How i got the best fitness of my life

Training
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Hello, I’d like to share my progress because this forum has a lot of great members who have given grade feedback on this journey. About a year ago, I bought a new bike I had promised myself for many years. Upgrading to a new disc brake bike (tcr advanced pro 0) from my supersix evo with red22. This was a good upgrade especially now that i’ve put som nice wheels on it.

But over he last year, I’ve ridden pretty consistently through the mountains here in SEAsia. This last week I did my fastest time ever up the local climb just at 40 minutes.

I did literally zero structure besides riding the mountains/hills regularly and progressively overloading my weekly KJs, peaking right out at around 8000kj for the week.

I basically have two limiters for the progression of my fitness. The first one is injury. And the second one is mental. That is somethign I’ve learned in the last 15 years of cycling. You cannot ignore these if you want progress. And you cannot rush your progress. So my plan was to increase the amount of KJ I did per week by under 10% and include a full blown rest week each week. I think that’s really all the magic it takes to get faster. If you just keep at those two things, you have no choice but to get faster, as long as you’re not just putting in junk miles. But the KJ will naturally rise as your average watts goes up.

Anyway, here’s my current fitness level coming up from 0. I had spent 3 months off the bike after a lot of riding in costa rica, el salvador, and honduras.

Screenshot 2023-09-03 at 10.56.14 PM
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Looks like you are reaping the rewards from solid consistent training. I never thought of kilojoules, I just try to stay in the optimal training zone. Which means longer/faster/harder rides as my fitness improves. Which is the same as increasing kJ.
The fitness chart is misleadingly named. It is really load with respect to current FTP. For actual fitness I look primarily to FTP and VO2max improvements.

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Agree. I feel like there is a hierarchy of ways to measure fitness improvements. The whole point of this thing is to go faster right? Not just make bigger numbers, right? I think VAM is probably the best metric out there to measure fitness increase.

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Go faster? No, not necessarily the end goal. Depends on what you’re looking for. The whole point of training for me is to increase my metabolic health, or in other words, my ability to burn fat. If I win a few races along the way then great. If not, I couldn’t care less.

Going faster for a given RPE will likely go hand in hand with improved metabolic health, but it’s not the the ‘point of this thing’ :wink:

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@Steve_Balboni, thanks for sharing. Discovering and committing to what it takes to be consistent over years is wonderful. :+1:

My reasons for training are physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. I’m interested in improving quality of life and an ability to do (more) work over (longer) duration, improving and maintaining strength and function (including metabolic health) over time.

  • @am50em, personally, FTP and V02max are not, themselves, markers of fitness.
  • @Steve_Balboni, for me, going faster is nice but it’s not the whole point.
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thanks for sharing about yourselves

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Tracking KJ is a good way to create a trend for/of improving fitness. The inherent trap is to make it a daily ‘number grab’, which is what some (popular) metrics have become. But it looks like you discovered that pitfall and have found a way to avoid it. Big kudos!

Personally, I’d like to see more emphasis on tracking METs, lactate (resting and work at all levels), BG (which is not to say that I think everyone would benefit from CGMs), and (more importantly) insulin if/when that technology becomes readily available to the populace than, say, VO2max and FTP. Why? Because the aforementioned items provide more information about what’s actually going on inside the body over time.

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Firstly, congratulations on your improvements, and your desire to get faster.

Secondly, don’t be blind to the fact that all kJ, like TSS/Load, is not created equally. 1kJ = 1000W for 1 second, or 200W for 5s.

It is still possible do “junk miles” if the focus is only on kJ. Where measuring kJ can be good is when you need to fuel for longer/more intense rides.

