 By working exclusively on your aerobic engine or base fitness, which is what I'm going to demonstrate to you today. We're going to go outside, I'm going to show you a practical way. To train base fitness, this applies to both indoor and outdoor riding by working on this area exclusively. You're going to build fitness adaptations that are going to take your cycling performance to the next level. For example, aerobic training is the best training to stretch the heart muscle, to make your heart muscle bigger. It's also going to help you increase your lung capacity so you can bring more oxygen into your bloodstream. You're going to increase your myoglobin stores. You're going to improve mitochondrial function, which essentially means you're going to deliver more energy to your working muscles. There's that and a whole lot more than how to train base fitness that's coming up. So welcome back to the 29th edition of the RCA Training Tips Show where today I have a special treat for you. I'm going to share with you a video that's one of 20 in a brand new online course that I have for road cyclists that are keen to take their cycling performance to the next level, being the up-level road cycling course. Given the fact I opened the course last Friday and I'm closing it in a few days' time, and I'm also offering a 30% discount to incentivize people on joining me in this new course, I wanted to give people out there that are thinking about joining me a flavor of what the content is like. Now in the new course you're going to get some practical videos as you'll see today where I'm going to share with you my three critical factors for base training rides which applies to both indoor and outdoor cycling and the course also includes some whiteboard theory-based videos including a video before the one you're going to see today which explains why we leverage zone two to build our aerobic engine. You see there is zone one, there's zone three, there's also something called sweet spot, not against those. In fact we use them in the course, they just need to be carefully placed in an overall 12-week base training program. Now if you get value out of this video today, please don't forget to give it a like and if you're after more content like this and you want access to 12-week training programs, a private group where I do live Q&As every single month and also support from coaches such as myself, then check out the link below and let's get into it. So welcome to let's go for a base training ride together where I'm going to show you how I and how I believe you should roll when building the aerobic base fitness engine during outdoor training. But before we take off on this ride heading from the magnificent Sunshine Beach area to Maruchidor here in Queensland, Australia, let's reflect quickly on why we're going for this ride together as I commence what will be roughly an 8-10 minute warm-up before hitting my zone 2 number. So by now you should understand the importance of base building training leveraging your zone 2. You should also by now have identified your zone 2 number and you should have an idea of where your base fitness is at from the cardio drift test. However, whether you need to work on your base fitness now or whether you're currently working on a high intensity program because you've already got a solid base fitness engine, base training rides will and should always be part of your training regime. So in this video today we're going to go for a base training ride together. Real world stuff where we have road undulations, traffic, roadworks, you name it. With the idea of this video being that you walk away or maybe you ride away with a better understanding of how you should ride outdoors when training base fitness. And there are three key takeaways I'm hoping you will get from this ride together. Number one, I want you to learn how to ride with consistent or constant pressure. Number two, I want you to learn how to use base training rides to enhance and develop new skills. And number three, I want you to learn to keep an eye on your heart to see where the drift starts to creep in and to learn about variability in your heart rate. So on this screen from left to right you can see the ride duration, cadence speed in kilometers per hour, average three second power, heart rate, gradient and the route which is straight down the beach. The ride today is going to be a two hour zone two ride although I will actually end up doing two hours and 25 minutes so let's not get overly picky. However, what you might find interesting to note is if I'm doing a two hour, 2.5 hour, three hour or whatever base building zone two ride it may be I won't include the first 10 minutes as part of the official ride as that is purely dedicated to getting the legs warm spinning in zone one. I do start the bike computer but I don't count it as part of my official two hour zone two ride. This 10 minute spin should also happen at the end of the ride to help create cellular exchange where metabolic waste that has been accumulated from the ride can start to be flushed out. You'll hear more on this topic when we get to the rest and recovery video later in the course but just know that while zone two won't create as much waste products as high intensity training it's still going to push the lactate system up slightly especially on some of the longer zone two rides and as a result we always want to spin at the