 In this video today, which is video three in a four-part series brought you by these Asioma power pedals that are on my bike, I'm gonna share with you how to build cycling speed and strength on the bike using a power meter. Now keep in mind, one of the biggest mistakes cyclists make in training is going for speed and strength before they've properly developed their aerobic engine. This is kind of like putting the levels up to a house before you've properly laid the foundation. So please watch the first two videos in this series which I'll link to below, if you feel like your base engine is underdeveloped. So let's discuss three items today as the sun sets on the magnificent Gindia Drive, closed road in the Sunshine Coast Queensland. Number one, what are the critical training zones? Number two, why a power meter is so much more effective than heart rate? And number three, three critical strategies to implement when building speed and strength on the bike. So at the Road Cycling Academy, where I'm a road cycling coach, we use a seven training zone model which I call your cycling weight rack. And at a basic level, we can use the FTP, Functional Threshold Power, which is essentially your hour power to work out your seven training zones. Now if you're unfamiliar with FTP and you're not sure how to work it out, I'd suggest going back and watching video one in this series which I'll link to below. So once you have your FTP, you can use a calculator to establish your upper end zones and I'll link to that RCA zone calculator below if anyone would like to use it. So once the aerobic base engine is established for building cycling speed and strength on the bike, let's narrow in on zones four, five, six and seven. Zone four would be 91 to 105% of your FTP and is what we call your threshold zone. At this level from a physiology perspective, this is when you have a notable shift in your blood lactate levels as the lactate system is now further required to support your increased output. Technically you should be able to ride in this zone for an hour but many people refer to this as your 20 minute effort zone. Zone five is 106 to 120% of your FTP and is what we call your VO2 max zone. This is your aerobic ceiling. So here you're at a tipping point of just being able to leverage oxygen to still produce some energy and typically the effort range here is between three to eight minutes max. Zone six is 121 to 150% of your FTP and is what we call your anaerobic training zone. Here your body is simply demanding more energy than what the aerobic system can handle. Thus your anaerobic system uses energy sources that are stored in the muscles, only allowing for an effort range of say roughly between 30 seconds to two minute if you're lucky. Zone seven isn't a zone per se, it's obviously over 150% of your FTP but it's more of an all-out effort. Here we're going deep into the central nervous and muscular skeletal system, pushing the boundaries of what we're capable of. Here efforts should last somewhere between 10 to 30 seconds once again if you're lucky. So any good training plan for somebody looking to develop general speed and strength on the bike should incorporate all of those training zones because they all have different beneficial outcomes. Interestingly though, long sustained threshold efforts seems to be missing from most recreational and amateur cyclist training plans as well as neuromuscular efforts. And I kind of understand why on that last point a lot of amateur and recreational road cyclists, they're not sprinters, they're never gonna win a sprint finish. So why would you bother training sprint but did you know the neuromuscular system working it will recruit or activate more muscle fibers. And if you've got more muscle fibers recruited then it's gonna help across all your cycling. So don't neglect the good old-fashioned all-out effort. Point number two is why a power meter is so much more effective than heart rate when developing speed and strength on the bike. Before we get to part three of this video, I really wanted to emphasize the importance of power training when training your upper end zones. To me, this is where the power meter really shines through. And in this section, I did want to quickly discuss the acioma power pedals. Because with their pedals first up, you can generate both a clear understanding of any discrepancies in left versus right side power outputs using their left, right balance proprietary analysis tool assuming you're using their duo model, not their UNO. Being a pedal system, acioma can establish real velocity versus average velocity, which many other power-based systems use. And as a result of that, we can be confident in any left, right discrepancies we have in power. And once we can isolate that discrepancy, we can then work on it, whether that be through bike fit or through physio, which will actually make you stronger on the bike if you can sort that out. Additionally, with acioma power pedals, you can isolate cadence. That is super important because when building speed and strength on the bike, we want to be able to work at different cadence levels. We want to work towards, say a 60 cadence level, do efforts where we're working on muscular strength. And we want to do high cadence efforts, 100 plus where we're working more the cardiovascular system. Yes, if you've got a heart rate monitor, you could buy cadence sensor and work on cadence, but it's only one piece of the entire training puzzle that a power meter can resolve. Additionally, with heart rate, it's very slow to respond to top-end efforts. For example, if I said come to this hill, I want you to do one minute anaerobic zone six efforts up this hill, come back down and then repeat, you're not going to be able to train zone six effectively with a heart rate strap. Your heart will just respond to slowly. In terms of the effort itself, by the time you finish the effort, say zone six, the heart will most likely still not have hit its intended destination. For zone five, VO2 max efforts, you'll probably be, say, halfway through the effort. By the time your heart rate hits its intended destination and for zone