¿Mejor el doble? — Double Threshold y fijación inteligente de objetivos en el entrenamiento

Björn: Welcome to the Afasteryou Podcast, where everything revolves around endurance sports and training. Sebastian Schluricke, Björn Kafka and Niclas Ranker are here to give you valuable tips and insights that will help you take your performance to the next level. So, good morning Björn, and welcome to a new episode of the Afasteryou Podcast.

Niclas: Good morning. You know what's always totally weird? We've been talking for at least 20 minutes already about all sorts of things, and now you come in with "Good morning." Well, okay, now the listeners know.

Björn: Right, now they know we've been chatting for 20 minutes already. Normally we start pretty much straight in. Today was an exception, I'd say. Yeah. We had to discuss some secret stuff first.

Niclas: Secret stuff, exactly. Let's see how secret it really is. Anyway, nice. You dug something up. I've unfortunately been extremely busy the last few days, I can't say anything about that. But Niclas… the secret stuff. Niclas dug up something fantastic. I know "Knowledge is Watt" from this excellent Substack where he writes up nice studies. I don't even know what he's called. A Spaniard, I think. No, Italian. Italian, right. Oh, not that I don't know his name. I've been subscribed for over a year now. You can read it really easily. He writes it up nicely. Sure, sometimes you need some physiological background to read a bit deeper into it, and some things maybe aren't so great. But Niclas dug something up. I haven't read it yet. I find it super exciting. It's about Norwegians.

Björn: It's about Norwegians. As background: Norwegians, if you look at the total number of Norwegians in the world, it's 5.6 million. We just looked it up.

Niclas: I said it was 5 million. That can't be right.

Björn: Yeah, it's completely crazy. Listen: there are 5.6 million Norwegians, and in recent years they've won more than 400 medals at European Championships, World Championships and Olympics in endurance sports. That includes rowing, cross-country skiing. Sure, the guys are amazing at winter sports, but it also includes cycling, triathlon, the Nor Boys, Uno X. Considering there are only 5.7 million Norwegians, these guys have an incredible number of medals. Extremely outstanding endurance athletes. And that has to come from somewhere. They're not good just because, I don't know, the water tastes so great there. So the Norwegians must be doing something right. And what a big research group looked into is: how do the twelve best Norwegian coaches train? What do these coaches do to make their athletes so good? And they've taken a broad look at it. You can boil it down to eight points, basically, which we're going to go through now. Fire away, I can only add my two cents. Exactly, that's how we'll do it. And afterwards we'll go through the eight points. And then we'll talk about what we can derive from these eight points for hobby and amateur athletes. Because one thing to note: these eight points are for pros. For someone who gets up in the morning, does their sport, lies on the couch in between, only worries about their food, can travel anywhere, has races. It's a completely different life from the average person who works their 40 hours.

Niclas: Heads up, let me give the listeners a bit of background. I'm a bit Norway-affine. I learned Danish at school. I studied Scandinavian studies, Norwegian, alongside Islamic studies, so Turkish and Arabic. So I have access to the whole mentality up there. I've been there often, or I'm still up there quite regularly. Denmark too, Scandinavia in general. So maybe I can dive into the culture a bit so people get some background.

Björn: Exactly. Okay, we'll start with point one, which is essentially high total training volume. They just ride a really high amount. They looked at it: across the year, they average 20 to 25 hours. Now, you have to say, they also deliberately broke it down a bit: swimming and cycling, because with swimming and cycling you don't have large loads on your joints, tendons, ligaments, structures. So basically you can swim and cycle as much as you have energy for. For cross-country skiing, for example, it's still not so bad, but for running, and therefore a bit for triathlon, it's somewhat limited. So broken down to swimming, cycling and, let's say, the disciplines where we don't have extreme load on the skeletal muscles, we have 20 to 25 hours on average over the year. Which is already extreme. We're talking about around 1,000 hours that these guys spend just on the bike or training.

Niclas: The interesting thing is, Olav Alexander Bu published something about Blummenfelt's training and volume. Your jaw drops. It was 1,300, 1,400 hours.

Björn: It's so bananas.

Niclas: Yeah, and he had an average daily energy expenditure of, I think, 7,000 calories, which is also crazy high. But I actually ran the math on it. Because I thought, that's really a lot. Okay, Blummenfelt of course also weighs a few kilos more, you can't forget that. Yeah, but he's only 80. Yeah, only 80. So the question is, I don't remember the study exactly anymore, but… that was the study about himself.

Björn: That was the "End Game" one.

Niclas: And I also pulled out the resting metabolic rate. You have to do that. And then it becomes about a 10% oxygen uptake utilization. And that's… that's possible, yes. I mean, if you look at the old, sorry, this gets a bit technical, if you look at the old protein synthesis that Maader once published, meaning you can convert energy at maybe six, seven and a half percent based on oxygen uptake, then it's way too much. But Maader said, I think in one of his last lectures, that it could be significantly higher, even 15 percent and so on. And I mean, the Norwegians prove that you can do something with extremely high volume. I see it with my athletes too. When the time is there and they just burn through that energy output, there are a lot of studies on this that simply show: whoever trains the most is at the end of the day the better athlete. It's that simple.

