Just seen this, very inspiring 😊

I just turned 60 and am trying to get back in racing shape. It’s been about 6 years. I was still riding but probably 50% of my racing days. I’m stuck. FTP just won’t increased. Im at 280W and for reference about 350W 12 years ago I had a coach, so I do have structure. What’s going on? For sure recovery is so slow

Spot on. Very solid advice imo, and in agreement with what other serious coaches say.

How should I name my cat? I was thinking of Wattington?

Do I need 2 cadence sensors on the crankarm and hub plus the dou Favero?

Why is my duo Favero reading 10 points difference left higher than my right leg?

Hi Joe I took up boxing at 60 and I’m 69 now. I do 2 intense boxing training sessions a week and a weight lifting class once a week. Every day I do 10,000 steps. VO2 max varies between 41/42.(via Apple Watch) My max heart during boxing hits about 172bpm, is this safe for short periods? My heart recovery is quite fast and I feel great after each session.

Would. You recommend for a 90 yr old who still loves long rides😊

Advice for a 90 yr old concerning training

I was fighting the “tired every day” thing. Went to my doc and turned out I was fighting leukemia. Sure explained all those “bonked” episodes. Now I train smarter.

Yes AY!

About climbing: My dad always said, "miles build stamina. Hills create character." Dad knew a thing or two about hills. In the late 50s, he and his pals used to tour the Highlands of Scotland on steel 10-speed bikes. Cheers

Grandissimo Joe..". numero 1"👍

yawn

Zone 2 for 80% of your rides. Do 1 “full gas” intervals session per week. Dr Attia recommended 6 total intervals at 4 mins each with 3-4 mins recovery btwn each interval. I’m 64 … and live North of Houston … all flats here. Opposite of you. :)

Can you combine a high intensity workout with an aerobic threshold workout? Can I do 3x 5 min at 120% of FTP followed by 1 plus hours at 60 to 70%? Will I be able to successfully activate both physiological adaptations?

So how long of rides should the Zone 1 & 2 rides be?

I am very glad that I met Joe Friel - I have been training for several years based on his books. Recently I (finally 🙂) bought Asiom Favero and that's why I came across these videos. My only regret is that automatic language translation is blocked - my English is very poor. Greetings from Poland. 🙂

I'm 67 years old and definitely not as strong as I was in my 40s. I do reverse lunges every other day which helps leg muscle mass. I do more cross-training these days: cross-country skiing, biking, hiking, canoeing, etc. For me, fish oil daily has helped in terms of no joint pain when waking up in the morning.

Joe Friel is the god of bike training. I’ve worn out his bible.

That's right make sure you stay on the back and off your feet and then when you get older you'll end up with thin bones because as you know, cycling is a non-load-bearing exercise, which has been shown to be absolutely useless for preventing osteoporosis

Too many acronyms ..just ride regularly with distance and speed dial..

You can’t out run (bike or swim) a bad diet!

Enjoy your vids Joe, you haven't changed very much over the years! Keep those good vids coming!

Thanks Joe! In general would you advise to pick either one of the Sat & Sunday fast group rides (3-4 hours usually, 200+ TSS) as one of the hard efforts and a Wed or Thursday as the other for a 1 hourish Interval workout or go easy all week and hard on Saturday and Sunday (Weekend Warrior 💪). Also how would adding two - three days of weights in there work (could I do squats and leg presses too?) My weeks vary 6-12 hours riding and I'm 55. If going easy on one of the weekend days could the other be long 3+ hour zone 1-2? Wanting to get as strong and fast as possible.... with work, wife and kids ;-)

Hr for Zane 2 , power for z3 And z 2 on erg on trainer !!

This is all BS. Cycling ability is hereditary. You either have it or you don't. Choose your parents wisely and you'll be a cycling superstar.

Any recommendations for other sports for people over 60? Tennis for example…..or is there someone like you for tennis? Ty

The focus on accuracy is totally inflated - unless - you have multiple PM's. You don't want to maintain different zones for different pm's. Its already a headache differentiating between road, TT and MTB. My master is the road bike which I use most and have oldest data and I changed crank length setting in the firmware in the others so that all bikes give similar numbers on my reference climb.

🤙🤙🤙

To not get dropped, lose some weight, stay on a wheel and do some sweet spot training.

We also become more insulin resistant as we age, you can't keep slamming down gels and having porridge and toast for breakfast into you're 40's, 50's, 60's etc! Stress also slows your digestion and you have less stomach acid to absorb the nutrients. Stress compounds and is unavoidable to most people as you age. Enter zone 2 training, and much more of it as you get older! You no longer have the reserve to combat the extra stress of high intensity riding. Zone 2 gives you most of the benefits for a fraction of the stress. By the way that's zone 2 in a 6 zone model NOT a 3 zone model. 180 minus your age in HR is a great middle ground for zone 2.

