 Welcome back to another video my name is Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at CTS and today we're going to be discussing how to become a faster climber. Now as you probably already know there are two very important factors when it comes to climbing ability and that is your weight and the power you can produce hence the all-important watts per kilogram equation. In this video I'll be tackling both sides of that equation as well as talking a little bit about climbing technique and whether or not it's better to stand or stay seated while climbing and what to do about cadence. 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 racing and training 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 then be sure to leave it in the comment section down below. I do my best to get to all the questions in the comments. Obviously there are a lot of factors that contribute to your cycling performance but there's a reason why so much emphasis is placed on your power to weight ratio. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this equation you simply take your power that you can produce and divide it by your weight and that'll determine how fast you can climb. Yeah obviously man that's why on Zwift I put my weight at 90 pounds. Let's start with how to increase your power. Now increasing your power doesn't mean a whole lot unless we have a time duration associated with that power. Your five second five minute and five hour max power are all produced in very different ways and require very different training. So when someone asks how can I improve my climbing ability they're kind of asking the wrong question. What kind of climbs are you training for? Are you training for punchy climbs that aren't going to last over a minute or are you training for long sustained climbs? Training for these two types of efforts can be very different and for the purposes of this video I'm going to focus on your ability to do extended climbs that last 10 minutes to an hour. That's what most people are talking about when they're talking about improving their climbing ability. To improve your ability to do extended climbs you want to increase your FTP or the power that you can sustain for one hour. I have a whole video about how to improve your FTP that I'll link in the description below. Most of what I'm about to say is from that video so if you want to see me go into more detail be sure to check that one out. Raising your FTP is as much about how you plan out your training month or week as it is about planning out specific FTP focused workouts. Now when planning out your training month you want to make sure that you employ progressive overload so that each week is harder than the last week and you can do this by increasing volume or intensity or both. If you apply the same amount of stress to your body that it's already adapted to then it'll stop making adaptations and you'll hit a fitness plateau. You also want to be sure to have a rest week in there somewhere preferably after three or four weeks of hard training. When planning out your training week you want to have two or on occasion three interval days per week. More than this likely won't make you faster and will probably have you burnt out after a couple weeks. A review on 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 over training. The rest of your rides for the week should be in zone two or active recovery rides. Pushing harder than this on these days means that you likely won't be fully recovered between your interval sessions and then those sessions won't be as high quality as they should be and you shouldn't skip the low intensity workouts just because they aren't taxing. Man endurance rides are just so boring. If I'm not chasing after a Strava segment or smashing my face in on a group ride I just don't even ride my bike. The low intensity days are an important part of your training as well. A review on high intensity versus high volume training stated that both high intensity and low intensity training are important components to the training program. They went on to say that a short-term period of high intensity interval training can enlist improvements but also that important adaptations appear to occur with low intensity continuous training that are not observed with mix or high intensity training. When training does not have an appropriate blend of both high intensity training and high volume training inserted into the program performance ability can stagnate. Once we have the training month and week organized we can get into the individual threshold workouts. A threshold focused workout should be done at 95 to 100% of your FTP and should have interval lengths of 10 to 20 minutes with rest periods one fourth to one half that time. We're looking for 30 minutes to an hour of total work done during these sessions. For a more novice rider looking for 30 minutes of work this might be three 10-minute efforts at FTP with five minutes between efforts. For a more intermediate level athlete this could be three 15-minute efforts with seven minutes in between or four 10-minute efforts with five minutes in between. For an advanced rider this could be four 15-minute efforts with five minutes in between or three 20-minute efforts with 10 minutes in between. Higher intensity intervals will bring up your threshold more quickly but you'll also max out the benefit that you see from them more quickly so you should use them as a tune up before your important race and make sure that you do them in a race specific way. Okay so that's the first half of the equation but now how do we go about losing weight? Again I have a whole video about weight loss for cycling that I'll leave in the description below but here are the cliff notes. The reason most diets don't work is because they're temporary fixes. If you go on a diet and then lose weight and then go back to your old diet you're going to gain the weight back after all that's how you gain the weight in the first place. The diet you use to lose weight needs to be one that you can sustain for the rest of your life not one where you're walking around all day starving thinking about food all the time. If you're constantly thinking about food and starving yourself that's an indication that that diet is not sustainable. If I could just have that piece of cake then I would finally be happy. No you got to make race weight be strong. Ah screw it I'll just buy some lighter wheels instead. So how do you go about doing this? Well you want your diet to be low in calorie density meaning that for a large volume of food you get a small number of calories. This will keep you satisfied with your portions while consuming fewer calories. A study on the energy density of foods effects on energy intake took 18 subjects and provided them with meals for two days during three separate testing sessions. In these three sessions the subjects consumed either low, medium, or high energy density or calorie density meals. The results showed that significantly more calories were consumed for the higher energy density conditions even though the amount of food by weight was relatively similar. Calories consumed were around 1800 calories for the high energy density group and below 1400 for the low. And that's the key here with low calorie density. You don't have to reduce your portion size or starve yourself to lose weight. 