Training question.

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How many miles/km would you recomend doing befor implementing a training plan involving monitoring heart rate, and training in different zones etc.

How many miles/km would you recomend doing befor implementing a training plan involving monitoring heart rate, ....100,000,000 miles before implementing a plan based on heart rate......:D

What's wrong with HR training :confused:


What I like to do is increase my work stress, sleep less, eat excessively salty foods, take 600 mg of caffiene, 50 mg of ephedra, have an aurgument with my boss and then with my wife when I get home before getting on the trainer. That way it is real easy for me to get right into 98% MHR for about 5 minutes. :p

What's wrong with HR training :confused:


What I like to do is increase my work stress, sleep less, eat excessively salty foods, take 600 mg of caffiene, 50 mg of ephedra, have an aurgument with my boss and then with my wife when I get home before getting on the trainer. That way it is real easy for me to get right into 98% MHR for about 5 minutes. :p
Felt, where are you getting your ephedra post FDA ban?

You guys are tough on a newbie. What these wiseacres are trying to tell you is that HR is not a great variable to base training around. On a budget, you are better off finding a pretty good fluid trainer (KK) and a rear pick up cyclometer. There are a bunch of conversions of mph to watts for the KK trainer, or you can buy the power unit if you are really ambitious. Look at Silly Old Twit's It's killin me thread, he initially did it all on a gym trainer that tracked watts. That is a great thread to help you get started

... What I like to do is increase my work stress, sleep less, eat excessively salty foods, take 600 mg of caffiene, 50 mg of ephedra, have an aurgument with my boss and then with my wife when I get home before getting on the trainer. That way it is real easy for me to get right into 98% MHR for about 5 minutes. :pNice approach, I like to ride my small ring in easy gears while riding busy streets. Honking car horns and a couple of profane words being shouted out of car windows does a great job of getting my HR up :)

Seriously, don't mean to entirely hijack your thread Scotttri. Just that I strictly adhered to HR based programs for over two decades with lousy results. I still collect HR data along with power data these days and it really shows why HR data has to be taken with a grain of salt and might not be the best way to structure a training program. There's HR lag at the beginning of an effort, HR drift all the way to the end of a steady power effort, emotional, nutritional and hydration issues that influence HR as Felt_rider reminds me that are independent of actual training load.

Not everyone will justify the expense of a power meter, but what PM based training and racing has taught me is that if I don't have my PM(happens once in a while when my batteries die or I flat and take a pit wheel in a race) I'll pace my efforts on perceived exertion(10 point RPE) instead of HR. All this SST, L4, L5, L6 interval stuff we talk about on these forums can be thought of as focused steady efforts for minimum time durations. Do a steady, focused, hard effort that you can sustain for 20 minutes but not much longer and you're riding a good high-SST or L4 effort. Ride a steady effort that you just finish 4 to 6 minutes and you're riding VO2 Max(L5). You don't need HR and it can actually be misleading as HR takes a while to respond and then continues to drift upwards throughout the interval. Try to pace VO2 Max efforts or worse yet L6(anaerobic tolerance) efforts with HR and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, to answer your question. You can start structured training as soon as you want to as long as that structure includes some easier base building rides. Don't jump into hard short interval work till you've got quite a bit of steady endurance building under your belt. But you can start paying attention to the intensity and duration of your efforts to get a feel for pacing. Just make sure those efforts are long steady efforts that don't wipe you out. Alternatively you can just ride for a few weeks or months to get used to being on the bike and get used to riding progressively longer rides before starting a more structured program. Either method can work, it depends a lot on where you're coming from in terms of sports background(I assume you're already running or swimming from your alias) and how you like to approach things. Just don't make the mistake of jumping into hard short interval work without a solid base of aerobic fitness on the bike. Whether you get that through half hour and longer Tempo and SST efforts or just by doing long steady rides isn't as important at the start as just making sure you build your aerobic core before launching into some complex program of short intervals.

Good luck,
Dave

How many miles/km would you recomend doing befor implementing a training plan involving monitoring heart rate, and training in different zones etc.
Are you training for a particular event (bike tour, health/weight loss, racing season, etc.), or it is simply to ride more? If it's simply to ride, I'd get a bike computer/speedometer immediately and just see what you can do on your own for a couple months to a season before working toward zones and structured training. Nothing would *prevent* you from getting straight into structured training, but I think just riding for a little while will give you some perspective and let you see what you enjoy about the sport.

What's wrong with HR training :confused:
I think it's a good starting point, again, for perspective. It's cheap, can be used indoors or out, can facilitate a great deal of progress, and lets someone decide whether they really want/need more.

I apologize :o I was just trying to make a humorous point of how many external events or situations can influence heart rate.

Actually my start in cycling (only a couple years ago) was using a HR monitor and it was good to allow me to see how my body would respond to certain stresses in a new activity, but then someone on this forum cut me down :) and I began to see the light :) on how there are many factors that can influence the HR from day to day.