end of a base training ride. So because I am warming up for 10 minutes here I like to wait until I'm around the 25 minute mark before I take note of my first heart rate number which will do in a second because the first big thing I want to emphasize for you here is constant pressure on the cranks and if there is just one thing you take away from this online course and I hope there's more but if there was just one thing this would be it constant pressure on the cranks. Here I am now settled into the ride at my target zone two wattage which is going to be 240 watts for this ride give or take 10 to 15 watts with road changes and undulations and something I would like to point out here quickly is that I do have my zone two wattage 10 watts higher on the road than on the trainer as my trainer actually reads 10 watts lower for the same output which is very common and something you might like to check yourself. So as you can see here I am riding on a very undulating part of today's base ride which I need to do in order to get to the flat areas which you'll see shortly but what happens with many cyclists when they get to undulating terrain is they will ride hard up the hills typically pushing it out of the saddle and when they get to the top of the hill they will coast down the other side and to prove my point here I have some other footage for you on this same road taken at a different time unfortunately I didn't have any cyclists ride past me this am so let's have a look at this footage and you will see a cyclist up ahead in white. Now I'm going to speed the footage up here at times just so you can see what happens here in its entirety but just note that I am riding consistent constant zone two pressure. Yes there are some variations given the road undulations but I'm pretty much in zone two the entire time and I have constant pressure on the cranks. I'm getting a proper aerobic base building workout in while the man in the white is working who knows what. I'd say a bit of every zone including zone zero otherwise known as free pedaling. He's essentially being dictated by the terrain and momentum of the bike and look I'm not here to bag this rider because if this is what gets him out of bed for some exercise in the morning and he likes riding like this then go for it but if his goal was to improve his performance on the bike then this type of riding leads straight to a plateau where average form will fluctuate and nothing essentially is going to improve and let me be loud and clear here this is the way many cyclists ride their bikes in training all over the place without any consistency or constant pressure on the cranks and that on off nature that you can see leads to very poor conditioning at a musculoskeletal level meaning you fatigue easier because in training you're constantly in this on off washing machine all the time. So here I'm riding slowly but I am on the cranks with pressure in my zone 2. I have obviously slowed the cadence down going up this incline here which is a good way to build muscular strength and create some variation in the workout. Variation is an aspect to our training that you'll hear more about in future videos but just know for now that both slow and fast cadence during base training rides is a good thing and as you can see I'm now headed down the decline but the pressure is still on the cranks and the cadence is clearly higher. The only time I will take pressure off the cranks is when stopping at traffic lights turning corners avoiding traffic or riding down a mountain or a super steep hill. You get my point consistency on the cranks in our zone 2 is key when practical. So let's skip forward here a little to just over the 20 minute mark where I'm about to take my first heart rate reading for the drift score and it's 130 beats or there abouts. I would normally go to 25 minutes but I'm about to hit a little row of shops with some traffic and the slowing of the bike and pedal stroke will start to affect my heart rate so I'm just taking it a touch earlier here. We'll skip forward here again to just over an hour into this ride. I am now on a bike path approaching the Maruti Dora river where I will do a U-turn and as you can see my heart rate hasn't really drifted yet which I'm happy about given current fitness levels and I'm on a bike path which is a great tool to have for our base training rides for two big reasons. Number one they're obviously safe and number two they teach us better bike handling skills and that is one of the other key takeaway points I'd like you to have for this video and that is using base training rides to further enhance and develop new skills. As base training rides are a great opportunity for us to hone our bike handling skills what I'm about to do here is you turn my bike in quite a tight little area. I am then going to ride up a bit further and do it again and I'm then going to do it one more time so three times all up but you might like to do it four five or six times to help develop your balance on the bike and turning skills which many cyclists lack. On the way back to the main road on the bike path I'm also going to practice taking one hand off the handlebar then the other hand and then both hands. So the bike path not only provides a safe riding environment it also provides a safe environment to enable us to practice and develop skills and you could do this on a bike path either during a zone one recovery