Base and Zone Two Explained
The new year has passed, resolutions have been made and it’s January. This says to me it’s time to start putting a training plan and regiment into effect.
This can mean many different things for different people. It could mean as little as cutting back on calories and getting out for some sort of exercise a few days a week. Even a small amount can reap benefits in the new year. These little amounts start to energize your system. From increasing your metabolism to creating good habits. If you don’t know by now, most of getting into shape and in better health is all about creating good habits.
For myself the next few months will be all about base and base miles. What this means is I will be putting in many hours and miles on the bike and for the most part not worrying about intensity. If you have heard about zone two workouts, this is exactly what zone two will look like.
The best way to determine your zone two is to do a twenty minute all out effort on a bike with a power meter and then take ninety five percent of that average power. That will give you your functional threshold power or FTP. Think of your FTP as your zone four and then you can find that zone two. (This should be grouped into about fifteen percentiles)
The zone two efforts have been proven to increase your FTP, even in what might seem an easy zone or effort. How does this happen you might ask? Well, it’s really a matter of training the body to adapt. After many miles and hours the hope is that once your zone two effort you have built up enough strength, and endurance to move that zone two to a higher, new level.
This is where getting a coach can be super helpful. A good coach is going to test their athlete to determine the athletes zone two and then create a training plan around that zone two with base workouts to fit into the athletes schedule.
A highly important aspect of a coach's job is to be just that, a coach and mentor. Through these months of zone two preparation, it is easy for the athlete to want to push out of the zone two efforts. And while that can be good, it is the coaches job to prescribe just what is needed to inspire the athlete and importantly observe that the athlete does not try to overdo weeks or workouts.
As a coach, I am always understanding that sometimes we have to do something a little different or maybe push out of the norm. My job then is to analyze what was done, what was the effect and what do we need to change.
As we migrate through the base building weeks, an athlete should start seeing the benefits of this volume and base miles. Now we can start to do some intensity and interval training, but keeping these in the more moderate of workouts. I like shorter efforts with short rest, with the idea that you are pushing a harder intensity and then a short rest period and then back into intensity. Think of thirty by thirty efforts. (thirty seconds by thirty seconds ten to fifteen times) The idea is that by doing these efforts above your FTP you will start to bridge your power between efforts and essentially building your FTP to the above threshold zone.
These shorter intervals mixed in with the majority of base miles will be the basis of my training plan for the weeks to come preparing me for harder and higher intensity training to come and to not only build my threshold power but get me in early season race shape in the weeks to come.
Please let me know if I can help design a training plan for you!
Thanks for reading~ Coach Zeke
