You almost always take the same route, the same training and you don't improve... that's when you ask yourself: What should I change in my planning?

We could start by analyzing what we are doing and where we fail since many times we do not stop to think about our mistakes.. If you are an experienced athlete with years of training under your belt, The best medicine could be to increase the intensity and duration of this in our training., as long as, What you are doing up to that moment does not have the expected results (we should measure what is “expected” and see if we reach it).

This intensity can be given by the famous series, concept feared by some, unknown to others and that is, series or fractional works, do they really help us improve so much? Is there another “way”?

In the methodology of resistance or strength training, which are the main capacities involved in cycling, we find of large groups:

Continuous systems and fractional systems.
Within these two large groups we can distinguish subgroups based on the intensity, duration and objective to develop in the athlete.

We are going to describe them quickly:

Continuous systems:
Large volumes of work without any interruption, where we will mainly use it in the preparatory or base period. Its use is recommended especially in cyclical sports where the duration of the effort is greater than 60'' or more.. It would be our winter “shooting” or variable jobs depending on the route..

Fractional methods:
These are jobs with a rest interval (active or passive) where complete or incomplete recovery of the athlete is sought depending on the rest time between jobs.. They would be the famous series that we talked about at the beginning and that we will now generally describe the main effects and improvements in our performance..

• Interval system: Duration between 15'' to 60' depending on the interval (short, half, long) at an intensity between the two thresholds or higher than them (2.5 to 6-7 mmol/L of lactate in blood) with an improvement in maximum oxygen consumption due to greater peripheral oxygenation, improvement of our anaerobic threshold and greater economy in the use of glycogen.
  
  
• Repetition system: Shorter or longer distances are used than in competition or specific situations., but at an intensity similar to it or even higher. The difference is that these repetitions last between 1' to 8' long. . We will place the work intensity above the anaerobic threshold many times and the recovery will almost always be complete (greater than the work time of each repetition.) We will look for an improvement in lactate tolerance, Anaerobic capacity and improvement in the shorter working hours of phosphate deposits.
  
  
• Modeled training: It is a variation of the repetition method where the athlete is subjected to different training/competition distances.. Imitation of the characteristics of the test is sought. The first part of the training is worked at a high intensity with repetitions much shorter than those of the competition., seeking the use of the anaerobic mechanism. The central part of the session is worked at competition intensity with a distance similar to this or slightly lower/higher, seeking an improvement in aerobic capacity. The final part involves short repetitions at high or very high intensity., to simulate a real competition (sprint finish for example). Mainly the aim is to develop fatigue resistance in this system in addition to anaerobic capacity. / aerobics, improvement of glycogen stores, increase in Vo2max plus more adaptations.

50” all out work (180% of FTP or more) + 1’30’’ recovery after one hour at 60-70% del FTP. After two climbs to the 102-109% of the 15' FTP separated by about 10' and at the end, in 5 hours of training, repeat the series at the beginning of 50'' all out (Fatigue resistance)

Once the different methods have been presented in a very general way, we can say that in the development of the cyclist there must be use of both systems.. In continuous methods we work more generically on the development of some components of the training that we are already interested in (aerobic resistance for example), however in fractional methods athletes can develop these components in a very specific way, specifying the intensity of the load very well., duration and recovery…

Add that here we are not talking about the psychological or social part, where it is true that the work of fractional methods often involves training alone, causing the psychological wear of the cyclist before the physiological wear. It is in these cases where we must know each athlete very well and know how to schedule the work and structure it well., Since many times our athlete starts the season with great enthusiasm and “accepts” all the work sessions that we propose, but as the season progresses, We find that the series have not all been made or have simply not been made.

I think that for good development we must keep in mind the two great methods together with knowing our athlete, The more we know him, the better we can structure his season and improve his physical condition..