A new Sports Medicine paper has sparked a huge debate around Zone 2 training, with some claiming it has no unique benefit for mitochondria, fat burning or VO2 max. But is that really what the research says — and does it even apply to trained cyclists? In this episode, Anthony digs into the study, the population it actually examined, and the response from leading endurance experts to explain what Zone 2 is really good for — and whether you should change your training.
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Of course it does work. I started pretty much from zero, did Zone 2 for a year without knowing what it was, just went with the flow, then bought a road bike, did train another year with power meter and Strava (self taught, no trainer involved, exploring the other zones but also doing Zone 2) and now, two years later, made 40 alpine mountain passes, covering 30000m of vert in 20 days, usually finishing those passes within the top ten to top three percent in my weight class (that's including pretty much every professional rider in the peoloton over the last 15 years, since the three grand tours have been all over those passes – Giau, Sella, Mortirolo, Fedaia, Gavia, Stelvio – you name it). I ride up to 1800Km per month these days, I can reliably average 38-40kph over 50Km, more than 35kph over 100Km, just did 280Km/1000m of vert at an average of 31.8kph in 25kph winds (plus a total of 50min stopping time) and lived to tell about it (all those are round trip routes ridden solo). Now you tell me that Zone 2 doesn't work one more time.
Just cycle how you want, enjoy the ride, push when you feel up to it, that's the great thing it's you and only you, don't care about what people think.
yes it does just like the typical middle aged 9-5 office man needs an S-works frame with a power meter. 😂😂😂
I have tried this 80:20 approach for years and have come to the conclusion that the minimum training volume for it to make sense is around 10 hours per week. Then you can have two really hard 60-minute sessions per week, while the other 8 hours can be Zone 2, with some variation between lower and upper Zone 2.
Anything below 10 hours per week I don’t think this 80:20 approach really works. Prioritize a minimum of two hard 60-minute sessions per week, and then add as much Zone 2 as you can squeeze in.
I’m now riding 5 hours per week, and I still do 2 hours of hard intervals and 3 hours of Zone 2, and I’m seeing progress week by week.
All these online coaches should put a big disclaimer that 80:20 only works when you’re training around 10+ hours per week, or something along those lines.
Had figured that training was skewed for normal people – main question is why do so called professional trainers lead you down the wrong path. Have also looked at AG1 and there are some red flags for its use and it's expensive for what it is.
Most people's zone 2 is my zone 22 ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
trzeba jeździć systematycznie i przemiennie raz mocno tak że leci z ciebie pot na kierownicę i ramę roweru, a raz tak żeby odpoczywać po wysiłku i w różnym terenie od płaskiego do fajnego z górkami. Na pewno nie robimy cały czas dużego wysiłku i wyścigów na każdym wspólnym treningu bo tak to wszyscy się zajadą i nic z tego dobrego nie będzie dla nikogo.
It seems to be telling amateur athletes HIIT workouts are for you, and here is the irony: The amateur still needs a 48-hour recovery time due to the intensity
When exercise physiology papers focus on time efficiency, the calculation usually measures the 30 minutes spent during the workout, rather than the 48 to 72 hours of systemic recovery required afterward.
While the study correctly notes that HIIT triggers powerful mitochondrial signals in short timeframes, prescribing it as a universal default for the general public ignores the biological invoice that arrives 24 to 48 hours later. We do need to recover.
Well my kind of Zone 2 "with spice" during 40 years will definitely work for Average Joe.
I've enjoyed solo training and only seriously been in a club after I turned 40, a total of 5-6 years, 9 yers from now.
Before this, I trained for big events, tris – or just bike events with a lot of comfort zone – and then the hill sprints "attacking myself" – what many recreational riders drop out of instantly when you try to lurk them;
This when
1) the soul has left you
2) your legs have shouted and screamed "no, no no"
3) just for you continuing, neglecting those orders from your body
4) finding your inner passion, and continue up the hill, preferably a hill with a plateau before the descent
5) looking death in the eye
6) But then when you relax – and the pain comes to you as cash payment, when it no longer blackens before your eyes, when you can sense a faint light at the end of the tunnel
7) then not to continue in monotonous zone 3-4 – but to go all the way down to zone 2 and stay there.
8) Until the next time you look death in the eye. Where you see life through death.
– every single time.
And then on a 3-4 hour trip do it 15-20 times, out in the countryside, if you are blessed with a lot of tubercles in the countryside like me, I would find it very strange this working only for single me.
However, I could never get the local bike club with its glorious traditions on board with something like that when I trial cycled with them as a 14-year-old in 1986.
But never mind. I got far more technical training in my rowing club. Here cycling still seems like an old thing, even with the initiatives that have been taken in the new millennium.
The monotonous training continues on a club basis in many clubs. And still with many top pros.
Of course, zone 2 should be spiced up to the maximum by getting you to embrace life many times during a regular 2-hour everyday training. Where you move yourself 3 bars out of your comfort zone, even when your body is fighting back, because you end up on top of a white cloud, and the dip where you feel the intense pain is only temporary, and you feel fantastic afterwards in a new Zone 2 stretch.
