 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 five of the biggest training mistakes that athletes make that could be holding back your performance. These are all mistakes that I've made myself and that athletes that I coach make on a consistent basis and they're all easily fixable. We'll be talking about how often you should be doing intervals whether or not you should be hitting the gym and the last mistake is probably the most detrimental as it has a huge effect on your performance over the course of a season and it's probably the easiest to implement as well yet most cyclists still don't do it so be sure to stick around for that. If you're new to this channel I make weekly training, racing and gear related videos going over tips and tricks that I've learned in my 12 years of training and racing experience that have gotten me to the top of the ultra endurance mountain bike game in the U.S. 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. All right let's jump right into the training mistakes. The first mistake that almost every serious cyclist has made or is currently making on a regular basis is trying to fit in too many high-intensity or interval days into the week. Let's start by asking how many interval days is optimal? A review of the best practices for training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes advocated for two or three high-intensity or threshold intensity sessions per week and that additional increases in high-intensity frequency do not induce further improvements and tend to induce symptoms of overreaching or overtraining. It's not uncommon for ambitious athletes to try to fit in four or five high-intensity sessions in a week and then wonder why their numbers are stagnating. More is not always better and this is often the case with high-intensity work. A study done on interval training at VO2 max took eight runners and had them perform VO2 max intervals once a week and then overtrained them by having them perform the intervals three times a week. The results showed that surprisingly the subjects did not improve after the overtraining period and the study concluded that performance did not increase after four weeks of VO2 max intensive training. Overtraining from too much intensity often comes in the form of chronically feeling a low level of fatigue. Low enough that it doesn't ring any alarm bells and becomes your new normal but enough that it affects your performance. Many athletes feel that if they aren't suffering they aren't getting stronger but the lower-intensity workouts have their place and are beneficial as well. A review on high-intensity versus high-volume training stated that both high-intensity and low-intensity training are important components of the training program. They went on to say that a short-term period of high-intensity interval training can elicit improvements but also that important adaptations appear to occur with low-intensity continuous training that are not observed with mixed or high-intensity training. Now there are exceptions to the rule but generally you want to stick to two or on occasion three high-intensity sessions per week. Trying to fit in more than this is a recipe for overtraining. Yeah but does going after Strava segments every day of the week count as high intensity? The next training mistake is similar to the first one and it's something that I talk about on this channel a lot but it bears repeating because so many athletes mess it up and that is doing your recovery rides too hard. You almost can't do your recovery ride too easy but you can certainly do it too hard and most athletes do. The only thing that doing your recovery rides harder does is makes you not as fresh for your interval days which need to be as high quality as possible. A study on the impact of training intensity distribution on performance and endurance athletes took 12 endurance runners and 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. It may seem counterintuitive that riding extremely easy on these days will make you faster but remember that you're trying to set yourself up for a high quality high-intensity workout. That's where the real performance gains come from. So exactly how easy should these recovery rides be? Well your recovery zone is 55% or less of your FTP. Let's say your FTP is 300 watts. That puts your recovery zone at 165 watts or less. That means do not go over 165 watts on your recovery day. It doesn't mean try to average 165 watts or try to ride towards the top of that zone to maximize the workout. It means don't go over 165. Your average power should actually be much lower around 95 to 115 watts. If your threshold is lower than that then you definitely want to be looking at double digits for the average power on these rides. Now if you don't have a power meter but you have a heart rate monitor then your recovery zone is under 70% of your threshold heart rate but most recovery rides should be lower than this. For example my threshold heart rate is 175 beats per minute but I usually do my recovery rides around 100 beats per minute which is 57% of my threshold heart rate. For our next training mistake we have using the wrong FTP or really using an FTP that's too high. Here's a little tidbit the next time somebody tells you what their FTP is you can probably subtract about 10 watts off of that. What's my FTP? Well you know like three years ago when I was in the best shape of my life I did an 18 minute climb at 300 watts. So now after sitting on the couch all winter I'd guess it's probably 298 give or take. Almost everyone over estimates their FTP and part of that is due to testing methods. Your FTP is supposed to be the power that you can sustain for an hour but almost no one does a one hour test. Different testing protocols like the 20 minute or the two by eight minute can overestimate your FTP depending on what kind of rider you are. For example if you're a puncture rider who does better at shorter efforts then you'll obviously do better at a shorter test than someone who does better at sustained efforts. The other way that riders overestimate their FTP is by taking the best FTP number that they've ever gotten and then never changing it even if their fitness goes down. The problem with overestimating your FTP is that it makes it really difficult to complete workouts. It's already hard to do a two by 20 minute threshold workout but if you're shooting for a number that's five to 15 watts over your threshold then you're simply not going to complete the workout. When this happens a lot of riders will say that they just had bad legs and while off