It is always possible to observe an experiment but draw the wrong conclusions… There are a lot of claims that low intensity work has some kind of fitness adaptation. My conclusions are that low intensity work improves the skill set used. We now have the diagnostic tools to test this. Cycling lacks failure states - the rider can’t make the pedal go around in anything other than the circle dictated by the crank and bottom bracket. High intensity work tends to be less efficient because the intensity masks the errors (pushing down at the bottom of the pedal stroke would be the obvious example). Low intensity work allows riders to better form muscle firing sequences and timing. This is easy enough to test as many power meters now show force vectors.

When will favero have an SPD pedal power meter?

💥 Joe… There Is Data That Shows “ Exercise “ To Burn Body Fat Doesn’t Start Until “ 35 Minutes” 🥸 Diet… Low To No Sugar Low Carbohydrate Remember: 3500 Calories = 1 Lb Of Body Fat Several Small Meals a Day To Limit Insulin Spikes 💥

I’ve noticed every generation of young riders kinda re-invents the wheel with their terminology. But not a lot has really changed in 30 years. Polarization used to be go all out on hard days and on easy days ride like a grandma. Over/unders used to be called cross-cross workouts. Sweat spot used to be cruise intervals. You never hear the term “over distance training” or “my long day”. Great vid

Hello Joe. Thanks for your channel. I’m 63 and live in Colorado so flat terrain is very hard to find. I’ve been a competitive cyclist for more than 30 years. As an old school guy, I don’t have a power meter instead I use a Polar heart rate chest strap with a recently observed max HR of 164. I am using Polarized training. Can you give me advice on what heart rate I should do my long rides ? Many thanks in advance.

Joe's explanation of Polarised and Sweet Spot training is really good. I have read around this (a lot) and I'm still confused! A background note: I have power for cycling and for running, and I use a chest strap for both, so when I refer to Z1/Z2 I mean heart rate or power (my zones more-or-less match up). Joe (and Stephen Seiler) seem to suggest that if I do an interval session which includes a lot of baseline cycling or running (e.g. running 40-min each way in Z1/Z2, to the venue where I do running intervals), the whole workout should be classed as a "hard" workout. For sure, the hard parts are going to need extra recovery time! Naively though, I would have thought each workout would have the exercise intensity components proportioned, and these would invidually contribute to my Polarised, Pyramidal, Threshold training (whichever system I'm using). Garmin does this for me as a matter of course - showing the components accumulated as "low aerobic", "high aerobic" and "anaerobic". I absolutely agree with the comments about the necessity for base miles and HIIT not being a substitute for them (probably a bitter pill for those who really are time crunched though). I also know that training needs a suitable sprinkling of nearly all the intensity components (together with a suitable sprinkling of rest). Finally, off-topic now: I'm also struggling with the intricacies of Performance Management metrics and how they should be applied through the year (e.g., how easy and how long should the "off-season" or "de-load period" be, etc.). I get how they are used for planning microcycles, but I'm currently missing the longer term view. Notwithstanding these further puzzles, a great talk and, as you can tell, it's opened up more lines of research for me to follow... 🤔

Counter point on the fasted riding: I'm strict keto (several years) and do *all* my riding fasted. I just did a 3-day Fondo event where I rode 235 km (1700 m climbed) fasted. On a fatbike that, as equipped, weighed 50 pounds i averaged 20 kmh. I have never bonked once since i stopped eating carbs. I even beat 20 people on the 400m sprint at the 65km mark of the 100km main ride. Lol

X

For people busy with work and worried about losing fitness I like to get up earlier and straight out for a jog for 30-60 minutes or you could just jump straight on the trainer and do say 30 minutes z2 then some hard 30 second on 2 minutes off for another 30 minutes.

I've been doing a variation of that type of training for a decade or so- 5 easy days a week, with the other 2 days inserted that are even slower and shorter than the other 5

Soo.. You clearly explained the difference between polarised and sweet spot training, but I didn't understand what your advice is. If I have 4-6 hours a week, what should I do? Imagine I want to train for a 70.3 Ironman. 90 km bike ride, aerobic. Should I still include sweet spot training or HIIT training? or purely aerobic? Thanks!

The Jack Daniels of cycling.

Wat you tink about establing your FTP wit a ramp test and mutiply by 83.33% of your max power of the ramp test done on 1 minute icrement by 10 watts

Totally agree

thank you for sharing Sir. Great video! thank you again!

Understood, 2 things, aerobic is the first one and muscular endurance the second one. For this second one (muscular endurance), Joe sugest workouts such as 8min at FTP and 2min recovery to be repeated 3 times. This is for me Zone 3!!! It confused me as Joe is in favor of 80/20 polarized model aiming at avoiding zone3. Am I missing something?

I understand that normalized power (NP) is possibly a better representation of physiological strain and so better for use in training, but the claim that NP is better at predicting calories burned goes against my understanding. Average power multiplied by duration gives you actual kilojoules (energy used) which under reasonable assumptions about exercise efficiency can be translated directly to Calories burned.

Brilliant!! Merci