When I noticed the HR rate increase from a fast pace or climbing a hill a panic would set in that I need to back off. For me it became a device that limited my effort instead of working to increase my effort. Not saying that everyone does that, but for me it wasn't good.

Felt, where are you getting your ephedra post FDA ban?
I was joking.:)

I stopped taking that stuff a number of years ago before the ban. I wonder how close I came to heart failure using that stuff in those days. There were days my heart raced so fast that I didn't think I would make another minute and there were a couple of folks from my gym that did die from using it too much.

On the HR debate I am remembering Dr Coggan's endorsement of a running book that I haven't read yet but I would guess it probably has some HR based training in it.:eek:

http://www.cyclingforums.com/t-380705-15-3.html

"I never read any of the popular books on training until just a couple of years ago. I then bought 5 or 6, read them in a weekend, and sold them all except one: Better Training for Distance Runners, by Martin and Coe."

I was joking.:)

I stopped taking that stuff a number of years ago before the ban. I wonder how close I came to heart failure using that stuff in those days. There were days my heart raced so fast that I didn't think I would make another minute and there were a couple of folks from my gym that did die from using it too much.
I am joking as well. As an attorney, I represented some of the major ephedra "manufacturers" defending them in various liability cases. I know the players in this industry well and ended up as a major creditor when they filed bankruptcy owing me a lot of money in legal fees. Never took the stuff myself, but in order to defend the product, usually on issues of medical causation, I did have to become pretty familiar with how it works. In my completely biased opinion, most of the deaths and or adverse events were related to a pretty complex series of factors including obesity, congenital heart defects, using ridiculous amounts of the product, other substances including tobacco and other diet aids.

Aside from a strong cup of coffee and too much diet coke, I tend to avoid stimulants when exercising.

Nice approach, I like to ride my small ring in easy gears while riding busy streets. Honking car horns and a couple of profane words being shouted out of car windows does a great job of getting my HR up :)

Seriously, don't mean to entirely hijack your thread Scotttri. Just that I strictly adhered to HR based programs for over two decades with lousy results. I still collect HR data along with power data these days and it really shows why HR data has to be taken with a grain of salt and might not be the best way to structure a training program. There's HR lag at the beginning of an effort, HR drift all the way to the end of a steady power effort, emotional, nutritional and hydration issues that influence HR as Felt_rider reminds me that are independent of actual training load.

Not everyone will justify the expense of a power meter, but what PM based training and racing has taught me is that if I don't have my PM(happens once in a while when my batteries die or I flat and take a pit wheel in a race) I'll pace my efforts on perceived exertion(10 point RPE) instead of HR. All this SST, L4, L5, L6 interval stuff we talk about on these forums can be thought of as focused steady efforts for minimum time durations. Do a steady, focused, hard effort that you can sustain for 20 minutes but not much longer and you're riding a good high-SST or L4 effort. Ride a steady effort that you just finish 4 to 6 minutes and you're riding VO2 Max(L5). You don't need HR and it can actually be misleading as HR takes a while to respond and then continues to drift upwards throughout the interval. Try to pace VO2 Max efforts or worse yet L6(anaerobic tolerance) efforts with HR and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, to answer your question. You can start structured training as soon as you want to as long as that structure includes some easier base building rides. Don't jump into hard short interval work till you've got quite a bit of steady endurance building under your belt. But you can start paying attention to the intensity and duration of your efforts to get a feel for pacing. Just make sure those efforts are long steady efforts that don't wipe you out. Alternatively you can just ride for a few weeks or months to get used to being on the bike and get used to riding progressively longer rides before starting a more structured program. Either method can work, it depends a lot on where you're coming from in terms of sports background(I assume you're already running or swimming from your alias) and how you like to approach things. Just don't make the mistake of jumping into hard short interval work without a solid base of aerobic fitness on the bike. Whether you get that through half hour and longer Tempo and SST efforts or just by doing long steady rides isn't as important at the start as just making sure you build your aerobic core before launching into some complex program of short intervals.

Good luck,
Dave
Yeah I come from a running back ground and do, do a bit of swimming and cycling of course, But I want to get more into cycling and improve speed endurance etc. Running is takeing it's toll with injuries so I'd like to give it a rest for a season at least maybe two, thenget back into it hopefully with a far more improved cycling leg and build up to an ironman triathlon.

With reguards to fluid trainers, power metres etc. I have a mag trainer which i use if it's to hot ( gets up to 45-50 degrees celcius here on ocasions ) and also have a polar s625x HRM. Is the polar power metre any good? or would I be better off with something else??

My take on it: There is no prerequisite for starting a training program. You can start first day on the bike. HR should be used as a guide only because it is pretty inaccurate. Perceived effort is a better approach. If you are doing intevals outside of SST, you should do the intervals as hard as possible for the given time period.