Well it’s not really on what idea you bought into 
What is missing is actually the fundamental research (at least I did not find it) to nail the correlation (and by preference the causaility, but that’s a whole other story) between measurable data (HR or Power) and training adaptations.
That is exactly where the anticipated “continuous lactate meter” comes into the equation. It’s coming and maybe rumours are true that “some” might already have something. It would be far more powerfull than any doping from the 90s. And if only one team would have it (thinking of a team from the desert), it would explain a lot. Especially the fact they gradually grow highly talented riders into something above the rest. They can’t do it in one season, because you need at least one season to get the adaptations. I’m really really looking forward how Florian Vermeersch will perform not this season, but next season. Assuming of course he has the mental skills to deal with training like a robot…
Anyway, this is probably the most intersting era ever. Technology allows things that were not possible. And it’s going really really fast. Inego San Milan is “gone” from the cycling scene. From what I understand he was “too extreme” in his beliefs. Look what happened to Pogi after they got a new coach. Now, they didn’t abandon the foundational work. But “just Z2” is not enough for elite cyclists…
I got a university degrees in Sports about 35 years ago. And went straight into IT . If I would be 35 years younger, I would prabably stay in sports and combine it with technology. What a world of opportunities…
Sure, in lack of studies we take the next best thing which is peoples personal experiences, or indicators. When you have thousands of people saying this clearly worked for me, and your own experience matches that then it seems to feel likely. What people find, is being under AeT they will see MAF test improvements and many people even being slightly over will stop seeing these improvements. This becomes rather black and white, although it is not universally true for all people. I would say reading Maffetone’s work makes this seem very convincing there is some level of “truth/validation” to the idea.
I also don’t believe lactate meters help in the case of AeT as we are talking about an aerobic threshold not a lactate threshold. This is where I think Attia and San Milan get it wrong. If you look at Coggan he says lactate is way more variable then HR so this adds additional risks/confusion. I could ask Andrea if he sees this variability as he has spent more time in the lab testing top athletes than any of these guys. Andrea is not convinced on this AeT benefit but let’s say he is warming up to the idea…
I do think a continuos lactate meter could/should be a game changer for sweetspot / FTP based efforts. And you could really start to dial in hill climbs is my guess. No question. You are going to blow up before you get to the top
So yes, I will likely buy one and try it just to fully understand. You are not dead yet, and you can devote the rest of your lift to sports technology You can always volunteer here…
don’t ban me 
(OT link), but I found this very interesting for HIIT intervals Blood lactate clearance after maximal exercise depends on active recovery intensity - PubMed
How to convert the lactate threshold (hr) in watt? Can we consider it like the AnT/ftp?
Basically when the article suggests to recover at 80% of the lactate threshold is it correct to recover at 80% of the ftp?
In 20 seconds the hr will not adapt quickly
To me this does not say anything other than after hard intervals don’t jump of the bike and lay in the sun… just keep pedalling…
No lactate is not completely linear to watts and why would you want to do this?
But it can be interesting if the effort put during the recover might help to reduce lactate faster.
I know that it’s fine tuning
I still don’t see how it matters. Meaning if you are training, you can lay in the grass and let it recover slowly if you feel like (who cares how fast you recover) and if you are racing you are going to keep pedalling anyway… What I think you find is all this stuff is so individual and in fluxuation that the answer is “it depends.”
Hi @Alex, I’m just trying to optimize training time. Moreover, as you know, I’m very curious about details / KPIs and optimizations
But better to stop with the OT; it’s completely on the opposite planet of AeT and Z2 training
I see it more like clear cases where Z2 makes sense and then there’s this kind of middle ground wher you’re not sure and then there’s this other end of the spectrum where it doesn’t make sense.
The first case where it makes more sense is when your apt to be over training. You’re doing more volume and/or in intensity than you can adequately recover from. Also, in the case of just starting out and being ultra safe and ultra healthy. “A real base period.”
The second case is when you’re very time crunched or have an incredible recovery system, and train at a level that pushes you to the edge of that optimized point of recovery. Then it’s probably more a case of it depends.
In the final case is when you’re either training a very small amount, for example a case where HIIT makes sense or you don’t like easy training and you’re not training too much. It a person loves sweet spot sustained intensity and they’re training three days a week for an hour, ok you know for a lot of people that’s fine, and will even bring reasonable performance.
So I don’t see Zone 2 as some magic bullet that makes sense for everybody. I just see it as something that’s very healthy and works well to augment additional anaerobic training, strength training, or hard intensity on the bike…
I would say the eye opening part of Zone 2 is that it can feel really easy and bring surprising benefit where most people would think oh my god I’m not doing anything, I can’t be improving.