Björn: Yeah, with caution, because as we just said with Blummenfelt, you also need the VO2max for it. Blummenfelt is, I think, one of the athletes in the world with one of the highest absolute measured VO2max values we've ever seen. I think he's at 7.5 liters.

Niclas: Yeah, but listen. Calculation. I worked it out. As crazy as it sounds.

Björn: I'm not prepared, but funnily enough I also… I was bored last night and ran through Blummenfelt's numbers.

Niclas: Estimated, right? No idea. I have to open the other computer. You can play some music so the listeners don't get bored. Elevator music? Yeah, exactly. By the way, fun story, back when I wrote articles for Zeit, before my time as a coach, I got into Zeit Online because I pitched them an article about elevator music. You wrote an article about elevator music? I wrote an article about elevator music. About that music that drizzles on you everywhere. And I wrote an article about it. And it was really funny because it's already really old, this music. Early 20th century. I don't remember exactly, there was some company, Muzak I think, and they produced these jingles or this elevator music, and I really dug deep into the topic, like I do with all topics that interest me, and that's how I ended up at Zeit. Wild. Just be creative and do a bit of nonsense and then you get it. Cool, okay. So, let me look here. Look at this. I think I had the file. Now I have to check. Um…

Björn: Blummenfelt was the one who, at least according to them, had the first ever measured real 90, right?

Niclas: Well, Svensson had… the Swede had 97, yeah.

Björn: So let's say… that was also, you mean the other Norwegian, this U23 time trial world champion, that was also a Norwegian.

Niclas: Oh right. Okay, yeah, but he had shit efficiency. I worked that out too.

Björn: Sorry, I don't care if I have shit efficiency if I can say I have a 97 VO2max.

Niclas: But it was totally wild, he pulled something like 13.7 milliliters of oxygen. I got a test yesterday where someone had 9.5 milliliters. That's just crazy. Ultra efficient. I got the test and the oxygen uptake was listed as a raw number relative to body weight. That's not so great. Like, I can even manage that. But in terms of efficiency he's just insane. He doesn't consume any oxygen. It's totally wild. Anyway, back to Blummenfelt. Right. So I went with seven liters. Depending on the source. So seven liters. And I worked out whether these crazy volumes can even work. I went with 10% utilization. And I arrived at about 38,000 to 40,000 kilojoules of turnover per week. And he pulls that off.

Björn: Is that a lot?

Niclas: Yeah, but it works. It works with that oxygen uptake. He's probably putting out 620, 630 watts for four, five minutes. Pretty cool, right? And yeah, I found that really exciting. It's so cool, so much energy.

Björn: But then you also understand, as you once told me, why these guys are walking around at Eurobike chugging Fanta, because how else are you supposed to get energy. If every day you're at 7,000 calories… I have a lot of hobby and amateur athletes who struggle with Ötztaler-style prep, 10 grams per kilo of carbs, and I'm like, guys, just eat a kilo of pasta. My god, it's only a kilo, spread over the day, it's not a big deal. Now imagine, this guy has to eat that every day. Sure. And a kilo of pasta isn't enough.

Niclas: Ultimately they eat like bodybuilders, in terms of total volume. There's Markus Rühl, really funny, when he was dieting and only on, I don't know, 3,000 calories, he felt like he was starving. Like he was about to keel over. I mean, 3,000 for me right now would be totally fine, clear, training on top, all good. Maader in his book says, in his newest old book so to speak, "The Chimera of Doping and the Unreality of Training Science."

Björn: The title is heavy, the book is hard to digest. I find it exciting, you can't buy the book anymore. You said Niclas is getting you this book. A mutual friend of ours. I actually missed picking it up from him, but you could probably get it from him now. Anyway, you can't buy this book anymore. It doesn't exist anymore.

Niclas: Totally exciting. Anyway, Maader writes about the big problem of energy expenditure, namely eating. And he goes into rowers in the GDR. He calculated it and they had to eat something like 5,000 calories. And he says, that's already a lot. Nowadays, and that's the big advantage, we can just eat. I mean, we're talking about the GDR, so before 89 or at the latest 89. The nutrition available back then, or the knowledge behind it, really wasn't that refined. Did they even eat much during training? Were they shoveling in 160 grams of carbs? Of course not. We didn't have this… more complex mixtures, or the knowledge about them yet. So energy supply is completely different. We can shovel it in. It works. You can just plough through that amount. Crazy. 7,000 kilojoules, that's insane.

Björn: It's really totally bananas. It's a liter of gasoline. In energy. That's crazy. But if you look at Blummenfelt, then what the Norwegians said in this research, 20, 25 hours, is almost human. You have to see, we'll get to other points later, that relativizes it a bit again, because it's still an insane amount, but fundamentally, if you have all day and that's your job, then it's definitely doable. I'd guess, bluntly, that in a normal training week they'll do their 25 hours. Then they have training camps or altitude camps where they train 30, even 35 hours. That's doable, in quotation marks. You just have to be able to eat well.

Niclas: Yeah, exactly.

