How Fit Did I Get Doing Zone 2?

What has your experience with zone 2 training been like? 👀 Let us know in the comments! 💬

No matter how many times I repeat to myself "stay in Z2". A plastic bag carried by wind is enough to start a race in Z4 😭

As an older rider, this all sounds pretty much like what we used to call the ‘getting the miles in’ winter training rides

I started cycling at the beginning of 2023, no cycling background at all. My brother in law was doing triathlons and was on my case about fitness. He told me just do zone 2 it’s not hard. I was 227-230 pounds totally out of shape. I finally gave in and tried it. I did zone 2 for a year straight, I lost 30 pounds! Starting this year I hired a cycling coach. Surprise, surprise 80 percent of my training time is still zone 2 :) My brother in law is now the one getting dropped ;)

As a former distance running coach, my biggest problem was getting athletes to understand that all out every day is not the answer. That “no pain no gain” attitude still persists. Thank you for showing once again that science does show the way!

I joined you from week one. It has been a great experience. As a 60 year old cyclist of 40 years, aging has taught me that training must change as my age has. I get more out of lower intensity than I did when I was younger. Recovery time is critical as I age. Here are my 7 week results. Starting FTP - 195 Ending FTP - 226 That's a huge difference for what felt like low intensity consistent riding. Sooooo Goood!

It is good to know that just having a long and enjoyable ride is good for improving. Our cycling group is too much focused on riding faster and faster, and in the process people are being dropped literally and socially. Good experiement!

Lol at naming and shaming the 'well actually" dudes pointing out she momentarily went into Z3!❤

Zone 2 only must have been torture for an ex-trackie. 😂 Well done Manon - it's great to see some of the data behind the zone 2 recommendations.

Well done! The end of the ramp test was the face of someone who had given absolutely everything. Kudos 🎉

I wrote a book about the importance, and benefits, of zone 2 training back in 2007; Base Building for Cyclists. I did the exact same testing on athletes back then with 6 week before/after zone 2 focus training with similar results. Great to see this training method getting some discussion/attention again. It's not a new idea! It wasn't a new idea when I wrote Base Building for Cyclists in 2007, but I wanted to communicate the importance of zone 2 base training to athletes that were often training too hard too often. One misunderstanding has been that base training is just riding around easy all day. Thank you for reminding riders that you need to be riding in zone 2, and not in zone 1, in order to stimulate adaptations and realize these benefits. Zone 1 is for warm up, cooling down, and recovery rides. Zone 2 is for base training. Thank you for sharing your experience and data! Brought back memories of doing this with my athletes many years ago. Great video, great information.

Historically I trained full gas as much as possible. Now after a 5 year break from anything over 15 miles I am training for a 115 mile ride. I have been following zone 2 training plan and am finding, that I can train more frequently and do longer rides and am seeing measurable improvements week on week. I’m 4 weeks away from the event and feeling confident that I will cover the distance, albeit not that fast. On real rides (away from the turbo) HR blows out the top on the climbs but then quickly comes back.

Best video I've seen on the actual implementation and then validation of Zone 2 training of a consistent block of time. Great job!

The weather here in Scotland was terrible earlier in tbe year so i decided to train indoors while watching pro races for 2 hours a day for 50 days. I dropped 13kg weight so far and my average speed has increased from around 20kph to 26kph for each ride. I dont have access to lab testing but i feel a lot fitter and a lot lighter and about to treat myself to a new Giant TCR for some out door rides now the weather's improved. 😂

I was going to do a VO2 max ramp test next week. I'm thinking of cancelling it after watching this! Manon, you are a beast.

That was a pretty crazy increase. I'll be honest, looking at the original lactate curve, I couldn't see how hey were coming up with 140 watts for LT1. Lactate was clearly increasing at that level. But with this second test, the 160 watt level is really clear. As the researcher said, it didn't really matter since you were training to heart rate. But what floors me is the improvement in only 6 weeks. I can see that I'm missing a trick by not doing some longer rides. Thanks for this series!

The amazing thing is I bought Davis Phinnie's book in the early 90's, used a Polar heart rate monitor & learned all of this back then and did fantastic fitness wise with it. The book laid out very well that your LSD (Long Slow Distance) Zone 2 was the hardest phase of training because it was so damn boring & felt pointless, yet would improve your cycling the most dramatically. Now...we're being shown Zone 2 training for a new generation of riders who think this science is new. It's been around for so very long.

Finally Manon! You are the best. I thought I'd never find the result I'm so glad you posted this. I've been searching this every few days.

Thank You for sharing the research and results!!! Getting confident answers is very difficult to find as many athletes don’t want to share what works best!

I love this vid. I'm a big believer of Seiler's heirarch of training needs and this vid further helps that point. I also love that the coach was pointing that out near the end. Also that coach is a real hype bro and I love him for that too. Another thing is I also kinda feel what Mannon felt, that it didn't feel like I was "training" but every so often you get that feeling of "Did I get stronger" or "That segment felt real good/easy(compared to previous attempts). Edit: I further love this vid just coz Manon.