@Malte Karsten Hi Malte! My answer to this would be that it depends. Technically doing a run/row/bike etc. at the same heart rate is making your heart and lungs train equally hard. But it’s the amount of time spent doing the exercise that would influences the benefits. Eg. A 30 minute very easy z1 cycle or a 30 min equivalent eaay run would have fairly similar adaptions. But let’s say you do this twice per week during your rest days/days off - that adds up to ~50 hours of non cycling training a year and you are very likely missing out on cycling related adaptions. Becoming very efficient when pedalling is a real thing and time in the saddle will only benefit cycling performance as long as it’s managed correctly. However if you are doing a medium to long training ride of say 2.5 to 5+ hours then you would be missing out on cycling related adaptions if you were to spend this time cross training for example. I’m sure you’re not suggesting that you swap a 5 hour bike ride for a 5 hour run but the point is still the same, there does become a stage where cross training v cycling will not produce the same benefits for your cycling performance goals. Does that make sense? Also it’s not dangerous but you have to be careful when seeing van der poel running on Instagram. We have no idea what everything looks like around that and what his training programme is like. He likely has 20+ experts analysing, adapting, monitoring etc his training on a daily basis and they do know what they are doing. A time crunched parent with a full time job can’t really draw any inspiration from MVDP’s cross training - they would almost certainly be better off spending more time riding their bike if the bike is their goals. A beginner or somebody who’s returning to exercise after a long break, injury etc. would probably be fine to cross train and see real benefits to their cycling performance. But there will be a plateau at some stage and this is where the likes of Anthony’s training earns it’s stripes. There is a reason for the sessions that are put up at the end of the day.

@Malte Karsten some form of strength training should be enough to ensure good bone density. It is true that if you just cycle that your bone density mightn’t be great but lifting some weights is normally sufficient for healthy bones - doesn’t even need to be heavy. It depends how you define cross training whether you consider strength training to count or not. I would say no but I suppose it can be argued that it is. But it depends whether you’re referring to squatting/deadlifting big weights for a couple of reps or doing a 45 min HIIT or intense core workout for example. The latter would be more for helping fitness instead of developing power. Track sprinters are a massive exception when looking at the gym. Because sprinting is so short compared to hours of road/gravel cycling they aren’t even comparable really. I’m pretty confident that you could win the Tour de France without touching the gym but you would not be any good at track sprinting without it. It all depends what your goals are. I’d say for you that gym is probably less beneficial than what you’d think it would be. If you want to be good at road/gravel cycling etc then you’d be far better off spending more time on your bike than in the gym!

There has been a few discussions about cross training over the last few days and this is probably where it is really useful. Probably best to discuss this with Anthony but I would suggest that trying to keep your body moving at the very least. There are a lot of really good core workout videos on YouTube where you can still do a really solid session without any equipment. If you have experience in running and could manage say 2 x short runs for example then you’d be doing very well - but if you have any niggles or injury concerns in general then scrap running altogether. I’m not sure where you are in the world but hill walking/hiking is still good exercise. If you are walking with a few others and you could carry the main bag or something to make the walk more challenging and increase heart rate by a little bit more then that would be good. Rowing or any other bit of gym equipment that keeps your body moving and heart pumping is also a good thing. But you should probably review this a bit with Anthony as ideally you wouldn’t have a break in the second week of a vo2 block - this will probably need to be tweaked and you might end up repeating week 1 again when you start back after the holidays. Hope that helps a bit! Enjoy the break and the family time too 😎

I think Omar sums that up fairly bang on. You’re not going to find a coach who can give a better answer to ai these days in terms of a physiological answer at least 😆 To give a human answer in terms of how this applies I would say this. We don’t always need to absolutely smash ourselves 100% every sprint session. If we wanted to do some massive sprints with a lot of torque from the uphill gradient then you would be prescribed that. There are so many different types of sprints and sessions can work on loads of different components of a sprint. The uphill big power sprints will produce a lot of torque but also a lot more muscle damage. After a few of these your legs will be destroyed and it will affect your ability to ride in z2 afterwards or over the days ahead. In the gym for example a power lifter would get away with going all out like in an uphill torque sprint. But they don’t have to spend hours riding in z2 afterwards like cyclists do. This is where people miss a trick when they apply a principle from another sport or way of thinking into cycling - it’s not always transferable. The session you did will be good for leg speed and technique which are two things that prevent people from sprinting to the best of their ability 90% of the time in my opinion. They are really strong and can do an ugly uphill grinding sprint, but can they suddenly snap out of the draft and slingshot past the guy in front to win a town sprint. Additionally you would be surprised by how many people would really benefit from accelerating/sprinting in a lower gear as you can accelerate so much faster by producing less torque and have less muscle damage basically. It will improve repeatability big time if you can learn to effectively sprint in a slightly lower gear - or in other words you won’t feel as tired despite accelerating as fast etc.

I was thinking that you were sounding quite motivated about this session last night @Alex Omar. I was wondering if it was going to be as easy as you seemed to think it would be 😆

@Sarah Egan I’m not sure how hard these efforts were but yeah as a general guide you’re helping the body to deal better with building lactate and then clearing it. Benefits both your vo2 and threshold, as well as being good race practice too - a lot of people have ‘one speed’ where they can go fast but can’t really push over this whether it’s a sprint out of a corner, short steep climb etc. It just feels horrific to do in training unfortunately. No easy way to get through it.

@Sarah Egan Yeah in their podcast last Wednesday they spoke about it. It was about 15/20 mins or so at the end where they read through the email he had sent. They spoke about the parts that David gave permission to discuss on the show which ended up not being a good look on his part and Factor. They didn’t say anything unfair in the review but Factor seemed to think that the two boys would hit all of the key marketing points without being told what those were beforehand I’m assuming. They just said what their experiences of the bike were, as opposed to hyping up the bike like all of the reviewers do essentially - quite refreshing really. But David fairly slated them which can’t do any good for Factor surely. Worth a watch

@Anthony Walsh https://youtu.be/0ceZ4DA9rWM?si=ivkluBICzV8rwuR9 Skip to an hour in and they go through it all