How To Turbo Charge Zone 2 Training

Zone 2 training has become extremely popular—and for good reason! Despite being a relatively low training intensity, zone 2 is said to improve your fitness across everything from long steady rides to really hard efforts. But how do you get the most out of it? And what should you do alongside Zone 2 training to keep developing as a rider? Here are our top tips!

00:00 How do you get the most out of Zone 2 training?
00:14 What is Zone 2?
00:38 How to find your zone 2
01:24 What does zone 2 do for you?
02:28 Sweet Spot Training
03:30 Keep testing your fitness
04:21 Increase your training load
05:44 Adding VO2 Max Training
07:13 Recovery is vital
08:09 Conclusion

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How much zone 2 training are you doing? 🚴‍♂️📈 What are you doing to get the most out of it? 🚀

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[gcn]

What has your experience with zone 2 training been like? 🤔

[dmoore]

I do zone two on the trainer. As a heavier fella it's hard to stay lower power on the roads with hills. Z2 has literally changed my riding and built my endurance so much.

[VictorElGreco]

Admittedly an older person’s view 🙄 but I complement my cycling with a good 400-500 hours of Z1 *walking* per year. 😅 You get to stretch your back and hamstrings, and hopefully also enjoy a good conversation along the way. ☺️

[sebastienmichaud]

As a competitive squash players, we recon a hard squash match is the equivalent several of Vo2 max efforts... so during the squash season I mostly do Z2 bike rides. When the ridding season begins (late spring here in Canada) I somehow always feel stronger than the previous one! I hang the racket and focus on having balanced cycling efforts and recovery. Then squash season restarts in the fall and I feel fitter than the previous year. Now I'm 43 years old and I understand it'll probably start going down every year soon lol. Thanks for the great videos, GCN ROCKS! 💪

[suisinghoraceho]

For time strapped, increase volume of Z2 is pretty difficult. The other approach is to ride low Z3, high Z2. Initially, you would still get heart rate drifting up. In time, your Z2 would creep up to engulf this low Z3 power and you can ride it without heart rate drift.

[jakemathis]

I appreciate the comment about the nose breathing not working 100% for everyone!

[eduardocarvalhoneto]

Really well put together, I like the clear examples and charts. Well done Connor.

[richardpiotrowski]

My primary trainiong is an indoor traner. but cycling isn't my primary acivity. so Z2 is what I do...unless I'm completely bored and then it may be the alpe...
I also agree with Dr Attia's comment that he trains for longevity for his family...

[overcookit]

Zone 2 training has been done by Pros for decades - for me (respectively my body), that level of exercise is not high enough, at least for the duration of my rides (commonly 1h45min to nearly 3h), When I was younger, I did such rides for 5h+, but now it seems that after only doing long and slow rides, it is difficult to ride faster now and then; it is quite hard then to get the pulse rate up again. I feel better after at least tempo (L3) rides.

[banderge]

I've started at miserable state: Although I had some power in legs (I did 1.1k watts in sprints) my ftp was somewhere near 150-160 watts. During winter I've started to ride 3 times a week in z2 on zwift and once it was sunny outside, I've started to ride outdoors (on ebike). In outdoors I got a little bit crazy and averaged to 16-22h on a bike weekly (only in z2). This week I got back on zwift and my z2 is around 140-150 watts and ftp is somewhere in 200 or so. I think I could achieve more if I did at least one SS or VO2 max or Over/Under ride during a week. Good video 🔥

[cybercat]

Worth considering that a majority of us probably don't even know what our FTP is.
I really don't and cycle very regularly across the whole range of zones.

[BikeCoffee-Cake]

Great video!

When I have enough time I like to do long Zone 2, with bits of Zone 3, 4+ and some weights, and feel great. It’s the only way I can do high volume and recover.

But weeks where I only have 2-4 hours to cycle, I feel better off with high intensity intervals (given I have plenty of recovery time anyway).

[erlendsteren]

What about zone 1? Very few people talks about it, and I think its underestimated. I like to go all over the zones, not forgetting any of them. The classic long easy ride is a mix of zone 1 and 2 and history tells that it has been good for many people. I cant go zone 2 for 4 hours without getting very exhausted, but if I dilute it with a lot zone 1, I arrive home a lot fresher and not so exhausted that I cant take a ride tomorrow. I disagree with the 80% zone 2 idea and believe its too hard. It should be diluted with some zone 1. The week before Road World Championship I was passed by an Arcea B&B Hotels pro-rider (Embret Svestad-Baardseng?) and a Coop-rider, and they were definitively going no harder than zone 1. My guess is that the Pro-riders spend a lot time in zone 1. Zone 1 is also a very much used zone for commuting. The worlds best skier in 1966, Gjermund Eggen, did mostly zone 1 in the summer, walking in the mountain looking after his sheeps.

[SutherlandBoswell]

"You look very nice today Zone 2 training, " or did you mean complement?

[paulgrimshaw]

Congrats on a video that contains more nuance than simply catering to the lazy (aka do only Z2).

This is a good time to move away from using power meters to establish bragging rights, rather than using them to gauge sustainable output as part of a sensible and regular (ie. not weekend warrior bs) cardiovascular/pulmonary based training plan.

[StephenMarkTurner]

"Zone 2, you look Mahhh-velous"

[bannie]

if you live in a hilly area and you want to keep in zone 2, just get an ebike it's the best thing for zone 2 training. the steeper the hill just press for more assistance. this is obviously aimed at the lesser fit people. last week I did a 100km ride and I'm fat adapted, no feeding and my average bpm was 132 and did it just over 4 hrs. and I also weigh 132kgs. the route had a few hills but a very bad headwind on the way back

[richardmiddleton]

Zone 2 trains your slow twitch aerobic muscle fibers which act like a vacuum cleaner to remove/use pyruvate/lactate produced by the fast twitch glycolitic fibers when intensity increases. In other words, you can go harder for longer! Like attacking with 100km to go and winning!

[jkmacie]

Concentrated on higher volume lower intensity in comparison to last year. could sustain power for longer and didn't dread getting on the turbo. Gotta have the time to do it though.

[loud]

I get a 2 hour 2x20 work out done 2s a week and do Z2 pretty much everywhere else: commute, group rides or just moving about on the bike its pads out a 4 hour week to nearer 10 when I'm working and nearer 20 of I'm not working