 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 how to train for cyclocross. Cyclocross season is here and that means two things. First a huge drop-off in the use of the hashtag cross is coming. No dude during the season you have to use the hashtag crosses here. You see you always have to be letting people know the current status of cross in case they don't already know or haven't already seen 20 other posts with the hashtag crosses here. It also means that the main focus of this video will be what your training should look like in the midst of cyclocross season. I'll go over some specific workouts as well as what a training week and a race week should look like and some important things to keep in mind when heading into cross season. If you're new to this channel I make weekly training, racing and year-related videos going over tips and tricks that I've learned in my 12 years of training and racing experience 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 then 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 down in the comment section below. I do my best to get to all the questions in the comments. Cyclocross season for most of us has already started and I wish I'd gotten this video out a little sooner because one of the best things that you can do to set yourself up for a good cross season is take a short break from riding before the season especially if you've been racing road or mountain all summer. I talk about this at length in my 5 most common training mistakes that cyclists make video and I'll link that in the description below if you want to check that out. Basically never taking a break is a recipe for stagnating performance. You build up fatigue over the course of a season and many riders start to feel stale towards the end of the year. If you just keep training right through cyclocross season you can very well feel like you're dragging through the season and your performance will suffer. Three to five days completely off the bike before the season can be a great boost both physically and mentally to set you up for a good fall. Without out of the way let's get into what your training week should look like. For most of us cross season is pretty tightly packed with races almost every weekend. This is a good thing because it allows you to get in a lot of race specific training. However it is easy to over train if you don't allow yourself enough time to recover between races and hard workouts. If you're a regular watcher of my video you've already heard this plenty of times but the research shows that two or on occasion three high intensity days per week is optimal and any more than this usually leads to over training. This is even more important when we get into cross season because cyclocross races are extremely high intensity relative to other cycling events. This is both because they're shorter relative to other cycling events and the courses require huge surges in power. You aren't holding a steady effort over the course of a cross race. Because of this the high intensity workouts need to be extremely high quality to see the maximum benefit which means that you'll need to be well rested. A study on the training intensity distribution of runners put them into a group that emphasized low intensity and one that did more moderate intensity along with their high intensity intervals. The low intensity group made greater performance gains and the study concluded that these findings provide evidence supporting the value of low intensity training as long as the contribution of high intensity work remains sufficient. Going easy on your easy days will allow you to go harder on your hard days. Again this is a reoccurring theme on this channel but only because it's so important especially as we get into cyclocross which favors being punchy and explosive. Let's get into some example training weeks to show you what I mean. On a typical training week you'll want to do two or three high intensity sessions and you'll want to do them when you're the freshest. In a typical week you might have Monday and Friday as rest or active recovery days and then the days after that so Tuesday and Saturday would be your hardest workouts of the week. We'll get into exactly what these workouts should look like in a bit. You may opt to have another interval day in there somewhere but I wouldn't do this every week especially in the midst of a crowded race schedule. The rest of the days should be fairly easy low endurance pace rides that aren't too long either. Obviously not long is relative to everyone but generally I'd say that for more novice riders an hour is fine and for more advanced riders two to two and a half hours is what you're looking for. This is probably one of the biggest differences when you get into cyclocross training. In the midst of cyclocross season you don't need to be maintaining that high volume and that's for two reasons. One is that cyclocross races are short this is simple but the other is that that endurance fitness doesn't fade that fast if you continue riding regularly and maintain that high intensity. For example in this study that reduced intensity long-term endurance was decreased significantly by 21% in a group that reduced training load by one-third and by 30% in a two-thirds reduced group. However in a similar study that decreased volume long-term endurance remained the same in the one-third reduced group and it only decreased by 10% in the two-thirds reduction group. By the time you get to cross season you don't need to be maintaining that endurance especially for such short events. Your endurance will stick around as long as you continue doing high intensity work which is what you should be focusing on during cross season. Three high intensity workouts a week huh? So that means when I race on Saturday and Sunday I got to smash myself on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Yeah pretty much sounds like what I already do. Would you consider a race to be high intensity or low intensity? I'll give you a hint it's high intensity. A race counts as a high intensity day. With that let's get into what a race week should look like. Let's say that you have a Saturday race or you're racing Saturday and Sunday. If the race isn't that important and you're just training through it then assuming that Monday was a rest day you'll want to have a hard interval workout on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday should be relatively short zone two endurance rides. If you're racing back to back weekends then you'll want to swap Tuesday and Wednesday and have Wednesday be your high intensity day. If it's race week and the race you have coming up is important and you really want to do well then you want to have your interval session on Wednesday. This shouldn't be a killer workout. Yes it should be high intensity but you shouldn't be absolutely trashed afterwards. For example if in a normal VO2 max workout you do four or five VO2 max efforts then maybe in this workout you might just do two or three. Tuesday and Thursday would be active recovery or very low endurance and Friday would be openers. The opener workout should be mostly zone two with a couple punchy efforts so that you don't feel stale on the starting line on Saturday. And if you can do that workout on the course that's great. Now I've been talking about these high intensity days and how you should arrange them in the week but what should these high intensity workouts actually look like? Here are some examples of the workouts that I prescribe to my cyclocross