 The off-season and base season are traditionally a time for lower intensity riding, at least compared to the rest of the year. In the off-season, cyclists are often getting in the gym, and this unfamiliar training load usually leaves them sore enough that any sort of intensity is out of the question, and in the base season, training volume usually takes priority over intensity. This could make up a period of several months where relatively little intensity is included in the training program. This is the traditional approach for most endurance athletes, and there is research to back it up, but could cyclists benefit from including a little bit more high intensity training in their off-season and their base season? Personally, my stance on doing maintenance intensity during these parts of the year has been throw it in if you can, but it's probably not critical. However, some recent research has me reconsidering this, and this is what we're going to be going over in today's video. And at the end of the video, I'll be giving you some example weeks so you can see exactly what this should look like. We have research to suggest that a base build from high training volumes may be important for tolerating and responding well to higher intensities, and when we look at how elite athletes train, this lower intensity higher volume approach is typical during the non-competition part of the year. This is evidence in favor of a traditional periodization approach, meaning that a high volume and low intensity of training early on, and then as your season approaches, intensity goes up and volume goes down. However, there are coaches out there that suggest a reverse periodization approach is actually preferred. Using reverse periodization would mean that you start off with high intensity and low volume, and then transition into low intensity and high volume as your season approaches. Um, okay, but what's the periodization approach called where you transition from high intensities with racing in the winter to high intensity KOM hunting in the summer? I'm just asking for a friend. And while reverse periodization has been shown to be effective for swimmers, particularly at shorter distances, the research just isn't there for other endurance sports. The closest study I could find was this one on triathletes, which found that it didn't matter whether reverse or traditional periodization was chosen. This was echoed in this study that tested different periodization models on cyclists, which had subjects increase intensity, decrease intensity, or mix intensity throughout a three month training period. The results were not significant enough to show a difference between the training strategies, but that being said, the increasing intensity group, which would be similar to a traditional periodization approach had the largest proportion of individuals with a moderate to large response at 87% versus 50% and 60% in the other two groups. If I had to say where the balance of evidence lies in regards to traditional periodization versus reverse periodization, I would say that it's slightly in favor of traditional periodization, and that's mostly because there's little research done on reverse periodization and what we have is not terribly convincing, at least for cyclists. Now of course, one does not have to follow reverse periodization in order to include intensity in their off season and their base season. And this brings us to the question of whether or not intensity should be cut out completely during these periods, or whether some level of maintenance intensity should be included in the off season and the base season in order to reach optimal performance later on. Of course, assuming that the intensity will increase above this maintenance level once the season approaches. This brings me to this study on high intensity maintenance during well-trained cyclist transition period. In this study during the two month off season, they had subjects either do only low intensity training or perform a high intensity session every 7 to 10 days. Every 7 to 10 days is not very frequent and is certainly a lot less intensity than somebody would be doing mid season. But again, this study was trying to test whether doing maintenance intensity was beneficial and at this frequency I would consider that in the maintenance zone for hit work. Not too surprisingly, they found that those that performed this maintenance intensity were in better shape at the end of the off season period. You would expect this. Obviously after a two month off season period, those who have been doing some intensity are going to be performing better than those who haven't. At least right then and there at the end of the off season. But what about later on into the year? Will the extra rest help those that stuck to easy riding in the off season? Or will the little bit of maintenance intensity mean a higher fitness level mid season? It was certainly expected that the low intensity group would catch up as the training progressed. But this was not what happened. Even after 16 weeks of training, the low intensity group was still at a lower fitness level. This would seem to indicate that cutting out intensity completely will put you at a disadvantage in the coming year. And I will say that this is the best experimental evidence that we have about this question. Although other research done on drop in aerobic performance during the off season could help support this idea. I certainly wouldn't say that this is conclusive evidence that intensity needs to be part of your off season. However, it is enough for me to make the suggestion that yeah, it's probably not a bad idea to include some maintenance intensity. This does not mean that you should be smashing yourself on the bike regularly in the off season and the base season. Far from it actually. Okay, bro. Don't you just get the feeling that this is the kind of guy that actually reads the instructions before putting together Ikea furniture? What a nerd. Remember that the off season still serves a purpose both from a physiological and psychological perspective and may act as a reset for certain blood values and hormone levels. And the base season should still primarily be focused on getting in higher volumes of training at a lower intensity. However, occasional high intensity may be beneficial for performance down the road. So what should this intensity look like? Well, the truth is that during the off season, the specifics of this high intensity session probably doesn't matter that much. After all, we know that specificity should be at its lowest at this point in the year and then increase as the season approaches. Whether or not it's 10 minute threshold intervals or a 30 30 sprint workout is probably not super important. But I would pay attention to the frequency with which you're doing