THE BEST-KEPT SECRET IN TRAINING: THERE ARE NO SECRETS

Polarised, pyramidal, LSD, Zone 2… there are myriad theories about how best to structure your training. But do any of them really work better than simply riding your bike lots?

-  Joe Laverick

Has training ever been proven to work? It's a very simple question with a very complex answer. We all know that riding your bike gets you fitter, but is it that simple? How much does the specific combination of sessions, intensities, recovery and periodisation really matter?

"There are no secrets," declares Peter Leo, cycling physiologist for the Australia national cycling team, "but you do have to train to what will be expected in the race you're preparing for. It's really important to understand the race demands; if you don't understand them, you cannot be targeted in your training." Training to the demands of your event is one of the most simple and fundamental cornerstones in the coaching world. But beyond this core principle, it often seems that wherever you look, you find conflicting opinions about how exactly to train. There's a joke in applied sports science that for every study you find supporting a theory, there are two disproving it.

Should you obey the old 80:20 training rule and ride at low to moderate intensity 80% of the time, and at high intensity the other 20%? Should you spend the majority of your time training in Zone 1, adding just a sprinkling of super-high-intensity work? With all the data at our fingertips, there is an ever-present risk of over-complicating training or following a plan just because it has worked for someone else. But is there also a danger of oversimplifying if we dismiss all the theories and train purely by intuition?