Björn: Okay, on to point two. Pyramidal intensity distribution. Basically, they looked at the large majority: 80 to 90 percent of total training at low intensity. And they're talking around 1.5 millimoles as a max. They don't go above that. Yeah. Basically they always train below FatMax, at that intensity. That means… so to put it bluntly, even at my fitness level, it already starts that I actually shouldn't be riding the whole time at… if you buy a pre-made TrainingPeaks plan, many of the base sessions are written at, let's say, 60 to 65 percent of your FTP. If I blast around at 60 to 65 percent of my FTP the whole time, then bluntly, that's already too much energy. It doesn't work. The fitter you get, the lower you ride your base training. So basically you always aim for — the fitter you are, the more you ride around at 50, 55 percent of your FTP somewhere. And people often say, for example the Norwegians also do a lot at one millimole. So let's say one millimole to 1.5 millimoles is the threshold where they do base training. After that, and we're kind of getting into point three, traditional macro-periodization model. They build it up such that, and that's why I'm already leading into point three, in winter they just train a lot of easy volume, significantly more than during the season. And the closer they get to the race, they build it up pyramidally. So if your race means four minutes all out, they start with longer intensities and build them up shorter, to lead into the target intensity. If your effort is the Tour de France, then they probably start with shorter VO2max stuff and flip it around, so that right before they're doing 3x20 minutes at threshold or something. So that's basically this old-school macro-periodization model, where you start with… focus on high volume, then approach the competition, meaning reduction of volume and increase of intensity with an increasing specificity of the key sessions.

Niclas: Exactly, so I'm not entirely sure, I'd have to look at the study again. But that works of course super, super well in the context of cross-country skiing or an Olympic cycle, because you have one race where you need to peak hard. Exactly. With multiple races… I know Olav Alexander Bu is also a big fan of block training, although I mean, if you grind base for six weeks straight, then it's kind of block training already. If you look at Seiler's old notes — or actually Verkhoshansky and others — then you have block training, so you have your base phase, then a transition phase where a lot of threshold and so on is done, and then the specificity comes in. It just shows that… I mean, I think volume is king. And then to say, I now have specificity — funny thing, Seiler observed this intensively and said, no, this is all polarized, what they're doing. Which kind of speaks against it, because this middle block with threshold and so on doesn't appear there. But it turned out that all these cross-country skiers do partly work polarized. But then towards the race, towards a cross-country race, the specificity kicks in. So they have, as you just described, high volume. Then they have their hard intensities. And only then they start building in the specificity. So the pyramid is a bit different. But it depends on the discipline. Exactly.

Björn: It was also… in this research note, they specifically pointed to cycling, and especially road cycling, because there they said this is a bit different again. In the training itself, excluding races, you have a lot of just base riding and VO2max efforts, or very… By VO2max I mean everything above threshold. Um… because they see the one-week stage races, the multiple one-day races — Sunday one-day race, Wednesday one-day race, Saturday one-day race, which they often have during the classics season — as hard and race-specific training blocks. So one-week stage races are, as an example, clearly seen as block training, because it's basically a week of full-gas pain. And around that, they train super easy. So road cycling specifically is a bit of an exception, because it's more specific. And because over the year, with their, let's say, nowadays only 60 to 70 race days they have. But those 60 to 70 are at medium intensity. You don't need to blast crazy sweet-spot intervals if you're doing that for a week straight.

Niclas: Absolutely. When you look at them in races, you're always amazed at how much they actually spend in unpopular training zones. Yeah, totally. But that's at the end of the day, at the Coaches Corner, it was kind of the key point at the end. What actually does World Tour pro riders? It's, first, the race density, and second, the distance and the time they spend in those tempo zones, where everyone says, that can't work, we have to work polarized. No, forget it, they train — or race-induced, they spend a huge amount of time in these zones.

Björn: Yeah, exactly. That's, I'd say, relatively difficult when you're really in World Tour road racing. Then you have, in terms of pure planning, your race is set and you build everything around that somehow, with recovery, whatever. If we apply this to, bluntly, mountain bike marathon, where we maybe have 30 race days, except, I don't know, Hans who has 50. Great, great training plan. Right. Then you can structure it a bit differently. You can do these race-specific sessions, peaking for a race and stuff like that. It looks a bit different. You always have to refer back to the specificity of the individual sport. Exactly. The next point I found super interesting was micro-periodization. It was clearly highlighted: maximum two to three intensive days or sessions per week. Three intensive sessions up to a maximum of four, where they say, okay, three or four only happens when Double Threshold is being done. The Norwegians do that quite happily. Like, morning session first, afternoon session second, and both are usually around 2.5 millimoles. So as a Sub-Threshold.

Niclas: Exactly. And I mean, this structure… you know me, you know how I write plans. This is pretty much exactly what I always do. Three intensive days, done. That's it.

Björn: The rest is volume. And that's clearly stated too. Except in extremely rare cases, basically, never two hard days in a row. The days that are hard are always Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Those can be the hard days. And then really, yeah, a focus on clear rest periods and rest days. And in this micro-periodization, in this section of the article, it was clearly emphasized: rest periods are sold to athletes as training. That means they have to stick to it strictly. If Monday says you do nothing, then you do nothing. So, you should actively lie on the couch and eat. Bluntly, right? Well, not quite. Always in context. They're not going to shovel in 7,000 calories on a rest day, but basically on that day your only job is to recover and regenerate and eat well.

Niclas: 7,000 calories, I have to jump in for a second, because this book has been sitting here the whole time and I have to keep staring at it.

Björn: Ben & Jerry's? You have a Ben & Jerry's book? Yes.

