 Determined to rise, the competitive nature of man took over. He began to believe that those who weren't for him had to be against him. He wasn't afraid to burn a few bridges or make a few rash decisions to get to where he wanted to go, but perhaps he had it backwards. So I'm at the Giroeen Sporting Complex in Nusa, Sunshine Coast, Australia and behind me here there is a purpose-built Criterium track. It's about a kilometre in length and I've got my road bike behind me and I'm going to show you what not to do in one lap and what to do in the second lap if you want to become fitter and stronger on the bike. You might be wanting to just beat your mates around the block, you might be targeting a Fondo event, you might be wanting to start racing your bike but you don't really know where to start and really you've got to start with your base layer, your base fitness. I might have heard of it before and what a lot of cyclists do is when they go out and ride, they'll do bunch rides, they'll ride with mates and they'll be all over the place. They won't be properly training their base and it wasn't until I properly trained my base until I really took my cycling to the next level. So I want to show you in this video, okay, what does that look like and what are some of the common mistakes cyclists make and I've actually been thinking about doing this video for some time because it is such an easy correction to make and such a common thing I see cyclists do. But I've refrained because as many of you will know, a coach of mine, David Sturt, he came up to the Sunshine Coast last weekend and we put together a cycling fundamentals online course with some YouTube videos that will supplement that course and I didn't want to cut the grass of that series but as it turns out, yes we talk about this but we talk about so much else. So this is a great way to wet the appetite for people out there that are just wanting to learn a little bit more and become fitter and stronger on the bike. So there's a few things to discuss before we get into these two laps. Number one is the problem with understanding this is you can turn into a bit of a dickhead and I did. So I want to explain to you like a bonus tip at the end of this video, okay, what I'm talking about and how to mitigate turning into what I turned into. Number two is if you're just getting into road cycling, yes, this is important to understand but first things first, understand your bike, get a proper bike fit, understand how to handle the thing, go right it a few times and then you come to this. Number three is at the start of this YouTube channel when I created it about seven or eight months ago I met with Luke Mikkelroy from Mets Performance Consulting. They're in Melbourne and they do lab based testing and I thought from that interview I had with him after I did a full lactate blood test and VO2 max test I would share some insights that he shared in that video in this one just for some credibility from a scientific perspective. So a big part to this video is understanding your training zones. Now we're not going to go into deep level on all training zones today. We want to focus on zone two but it's very important that you understand that there are, depends on who you speak to, five zones, seven zones but the different zones train different systems and they enable you to train with structure. It's kind of like going to the gym, right? You've got a weight rack and am I training power, strength, muscular tone or endurance. That'll dictate what weights you lift and how many reps and how many sets you do. This is kind of like the same thing. And to work out your zones I'm going to put a little link in the below video description area but there's essentially a percentage of your heart rate or your functional threshold power. Now heart rate is important but it does vary and fluctuate based off the environment such as weather, levels of fatigue. So ultimately if you can train with power or both ideally but power is your best way to go because it doesn't fluctuate. You've got to put power through the crank and to work out your zones with power you need to understand your functional threshold power which is essentially how long you can hold power for for an hour and you can test that through either going out and doing a 20 minute test as hard as you can and then your times your average power by 0.95 you get your FTP. Now a lot of people instead will do what you call a step test which is like a ramp test on an indoor trainer and once again I'll link to that below for people who want detail on that. And the other one is what I did is I went to a lab and did a proper VO2 max test and lactate blood test which gave me all my numbers quite definitively so my power and my heart rate numbers combined and I'm going to link to METS performance below like they're not sponsoring this at all but I just want to show you it's actually not that expensive depending on where you live to get one of those tests done. The big thing that you do a fuel test you do a 20 minute time trial test, step test, whatever it is and you get your zones from that you can normally get a pretty good FTP generally within a couple of watts, right? What I really struggle and what I'm still trying to figure out myself if there's a possible way to do it but what you can't find is that aerobic heart rate zone is not possible unless you physically measure blood lactate how are you going to do it? It's not a percentage of anything. The other reason why a lab test or especially the hybrid test that we did would be better than a field based alternative is that again it comes down to the strengths and weaknesses you go do a 20 minute time trial what does it tell you? It tells you FTP, right? How are we going to improve that FTP? Do we need to do aerobic stuff? Do we need to do volume? Does it need to be VO2 intervals above at 95% VO2 max? Do we need to do more threshold style work? We don't know because we don't get the lactate graph we don't get that fraction of expired oxygen graph, okay? So without further ado I'm going to show you what many people, many cyclists do when they go ride their bikes either side by side with a mate or by themselves this is what not to do So before we start lap one let's look at my training zones that I got when I went and got tested at Metz Performance now I've been training my base for a couple of months before I went there and nothing else my base, 180 to 300 watts but everything above it is really poor very small zones and that's because I hadn't been training anything outside of base before I went to see