Your Body is Complex, but Your Workouts Don’t Need To Be.

The Simplicity Advantage: Why Straightforward Workouts Trump Complexity

Workouts with 20 steps to them aren’t better than a workout that is a simple duration and heart rate range as a target, if the workout doesn’t actually get done. A complicated workout is just a complicated workout. Some coaches use complicated workouts because they, themselves, believe that complex workouts with multiple steps must be better. Some use them because it makes the training for bike racing seem so complicated that the complicated workout is necessary, thus helping ensure keeping a coaching client. Further, if you race your bike outdoors, and you have a workout that can only be done on the trainer, what is the actual limiter in racing your bike that you need to address on the bike, but can’t do while actually riding your bike?

Einstein's Wisdom in Training: "If You Can't Explain It Simply

Albert Einstein is often credited with saying,"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” That is, is your workout complicated for the sake of being complicated? If you aren’t an expert on training methodology or crafting workouts to address a specific purpose, it may be that all workouts sound all science-y, and you’re glad you have someone so smart to give you workouts that look like linear algebra. Really, though, it’s not necessary for workouts to have so many steps that you can’t follow it without technological assistance. Your workouts should have a purpose, and that purpose should be clear before you even step over the top tube.

Purposeful Workouts: Understanding the Basics

Workouts are to build endurance, to work on a skill, to work on an energy system, to mimic an effort, or they are recovery days. That’s it. When you step into your pedal,

you should know what the purpose of your workout is. You may not understand the exercise physiology, or you might not have experience in why a workout is applied when, but you should know the basics of why you are doing what you are doing. If it is a day to build threshold, it should be clear. To build threshold, you’re doing efforts at threshold, below threshold, or above threshold. All are approaches to raising threshold, but the why of you’d take each approach would be unique to the athlete doing the workout, not some philosophy of a coach.

If it is a day to build what is typically called “VO2max,” which is generally described as what we can do for about 5min, then you’re going to have efforts at that effort, above that effort, or below that effort. Regarding this type of effort, specifically, before you begin the effort, do you even know if this is an area of strength or weakness for you? You should. If it is a day to build anaerobic capacity, which is generally described as what we can do for one minute, then you should know that you’re working on that, specifically. This is one area that we at WRA have found athletes who are new to us often don’t address this at all, and particularly

for road events, it’s a major component of how the end of races plays out. It matters more than your 5 second wattage. Yes, it does. We can fight about it, but even if you won, you’d still be wrong. It’s probably that you or your coach just don’t like doing those kinds of efforts. If it is a day to build endurance, it’s usually going to be a longer ride, with “longer” for most folks being something that gets done on the weekend.

Endurance Training Unveiled: Beyond Riding Longer

Improving endurance isn’t simply being able to ride longer, but it’s also being able to do more for a duration that is more than an hour. While it isn’t uncommon to include other efforts within an endurance ride, for most amateurs, making an endurance ride complex is more about the coach wanting to put some busy work in there. At the upper competitive levels, when the endurance to complete a race or event is already well established, some of the workouts above (threshold, VO2max, anaerobic capacity) might be included in the latter part of endurance workout. How do you know that you are ready for that?

Are you there at the end of your races, and factoring in the finish or placings? Is there a category or two or three above the category you’re in now? We at WRA like to keep those longer rides such that they can be social for most folks. While a nice, long, solo ride is often good for the soul, it’s the case for many that they like to do those longer rides with people for a social aspect. And, frankly, these days there is some merit to having people with you out on the road. A group ride can be an endurance day, but for many, it is a ride where sitting in makes it too easy, and then pulling is too hard…so what is really being worked on here? Was the pulling enough work to improve whatever was being worked on there? Was sitting in too easy to improve endurance or ability and purely aerobic intensity? It is hard for some folks to understand that riding in a group for 2-3hr might not actually do anything to improve their race fitness. In all of these scenarios, the athlete will get more out of the workout if they understand what they are working on during that workout. It doesn’t mean that there needs to be a graduate level description of the exercise physiology.

The Role of Complicated Workouts

The training for bike racing is not all that complex for someone that understands what is required of the body during competition and training for it. It doesn’t mean that the training is supposed to be easy, but it shouldn’t be complex. You should be able to do the workout without having to have it fed to you on your head unit or screen. You can have that workout being fed to you, but you shouldn’t need to have it fed to you, because it is impossible to remember. If you don’t understand the why of the workout, then you’ll almost certainly not be able to remember the steps or parameters. It’s easier to improve if you understand why you are doing what you are doing.