Summary

The conversation delves into the significance of structured training in sports, particularly focusing on how managing intensity can lead to better performance outcomes. It highlights the importance of recovery and adaptations over time, while also addressing the complexities introduced by variability in training methods that comes with group riding.

Takeaways

Structured training is essential for performance success. Managing intensity is crucial for recovery and adaptations. Variability in training can complicate performance outcomes. A well-structured plan can lead to year-on-year improvements. Intensity management should be considered in all training cycles. Coaching plays a vital role in structuring training effectively. Recovery is as important as the training itself. Performance peaks can be achieved through careful planning. Uncontrolled rides introduce variability that can hinder progress. Understanding the science behind training can enhance coaching effectiveness.

Monthly coaching RCA: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.322) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I am joined by RCA coach Ben Treville, who's a science data geek or data nerd. I always forget which one it is. I think I say that every time, Who's actually in the middle of Australia at the moment, traveling with his partner in the Northern Territory. So thanks for joining us today, Ben.

Alright, this podcast is brought to you by Starlink.

Yeah, the internet connection is actually pretty good based off of the last podcast we did. So hopefully no issues in this one today. I wanted to talk about group rides and bunch rides because a lot of people that come to us, they're doing them and they want to incorporate them and we want them to keep doing them. We call it the not negotiable rides because we want people to continue doing the rides that they enjoy doing.

you know, people also need to recognise that if you're overdoing them, which a lot of people are doing as well, you know, there's maybe some considerations you need to, you need to keep in mind. So in this chat today, I wanted to, you know, ask you with your, you know, partial science hat on, because I know there isn't a lot of science in this space specifically, this kind of indirect stuff that you've looked at, but also your anecdotal experiences as a coach, you know, working with amateurs and, and recreationalists that are doing

know, group rides as part of their training, you know, how does it look? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? What do we need to consider? So the first thing I'm going to ask you, because you know, a lot of people come to the RCA, they're making inquiries, I'm having conversations with them, and they're like, they're worried, do I have to let go of, you know, my group ride or my social ride or my, you know, we call it in noosa, the Tuesday world champs, you know, go smash fest with your mates. Do I have to get rid of that if I want to improve Ben?

Ben Treble (01:53.484) My favorite statement. depends. It's a point. I feel like I wear two hats. My lab coat as a sports scientist, and then I have my coaching cap and my sports scientist lab coat says, you know, from a technical point of view, structured training wins out. It's really about managing control and intensity and the more, even from a science or a coaching point of view that we can.

I can't.

Ben Treble (02:22.402) control, manage, intensity throughout a week, a block, a macro cycle, like a year on year within the plan, the better we can manage the recovery and the better that we can peak for a certain performance and find year on year adaptations. Once we add in variability, and I'm going to...

call on your bunch rides as highly variable uncontrolled rides, that's when things get a bit more complicated, right? And that's when you find that it's going to be difficult to plan a little bit, right? So that's the, we can dig a little bit more into the science side, because there is some science that's, would say, directly, or sorry, indirectly related to this topic. And that would be the science around what we call training intensity.

distribution, which is fancy words for, you know, how much time do we spend in each zone when we train? So I think a lot of our athletes and listeners are used to thinking about, you know, in training peaks, we can see that how many hours in a week have we spent in each zone, week on week, and you can see the general structure. The two most common would be targeting for either a pyramidal structure, where the higher the zone you go, the less time you spend.

And then you have probably what's got a bit more science behind it in terms of better outcomes, which would be polarized training or the 80-20 approach where you try to spend 20 % of your time at high intensity zones. And you spend 80 % of your time at the lower zones, so zone one and two. And you spend very little time in the middle in that zone three tempo space.

Can I, before you continue, can I just play a little bit of devil's advocate here because you you talk about the unpredictable nature and not being able to control what's happening in a group ride or a bunch ride and I get that but isn't that what happens in the events that a lot of people are targeting like their Fondo events or maybe they even want to go to a crit race so isn't a group ride like the perfect conditioning tool for those?

