 So welcome to part two of a video series that I'm running on the common mistakes road cyclists make in training. Now please keep in mind that I'm not riding a high horse here, I have made these mistakes myself over my journey in the activity and sport of road cycling, but now as a road cycling coach I'm keen to isolate these mistakes and help people overcome them. But before we get into the number two mistake road cyclists make in training, where I'm gonna share with you a proven methodology to take your road cycling performance to the next level, just to reflect quickly on the number one mistake cyclists make in training, I'll link to that video below if you haven't seen it. I discussed in that piece in detail working on base fitness and the reason why I made that the number one mistake cyclists make in training is because, not only from what I've witnessed, but all the books and research that I've done is that training base fitness is critical to taking your performance to the next level. I'm not saying it's more important than high intensity training, but what I want you to think about is let's think about building a house. Base fitness is the foundation. If you have a solid base foundation, you can build a skyscraper, i.e. take your performance to the next level. But most cyclists will be going into building the levels of the skyscraper straight away. Riding high intensity in bunch rides and dick swinging contests with friends and even when they ride solo, they often get carried away. To prove my point here, I've got some GoPro footage that I've recently taken that I wanted to share with you. And this footage I captured was from my bike and I will fast forward a little bit from time to time here. Just note, I use power for training and we'll be referencing power in this video, not heart rate. You can see that I'm sitting in my zone two, which is my base building fitness zone, on undulating terrain. I am consistent both uphill and downhill. Yes, there will be some deviation from zone two from time to time, given the lumpiness of this road. But the cyclist in front of me, his output is being dictated by the terrain and momentum of the bike. He's riding hard uphills and coasting down the other side, not even pedaling at times. So let's just think about that for a minute, the not pedaling thing. If you were running or swimming, you don't all of a sudden stop in the middle of a lane or in the middle of your run. But just because you're on wheels in road cycling, people just stop. And I doubt this rider is even touching his base building zone two, which is okay if he's doing high intensity workouts on this road, but I really don't think that is the case. And the unfortunate thing about this footage is that this is the way most people ride. And he's the one probably thinking that I'm the dickhead passing him down hills and then not riding hard uphill. Little does he know that I'm the one being consistent with my pressure building a solid foundation. And what's also worth noting here, as we continue to watch this footage, is that I bet you when he's riding on flat roads, he's most likely riding zone three, which many consider to be no man's land in training. He does this because zone two feels a little too easy and zone four, his threshold one hour power zone feels a little too hard. And unfortunately, zone two gets neglected. So that was the number one mistake that cyclists make in training. The number two mistake cyclists make in training, I've actually got a little treat for you here where I'm gonna share with you a video from an online course that I've got called up level road cycling course. And it's a video that I actually recently shared with my email newsletter subscribers, but I thought I would share it with you too to help me celebrate the relaunch of this course that has just been updated with five new videos, including four specific on road training examples, the private Facebook group, access to two road cycling coaches, being David Sturt from The Hurt Box and myself. Now, if you're not quite ready for the course just yet, I've also created a free online video training, 35 minutes where I share many of the critical factors that help road cyclists take their performance. To the next level, I'll link to that below. And it's typically for road cyclists where they've been riding for a while, but the plateaued. And that's a great segue into talking about the number two mistake road cyclists make in training. You see, what typically happens when people first get into the activity of road cycling is this. In the first two, maybe three years of their road cycling journey, their form rapidly increases. They go from getting dropped in the bunches to hanging on to maybe pulling some turns. But then what happens is a plateaus. And when a plateaus, sometimes you feel good and other times you might feel shot and you can't quite figure out why. You're probably doing the same bunch rides, the same dick swinging contest with mates, the same solo loops, et cetera. No doubt the plateau may lift a little bit from time to time when your motivation changes. You start doing more volume of the bunch rides, the solo rides, et cetera. And as a result, this plateau lifts a little bit. But ultimately you still have the days where you don't feel so good or weeks. And then other times where you feel really great and you can't figure out why. But ultimately you're not getting this spike. And the big mistake, the number two mistake cyclists make in training is there is no structure to both the workout itself and the overall weekly, monthly, or target event plan. To extend on that, there's no base building period, too many high intensity workouts in a week, no gradual increasing of difficulty over time, both with base and high intensity training, no targeted rest periods or weeks, little consideration for the target event needs in training. The list goes on. So what I'm gonna do with you here to help overcome this mistake. You might be stuck on a plateau and you're really keen to take your road cycling to the next level. I'm gonna share a proven methodology to training. I call it the step ladder approach. Now, this isn't the only methodology to training, but it's a methodology that I personally use. It's helped me take my road cycling to the next level, middle of the pack B grade rider to competitive A grade rider. And it's a methodology that I've seen hundreds of athletes take their road cycling to the next level, improving FTP numbers by over 30%, best power numbers, standing on podiums, et cetera. So let's get into