Fasted Training

Fasted Training is not something I have given much thought to. However, on examining my training log, it is something I do. Regularly. In fact, about 5 times per week. I get up and use my commute to train, run or bike, before having my first meal of the day at work. Or, I get up early on a weekend and grab a quick run or swim before the rest of the household rises – again before breakfast.

So, in short, I am a fasted training.

Don’t get me wrong I am not a low carb high fat dude. Or an evangelist of training the body to burn more fat. It just turns out that 50% of my training is fasted.

The theory:

If you train in a fasted state, the body will be forced to break down stored fats in order to fuel the training. In this situation, your insulin level is low and will not interfere with the fat burning process, thus allowing you to access and burn more stored body fat for fuel.

My Experiences:

Looking back at my training diary I cannot see a definite train. What I can see is that I have had great training sessions, session where I feel like I’m floating along – one with the world. Although, on the flip side, I can also so sessions where I’ve died on my feet. I have bonked, hit the wall – whatever you want to call it.

However, I would say, that I have been more likely to crash and burn in sessions that are closer (in time) to the hour, or more. So, for me – there may be a limit to how much I can push myself on an empty stomach.

But I have been able to maintain quite a low (for me) body fat – even though I like my food and a beer or three.

My thoughts:

Fasted training may not be for everyone. If you think on it. training on an empty stomach used to go against the grain in the fitness world. However, we are learning that there is no one right formula for all who train. So, it may be worth giving a go.

If you do give it a go, don’t jump in all gung-ho. Ease in to things. Test out training at various intensities, as some athletes have better results with easy session but don't perform well with higher-intensity workouts, and yet others are the polar opposite.  

We are all different so it pays to try different training methodologies… don’t you think?

Also, break the fast as soon as you have finished your training. Not with any of these faddy diets., but with a good balanced meal. A meal that includes a good mix of protein, fats and complex carbs …. Your belly will thank you for it.

Will

Making the Most of Time: The Bike Commute (Part 2)

As I have already stated, I have started using my commute to work as active training time. For now, most of this is on the bike. That’s because I’m not very good on a bike. Last time I blogged about my easier structured sessions on the way into work. This time I will cover the harder part of my regular commute.

Travelling from work

On the way home, the need to stay fresh has passed – so I can give these sessions the extra that will push me on. Unless I am actively recovering these will always leave me feeling I have put in some work. (Even at these short distances). There are times where I will just have an easy ride if I need a level of active recovery, but most of the time I try to get some quality work done.

For me I have a 5-mile (or more) stretch up a slight but continuous hill. My most common sessions are: -

• Saw Tooth Intervals – I pick an upper HR% and a lower HR% and aim to move back and forth between the 2. For example 82% and 65%. I push myself until my HR is at 82% then ease off until it drops back to 65%. Then start to push again. 
• Heart Rate Time Trial – I will aim to ride home at between 80 and 85% MHR recording the time, to monitor improvement. (This is a bit of a LT training session for me.)
• Standard Short Intervals – These are simple 1min hard, 1 min active recovery. The 1min hard is hard but not a maximum effort. 
• High Intensity Intervals – Done as 20sec hard followed by 40sec recover. This time the hard is at my maximum effort
• Big Gear – A simple one, where I ride the majority of the ride in a much bigger gear than I am use to.
• Standing – I ride home out of the saddle, thus recruiting slightly different muscles than I normally use.
• The Long Hill Ride – once per week I will use my road bike rather than my MTB and take a longer route home (25-35mile). The aim of this is to get some quality hill climbing in. I try to hit categorised hills and aim to average well over 100ft of climbing per mile travelled.

Will

Making the Most of Time: The Bike Commute (Part 1)

For the majority of us training for Ironman, Triathlon, or any other endurance sport, the key is quite often capitalising on the time that we have available to us. Too often, I hear the excuse: “I haven’t got time to exercise.” We all have the same amount of hours in the day. It is up to us on how we choose to use them.

One way to make more time available is to make use of your commute. I know this is not available to everyone. Some people have mad 50-mile commutes. However, I do know of people that will drive part the way then use the rest of the journey as training time. (There is always a way if you want it.)

For me I am lucky. Where I live has a Sustrans cycle way running through past my house. The same cycle way, further down the line, runs past the business park where I work. Perfect!!!