Niclas: Absolute hammer. I can recommend it to anyone who has an ice cream maker. The recipes from this book are in there. A million copies sold, original recipes. Mega book. So anyone who has issues with food. And it's, you know, it's so funny, these illustrations — I'm showing it, no one can see it unfortunately — but it's like the children's books I used to have. It's totally cute. Looks really cool. It's great. You can get, I don't even know if it's still officially available, I bought it used back then. Yeah, I have to go make ice cream again later.

Björn: We could do it as a gimmick, for the last minute of the podcast you just read out a recipe from this book. It's not that well written. Okay, too bad. So, that was macro-periodization and micro-periodization. And ice cream. Now we come to point five. Ice cream is also required here. Altitude training camps. The clear goal is three to four training camps per year. Adding up to a total of 50 to 100 days above 1,500 meters. I find it exciting that they're already counting from 1,500 meters. Because most people only start counting at 1,800, 1,900. People often say, yeah, you should be above 2,000. Also important here: focus at altitude is low intensity instead of high-intensity training. So when training at altitude, it's really just volume, nothing else. And when intensities are done, it was said please go back down from altitude to normal elevation, ride the intensities at normal elevation, and then go back up.

Niclas: So Niclas, why do you think they spend so long at altitude?

Björn: Well, because of energy expenditure, because of lots of training, and because only then do the red blood cells really form. There's another point.

Niclas: That one's actually much more exciting. Capillarization of the muscles at altitude. Meaning the muscle just gets used to… diffusion of oxygen. If you imagine how a muscle works. Oxygen has to get into the muscle somehow. That works via a capillary effect. Everyone knows it, stick a straw in, slurp, it goes up. And when capillarization at altitude is better. I think that's also the case with some people like Andreas Seewald, who is insanely much at altitude. And was always on the move and, I don't know, riding around in the Andes, and has lived at altitude his whole life. He lives, I think, at 900 basically, and he's surrounded by mountains and has been in the mountains the whole time, even as a child. Capillarization of the muscles is decisive. Yeah. It's also exciting to see how these capillarization effects transfer to humans and animals. Someone who lives in Nepal, does he have insanely many red blood cells? Most likely not. He has super good capillarization. Or some llamas in the Andes — their muscle is extremely well perfused. And this effect, I read something about this many years ago, and a German scientist, Olaf Schumacher, also studied it more intensively. He's now in Freiburg, he went to… where? Oman or Saudi Arabia? I don't know. I don't remember exactly. Anyway, this effect, I assume.

Björn: So you see that as, before you just have the mass of red blood cells and the two-to-three-week-lasting effect of, okay, we push VO2max and everything that comes with it. Instead you say, they do this especially, let's say 100 days at altitude, to improve capillarization over a long period, over several consecutive years.

Niclas: Yeah, exactly. Exciting. You can also tape one nostril shut, right? No, you can't. Björn Kafka launches a new trend, all athletes walking around with a taped nose. No joke, there was a study, end of the 90s or mid-90s, where they had runners run with a snorkel. With a diving snorkel. That was really cool. It had a huge benefit. I tried it myself. The effect is basically as follows: first, this pull isn't exactly pleasant. You notice that you're limited. But another thing, you actively start exhaling much more strongly, and that way you also clear lactate much better. In this U-shape, basically, everyone knows a snorkel has this curve where moisture collects, and you don't want to inhale that. So you blow out relatively hard. And I remember, many, many years ago, there was a book by Chris Carmichael, the Armstrong training one. I mean, Armstrong wasn't trained by Carmichael, but by other people who knew more about red blood cells and stuff. There's this wonderful scene with Armstrong, some documentary or interview, and he's at Michele Ferrari's, and he gets asked what he needs, and Michele Ferrari with his Italian accent says: "Lance, you only need red blood cells." Anyway, in this Carmichael book, Chris Carmichael also describes that exhaling had really interesting effects, and I don't know, maybe it brings in auxiliary breathing muscles and so on, there are people who know more about it than I do, but yeah, there are crazy studies with positive effects. Isn't that one of those internet-Instagram trends, taping your nose shut? Or at least still? Or taping your mouth shut?

Björn: Taping your mouth shut, right? So that at night you breathe better through your nose? And that's supposed to improve sleep quality? I don't know.

Niclas: And plucking nose hairs is a big trend right now too. Stop it!

Björn: That must really hurt, right?

Niclas: It hurts like hell. Just hell.

Björn: Never. No. No, no, no, no. We don't do that. Right, point six we've basically already covered. Specifics of road cycling, one-week stage races, high-intensity blocks, hence a combination of traditional periodization and block periodization. We just mentioned that.

Niclas: Anyone who wants to look into these two keywords, block periodization, classical periodization, can look them up online. Block periodization is an exciting topic. From Vladimir Issurin. Unfortunately I never really got to know him. He was already quite old and not really fresh anymore when I was lecturing at the institute where he was. But I spoke to some of his colleagues. It's exciting. It's also evolved over the years. And I'm a big, big fan of it and do it a lot. Yeah.