I tried to get my training groups on board when I joined the club and immediately as team captain in the years 2012-2017, but it thinned out, and soon we were back to the monotonous zone 3-4 with very small zone 5 adjusters, but zero zone 5++. My life is too short for that kind of thing and for the past 9 years I have greatly enjoyed being back on my solo training. It gives a nice return when my 40-year-old training method is tested in exercise runs – which over the past 15 years have become more competitive than just "social rides with new friends and then a sprint as grande finale" as we did in the 80ies.
Here I like to pull for a group and enjoy it, but the way there and in between I still have a hard time getting people on:
1) 70-80% zone 2 ride
2) 20-30& zone 5++ attacks – death has come for you, putting you up above in the white sky.
Neither pro nor amateur has been on my ride.
Fine, I enjoy my solo rides, which are never the same routes anyway.
Very playful and recommendable, I just want to mention it again.
Thanks Anthony, I knew that it was only a matter of time before you commented on this resource.
Thought this was going to be useful and insightful. Wrong on both counts. Deleting this channel from my feed.
Sounds like AI slop script mate
Hi there, professional Science Communicator here. Sorry for long post but here goes.
I don't have an open access link to the full paper otherwise I would share it here. It's worth pointing out a few things that are missed when looking at papers like this, in order to not feel like we need to dunk on the researchers for doing a study which does propose something important.
1. If we're looking at the research groups we need to look at the last author Dr Brendan Gurd. Typically with academic research, the 'corresponding' author who is usually listed last is the one that is the senior partner of the research and who has been either responsible for the group project coming together to do the research. Gurd has got 188 currently published articles and is well respected in his field, and for a wider variety of studies rather than only for HIIT based research. Gibala was involved in coming up with the idea alongside Gurd and Storoschuk but I would really caution against thinking that Gibala had a major influence over the direction as if it's any kind of scheme.
2. The paper is a narrative review. It's taken all the existing literature and tried to make sense of it, but these are not 'new' findings from a lab. This paper may then be the precursor to a study done in a lab, developing new knowledge about how people do respond to the lower intensity exercise stimulus.
3. The paper acknowledges that the other studies they looked at didn't all have the same definition when it comes to 'zone 2'. It says: "A systematic literature search was not utilized to obtain Zone 2 exercise studies", and rather that it took other types of search terms related to “low-intensity exercise,” “endurance training,” “continuous training,” “lactate threshold”, “ventilatory threshold,” and “Fatmax”."
As a result, the point that I think the authors make is that spending lots of time (as Roadman rightly points out) as an untrained but active individual doing a form of low-intensity training does not have a solid evidence basis for generating good health outcomes such as improved cardiovascular fitness.
4. The paper is more than a year old. It's funny how it's all of a sudden become talked about.
I will also call the paper's authors out for one thing in the key points:
"Zone 2 training is touted by influential commentators including on podcasts and in popular and social media as the optimal training intensity for improving mitochondrial and fat oxidative capacity, thereby supporting metabolic health and chronic disease prevention."
It's funny how the same logic being misapplied goes both ways. An untrained, active, general public (which Gurd and co seem to write in mind of) are not necessarily the same people who are consuming podcasts and popular media and want to take a more objective science-backed approach to doing 8-12 or more hours of training a week.
My zone 2 still fast so idc
Being a science advocate and then going on to shill AG1 is laughable. Sorry, not cool bro, not cool.
ıts also not work for beginner runners but everybody goes crazy for it. unless you reach certain level of volume and speed, economy/efficiency is much more important which greatly obtained by strength and special trainings like runner or cyclist specifc plyos
Cool to watch you rocking an Ementa Hoodie. props from Lisbon, PT!
Yeah but Z2 is so enjoyable.
Z2 volume, 1 strength session in the gym and 1 VO2max interval session pw.
It's a narrative review article. It's not an RCT or a meta-analysis. You're overstating the conclusions.
Bicycle scientist are always fluctuating
Turn off the text on the screen.
The cool thing about zone one and two workouts is that it is a subtext to the main thing for improving fitness: consistency. Especially for people that are going from couch to high intensity or long hour such as training for a marathon. Following a three month marathon training program they will be fit for the marathon if they can get through the training without getting hurt; but they have a high probability of getting hurt.
But if you build an aerobic base by doing zone one and zone two training for six months, let’s say, your muscular skeletal system has a chance to catch up to the extra load. Which means you have a greater chance of being consistent in your exercise.
Consistency overtime equals greater fitness.
Does this mean that I should break my time down to a split of 80% easy 20% hard as a rough to maximise my training or similar splits or even less easy rides?
I don't want to watch this video. If it's about "not enough time" and that's why zone 3 or so would be more benefitial – probably yes, but in general, and expecially in cycling – zone 1 and zone 2 works extremely well. In running it's harder as your body is not ready for high volume at any intensity. But in cycling you can have 2-5 hour rides basically each weekend. But in reallity you can have even from early morning to late night rides – they're awesome mentally and they have extremely high value for beginner amateurs. A lot bigger than for advanced amatures, as for experienced cyclists they can have less training stimulus. But if you're aerobic system is not developed that much… then the most valuable thing you can do – is time. Intencity doesn't matter. Of course, you need to do something at least 3 days a week, better 4+. And such rides by itself won't do much – you won't get high ftp from them. But you get something a lot more important in the beginning – building your aerobic base.