Luke and if we use my training zones as an example I've gone out of the blocks way too hard I've gone threshold VO2 max then I've backed it off because I'm now going down a hill now a lot of cyclists when they go down a hill they'll stop pedaling because the movement of the bike we're about 40, 45, we're going to hit 50 kilometers an hour I don't need a pedal, the bike's going pretty quick and as a result we're not in any zone right now we're not even working at all you do a lot of this in bunch riding as well when you're sitting behind a wheel so I've come around this right hander and now I'm back on flat roads and I'm going to ramp it up movement of the bike starts backing off a little bit and I've now hit a headwind so I'm going to drive it into the headwind because I want to keep the bike moving revolutions per minute a little bit low as well we want them building base between 90 to 100 but I'm driving it into this headwind I'm all over the place with my zones and now come around the corner a little bit less wind I can see a hill I think I'm going to attack this hill so I'm going to back it off again I'm back into zone 2 although revolutions per minute because of the wind conditions I'm sort of driving it not really in that 90 to 100 zone and now I've hit the hill and I'm going to smack it up this hill about a 5% gradient it hits I know it's only short and punchy but I want to drive it over the hill and I'm well and truly over my anaerobic zone here now I'm going to back it off back into zone 1 because I'm a little bit cooked at the top of this hill and this is how a lot of people ride their bikes and this has a massive impact if you want to train your base physiologically look there's some crossover effect of course but they do have actually in theory their polar opposite adaptations one's aerobic one's anaerobic so for this one to improve our aerobic engine we don't want lactic acid in the system because it actually starts to shut off the mitochondria in the muscles they will use up the oxygen so we're about to start lap 2 here and based off what Luke's saying I don't want to be jumping around too much in terms of my zones I try and aim for around 230 to 240 watts based off my level consistent pedal stroke between 90 to 100 RPM now that may fluctuate and vary this course is a little bit tricky we're going around in circles so there's wind conditions coming to play but really trying to focus as much as possible consistent pedal stroke between 230 to 240 watts I'm trying to keep it on I'm going around a corner and I stop pedaling for a second and then sort of between 90 to 100 RPM and you want to stay there for as long as you can throughout a ride now some people might be questioning why do I not have heart rate heart rate is very important with it I need to start doing it really important because some days you're going to be feeling a little bit off and fatigued just to understand where your heart is at I think is very important to compliment power now you can see I had a headwind there I was keeping it around to 230 to 240 watts once again I'm approaching a hill here 220 watts now this is the tricky part a lot of people will get to the bottom of the hill and they're going to want to attack but we don't want to be jumping into different zones I've really backed it off here come back down through the gears I sit up I'm tight in the core and you can't help but elevate the power a little bit I mean for me I'm still in my zone too but you're going to lift it a little bit when you go up hills it's almost impossible not to but I'm not getting excited I'm not out of the saddle I'm still in zone 2 okay and then when I get to the top of the hill I'm going to lift the gears and continue to pedal to maintain my momentum to stay in zone 2 so this type of riding is going to help you build your base fitness significantly okay so now I'm sweating up a storm because I'm actually doing in between the camera the complete opposite of doing base and that's because I've spent time building my base and you know now I'm putting up the framework and actually today's more of putting on the house sharpening the pencil I'm doing some 10 second efforts around the track and look that's the kind of stuff that you do after you've built your base because you can only as I said get your house so high get yourself so strong if your base isn't solid and that first video that you saw but I'm not telling you not to ride like that because you will and I still do it's impossible when you go out and ride with some people and your mates and bunch rides bunch rides like that you're going hard and you're going slow and look a bit of bunch riding can actually be can be pretty good as you know training regime but only to get a bit of speed in the legs because races are inconsistent they're like that but for you to get strong you've got to build the base and you've got to really spend a lot of time that second video is just going out there riding side by side with somebody that's at a similar level to you or by yourself and just stay in zone 2 for as long as you can and don't free pedal obviously you've got to stop at traffic lights but keep a consistent stroke through the pedal at all times and you'll be surprised how fit you get now some of you might be saying well how long do I do this for and how often depends how long you've got in the week to train and if you've got say 10 hours in the week you don't want to go do 10 hours of base training in your first week you want to build into it and give yourself a rest week every so often but an actual complete training program for base we've got that in our online coaching course which will be coming shortly so the last part of this video so the bonus tip don't get too anal with this type of training so this happened to me I became a lot fitter and stronger training base and then implementing structured efforts and as a result every time I went out riding because I wanted to maintain my fitness I was doing something specific right so just don't be too anal if you're riding down a mountain and it's steep just ride the thing don't worry about staying within zones and if you mate Johnny sends you a message he wants to go for a ride but he doesn't understand zone 2 and base training and despite the fact you're trying to teach him he might take a while to come around so still go for a ride with him you know don't get too anal with this thing because cycling's not just about becoming fitter and stronger it's also about socializing and hanging with your mates I'll catch you all in the next video Thanks for watching!