four, say threshold efforts, you'll probably be one, two, maybe even three minutes into the effort before your heart rate is at where it should be. And as a result of this, a lot of inexperienced road cyclists, even experienced ones will go too hard at the start of an effort in order to get their heart rate up quickly. And as a result, they won't be effectively training their zone and they will probably not be able to sustain the effort because I've gone too hard at the start. So the power meter gives us that instantaneous reading where we can target our upper end zones straight away. Point number three is three critical strategies you can use when building speed and strength on the bike. First up, if you have a specific event in mind like a time trial, a criteria, et cetera, you're gonna target these upper end zones a little bit differently because you're gonna favor some more over others given the specific nature of your event. However, if we're talking about the general Joe Blow who just wants to beat their mates around the block, strategy number one, let's use high intensity interval training as your approach to working your upper end zones. Now don't confuse a general hit session, so HIT versus a H double IT session. A general hit session would be a bunch ride, a social smash fest with mates, where it's kind of random. A HIIT session will be a specific defined interval session where you're working either one zone or you might integrate a couple and you have strategic rest periods. So we're essentially bringing lactate into the working muscles and taking it out, bringing it in, taking it out. So you wanna ensure that you're incorporating both in any good training plan but definitely at least one to two high intensity interval training sessions into your plan every week, external to your easier weeks. Now if you're trying to figure out what a good high intensity interval training session would look like, far too much of a rabbit hole for us to talk about in this video, but what I would recommend is go to Wahoo System, I use that myself and we use it at the Road Cycling Academy. Download a free trial and have a look at their training session zone four, five, six and seven and that'll give you a great starting point of what high intensity interval training sessions look like training your upper end zones. Strategy number two is progressively make your sessions harder. So when you first start implementing high intensity interval training sessions, start at the lower end of your zone if you're working say zone five, start at the lower end and do smaller efforts with larger rest periods. That's where you would start and you would build from there. As an example, if we were training threshold let's start with five minute efforts at say 92 to maybe 96, 97% of FTP and have a five minute rest in between three reps. Over the course of many months work towards achieving three times 15 minute efforts at say 102, say 105% of FTP with only a three minute rest in between efforts. Once you start adapting to working a specific zone well you could look to incorporate some low cadence drills or some high cadence drills. So you could do some of your efforts at say 60, 70 cadence working more the muscular system. You could also add in some cross zone sequencing for further progression. As an example, you could be doing a two to three minute hill repeat session working your VO2 max. As you progress, you could start slowing the cadence right down to 50, 60 RPMs to work more the muscular system. You could also add in some high cadence mini sprints at the top of each repeat transitioning from zone five to zone seven in the same repetition. If you had a target event or race obviously your zone work would be aligned to what the requirement would be for that particular event or that particular race. And you would also make your training more race specific as you get closer to event day. Strategy number three is allow the body to absorb fatigue AKA fitness adaptations. So when you start to work your training zones your upper end training zones particularly if you start doing some sprint sessions that can be very taxing and fatiguing. And look you don't wanna go straight into a sprint session you wanna work towards a bit either way you wanna respect the fatigue that you're feeling the day after two days after however long it takes before you go out again and do another hard session. You see most cyclists they all just train on top of fatigue and they're crushing fitness adaptations. So the best thing that you can do one of the best ways that you can progress is respect the fatigue and allow your body to absorb it before you go out and add on more fatigue. So here's a couple of strategies you can use. Either side of your high intensity interval training days or your general hit days ride zone two. Zone one or have a complete rest day. Every third or fourth week back right off the intensity for that week. And that easier third or fourth week isn't designed to stop riding at all you just back off the intensity that week. And that is designed to help you absorb the stress the fatigue that you've put on your system over the course of a two three week training block. And in that week I would also recommend on fresh legs. So perhaps towards the end of the week once you've rested go out to your local comm. This is mine. It's called Gindia Drive. It's only a three and a half minute effort. And just after a proper warm up rip it apart and see how you're going. You could also do an FTP test. I like to alternate. So say every six to eight weeks depends on your build you would alternate between an FTP test and a benchmark climb. So you've got two tools at your disposal to see how you're progressing. So that's how you get stronger and faster on the bike using a power meter in the fourth and final video we're going to be talking about how we use the analytics from the power meter to our advantage. If you've gotten value out of this video please don't forget to give it a like. And if you're up to more info I've got a free ebook which goes into power training in a lot of detail which I'll link to below. I'll catch you in the next video.