ride or a base building ride and it's something I would recommend you do on a weekly basis at the very least. What is also happening on this ride to enhance and develop new skills which you can't see is that I'm trying a new saddle to accommodate my change in crank length. It's one of those funny looking SMP saddles but it appears to be working nicely and the point I'm trying to make here is any changes tweaks adjustments to your position etc are best done either during the off-season or during a period where you're focusing on building base. You're much less likely to cause issues or injuries during these periods so use base training rides to your advantage assuming you're eager to make changes to further develop your position on the bike. Just don't make any significant changes and head out for a four-hour base training ride I'm also referencing your one to two-hour rides here. So if I skip forward again now roughly 90 minutes into this ride the heart starting to drift a little but nothing alarming and here I'm practicing riding in the drops. Once again developing another skill or technique during a base building phase many road cyclists never ride in the drops and that's often the case because they simply don't practice it. Getting in the drops will make you more aerodynamic on the bike and it also gives you greater handling given the lower center of gravity. So it's a very useful tool and capability to have up your sleeve and the best way to develop it is to get in the drops say five minutes on five minutes off as an example during periods of your base ride. I'm also practicing some nose breathing during certain periods of today's base ride just purely focusing on big deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Breathing through the nose has been demonstrated in many studies to produce a 10 to 20 percent greater oxygen uptake in the blood due to the way the nose warms and filters air that is being breathed in. Clearly nose breathing at a maximal output level is difficult so the best time to practice this method of breathing is when training aerobically. Lastly on this topic of developing skills I'm completing this ride without any food. I had a small instant coffee before leaving in the morning and a smidge of coconut milk but I won't be eating anything on this entire ride outside of drinking one water bottle per hour. Yes I do have a bar in my back pocket in case I need it but during base building periods this is a great time to complete some faster rides so you can develop your system to better fuel itself with fat and not be so dependent on carbohydrate. So let's now head to the end of this ride and as you can see I'm finishing on a drift of about 10 beats around the 140 mark which is to be expected. I'm only riding two to three times per week at the moment and two of those rides are a 45 minute indoor trainer session so I simply have not been working my aerobic base fitness enough to have a limited drift for two hours. If we now look at my numbers in today's plan you can see the power numbers they're pretty consistent external to some stopping and some little sparks which were probably driven by a few times I stretched the legs getting out of the saddle going up a hill and there was an instance where I had to get in front of some traffic for safety purposes when I was confronted with a road work situation. Overall the power line I am happy with and in terms of my heart rate it started to drift as you can see around the one hour 45 minute mark and ended up as you know at around 140 beats. So that is the final takeaway for you in this base building ride that being let's just always keep an eye on heart rate when we're doing these base building or base maintenance rides. It's easy to do and there are three compelling reasons why you should be consistent with it. Number one we can benchmark our aerobic engine by keeping an eye on when our heart rate starts to drift. Number two we can be smarter about our rest and recovery so if you become intimate with your heart and you start seeing some weird spikes and or elevated numbers before or during a ride that's telling you something maybe you should rest that day or maybe it's even time for a rest week and number three it gives us something to aim for with our base fitness. What do I mean by that? As you know from watching the cardio drift video we want to try and work towards a limited heart rate drift working aerobically i.e zone two for at least 120 percent of the target event time. So if it's a one hour criterion we want limited heart rate drift for 75 minutes or if it's a three hour road race we want limited heart rate drift for 3,045 minutes and if you've got a 10 hour Fondo event let's be serious you're not going to have a limited heart rate drift for 12 hours but you might work towards four to five hours and for general cycling wanting to beat your mates around the block I'd say a two to two and a half hour period with limited cardio drift would be a great target to have and even for those focused on criterion racing while technically it's 75 minutes having a more efficient aerobic engine is going to help with the development of your upper end zones thus having some numbers to aim for gives the base training rides even greater purpose and of course if you love coffee which I do be sure to pop by the local coffee shop on the way home either before or after that light 10 minutes spin down