Björn: I think it's one of the best things you can do. Now, a point I found kind of came out of nowhere. Balance between load and recovery. Implementation via micro-periodization, hard and easy days alternating. Okay, sure, we had that. Recovery weeks every three to four weeks. Mhm. But we're not talking about doing nothing or cutting the volume super hard. We're talking about a targeted unload by, let's say, reducing by 30 percent. So we keep doing volume, but instead of 20 hours we now train, for example, only 15 hours. And instead of 3x20 minutes sweet spot, we now only do 2x20 minutes sweet spot. Bluntly. Just reduce everything for a week. To bring recovery into the foreground. They also said that it always depends on how the athlete is doing, what kind of athlete you have in front of you, do they need it or not, and how does it fit into the race structure. You always have to factor that in, when it's actually useful.

Niclas: Yeah, but ultimately it's about collecting as much training time as possible. And sure, every third or fourth week, classically, if you're smashing VO2max for two weeks, then you happily take an easy week. Easy week, but also if I look at the athletes I work with who are cruising around at the very top, it's also like, even their recovery weeks, I go down to 70 percent. They still ride 15, 16 hours. That's the recovery. And then they go hiking for another six hours if they feel like it. That's when your engine — I mean, everyone knows it, you start training, the first two hours feel sluggish. And afterwards you're at such a high level that you say, okay, time for a two-hour recovery ride. That's just how it is, it doesn't bother you anymore. And if you've already revved the engine that high, then you have to keep it that way, because the drop in performance is dramatic. If high-performance athletes do nothing for two weeks, then 10% of VO2max is gone relatively quickly. Yeah, plasma and all that. So… the thing has to keep running.

Björn: The engine is always running, yeah. Absolutely. And I think you can't, with these… I always find it difficult when you have a real rest week and do nothing, it doesn't feel great either. You get pulled out of your rhythm. So some movement, just to keep structuring your day. Because you have to remember, these are pro athletes. If they don't train… what are they supposed to do all day? And if they do that for several days, it's, bluntly, boring for them.

Niclas: Yeah, and other things come into play. It feels physically really lousy. They're so highly trained and their blood pressure drops. You feel kind of hugged the whole time. They just have to move.

Björn: Yeah, but what I find particularly exciting is that you can kind of prevent this crash-out thing, and I think that's something where we'll get to the points later, but, yeah, that you, many hobby and amateur athletes like to, I don't know, they prepare, prepare, prepare, train, train, train, train, have their goal, achieve that goal, and then, yeah, now I'm going to do nothing for four weeks. Or like that, and this goal basically — they reach this goal and then they stop, do nothing for four weeks, and then wonder why the next year for example people start overtaking them, even though they've kept training. And I think that's what you can learn best from this point, which is why the point is called balance between load and recovery. Yeah. We've said it often enough now: the best endurance athletes are the ones who do this consistently over years. You can't think, okay, I'll smash myself for a year, do 1,000 hours this year, and then only 300 the following year. That's… that might be cool short-term, but if you want to be good long-term, then you better do 500 hours, 600 hours, 700 hours, 800 hours, 900 hours, build it up over years, your body can adapt, your mind can adapt, and then you'll become good over a long period. Endurance sports is not a sport where you become successful overnight. Yeah. And I think that's what hobby and amateur athletes always have to consider, that you have to build this up over a long period. If you want to reach your goals or if you want to improve your Ötztaler time, you can achieve a lot in one year, but in three years, four years, five years, ten years you can become really good and then you can ride really great Ötzi times. That's what I mean by that. Right, last point on the list, I found this super cool. They just said, yeah, there are other studies on this, you have to look elsewhere more specifically. It just said strength training, component of all endurance sports. It's done everywhere. In swimming, for example, it's done significantly more percentage-wise. In rowing it's also done a fair amount. Cycling and triathlon, it's done relatively little compared to swimming or rowing. Fundamentally, it's a component everywhere. They saw, sure, we've talked about this, especially in winter, very intensive strength training once or twice a week can be really good. They also highlighted, especially in winter, work on your core stability, work on your back, work on your abs, your hips, so you get through the year well and injury-free. That's kind of the main point across all endurance sports. Back, abs, core stability, that training has to always be done, once or twice a week, it's mandatory, everyone does it. And then specificity you can build in, if there are strengths or weaknesses in particular, you can do more.