I no longer drive to work, I run or ride. Bonus training time that does not eat into family time. Result.

For me the journey, depending on my choices, is only about 6-10 miles on the bike. Not a huge distance but it is a distance that I can make work for me. Especially using a heavier fat tiered MTB.

Travelling to work

Obviously going to work, I do not want to arrive there a dripping mess of mud and sweat.  However, I still want the rides to have a purpose (All training sessions should have a purpose). For me my rides into work, none of them hard – but all with a purpose, fit into one of these: -

• Recovery – Easy spin to loosen up the legs from the rigours of the previous day’s hard work. This will leave me feeling fresh and ready to go
• Drills – Could be 1-legged drills or focus on individual segments of the revolution. Alternatively, even a combination of the two. Great skills sessions.
• Constant Cadence – fixing a cadence and completing the whole ride maintain that cadence. Help me learn the feel of various spin speeds.

Next time I’ll look at the harder sessions, on my commute back home.

Will

Indoor Training (Bricks)

During the winter, a lot of training moves in doors through necessity imposed by bad weather and dangerous conditions.  You do not want to end your season before it has even started because a care has knocked you off your bike in the dark or it has slipped away from you in the ice, so indoor it is…

Monday’s for me normally means a brick session, and these can be quite long, but long and indoors does not have to mean boring.  The following are examples of the bike and run segments I may do as part of the indoor brick …

BIKE

 

This may be (for me from 1:00 to 2:30)

Session 1

Warm Up 10 – 15mins

Main set
 # x (

- 3 mins seated climbs just below VO2max 

- 2 mins standing  climbs just above VO2max

- 1min lighter resistance speed spin trying to maintain VO2max

- 2min recovery

)

Warm down 10-20mins

Session 2

Warm Up 10 – 15mins

Main set

# x ( 

- 5-10 x (1min seated climb | 1 min recovery)
- 5-10 x (1min fast spin | 1 min recovery)
- 5-10 x (1min standing climb | 1 min recovery)

- 5-10 x (1min fast spin | 1 min recovery)

- 5 min Easy
)

Drills

- 5-10 x 1min (each) 1 legged drills
Warm down 5-15mins

RUN

When in the gym the run part I aim to keep to a maximum of 30mins or so and base my sets on my steady marathon pace of 10kph (the gym I use is in kph)

Session 3
5 mins building speed
Main set
- Intervals 5 mins of ‘ups’ @ 10.5 kph and downs fast walked @7.5kph
- Intervals 5 mins of ‘ups’ @ 11.0 kph and downs fast walked @7.5kph
- Intervals 5 mins of ‘ups’ @ 11.5 kph and downs fast walked @7.5kph
- Intervals 5 mins of ‘ups’ @ 12.0 kph and downs fast walked @7.5kph
- Intervals 5 mins of ‘ups’ @ 12.5 kph and downs fast walked @7.5kph
Warm down

Session 4
5 mins building speed
Main set
- 1 min 10.0kph | 1 min 9.5kph
- 1 min 10.5kph | 1 min 9.0kph
- 1 min 11.0kph | 1 min 8.5kph
- 1 min 11.5kph | 1 min 8.0kph
- 1 min 12.0kph | 1 min 7.5kph
- 1 min 12.5kph | 1 min 7.0kph
- 1 min 13.0kph | 1 min 6.5kph
- 1 min 13.5kph | 1 min 6.0kph
- 1 min 14.0kph | 1 min 5.5kph
Warm down

Have Fun

WW

Heat Rate Zones

For both running and cycling a train by heart rate, some people train by pace, by power, by feel but I train by Heart rate.

The thing is that I use one system for cycling and another for running, the reason for this is that I have been lab tested on the bike (see earlier post) but not for my run. So for cycling a use a range of zones based on my VO2 max and for running a set of zones base on my Max and Min Heart rates.