Its not wasted time if you're enjoying the ride!
If you're a Tour pro and your races span 1hr crits to 5hr daylong races, you're racing zone3-4 as well as zone2 days. So you need z2 training. Most of us don't. Time crunched 40 year olds riding 1-2 hr rides don't need to train for 5hr z2 rides.
Just ride yer bike and enjoy it.
For me, as a total noob, zone2 is a way to do more training sessions and longer sessions, becuase… I like riding and I wanna get into bikepacking. After losing 60kg mainly on the bike, it's also a "calorie sink" since zone1 is boring and burns nothing whereas zones 3+ obviously kill me after minutes.
When it comes to vo2 max, obviously that went up very fast the minute I started doing shorter, hard work. In terms of mitochondria, I have no means of knowing what happens so I just don't care. No magic here, just a way to do more of fun stuff instead of sitting down waiting for the next day to ride harder again.
For amateur/casual this stuff shouldn't be about reading all newest data and optimizing every minute of training. Best way to overstress and quit.
The main driver for getting fitter is volume. Thats it. Just volume. Z2 has been so popular because it allows you to cumulate lots of volume without getting too tired. Surely intensity is important, but Z2 will always have a place
Not sure if I am doing it right but now I’m doing heat training with zone 2
The purpose of zone 2 is to be able to add volume with little fatigue for people who train 10-15+ hours a week. If you already have low volume because of time limitation, then you won't benefit from zone 2 rides. It has no magic way of making you faster, just as much as walking for hours won't make you run a marathon in under 3 hours. If you want to become faster, you need to train riding fast. If you want more endurance, you go out and ride for 5 hours (zone 2). If you just want to stay fit, then ride at any comfortable intensity for a few hours a week and this does it. For me it's that simple and I do not understand why people have to make it so complicated.
First time in my 4 years journey I increse Z1 and Z2 Volume and it is working for me, from 6-7h I ramp to 10-11 just only in Z1-2, my all Zone power ramp up and hr is lower to during effort so it work for sure,I am on that volume for 6-7 week
I agree with the sentiment that many people do too much Z2 as amateurs. I push almost every one of my Z2 rides to the top of my zone 2 as long as HR is not out of control. I also push my intervals HARD and at 10 hours a week my rate of progression is well above any of my peers training the same volume.
There is an important nuance here though, I prioritize my sleep and diet (plus fueling on the bike) much more than most. For those saying doing mostly zone 2 and making it extremely easy I challenge you to sign up for a race. You will most likely not be able to hold on because you can't push race pace efforts over and over again. The fastest amateurs I know do not cruise around doing low Z2/Z1 all the time, that's reserved for post-peak for their "A" race or after a hard block of training.
Отлично!
Sounds like "the cyclists bible" isn't wrong if 20 years old
For a guy who loves science, hard to believe you sold out to AG1 😮
Nice video. thank you
I am going to stick with my training regiment since it appears to work for me. And I never race and never will. 75 year old, male.
1. 2 days @ the gym, strength training. year round.
2. 1 long zone 2 ride every 1 to 2 weeks. 3-4 hours @ 65%-70% of max heart rate
3. 2-3 rides a week doing intervals including sprints. For me I want to be sure I hit 500-600 watts on my sprints. Ok for my age IMO.
4. 1-2 days a week, recovery. Walks only.
The constant cuts while your talking are very distracting.
few years ago, eggs were bad for you, now you are not getting enough…this sports science seems to me that is turning into pseudoscience. so many variables to think off and the average Joe, just want to know what to do to improve their numbers….. difficult to find credible information out there
thanks for sharing the paper view.
Consistency is always the key. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. Riding 10 hours one week and then not riding for a week is not going to get you any gains. Ride lots and keep doing it religously and you will get fast and efficient.
Non sarebbe meglio dire di rispettare le proporzioni nelle quantità e tipologie di lavoro?
Per semplificare:
80% zona 2
20% lavori ad alta intensità.
È esattamente ciò che fanno oggi i professionisti ma ovviamente loro suddividono su 25/30 ore settimanali mentre i ciclo sportivi lo suddivideranno nel tempo più limitato a loro disposizione.
La zona 2 non ha bisogno di 20 ore settimanali per funzionare ma solo di essere praticata per la maggior parte del tempo a disposizione.
… Ve lo immaginate un amatore che ha 5 ore a disposizione e le dedica tutte a lavori ad alta intensità???
Tempo 2 settimane e cadrà in overtraining. 😉
Hi Roadman, at 9.58 – medium mosh but https://youtu.be/V-wz-jUxu7k?t=800 (Why Your Zone 2 Training Isn't Working & How To Fix It – at 13.19) you can live in the middle…Can you clarify?
Put this in the context of aging athletes in their 50s, 60s, and 70s.