Niclas: I don't know if it's in the study or if it's at least briefly described, but another point. I'll call it resource allocation and distribution. 5-point-something million people. And most of them live in the south of Norway. Going north, it gets really sparse. Anyone who's been to Norway knows, up there there's really nothing going on anymore. There live, I don't know, 100,000 people. Really thin, thin ice. Even though there's lots of ice there. You have completely different support. If you decide to go into endurance sports in these countries, there's often a completely different commitment behind it. Support structures, because there are few people, are just better. Club structures are really, really good. Just with Uno X, road cycling has become en vogue there, doing it seriously. In cross-country skiing we've always seen that. The rowers were also, I mean, they've produced incredible rowers. And the resource distribution is so good that there's amazing support. That's why with this small team they can move so much. What soccer is for us, to put it plainly, is endurance sports there. It's crazy how much energy flows in. But also through short official channels, let's say, few people, little friction, you can move relatively a lot. And I mean, youth development in Germany is difficult. In endurance sports. From what I see, sure, we have coach education and the like, which is also great. But many teams also scoop up the talent super fast. That's really crazy. Development teams come in. And then it's usually, you have one or two really engaged club coaches who do a lot, which is totally cool. But there are few clubs, I'd say, that fundamentally have this performance mindset. I always have to think back to a rowing center in Friedrichstadt. Friedrichstadt says nothing to you. Absolutely no idea. Friedrichstadt is a very small town near Husum, where I grew up, that interestingly has a disproportionately high number of good rowers. Several German champions in the youth classes, I think also Olympic champions and so on. They come from Friedrichstadt. And Friedrichstadt is super small. Two people in my class rowed there, both German champions. They have crazy youth development. You can't really do anything else there. Friedrichstadt has a river, you have canals, it's totally interesting. Somehow the Dutch were there once and remodeled it, and so you have these canals in the town. Beautiful place to visit by the way, if you're ever in North Frisia, please go to Friedrichstadt. And you have this crazy rowing club. And as a kid, you either play soccer or you go to the rowing club. And there it comes again, you don't have any other crap to distract you. Why do great endurance athletes come from, well, not from a big city? Sure, there's the occasional Berliner or whatever. But interestingly they come from these small pockets, and there's one club, and then I'm like, what am I supposed to do as a kid? Then I just go to the cycling club, and then you end up as a pro cyclist, because of lack of options you just start with it. And that's in corners where resources can be distributed very well, because there are few people, this effect is definitely also worth considering.

Björn: Yeah, I actually find it really exciting in our Saarland, for example, that for, I think, two years now, we've had a really ambitious and good SRB, so Saarland Cycling Federation, youth coach, who basically does mountain biking, I think U19, U17. And in no time we've had two German champion titles in the cross-country youth classes. One in the U19 girls' — Clara Müller, exactly — and then one in U17 as well. In no time these structures, this team coming together, that the coach does super many events with them, they go train together a lot, lots of technique training together, and he says, yeah, these are kids, they don't need a crazy training plan and super-structured training yet. It's a lot about: whoever wants to come along to these events has to bring the performance, and then they go cycling on their own because they know, okay, I have to be fit to keep up. Sure, they're teenagers, but still kids to some extent. If you give them that incentive, they train on their own. And I think that's super cool to see, that this coach built something up in no time where real titles are coming out.

Niclas: It's brilliant. Something else comes to mind. A nice example of how it can work. I don't know if it's still like this, but at least it used to be. There's a club, SV Reudern. Mhm. And I did performance diagnostics there many, many years ago, back with Clemens — Clemens Hesse. And we arrived and thought, kids, youth, performance diagnostics is always a bit, but these were the older kids. I mean, "Reudern" already sounds how you'd imagine — small, a bit… the day was also crap. I thought it was a bit mangy. Anyway, they had 70 kids training there. They built a course and so on. It was totally crazy. It was wild how many kids they got to ride mountain bikes. And if I look here in Unterföhring, where I live, right around the corner from Munich, well, essentially Munich, we have a killer pump track. And several killer pump tracks, I sometimes do pump-track tours with my guys. You can hit three, four pump tracks within 20 kilometers, even less, 15 kilometers. And really nicely built ones, mega, mega, mega. Nothing going on there. It's really sad. Well, sometimes there's a bit going on, but I mean, if I as a kid — same thing for me, lack of options, that's how you get into cycling. There was nothing besides soccer, and then there was cycling, then there was a club, then there were a few people who were ambitious and wanted to do something with us, and then you just start with it. And now you're here in… Unterföhring, performance center, tours, pump track here, this and that, and you get thrown everything. And I stand on this pump track that I ride sometimes, even when I'm just passing by, and I always think, hey crazy, there are just a few little kids who maybe ride around on their scooters, but the thing isn't really being used. And I find that a bit sad sometimes, because I mean, if we had had such opportunities — or wherever you put that thing, if you put it in northern Germany in Hatstedt, or Witzwort, or wherever, there'd be kids there every day. Really crazy. Definitely. Because there's nothing else. And resource scarcity can totally lead to people having to focus on something. And that's a big topic in Norway, yeah.

Björn: So, the exciting question, Björn, what would you say we can derive from these points? All good.

Niclas: Yeah, so for hobby athletes, more is good, but of course it has to be integrated into daily life. And easy. And easy, easy, easy, sure. You don't need to buy a Lactate Scout or Lactate Plus or whatever. Heart rate works well too, so ride easy. Talk test, as long as I can still talk reasonably well, I'm good. Talking relaxed, so not this, ugh, to the right up ahead. Exactly, so not talking like I do when I run. When every two months I make the frustrating attempt to go jogging, I'm like, dude, I've gotten really fit on the bike now. Why does running still suck? I just saw there's this cool exoskeleton, not even expensive. 900 euros. And it got really good reviews. I saw it and thought, wild. Um…

Björn: Yeah, but that's for, I don't know, people with two busted knees.

Niclas: No, no, it's totally crazy. People use it for jogging too, and especially for hiking. Totally wild. Because I wasn't traveling much on vacation this year, I was hiking a lot, really every day sometimes, I was in the Alps with my kids. To the great joy of my kids. Always six, seven hours, and then a nice thousand vertical meters in a go. It's hard being related to me.

Björn: If I were your son, I'd whine your ears off. My little son hates me. Rightfully so. You drag them up a thousand vertical meters.

