these high intensity days back to back. It's kind of like what riders experience during a stage race. Even though they're racing hard for multiple days on end, they can still produce some of their best power numbers. After that week though, the fatigue was substantial and was right up there with the amount of fatigue that I felt after some of my hardest ultra endurance races. However, as I recovered, I did see some pretty substantial improvements. My best 20 minute power went from 353 watts to 363 watts, which is a big improvement. However, these weren't from 20 minute max tests. Both of these numbers were obtained during a 2x20 interval day. Overall though, I would say that a 10 watt increase in FTP after this block is about right. However, we really start to see bigger improvements when we look at my ability to do shorter efforts. I've been doing a lot of 8 minute max intervals, so I have a lot of good data from that length of time. I was able to get my 8 minute power up from around 380 watts to 415 watts. Now, I use block prioritization in the run up to the Piscus stage race, but the Piscus stage race itself acts as the high intensity week in the block prioritization model for my next a priority race, which is the Marathon National Championships, which is a month after the Piscus stage race. This is important because if you do your high intensity block too close to your a priority race, then you may still be feeling the fatigue from the high intensity week as you enter that race. Yeah, this whole block prioritization thing is pretty much what I already do, Dylan. I smash myself on Tuesday at the group ride. Then I smash myself on Wednesday at the training race. Then I smash myself on Thursday in a Zwift race. And then on Friday, I usually have a recovery ride, but if I run into a Strava segment that I need to get, I'm definitely going to go after it. And then on Saturday and Sunday a race. Oh, and instead of doing this once a month, I actually just do it every single week. When seeing the results of block prioritization, it can be tempting to overdo it. If one overload week is good, then two is better, obviously, right? This couldn't be further from the truth. A study done on interval training at VO2 max took eight runners and had them perform VO2 max intervals once a week, and then over train them by having them perform the intervals three times a week. The results showed that surprisingly, the subjects did not improve after the over training period. And the study concluded that performance did not increase after four weeks of VO2 max intensive training. So what's the difference with this study and the ones that I mentioned earlier? This study pushed the subjects to over training by having them do their overload block for four weeks instead of just keeping it to one week. If you're thinking about trying block prioritization, then let's talk about some different ways that you can go about it. If you've never done block prioritization before, then you might want to start with four high-intensity days in the first week instead of five. Or maybe you could do three high-intensity days during the first week of your training month after your rest week, and then just back it down to two high-intensity days per week after that. If you've got a week-long stage race, then this is a perfect way to do block prioritization. The race itself is the high-intensity block. Of course, using block prioritization is a great way to get ready for stage racing because you're getting your body used to doing high-intensity efforts day after day. And remember that if you're going to try block prioritization, be sure you pay close attention to your fatigue levels. Proper training is a fine line between not enough and too much training, and block prioritization can get dangerously close to the too much side. Thanks for watching, and I hope you guys found this information helpful. If you liked this video, be sure to give it a like, share it with a friend, and subscribe for more. If you want to see more training and racing content, be sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And if you want to follow my training, be sure to check me out on Strava. Finally, if you're looking for a coach, shoot me an email at djohnsonatrainright.com.