Cycling

VO2max  = 147bpm

Zone 1	Recovery	91 - 121
Zone 2	Extensive Endurance	122 - 130
Zone 3	Intensive Endurance	131 - 137
Zone 4	Sub Threshold	138 - 146
Zone 5a	Super Threshold	147 - 150
Zone 5b	Anerobic Endurance	151-155
Zone 5c	Power	156+

Running

Max HR = 175bpm
Min HR =47bpm

Zone 1	50% - 60%	111 - 124
Zone 2	60% - 70%	124 - 137
Zone 3	70% - 80%	137 - 149
Zone 4	80% - 90%	149 - 162
Zone 5	90% - 100%	162 - 175

WW

Winter Brick Sessions

By the time I finished work last night it was already getting dark, and my breath stood heavy on the quickly chilling evening air … and I wanted to get in a brick session, I thought it may be a bit dangerous out on the bike in rush hour traffic in the dark so the plan was to hit the gym and the spin bike for the firs segment then outside for the run. After all the weather/conditions in the UK really fall to where you cant get outside and run and treadmills are the invention of the devil.

So since it was going to be the spin bike I decided to push a heavy load and work my HR aiming to sit just below my Vo2 max (85-90% of) with recoveries dropping to 75% (just above the point where my lactic levels start to rise). The work out looked like :-

10min warm up
10 x (
- 2min heavy standing
- 1min heavy seated
- 1min spinning seated (rec)
- 1min heavy seated
)
8 x (
- 40secs heavy standing
- 80secs heavy seated
- 40secs heavy standing
- 80secs heavy seated
- 1min spinning seated (rec)
)
5 x (
- 1min heavy standing
- 1min heavy seated
- 1min spinning seated (rec)
)
5mins spinning

So 2 hours in total on the bike, by now I was drenched in sweat so I had a quick towel down pulled on my jacket and out the door I was.  The sky was clear and star filled (even amongst the light pollution) and I quickly started to feel the sweat in my hair start to freeze so I decided that I should go for a decent pace to keep mw warm, aiming for 80-85% MHR.

The first part of the run was flat allowing me to maintain my HR then as I approached the end of my loop it was time for hill reps … or hill sprints to be exact:

8 x 45sec hill sprints | walk back recoveries

The aim on these sprints is to really push myself and maintain a long stride length throughout, I time for first sprint and at my end point, so I always run the same distance for each sprint but by the last sprint it may be taking me longer than 45secs … but you get the point.

My session was finished off with a jog back to the gym, strides and stretching ….

Total run time 40mins

Not a bad midweek session … well for me

WW

Cycling Physiological Assessment (Part 2)

Interpreting the results …

Having all that data is one thing but understanding what it means and how to make use of it is another, the output from the assessment was a personalised 13 page report, which took a few days to prepare, that combined my results with my sporting aims (endurance as opposed to sprint) but briefly here are some points that came form the report …

Firstly my training zones: -

ZONE	HR	GUIDELINES
1	to 112bpm	Used for recovery purposes. Early winter training, or as a training zone if you build up extensive miles (6 hours/day)
2	114bpm -147bpm	Foundation of endurance training. Develops lactate removal capabilities and extensive overload on the mechanisms of aerobic respiration. The level where training induces performance improvements.
3	148bpm -162bpm	This is intensive training. This will bring your form forward to a peak. It is probably easier to do this type of training in an interval format, as it is simply difficult to maintain this intensity for long periods without the ‘racing’ motivation. The level three training sessions will be quite short.
4	162bpm +	Intensive intervals to top your form off. Monitoring of heart rate is usually not needed. Can be developed to enhance sprinting and time trialling.

Next my weight, as can be seen I an quite a bit heavier than the elite or age grouper (although taller) so I could do with dropping some weight, this will not improve my cycling but will help improve my power to weight ratio (currently 3.06W/kg) my aim is to drop about 6kg which by itself will help me realise a .25W/kg improvement and help with my climbing (which has always a problem)

Improving maximum power and oxygen consumption (and helping push up my VO2max) will be a case of training mid to longer training sessions in Zone 2 with mid (upper mid) zone having the most benefit and save most of the Zone 3+ work until after base training. To ensure control over this factor the use of turbo / spinning bike will be adopted in the off season

My strength is not very good (283w max power) so that is another area I need to work on during the off season and this needs to be both cycling specific and generic.  The cycling specific work will be taking the form of hill reps and be complicated with some off season gym work focusing on strength endurance this will help me push up my wattage and therefore improve my cycling weight to strength ratio.

So that is what my plan is based on at the moment and I will be going back to get retested in the new year to see what effect my training is having and this will co-inside with me commencing a specific Ironman training program.