TRANSITION, BASE WORK AND PREPARATION FOR YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL CYCLING YEAR EVER!
Transition, base work and preparation for your most successful year ever by Scott Blanchard.
Scott Blanchard is a Category Mens 1 cyclist and owns and runs Pyramid Coaching in Tucson, AZ. Pictured below is Scott Blanchard who also helps manage Eclipse Racing Team.
Transition-There needs to be clear separation between racing seasons. The goal of this phase is to allow all systems of the body to recover and rejuvenate from a long season of training and racing. An additional benefit of this phase is mental revitalization, which will enable the athlete to approach the New Year refreshed and enthusiastic. Most athletes are reluctant to let go of fitness even temporarily. This is detrimental to long term gain and nobody can maintain peak fitness for years without interruption. In fact, training at high intensities for long periods of time can and will result in detraining of the aerobic system, inability to recovery from workouts, inability to go hard, injury, illness, and an overall lack of motivation.
The solution is allowing for periodization in your training. Periodization sounds like a complex concept but it is simply a process of organizing the year into different phases or cycles (macro,meso,micro) which will stress the various energy production systems and allow for systematic recovery and resulting peak fitness. The western insistence on not using periodizing training and continued “harder is better” approach has caused many, if not most US athletes to never realize their full potential. How many one-speed wonders do you know?
If you don’t allow for adequate recovery it will be forced on you and quite possibly, at a point in time that compromises your entire season. During this phase it is important to allow for recovery of cartilage, ligaments, tendons, muscles, skeleton, the cardio vascular/respiratory system and the mind. You must have something to build on if you wish progress and improve. As with any foundation the broader the base the higher the peak.
The basic premise behind making gains in virtually any training scenario is that the body adapts to stress during periods of rest. This is one of the miracles of the human organism. We are adaptable due to our innately programmed survival response. Humans on a cellular level are designed to survive. When we incur an injury or illness, our immune system kicks in to heal us. When we are subjected to a workload, as long as we have access to adequate nutrition and sleep, we will become stronger. If this were not the case, the stresses that humans have undergone leading up to the post-industrial era would have been devastating.
The transition phase is characterized by a substantial reduction in volume, intensity, and frequency of exercise. I often will incorporate complete abstinence from training at the beginning of the phase. The choice to give someone complete time off depends on many physiological and psychological factors. Cross training and a return to resistance training is appropriate during this period. I often will encourage the athlete to give themselves permission to miss a workout(s) during this period if they wish to.
It is important that by the end of the transition period the athlete has had rest and a gradual build in training to allow them to move into the base phase effectively and safely.
Base Phase- The most important goal of the Base Phase is to train the aerobic system and secondly to develop strength (sport specific and weight room). It is the foundation from which all subsequent fitness will be derived.
The Base Phase is characterized by progressively increasing volume performed mostly in the lower end of the aerobic zones. It is important that during this time you incorporate drills to help develop leg speed (neurological adaptations), efficient muscle recruitment (one leg drills), strength and muscle tension loads (hills and big gear work), and proper technique.
In addition it is necessary to address the aerobic energy production system. The fuel source for aerobic energy production is fat stores. It is important to note that human beings, for all practical purposes, have an almost unlimited supply of fat reserves to be used as a fuel source. It therefore is of primary importance to train an athlete to be able to exercise at higher and higher intensities while still maintaining a state of oxidative (aerobic) metabolism. This is the process of developing aerobic efficiency. All things being equal: it is the athlete who has developed greater aerobic efficiency who has the best chance of winning the race. This is a fact because the longer an individual can stay aerobic, the longer they can abstain from going anaerobic (gross lactate accumulation), and the longer they can exercise because they are making withdrawals from the most abundant fuel source, fat stores.
It is important to remember that when you exercise anaerobically you have initiated a completely different energy production system. The byproduct of anaerobic metabolism is lactate (specifically-gross accumulation of lactate). Lactate or lactic acid should be viewed as poison for the endurance endeavor. It is definitely one of the greatest performance inhibitors. For example, have you ever had a gap form in a race that you just could not bridge. Even if the gap was only a few feet, the most probable cause for the inability to bridge a gap is lactate accumulation. Most all of us have felt that dreaded burning, dead leg, I can’t roll this gear out any more feeling. Now imagine if a gap formed and you were very much aerobic. You would have no difficulty bridging the gap if you were aerobically fresh. So you see, it just makes physiological sense to develop your aerobic foundation before doing anaerobic work.
For multi-sport athletes in general, anaerobic work should be used sparingly and only after proper aerobic work and the subsequent adaptations have occurred. In road cycling and certain running applications anaerobic development is far more critical. The adaptations that result from doing aerobic base work are an increase in the size and quantity of your mitochondria (energy production component of your cells), proliferation of your capillary beds (aids in efficient blood and consequently oxygen transfer to working muscles), development of fat burning enzymes (aids endurance), musculo-skeletal development, sport specific and muscle strength gains and strengthening of immune system to name a few.
Lay down those miles and create a situation where you now have opportunity to develop great fitness. While aerobic development does not guarantee high-level fitness it does provide you the necessary means. The more foundation you can lay the higher the achievable peak. The greater the base you develop the greater the resistance to injury, illness, and over training. You literally have something to fall back on. Your fitness is supported or “backed up” by your base so to speak. The more base work you do the more intensity you can handle. The more intensity you can handle the stronger you can become. It’s all a matter of having the ability to recover from, and adapt to, stress.
Scott Blanchard
Pyramid Coaching Intl. LLC
scott [at] pyramidcoaching dot com
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