Cam Nicholls (04:40.64) No, it's unpredictable. Like you don't know what you're going to get. It's like for like.

This is where I put my, my coach had on. said it in our last podcast, but, I am an advocate for bunch rides in, two scenarios. One is when you have a rider that's at risk of burnout from structured training, because I think we need, we need two things long-term. The most important thing that I think we could all agree on in, in cycle training is consistency over the long-term.

Right? So how do we maintain consistency on the long term? The risk to achieving that is going to be burnout that stops you from training, taking a hiatus from training, which could be from work, family, travel, whatever it is. And then you have illness and injury. How do we reduce the risk of those things interrupting training?

Ben Treble (05:43.636) And I believe that you need to keep training fun and interesting. And one of the most motivating things, but nothing is more motivating really than chasing your mates. many of your PBs can a set by on your Tuesday worlds versus on the indoor trainer?

it's definitely, definitely Tuesday Worlds. But I do know, I mean, that other thing that's resonating going back to something you just said is burnout. I know if I do Tuesday Worlds and maybe if I did Saturday, the Saturday group ride as well, if I did that week after week after week, I'd be probably burnout within eight weeks, maybe even six. Yeah. Because there's too much for me. I know my body well now because I'm chasing wheels and you you're pushing yourself. You said, you know, you're getting PB's and stuff.

You know, if you're your one minute power and your five minute power and, you know, 20 minute power, PBs or close to every other week, there comes a point where the body's like, I know, I've had enough of that. And all of a sudden you're not even anywhere near those PBs and you're all of a sudden you're on a plateau and that's demoralizing too. So while the bunch ride is fun, when you're plateauing and your mates are going faster than you now and you can't pull turns.

maybe that affects the motivation. I there's certainly been a story of my past, not so much anymore because I'm a lot smarter, I listen to people like you now, but in the past, that's where I've been.

Yeah, in science, we call it social facilitation. Right? know, when you put yourself in an environment where you're surrounded by people say pushing harder than you, the sciences has researched this topic a bit and it applied to both this research on both, like, sort of real world sport and eSports. So they've had the same outcomes indoors and outdoors on this and people were able to achieve more PBs within that social

Ben Treble (07:45.496) group environment than outside of it. So there's still, think there's a lot of value to be had from Bunchrides, but it comes back to the individual and I think the timing of their program.

So with my writers, yeah, with my writers, what we try to do is let's say you have a goal, a target event that's in four months time.

Maybe within the base training, that's the time where we're going to make space for bunch rides. It might even be, or in the off season is a good time to make space for one or two depends on the individual bunch rides. But then as we get closer to the goal, we're probably going to reduce that to one bunch ride a week. And then when we'd say two months out, I'm probably going to say, look, let's keep this focused. Let's just do solo sessions for eight weeks. And at the end of the eight weeks after the target.

We have a couple of weeks where we do two social rides a week to bring back some of that. The social aspect's really important, but also it's fun and motivating, I think, bunch rides for people.

Okay. So what would you say then to somebody that, you know, has not negotiable to two group rides a week, but they want to improve. And I'm going to throw a curly one at you here as well. What if, what if their goal is actually to, to beat them like that? Cause we do have people that come to the RCA and like the number one goal is I want to beat my mates in the local group ride. Like that is, that is the goal, but they're also the irony of that is they're doing group rides all the time.

Cam Nicholls (09:23.746) You know what I mean? So they're probably hit a plateau because they're just doing the same thing every single time and fatiguing themselves as well. I know, like I think sometimes people forget that the heart's also a muscle. And if you're like two or three times a week going to max with your heart rate, know, stretching your heart every single week, two or three times a week, even I feel like that in itself, like there comes a point in time where it's like, well, the heart doesn't tend to ache like your muscles do and your joints do.

It tends to shut down the whole body when it's fatigued. So that's a pretty serious thing.