these workouts. One high intensity session every week to two weeks is probably all you need and getting overly ambitious and doing more than this will probably lead to burnout and chronic overtraining later down the line. Remember that the off season is still a recovery period and you should treat it as such. Further to this, I wouldn't do these sessions as hard as possible or do as many intervals as you can at a given zone until you can't anymore. This is in stark contrast to how you should perform intervals at other points in the year where you want to maximize the interval quality and spend as much time as possible at the target zone. So for example, in an in season threshold workout, you may keep doing threshold intervals until you can't hold threshold intensity anymore. This is much less of a concern in the off season when we're just doing this for maintenance. So you may want to leave two or three intervals in the tank as to not burn psychological and physiological matches so early in the year. When we get to the early base season, you may want to keep this intensity frequency and then as the base season progresses, increase that frequency. For example, in the first month of base training, you may only do two intensity sessions. By the second month, you may bump that up to weekly sessions and then when you get to the third month, you may get to the point where you're doing two intensity sessions per week. The intensity during the base season should primarily be focused on building your aerobic engine, so threshold and sub-threshold workouts. It will of course depend on what you're training for, but for most people, following a pyramidal approach is the best during the base season. So this means that most of the training will be done at low intensity, some will be done at a moderate intensity, and an even smaller amount will be done at high intensity or over FTP. We're talking roughly 80%, 15%, and 5% respectively. And just like what was demonstrated in that study that I mentioned earlier on increasing or decreasing intensity, you want the intensity to be increasing throughout the base season. So for example, you may do more tempo and sweet spot intervals early in the base season and then add in more threshold work as you approach the end of the base season. You may want to throw in a bit of higher intensity work like VO2 max or anaerobic intervals for maintenance, and if you do, I would probably only do it about once a month and I would do it on top of an already high intensity day. Well, no matter what type of high intensity effort you're doing, if you ride over your first ventilatory threshold at about 75% to 80% of your FTP, you will likely be creating autonomic stress. Creating this autonomic stress too frequently can be an issue, especially so early in the year. This is the kind of training that can lead to staleness, burnout, and overtraining. And in the base season, we don't want to waste a whole day on something that we're not focused on, so it's better to add just a little bit on top of an already high intensity day. And then of course, there's the question of how does this maintenance intensity fit in with your gym training? After all, the off season and early base season is when your gym training load should be at its highest and these gym sessions should take priority, meaning that you should be doing them when you're fresh. If you're still in a phase where you're getting very sore from your gym sessions, then you should do this intensity before your gym work. Simply because trying to do any intensity with heavy doms or delayed onset muscle soreness will be near impossible and not very productive. If however you've reached the point where you're not getting that sore from your gym work, then I would experiment with doing this intensity after your gym sessions, either the same day or the next day. This is not something I would typically recommend for other parts of the year because usually we prioritize the high intensity sessions, but in the off season we want to prioritize the gym work to make the most out of this strength building part of the year. During the base season, I would flip this again and prioritize intensity on the bike and do it first when you're fresher. OK, so given all of that, what does an example week from the off season and base season look like? Here's an off season week where the rider might want to throw in a bit of intensity. Again, you probably wouldn't even necessarily do intensity every single week during the off season. It's a fairly standard off season week with a low volume and intensity of riding to very intensive gym sessions and a bit of cross training. Again, the intervals, which should be lighter than a typical interval session, shouldn't be done in the days following your gym work, at least not when you're starting out. And although that may seem like the logical place to put them, you'll understand why when you start getting into the gym. Generally, those following days, there's too much soreness to perform these intervals with any quality. Once you get more used to gym work, you could experiment with moving the intensity around a bit, though. As we get into the early base season, we'll be increasing the volume of riding, as we can see. The cross training will drop off and the training load from gym work will decrease. The intensity done in this week will also take priority and be done when you're as fresh as possible. Later in the base season, the volume of riding should further increase and you may also want to try doing two intensity sessions per week. If you can handle it in conjunction with this high volume. These are obviously just example weeks and everybody's training schedule will look a little bit different, depending on their training experience, their training goals and, of course, other life obligations. Hopefully you found this information helpful. Any time I have a change in opinion about a certain training topic based on some new research, I want to keep you guys up to date on it. Good scientists don't cling to their beliefs. If they see enough evidence against a certain position that they hold, then they change their position. I've personally done this many times throughout my career as I dig further and further into the research. I'm right there with you, dude. You got to be willing to adapt unless, of course, we're talking about disc brakes on road bikes or sock height or whether Vanderpole is the best rider alive or whether gravel has, in fact, been ruined yet or not. Or whether anyone should be doing a recovery ride or what the best nutritional supplement is. Other than that, I'm completely open minded. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like. Subscribe for more science based cycling content just like this and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.