Here are 4 workouts (clockwise from top left) that have a similar kJ (except the last workout), but the recovery needed for each one is vastly different:

  • 1112kJ from 90m at +/-70% of FTP
  • 1199kJ from 90m, with 44m TIZ in L4 power
  • 1190kJ from 90m including 3 sets over/unders.
  • 953kJ from 70m with 25m TIZ in L5 power (VO2)
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If I train consistently my VO2max and FTP will usually increase, and I can perform my rides “better” i.e. faster and/or less effort. But fitness is not a particularly very well defined concept, or to put another way there can be multiple definitions. I also track resting heart rate, HRV, body composition. But you could add strength and endurance or flexibility, or …
My point was I don’t think the load chart is a “good” measure for fitness. It tells me how consistent (or not) my training has been and guides my efforts. It usually correlates with fitness.

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You know what I find interesting about my fitness now is how much my 1 minute power has suffered. I have by far the best 1 hour power I’ve ever had. But my 1 minute power is just terrible. It’s almost frighteningly bad.

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"The idea that exercise should almost always be hard is a myth”

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cries a bit looking at my tabata and hard-start threshold workouts for the week

But last week of a build then back to some more base…which I hope feels easier after this week! :slight_smile:

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A full blown rest week every week?! Do you mean every month? Or a rest day once a week?

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@Steve_Balboni, thanks for sharing this… I will share something w/ you…

  • cancer in 2009, beat it, but got quite overweight (211lbs on a 5’10 1/2" frame)
  • stayed heavy until 2014, when I got sick of it…
  • started cycling in earnest in 2015 … partly to try to reduce chance of early vascular dementia and/or heart failure that males in my both sides of my family have experienced
  • I’ve done about 50k miles now according to Strava … this year I’ll end up at around 9k miles, it seems…
  • been using intervals.icu for 2 years how, Xert before that…

@Steve_Balboni , you specifically mentioned your power profile #'s… I’ve been working at mine the last 2 years as well. It sounds like you (just like me :smile: ) are not a natural born sprinter…

What I’ve done over the last year & a half is to work at reshaping my power curve (profile). I used to be “Time Trialist” or “Century Rider”. But bit by bit, I started throwing in a bit less distance, and more Seiler -style intervals { 5 min, or 8m or 12 min } and also Ronnestad -style workouts . Also a lot of Sweet-Spot work on off-days where I was feeling still a tiny bit tired a few days after VO2Max workouts.

All in all, it has paid off nicely. My profile now reads “Puncheur” or “All Rounder”, depending on what I’ve worked on the last 2 weeks or so.

I also came to grips with three things that helped me immensely:

  • diet that supports keeping weight down, and calories up usually only when I have a hard workout or event coming up - weight stays between 155 and 165 lbs nowadays…
  • rest days - I mean real rest days (these are different for everyone… for me a real rest day is sitting on the trainer and Zwifting at around 1.5w/kg for 90 min - 2hrs ; some will say rest means you get off the bike , but for me the endorphins make it better to stay on but go gently)
  • cutting down on alcohol (I had this arrhymia problem after long, hard rides; lowering caffeine in general, as well as cutting back on EtOH (beer, wine) has helped…

Everyone is different, everyone has their own idea(s)… and their own shortcomings to address, maybe.

I’m currently at about 160 days straight on the bike.

Also, remember FTP is just one number/dimension. 5min maximal power is a good indicator of some things… Sprinting is fun, but it takes some practice and patience (a different kind than distance patience)…

Definitely you are doing good stuff… keep at it! :+1:

What @Gerald said about “Junk Miles” is huge. I used to stay in Z3 forever on the trainer… and it was a sort of “black hole” for me. I have now gravitated towards HIIT, and training that is more polarized, both in the short term (doing more Ronnestad/Seiler workouts), and in the long term (doing really hard workout 2 times a week or so, a few moderate ones, and the rest easy). It has made it more fun, less boring, and way more effective.

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Yeah I meant every month heh

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This is great. Could you provide some more details about the protocol:

  • What do you mean by full blown rest week? Did you perform no cycling activity that week or did you simply decrease training load by some set percentage?
  • Also what do you mean by junk miles? Does the KJ work have to be done in a certain zone i.e. Z3-4? For example if it was done in Z1 would it be considered junk miles?