Yeah, I would agree. think what needs to happen is people have to remember that the work you do in the training isn't where you get the gains. It happens afterwards in the recovery. And if you don't get enough recovery, doesn't matter. Often you see this with the people who don't follow structured training as you're talking about, they might come to the RCA all the time and say, well, you know, I'm plateauing, but I'm doing more hours and more intensive than I ever have before.

Simple answer is you're not getting enough recovery and allowing the body to adapt to that training stress response. And because that's not happening, it doesn't matter how much more you push, if anything, all that's gonna do is take you from overreaching to over training and put you in a burnout mode.

right, which is what we want to avoid. So sometimes you have to go slower to get faster. I would suggest to those people, pick one bunch ride a week, skip the other one. The other thing, if we think about the polarized training model, right, 80, 20, if you're too long rides of the week, a bunch rides that are high intensity.

Ben Treble (11:13.582) There's a pretty good chance that you're not doing an 80 20. You're probably doing 80 20, but the 80 is hard and the 20s AC, which is, which is not what the science supports in terms of good outcomes in the longterm. So there's a balance to be had. And at some point you need to put the ego to the side. Now, if you really can't get rid of the two rides, the next step, the next best option would be.

In one of those rides, I would say one of them go hell for leather, like have a free ride, bunch ride that lets you, you know, get your fix. But the second one go on it, but you have to learn to say, okay, I have to learn how to drop the wheel or go off the front and drop back at certain points, right? So that will let you control the intensity. I remember doing bunch rides and I've had friends who were training come to bunch rides and they might go off the front and do an effort.

And then they'll come back and they might just sit on the back, right, to recover. And they'll actually use the bunch dynamics. They might talk to the bunch ahead of time. And I would say it's a courtesy to tell the bunch, guys, I'm actually doing a training ride. So they don't think you're just attacking the punch. So they know if you go off the front to do an effort, they're not going to chase you and kick things off. Or if they decide to kick things off, you might need to say, I've got to have the self-control to let it go and potentially get dropped on this bunch ride.

Hmm. Knowing that that will help me drop them next month when I do my free ride bunch ride. Hmm.

And what sort of stuff are you, you know, and this is a pretty broad question because everyone's different and everyone comes in at different levels. But let's just say as a general blanket and maybe I paint a bit of a picture here because a lot of people that come in, you know, I'll ask them and even if you look at and you go as a coach, I know you guys go a level above this because when somebody joins us, I'll incorporate, you know,

Cam Nicholls (13:19.37) import three months of historical data. And if I've been doing a lot of group rides, you can see what zones that they've really been hitting and focusing on. And quite often, because there is a lot of intensity in there, there's kind of like this gray area in the middle around sort of threshold, sweet spot. And in particular, I always ask people, do you ever do exclusive zone two? They've heard about zone two and they think they do it.

But like I'm talking about, no, no, you just actually go out ride for two or three hours and you just do zone two and you don't touch threshold. You really wanna focus on just nice, consistent, constant pressure at a zone two level. wow, I've never actually done that before. So there's often like looking at the data, lot of low hanging fruit items that you can focus on.

So if somebody's coming to you and they're doing a lot of group rides and say their goal is to improve in the group rides, but you've now convinced them, right, we're just gonna do one a week. What are you gonna put in sort of surrounding that, you know, in terms of training for the rest of the week?

I mean, how would I plan around a single bunch ride in a week?

Exactly. over a time as well, over a progressed 12 week period, how would you kind of start? let's assume that at the end of the 12 weeks, they want to now, they've been getting dropped off the back and they can't pull turns, but after 12 weeks, they want to be getting to the front and pulling turns again and feeling really strong again in their group rides and impressing their mates and doing all the things that we love to do in the group rides.

Ben Treble (14:59.438) I'd spend, I'd probably spend the first block weaning them off bunch rides, to be honest. So I would let them, at least the first week, I would let them have status quo, put in a couple other structured rides and see how well they can actually hit the target intensities of a recovery ride. I often find with new riders, when I give them a recovery ride, they turn it into something else. And the TSS looks way higher than it needs to be.