400 calories is the kind of deficit that you need in order to see consistent gradual weight loss. The study concluded that energy density influenced energy intake independent of macronutrient composition and that subjects reported no difference in feelings of hunger or fullness. Okay that's great but that was two days of eating. How does eating a low calorie density diet stack up in the long term? A study on energy densities effects on weight change over six years took 186 subjects and measured the energy density of their diet. Six years later they found that energy density of the diet had not changed for the individual and that a higher energy density was associated with weight gain and a higher BMI. The study concluded that low energy density diets moderate weight gain and that a lower energy density can be achieved by consuming more fruits and vegetables. And these are just two studies out of many. A systematic review on dietary energy density and body weight looking at many studies concluded that their findings highlight the growing body of scientific evidence suggesting a relationship between energy density and body weight and then consuming diets low in energy density may be an effective strategy for managing body weight. Okay so eating a low calorie density diet will help you lose weight but what does eating this way actually look like? If we take a look at this calorie density chart we can see that the lowest calorie dense foods are fruits and vegetables. These should be the center of your diet. When preparing a meal the vegetables should be the main course and take up the majority of your plate and everything else should be secondary. Fruit is great for breakfast or as a snack or especially after rides as it'll help you recover from a hard workout. Because of the high antioxidant load consumption of fruits and vegetables have been shown to improve recovery in multiple studies. You also want to try to eat as few processed foods as possible. For example processed grains have a lot higher calorie density than unprocessed grains do. Adopting this strategy isn't about counting macronutrients or portion control it's about developing a habit of eating that'll cause you to lose weight and settle at that lower weight and on top of that it'll improve your recovery after workouts and it's one of the healthiest ways to go about eating. Now let's take a minute to talk about climbing technique. Is it better to stand or stay seated while climbing? A study on seated versus standing climbing took seven competitive road cyclists and had them do a variety of trials both seated and standing. What they found was that VO2 max max heart rate and peak blood lactate were not different overall between the two however oxygen uptake and heart rate were lower for the sitting at a shallow four percent grade but when the grade got steeper the rate of perceived exertion was lower when standing. They concluded that standing was less economical during moderate climbing but decreased sensations of effort during steep climbing. In another study on seated versus standing climbing they found no difference in the time to exhaustion at 86 percent of max power however all subjects performed best at the highest power output when standing. They concluded that either sitting or standing can be used for submaximal intensities but standing should be used when maximal output is needed. Some riders prefer to stay seated while climbing while others prefer to get in and out of the saddle just look at two riders like Alberto Contador and Chris Froome. These are two of the best Grand Tour riders with vastly different climbing styles. Chris Froome rides planted in the saddle up the whole climb for the most part while Alberto Contador is constantly getting in and out of the saddle. What the research seems to be telling us is that it doesn't really matter which one you prefer although when the grade gets really steep or when you're trying to do a max effort then your best bet is probably to stand. Keep in mind as well that when you get on a climb your cadence will drop and for those of you that live in flat areas but you're training for climbing it may be important to practice low cadence riding. A study on preferred pedaling cadence of professional cyclists found that during mountainous scents riders seem to adopt a more economical or lower cadence around 70 rpm. This doesn't mean that you should actively try to lower your cadence while climbing but it does mean that if you live in a flat area where your cadence is normally high then you may want to practice riding at a lower cadence to get your body ready for climbing. A study on the effects of low and high cadence interval training on flat and uphill time trials had subjects do interval training at 60 or 100 rpm and then tested them on a flat and uphill 20 minute time trial. The results showed that the high cadence intervals improved time trial performance on the flat but not on the climb while the low cadence intervals improved performance on the flat and the climb. So if you don't have climbs available to you in your area then it may be worth doing some of your intervals at a lower cadence than you normally would. In conclusion the two biggest factors that affect your climbing ability are your weight and your power and when we're talking about sustained climbing we're really talking about FTP or the power you can sustain for an hour. Increasing your FTP and lowering your weight should be your main focus if your goal is climbing faster. Whether or not you prefer to sit or stand while climbing doesn't really seem to matter until you get to really steep grades or you're trying to do a maximal effort like up a short punchy climb. Also your cadence naturally tends to drop when you're climbing so if you live in a flat area it may be worth doing some low cadence drills. 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 for more. If you're looking for more training and racing content be sure to follow me on instagram twitter and facebook and if you want to follow my training then be sure to check me out on Strava. Finally if you're looking for a coach shoot me an email at djohnson at trainright.com