Niclas: Hey, they really push through. And it's — partly really a bit of trouble, but they do it and develop real ambition. I love that. And up top they eat a Kaiserschmarrn or something. That's always the biggest highlight. And I'm amazed at how they pull through. As a kid I wouldn't have managed to hike seven hours. In the end you have 1,500 vertical meters in your legs. And I'm really cooked afterwards. I notice, it feels like I've had muscle soreness for four weeks. In the quads or in the calves. And eventually I saw this exoskeleton. And people use it for hiking, totally cool. And I thought, I'll buy it and strap it on my little son so he gets up a bit faster. But no, that doesn't work. Maybe for my mother, yeah. But I thought it was a pretty cool thing. But hiking, by the way, fantastic sport. Also a fantastic endurance sport. Especially when it really goes sharply uphill. That's base training too. Right. So if you hike uphill for two hours, my pulse is absolutely in the base zone. I remember a mountain bike Transalp winner. A Masters rider. I met him a few times on hikes, funnily enough. And he always had his kid in the back in one of those carriers, and he just hiked up the mountains. And I asked him, hey, Transalp's coming up, do you also mountain bike? He said, yeah sure, I ride mountain bike too, but of course I also have kids. And he spends most of his time hiking. That's his training, he just hikes. And he completely smashed it. So hiking, great thing. Now I'm off on another tangent.

Björn: But for all hobby and amateur athletes fundamentally, if you can do more easy base training, do more easy base training. As much as your circumstances allow.

Niclas: It's always only about energy flows through the muscle. And if you say it doesn't work, how am I supposed to do this — ride your bike to work. When you have small errands, take your bike, not the car. Try to squeeze in a half-hour trainer session.

Björn: The more easy movement, the better.

Niclas: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, more is better.

Björn: Then on intensity distribution. Fundamentally I'd say, basically you can take it over the same way. Pyramidal training intensity distribution should also work very well here. And here I think, especially when you have stress with family, with work, one to two really intensive training sessions should be totally sufficient. Here I think it's always important to say, you don't have to blow yourself up completely on these sessions. A 7-8 on a load scale of 1-10 is totally sufficient. It doesn't have to be a 10 out of 10. No pro athlete gives themselves a 10 out of 10 in training. That's saved mentally for a race, to go to the bitter end like that. And therefore one or two really hard sessions are enough, and you've already set a good stimulus, that's enough.

Niclas: Yeah, one more thing on that, the topic of… pre-built workouts, platforms, whatever. That always looks really fancy when you have pre-built workouts with intervals and all that. I get it. It has an entertainment factor and you have the feeling that the person or the machine, whatever, has put thought into it. But when I sometimes see training plans, even from other coaches, where every day is something different… I sometimes have the feeling it's a bit of busywork, so people feel like something is being offered to them. But hey, as bananas as this sounds, I sometimes write, no idea, he has 25 hours of base on the plan. Really, that's it. And people ask, what, that's it? Nope, it's just 25 hours of base.

Björn: Yeah, bluntly, when I was in Girona over the winter, we talked on the phone at the start of the week, and you said, listen, here's the amount of energy you need to burn, ride.

Niclas: Just ride. Ride. In this and that zone, ride.

Björn: Yeah, just burn energy. Converted, I think, it was 28 hours, 28 hours of base training, do it.

Niclas: Yeah, no idea what you pushed, 25,000 kilojoules per week? Yeah, something like that. Yeah. So it's that simple. And when intervals come, they should be really purposeful, not just some random stuff. Two weeks of hammering yourself with VO2max, or when races are coming up, you build intervals. I just put together a few crazy intervals for the World Championships that really aren't nice. I mean, nice to look at, but I know they're hell to ride. But that's where specificity comes in briefly. And that's it. It's not about, like a galley slave who has to row every day. …grinding yourself into the wall, so that, especially if you have a family, you basically can't do anything anymore, so you say, okay, I've been at work, then I trained myself into the ground, and the rest of the day I'm just an iceberg lettuce lying in the corner.

Björn: Yeah, totally. Okay, periodization, micro-periodization, so basically points three and four. Fundamentally for all hobby and amateur athletes also, we just said, useful. So think about, if you're writing your training plan yourself, what do you want to achieve with your training right now? What's your target race? When do you want to train? …built your VO2max, when do you want to start with specifics for the race. You can make yourself a sensible plan and find a good path. Then build in recovery. I think for pro athletes, that's pretty much standard? I think as a hobby and amateur athlete who also has a job and family, it's almost even more important. And maybe also — exactly, that's really the first point. So good sleep, eight hours a night, that's the basis for everything else. I think job, family, all of it is easier if you manage… …to sleep well and to sleep as much as possible. And then a rest day can simply be, okay, I'll squeeze in a midday nap, lie down for 15, 20 minutes at noon. That can already be super. Build in strength training, one to two sessions a week, and even if it's just 15 minutes of small athletic training where you do a bit of abs, a bit of back, it's definitely useful for core stability and injury prevention. If you run a lot, do something for your feet, your ankles, your knees. Definitely a few exercises there.