And they don't realize that a recovery ride is very low intensity. It's like if you were running and I said, go for a walk, that's like the equivalent of, you know, think of what is a walking pace on the bike. You might think to yourself, why would I bother? That's the right pace for your recovery ride. The point that you think, well, how am I bothering with this? That's the good intensity for recovery ride. so that's where I would start. So first block, wean them off.

In the middle, I would try and even get them off bunch rides completely for at least one block. I think most people are willing to do one block with no bunch rides, just do some focused efforts. In the final block, bring them back into the bunch rides once a week, manage it. And then towards the very end of a 12 week program, give them free rein on a bunch ride and see what they can do.

Okay, and what sort of training would you be prescribing if they're not doing bunch rides? Well, what are they doing then? Are they just doing recovery rides?

No, no, it's going to be a mixture. ideally on the weekend, you're doing, let's say one or two long rides, but let's say you get someone who has six to eight hours a week, and we're going to target for say four rides a week. We're going to do one long one on a weekend around two and a half, three and a half hours. This will be predominantly zone two with some high talk efforts. So that's a low cadence intervals in the sort of zone three range.

Ben Treble (17:00.846) Then mid-week, you probably have two full days off at least, and then split up to structured intensity days, which will most likely be a mixture of either threshold, which could be over unders, for example, or might be if we want to work on via 2 max, it could be 30 15s, for example. And then we're going to have a zone two ride and potentially a zone one recovery ride.

Yep, it's interesting. And just what you've said there, I mean, there's so many people out there that don't spend that much time on structured interval training. And, you know, they wonder why they struggle with recovering from, you know, doing a turn in the local bunch ride. You know, they can't go again, or, you know, they're struggling to, you know, get up a climb in their local bunch ride. And it's like, well, when you actually step away from that environment, and you target

you know, specific adaptations. So, you you're over-unders, that's gonna help you with your climbing. You've probably never done this before, because you're so focused on group rides and sporadic riding, all of a sudden you're targeting something that's gonna give you a specific outcome. The same as the, you know, VO2 max, you know, interval sessions, like 30, 15s, or whatever it is. That's gonna really help you with the ability to go really hard, come back into the bunch and recover. Go really hard, come back into the bunch and recover. And it's funny when people actually take, like what you've just described.

we're gonna take a step back, we're gonna just move away from that environment for a little bit, and we're gonna do some specific things that are gonna have specific outcomes, then when you get back into the group ride, you've done all these things you've never done before that are targeted for specific adaptations. it's amazing, you know, that the feedback you hear from recreationals and amateurs that actually embrace what you've just described there, Ben, and go back into that environment like, oh, okay, I get it now.

If I want to be good at this, I can't just do this all the time. Having said that, I do know there are the unique individuals out there that can just do bunch rides all the time and be good at them. We've got one locally here we call the robot. We call him the robot because he's like a robot. He's genetically a little bit different. So it can be, but more often than not, and I'm certainly one of these people, if I don't go do my...

Cam Nicholls (19:17.966) some targeted stuff surrounding the group rides, do my long rides in zone two, do some structured threshold, hill repeats, whatever it might be. I won't perform as well in the group ride. that's a brief overview of how you would sort of, I guess, target or improve group rides. You don't have direct research there, but you've got some indirect stuff.

What does that stuff say? Is there any enlightening things that have come out of that research?

Any

Ben Treble (19:56.64) Yeah, I mean, the research that comes to mind is on the topic of, we said it earlier in the podcast, training intensity distributions. Steven Seiler is probably one of the more prolific researchers out there on this topic. And he had a predominant focus on the 80-20 model. I think some would even say that he's sort of not necessarily come up with that model, but been a big driver in the, you know, the endurance sports space.

trying to get people to adopt this intensity distribution model and the benefits of it. So I think it's pretty quick. Like if we, when we look at new athletes that come in, that come from this bunch riding mentality, haven't done structured training, if you look at their training history and you look at, assuming their threshold is set right, when you look at how the intensity distribution works in their history.