athletes and that the seasoned cyclocross coaches here at CTS recommend. Just like with any kind of racing as you get into the season you want your workouts to become specific to your goal event. These workouts are all designed to mimic the demands of cyclocross racing. The first workout is race start intervals. The start is extremely important especially with a larger field size so it's important to practice it. A common way to do this is by having intervals that mimic the start of a race. These can be organized in a couple different ways but I like to have six to ten minute interval lengths and shoot for 30 to 40 minutes of work total. So for example that might look like five by six minutes or four by ten minutes. You should allow yourself to fully recover between efforts because at the start of a race you'll be fully recovered. As for the intensity you want it to mimic the start of a race so the first 20 seconds needs to be all out and then settle into VO2 and then settle into just above threshold. Looking at power isn't super important for this interval just make sure you're not going below FTP because at that point you're probably not mimicking a race situation. The next workout we have is the classic microburst or Tabata style interval where you do interval lengths of 20 to 40 seconds followed by an extremely short recovery period of 10 to 40 seconds and then repeat over and over again. There's a reason why these intervals are so popular and that's because they've been shown to be effective. This study on the effect of different interval training programs on cycling performance tested 12 by 30 second intervals along with a host of other types of intervals. They found the 30 second interval along with four minute intervals showed the greatest improvement in performance. Again there are a couple ways to arrange these intervals but here's a good example of what you're looking for. This is a 30-30 workout with 30 second efforts followed by 30 seconds of recovery. This particular workout is split into two sets of 10. Novice riders may do seven to eight of these intervals while more advanced riders could do as many as 12 to 15. Two sets is usually the limit of high quality for this workout however on a good day you might be able to fit in a third set. If you want to make this workout even more cross specific then have every third interval be a running interval where you dismount and sprint as hard as you can on foot for 30 seconds. The last workout we'll talk about here is probably as cross specific as it gets it involves setting up a cross course in a field and then using laps of that course as intervals. Make sure you include some corners and run-ups to work on skills and that way you can see whether or not your improved lap time is due to increased power or increased skills. As with the start intervals 30 to 40 minutes of total work is what we're looking for here. If you can get some buddies of a similar fitness level to do this workout with you then that's great for motivation it makes the workout more race specific and it can actually make the workout higher quality as well. For example in this study on the influence of competition on cycling performance they found that subjects were able to ride three seconds faster in a two kilometer time trial when put head to head with another rider than when they were just trying to beat their own time. If there's a local weekday night training series in your area then this is also a great way to get in high quality cross specific work midweek. Now let's get into some special considerations for cyclocross training. The first thing I'd like to touch on is your CTL or chronic training load or fitness. If you've been training and racing at a high volume all summer then when you get to cyclocross season your CTL will likely drop a little bit. This is okay. This is because high volume training builds up a lot of TSS which boosts your CTL. With a drop in volume and more focus on intensity your CTL will come down. You need this though because high intensity intervals and high intensity racing like cyclocross require a lot of recovery. Despite the label that CTL has been given having a lower CTL doesn't necessarily mean that you're less fit. In fact you actually may be more fit for the task at hand which is 40 to 60 minute punchy races. For example someone who trains 30 hours a week of zone two will have a higher CTL than somebody who trains 10 hours a week of cyclocross specific work. However I put my money on the ladder in a cross race. Yeah well my friend's brother's wife is married to this guy whose brother is friends with this mid-pack cat four guy who's pretty fast and he says that you need a CTL of at least 80 to race so. And of course it wouldn't be a cyclocross video without talking about running in barriers. Obviously these are important skills to practice but in the grand scheme of things they actually make up a very small proportion of the race. You don't need to be putting in hours of running each week to prepare yourself for a 10 second run up. Usually some cross specific workouts with run ups thrown in is enough. If you are running inclined then peppering your week with short runs here and there won't hurt. The biggest skill that you want to work on for cyclocross is cornering because you're constantly cornering when you're racing cross. If you're giving away fractions of a second in every single corner then this can add up to a significant amount of time by the end of the race. There's no doubt that being a fast cyclocross racer requires a lot of skill. So spending time on your cyclocross bike and doing dedicated skill sessions are important and should be included in your weekly program. Alright let's review. Taking a break between road and mountain bike season and cross season will set you up for a better season by boosting your mental and physical freshness. You also want your volume to come down during cyclocross season. This is because the races are short and you want to be well recovered for the races and the hard workouts and maintaining that endurance fitness isn't hard as long as you're maintaining high intensity work. You want to do two or three high intensity days per week, two or three shorter endurance rides and two recovery or complete rest days. On race weeks you want to have one high intensity workout during the week especially if you're racing twice on the weekend. If the race is an important one then that high intensity workout shouldn't destroy you and the rest of the rides during the week should either be recovery or low endurance. Those high intensity days need to be cross specific by doing things like race starts, microbursts, and intervals on a cross course. Due to the low volume your CTL will come down during the cross season if you've been training and racing all summer. Don't freak out this is supposed to happen. Running is important but there's no need to rack up a ton of running miles during cross season and of course you want to work on skills the most important being cornering since you're going to spend a lot of time cornering during cyclocross racing. Thanks for watching and I hope you guys found this information helpful. If you like this video be sure to give it a like, share it with a friend, and subscribe. If you want to be notified every time I put out a video then be sure to hit the notification bell as well. If you're looking for a coach if you sign up for CTS be sure to use my code CTSDJ to save $40 by waiving the registration fee. Details are down in the description.