Welcome to Episode #336 of the 303 Endurance Podcast. You are listening to your weekly connection to coaches, experts, and pro athletes to help you reach your endurance goals. We're your hosts coach Rich Soares and 303 Chief Bill Plock. Thanks for joining us for another week of endurance interviews and discussion.
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In Today's Show
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Training Discussion: Regular Testing
Regular testing to determine your threshold intensities in each discipline is an important (arguably essential) practice to getting faster. This works for new and experienced athletes. Newer athletes may find this a bit demanding, but it will help you get faster, faster. Testing regularly is particularly helpful for athletes who have some experience and find themselves plateauing in their performance.
Here's how the cycle works. Take bike power for example. You want to take a baseline FTP test to determine your Functional Threshold Power. FTP is theoretically the power in Watts you can average for 45-60 minutes. This FTP becomes an anchor point for determining your training zones. Having accurately determined training zones is important for making sure you do prescribed training in the right zones.
For example, if you want to increase your threshold power you need to train at that Z4 Threshold zone to train your body to process muscle lactate efficiently. The more time you spend in that zone, the more adaptation you get. Without the FTP number or accurate substitute, you may be training in the wrong zone (eg Z3 or Z5), neither of which create the same adaptation of teaching your body to improve lactate processing and increasing your capacity to do work. Training regularly and progressively overloading the correct training zones over the course of 3 weeks on the 4th week you retest. If things are working, the next FTP tes