It's very rarely is it ever 80 20. And even often it's not really a very good pyramidal structure either, which is often just, yeah, sorry. Pyramidal would be you spend the most amount of time in the lower zones. So the bottom of the pyramid is your like zone one, then you have zone two, which would be like your typical endurance zone. And then as you go up the pyramid, the higher intensities, they're the ones you spend the least amount of time.

Yeah, so the main difference between pyramidal and polarized for those who may not be aware is you're spending just a little bit more time in zone two in the pyramidal, which is in essentially if you're not, most people aren't using a three zone model, which is what pyramidal and polarized use, which is the scientific zone model, which only has three zones, but zone two is more sort of like that sort of upper end aerobic sort of sweet spot.

tempo area, which really isn't prescribed so much in polarised, but it is in a pyramidal format. I don't know about you, Ben, but I know a lot of the coaches at the RCA, depends on the athlete as well, probably using more of a pyramidal approach than a polarised. still, if you're doing bunch rides, it's neither of those two things. guess that's the point you're trying to make.

Ben Treble (22:21.9) Yeah, there's quite a few in the research world. have what's called systematic reviews, which they systematically go out into the journal databases, pull all the research on certain topics. They try and pull all the data from each paper together in a way that lets them analyze a larger data set to see if there's any outcomes or insights.

And there's quite a few, there's probably three, if not now, maybe even five. I think there was another one that just came out recently systematic reviews on training intensity distribution. People are often trying to compare pyramidal to polarized. And then they often have like threshold and some other, you know, categorizations of training intensity models.

And there are certain papers that show pyramidal is better and certain that show polarized is better. There's probably more papers that support polarized over pyramidal. My hypothesis on this is that if you have less hours and you're say less trained, like an amateur recreation, you're better off with pyramidal. And the more well-trained you are, the more you need to switch into a polarized model.

Hmm.

Typically because the more well-trained you are the more volume you're doing and the more volume you do at a certain point You're limited by your energy, but both

Cam Nicholls (23:46.798) Both these models are proven models and both of them don't align to the Buntride model, do they?

No. So that's my point. come back to my first thing I said, which was that the variability that you get out of these bunch rides is uncontrolled and it's not predictable. So it's very hard to plan and do structured training and have really good outcomes. If you just do these bunch rides. The key thing here is that there's a time and place for bunch rides. The science side says solo structured training is always better, but in the long run, we know that you need to be consistent and stay motivated. So

If you're in the off season or you're a bit further away from doing an event you're targeting, that's the time and place to fit in those bunch rides and get your fix. And then the closer you are to your goal, you probably need to make more space for the structured training and it's more valuable and important.

Good. All right. Well, thanks for your time, Ben. If you're out there listening and you're like, well, you know, I wouldn't mind incorporating some structured training into my bunch riding schedule. And I want some support. want some guided support. know Ben's got some capacity at the moment. So if you want to work with Ben directly, you can head to the RCA website. You'll see monthly coaching there. That's our most popular option. There's also a weekly option if you want something a little bit more intimate.

And there you can work one-on-one with Ben or any of our coaches to, I guess, put a plan together that works around your schedule, looks at the bunch rides that you wanna target, you wanna improve. And we can ensure that you're getting the right training to get you off the plateau because that's really a hidden motivator for a lot of road cyclists that come to us is, they wanna be better in the group rides, they wanna be better in the bunch rides.

Cam Nicholls (25:36.706) but they've hit a plateau and they're not sure what to do about it. Well, that's where obviously we can support you. So head to the Road Cycling Academy website, www.roadcyclingacademy.com and you'll see a link in the menu description called hire a coach and that's where you can get started. We'll catch you in the next podcast.