days do happen if they happen frequently then that means that you're either over trained or you have your threshold set too high both of which need to be addressed. For a lot of riders having a higher FTP is an ego boost so they manufacture a higher FTP in their head. The only thing this does is hurt your own training. Remember that cycling isn't a competition of who says they have a higher FTP it's a competition of who actually goes faster and the only person that you should be comparing your power data to is yourself. The next mistake is one that's fortunately becoming less and less common but I still see riders make all the time and that's being afraid of the gym. Many riders feel that since cycling is a sport where being lightweight is often an advantage and since going to the gym is a place where you bulk up that they need to avoid it or they point out that cycling is an aerobic sport and going to the gym works on your strength so there's not much crossover. As with everything though you need to look at the science and when you do that it becomes clear that there's no debate here. You need to make a lifting part of your training regimen. This study on whether strength training improves cycling economy in competitive cyclists took 16 competitive road cyclists and assigned them to an intervention group or a control group. The intervention group performed squats at four sets of four rep max three times per week for eight weeks as a supplement to their normal endurance training. So we're talking about heavy weight here this isn't the typical low weight high rep that's supposed to be good for endurance these are the kind of lifts that you would see strength athletes doing. The control group just continued their normal endurance training during this period. The results showed that the weight train group showed a 17.2 increase in time to exhaustion while the control group showed no significant increase and these results have been repeated in the literature. This study on strength trainings affects on five minute power took 20 well trained subjects and assigned them to a strength training group and a control group. In this study they were doing three sets of four to 10 rep max twice a week for 12 weeks so again very heavy weights here. The strength training group showed reductions in oxygen consumption heart rate blood lactate concentration and rate of perceived exertion during the last hour of 185 minutes of submaximal cycling and in the five minute all out effort their average power increased from 371 to 400 watts while the control group saw no significant increase. So why does lifting improve your performance? I mean after all cycling is an aerobic sport and lifting doesn't tax your aerobic system and studies that measure VO2 max find no change after lifting. This review on optimal strength training for running and cycling concluded that the improved endurance performance may relate to delayed activation of less efficient type 2 fibers, improved neuromuscular efficiency, conversion of fast twitch type 2x fibers into more fatigue resistant type 2a fibers or improved musculos tendon stiffness. The main reason that you gain strength as a new lifter is not because your muscles are growing but because your muscles learn to lift better by firing more motor units and not fighting each other. It turns out that this does translate into improved power on the bike as well. I've got two older videos on lifting for cycling but I plan on making an updated video in the near future going over everything from when you should lift to what the workouts should look like to how to fit it into your normal training schedule so be sure to stay tuned for that video. Alright we're on to our last training mistake and this one may be the easiest to execute physically but the hardest to execute mentally and that is taking a break. That's right sometimes not riding your bike for a prolonged period of time can actually make you faster. Have you ever heard someone say dude my uncle is so fit he runs 10 miles every morning never misses a day. This is not good. Never taking a break is a great way to become overtrained. Now obviously you want to have recovery days and recovery weeks but I'm talking about not touching the bike for a week to two weeks at strategic points in the year. For example this year in May my fitness really started to fall off. My power was down, my motivation was low and I started getting poor race results. I took a week off two weeks before the Mohican 100 and went on to win that race and set a course PR. I've taken a mid-season break for the last five seasons and regularly prescribed mid-season breaks to the athletes I coach and it works like a charm for setting you up for a great late season. This is especially true if you experience a different performance. The vast majority of the time the solution is not to train more but actually the exact opposite to take a break. The other time when I take an extended amount of time off the bike is during the off season. This break is a little bit longer at a week and a half to two weeks and it's extremely important for getting rid of the residual fatigue that you've built up over the season and it's a huge boost to motivation. I can't tell you how many athletes I've talked to who never taken off season or anytime off the bike and just keep training year round like their A race is two weeks away. Yeah dude exactly you always got to be race ready. Everyone knows to be fit in July you have to be the fastest one at the winter training ride in January. Those are the top five training mistakes that I see athletes make. To review you want to make sure that you're not trying to fit in too many interval days into a week. Two or three is optimal and any more than this and you're likely going to push over training. Make sure you're doing your recovery rides extremely easy. Doing them too hard will only take away from your high intensity days because you won't be giving your body a chance to recover. Be honest with yourself about your FTP. Having an FTP that's set too high will only make it harder to complete workouts. Don't be afraid to hit the gym. Pretty much all the science on lifting for cycling shows that lifting will make you faster and finally take a break. Don't keep banging your head against the wall all year. Let your body recover and recuperate. 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 so you don't miss any training tips. If you're looking for a coach if you sign up through CTS be sure to use my code CTSDJ to save $40 by waiving the registration fee. Details are down in the description.