it. In this video, I'm gonna share with you the proven methodology to training. And between now and the end of this online course, you're gonna hear and you're gonna be seeing this methodology in action. It's called the step ladder approach. And whether you're looking to build base fitness or perhaps you've already built base fitness and now you're targeting a specific event, we're doing high intensity training, this is a methodology that is proven to work. And it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it because the human body is not designed to be on all the time. Nor are we designed to go from here all the way up to here like that. We need to do things gradually and that is what the step ladder approach is all about. We start down here, we build up and we build up again and then we take a step back. When we take a step back, that step back, we're actually a little bit higher than over here. And gradually we're going up, coming down and up, coming down till we end up. Right here, so whether it be a 12 week program for building base or whether it be a 12 week program for building towards a specific target event, this is the methodology that is proven to work. Now there are two big questions. We need to ask ourselves before we get further into the step ladder approach. Number one, what are we training? Base fitness or are we targeting an event and thus training high intensity? And number two, how much time do we have in the week to train? So let's just say the maximum amount of time you had in the week to train was 10 hours. So this is an example of how the step ladder approach would be utilized. Week one would be six hours, week two, eight hours, week three, 10 hours, then we'd back it off. Week four, six hours, week five, eight hours, week six, 10 hours. And it doesn't have to be six, eight and 10. It could be seven, nine and 10. Either way, we're gonna be building and then taking a step back. It's gonna be easier week, moderate week, hard week. Easier week, moderate week, hard week. You might ask yourself, okay, well, if I'm building base fitness, how does it progressively get harder if the volume is exactly the same? So let's call this block one. So let's just say we've completed our first block and we're moving on to block two. In building base fitness, how do we make it a little bit more difficult as we progress? What you might do is, block one, you're starting off in your bottom end zone two. As you know, in zone two, that's where we're building our base fitness. So you might increase it by maybe five to 10, five to 10 watts here while you're building base fitness. You might also, when you get to the third week here, on your longer ride on Saturday or Sunday, you might increase it by half an hour to an hour. So maybe in your big week, you'd do 10 and a half or 11 hours. Here it might be 12 hours. And here it might be 12 hours. And here it could even be 13 or 14 hours. And you're gradually increasing the wattage as well. So we're progressively getting harder. Now you don't want to drift into zone three. So just make sure if you are increasing your watts, you don't end up in zone three or zone four. If we're building base, we wanna focus on zone two. Now conversely, with high intensity training, the same rule is gonna apply. Our high intensity efforts are gonna gradually get harder as the weeks progress. But there are two big considerations when we're going from base training and now we're focusing on high intensity sessions. We're targeting the event. Two things we need to be thinking about. Number one, refrain from doing more than three high intensity workouts within a week. And number two, refrain from doing more than two high intensity sessions in a row. In training specifically with high intensity stuff. We want quality, not quantity. And what a lot of people do is they're out doing bunch rides every single ride, back to back days, back to back weeks, high intensity, high intensity and they get fatigued. And they're not properly absorbing the training that they've done and they hinder any improvements. Now while we're targeting a specific event, we're doing high intensity training, we still wanna be topping up our base fitness. So here's what an example week might look like when we're training at high intensity. This is just an example. Monday we rest, Tuesday we're at high intensity, Wednesday we recover in zone one, Thursday we're at high intensity, Friday we rest, Saturday it's high intensity again, and Sunday we go out and do a longer base ride. Now something to be wary of when you're training at high intensity. In your easier weeks like here, here, here, et cetera, it's a little bit different to when you're building base. When you're building base in your easier weeks, you're backing off the volume. When you're training at high intensity, we're not only backing off the volume, but we're also backing off the amount of high intensity sessions in that week. So we might ideally only do one high intensity session in our easier weeks. And you might go out and hit up your favorite local bunch ride or your favorite smash fest with your friends. And then for the rest of the week, we're taking it pretty easy. We're doing perhaps some zone one rides, some zone two rides, coffee shop rides with friends. And just be careful when you go out with your friends, it doesn't turn into a competition because quite often it can or if you're rolling on undulating terrain, you're going super quick uphills and then you're coasting down them. We don't want that because if you essentially make these easier weeks, high intensity weeks, you're not absorbing the previous two weeks of hard training. And that's gonna impact your improvements because what you will note in your rest weeks, you'll start to feel really good. It's because your physiology is changing. Additionally, if you are doing too many high intensity sessions in the easier weeks, when you get to the second and third, second and third, second and third weeks where you're ramping up the high intensity sessions to make them even harder, you're gonna be fatigued. So we talked about quality over quantity. We want quality in order to have quality. We need to have these rest weeks implemented. So that is the step ladder approach. We're gonna be talking about this a lot in the videos to come. But I just wanted to set the foundations for you. So you have a clear understanding of what it looks like. And I could almost guarantee that if you implement this type of methodology into your training, you'll be super surprised where you can take yourself.