Niclas: And the older you get, the cooler it is to have muscle mass stuck on your body, because that eventually disappears, especially the fast fibers. Counteracting that really makes sense. So I'd say, if you're not doing competitive sports but health-oriented sport, I'd almost tend to say: do endurance sports at some small level two, three times a week, if you like, two or three hours of endurance. Running, rowing, cycling works. And then twice a week, maybe even three times a week, a really serious strength training so that something happens. I mean, I'm slowly getting to an age where you have to think about it. Or you start doping. That's also — slapping on a testo patch. My father-in-law, he had to take them because he's already very, very old. And then I saw these patches and thought, cool. Didn't do it, of course. So the possibility exists, but you shouldn't consider the possibility if you don't… …have checked, okay, I really have a deficiency, otherwise you end up in deep trouble, because the extra hormones you pump in cause other hormones to be upregulated, and then when you stop those things, you get a bit too much, no idea, estrogen, and then those grow. Breasts as a man, no one wants that. Right, so strength training, the older you get, especially when it comes to the health aspect, great thing, and it's simple, we don't even need to think about it. Lift a bit of something. Go to the gym. They hardly cost anything these days. There's some flat rate and then you just move some weights.

Björn: I find it super wild, when you go to Aldi. At least it's like this at Aldi Süd here. I can go to Aldi and get a cheaper McFit subscription there than if I go to McFit. If I go to McFit, for example, they don't offer it, like being able to buy a single month. Doesn't exist. At Aldi I get a month of McFit for 19.99. My wife has one of those

Niclas: from her work. There's this offer here in Munich, the Munich area, called Wellpass, she pays 20, 25 euros and can use everything. Everything. Swimming pool, climbing, climbing gym.

Björn: In Cologne I had Urban Sports Club, that's basically the same thing.

Niclas: Right, and so the two of us, and the kids too, we go to climbing gyms, whatever, there's one around the corner. And so we go climbing once a week. And the offer is killer. So use it, above all have fun with it, then it'll work.

Björn: So, point seven. Altitude training for amateurs.

Niclas: That's really tough. It's always effort, and then I'd almost even say, sleep in an altitude tent if it works family-wise. I have several athletes who do it a lot, with two kids and the tent, and it led to outstanding results, but that's when you're already so maxed out and so good, then you can do it.

Björn: Right, exactly, that's the point I wanted to raise. I think there are very, very, very few hobby and amateur athletes who have optimized everything else so well that you find a sensible reason to do an altitude training camp or use an altitude tent. So, bluntly, if you find Livigno so great and you like going there on vacation, yeah, you can do it. Okay, then just train easy there, otherwise you ride yourself into a wall. Otherwise, for most hobby and amateur athletes I say, before you start with altitude training, with an altitude tent, I say, yeah, then first you should do heat training all the time. There are much cheaper and more effective ways you can still use and exhaust, before I say, okay, lie in an altitude tent. But I mean, heat training is really nasty.

Niclas: Altitude tent is, well, in your case, you hate the altitude tent, or the altitude tent doesn't like you.

Björn: We'll sort that out, hey, we'll still get it working. My athlete, I've loaned it to him now, he actually asked if he could keep using it for the winter. And I said, well, I still have a score to settle with that thing.

Niclas: Niclas talks real shit about altitude. He says even from low altitude the saturation drops off badly. You see that in your race results too. That I'm really bad. As soon as it goes above 800 meters, you break down. And yeah, so it always sounds so nice, I lie down in the tent and everything's peachy, but then you feel a bit mushy. In summer it's hot in there. But I mean, heat training isn't exactly fun either.

Björn: I find heat training cooler than an altitude tent. Paul's answer with the altitude tent was, just do beach races.

Niclas: Yeah, exactly. There's no altitude there. Bang, smash it. That's cool.

Björn: Paul rides here at KMC, and the team manager at KMC. So Paul already talked to the KMC team manager. He'd even organize a bike for me so I can try it out.

Niclas: Yeah, cool. My Paul is also the total prototype for a beach racer, right? 58 kilos and flat. Nice. Okay.

Björn: I'd say, the last point, which for the pros was balance between load and recovery, I'd rephrase here to balance between training and daily life. That's actually the most important thing for every hobby and amateur athlete. You have to figure that out. And then sometimes I even say, less is more. You have to somehow fit this into — you have to find a way to fit your training into your daily life as stress-free as possible, and then of course in the optimal case, if you're a competitive athlete and want to race, then as much training as possible that stays stress-free. What's important, I find, is always this, yeah, if you have to argue with your wife every evening about whether you can go on the trainer for another hour, that's going to be tough, you have to find a middle ground somehow, and — throw the wife out, find another sport, whatever.

Niclas: The life wisdoms of Niclas Ranker.

Björn: Throw the wife out. I can bring that up. I never have those problems. I'm always allowed to train as much as I want. Yeah, good.

Niclas: Yeah, good. Nice. I don't know what to say to that. No, I don't have those problems either. Luckily. It's fairly distributed. We've got it. Yeah, right? Yeah. I also really… Again. I don't feel like talking anymore. Thanks, Niclas. It's okay. This Ben & Jerry's book has been grinning at me the whole time. And I've been picturing the whole time that I'm going to eat in a minute.

Björn: Hey, good thing, it's almost lunchtime. You can go cook something good. Then at noon, enjoy a nice meal. Right, I'd say, let's wrap it up. Thanks a lot for listening. See you next week.

Niclas: See you soon. Ciao, ciao.