I’m trying to do a lot of zone two right now after coming from a minimum winter of training so zone 2 for the health and safety factors. Especially as I am trying to increase my volume quickly. I can say I’m not super strict about it. I mean, I watch my heart rate. I try to keep it under 120 but then later in the ride when I have decoupling then I just go a bit harder and go over. So I’m still doing 90% zone 1/zone 2 and just sprinkling in smaller amounts of intensity at the end of the ride.
I would go one step further
All science is showing if you really want to improve, no matter what level you are at, you will need Z2. It’s not enough to get maximal benefits, see what happened with Pogi.
Now of course, if you have very limited time, doing ANY sports will always lead to improvements compared to doing no sports. Eddy Merckx used to say : “ride your bike”. Which is of course true. The question is what type of improvements do you want to see.
You want to participate in a Sunday club ride. well, anything you do in the week will be better than nothing, pick what you like most.
You want to do a Gran Fondo or a long gravel race? might want to be a bit more specific about your training.
My godchild is a starting racer (in Belgium, first year of “nieuweling”). In the kids categories, he showed some talent, and got connected to a team of the University of Ghent, that has put him in a training program. I was really intested to see how his program would look like. Well : a lot of Z2, HR based (!) with specific internal training a couple if times a week. So that seems to be the current understanding in science at this moment.
I am one of the biggest Z2 fans from 12 years ago when I found Maffetone, I became a real believer. But regarding your statement. If you want to improve no matter what, you need Z2. I would say that leaves too much open to interpretation. First is how you define Z2… there is a wide range of definitions and San Milan’s definition seems much higher than Maffetone’s… Attia spent time with San Milan and the way he describes Z2 is more like the upper end of Z2 power. I would even say San Milan’s definition is less defined than Maffetone’s, unless you want to talk lactate levels which for one does not make that much sense (we are talking about aerobic level, not lactate level) and two no one is riding around with continuous lactate meters.
If you define zone 2 workouts prescribed and followed strictly below AeT, then I for sure disagree as cyclists have been very fast for many years and never followed that protocol. Could it give elite riders a little extra edge, I would say arguably yes.
Health is one of the biggest benefits I see, reducing the chances of getting sick or injured which allows more training and more consistent training. Some people might never get sick doing tons of z2/z3 power workouts.
But I think the nature of what you are saying is true. That most people could likely gain something by including z2 HR in their yearly program at some level.
Once you get past a certain volume a cyclist has to ride a high percentage in zone 1/zone 2 or they won’t be able to recover, example no one can ride 20 hours a week and have it all be at sweet spot and above.
The zone 2 observation may be descriptive not prescriptive.
Dave
Yes that was my main point above for when it is more required (more volume than you can recover from). So yes I think that is one of the critical drivers of low intensity. Although someone might be able to 95% of 20 hours a week > AeT… Surely not most of us
Please, don’t misinterpret my message. Zone 2 is really important to me too. All I’m saying is that HR is not straight forward and there are many more factors that influence hr.
For my long rides, I rely as much on breathing and feel as I do on hr. Or maybe you could even say I don’t rely on anything, just riding.
Back in the day, at the academy, we had physiology classes. Whenever we wore hr monitors (we had that boxy Polar accurex II) we would tell each other jokes. The joke that raised the heart rates the most won.
Just like blacktek said, your heart rate raises only from the anticipation of a climb. If you don’t understand these mechanisms you can easily screw up your training.
Another example is that I (kind of) screw up my training yesterday. I rode an easy zone 2 training. Or normally it would be, but my cadence was to low. I noticed it, but wasn’t bothered to do anything about it. Today I feel wasted because of it. It is not a big deal, but it shows you need to piece everything together to execute a training the right way.
Make no mistake, the majority of my training is zone 2 as well.
I think they point everyone is trying to make is HR is a closer connection to stress in many cases so it you want to carefully minimize stress it’s safer to use HR, and reduced power does not screw up your training if the goal is to tightly manage stress. If you believe in Maffetone it’s very unlikely that going a bit too easy will have any negative effects on this low HR training. So thinking all these external factors don’t affect stress would be a mistake. But this is just a philosophical discussion as It can be different for different individuals and the better shape you are in the easier it becomes to go easy, at least physically.
But, based on what I’ve read from Friel and other sources there might be the “negative effect” of a training impulse not strong enough, not generating any adaptation.
In general I’m liking the Z2 training, but I’m quite sure that we shouldn’t go slow as we like without (lower) limits (upper limits are clear). We should stay in any case in a training range.
Science does not agree with this. Different studies show that it does cause adaptions. Here is an example reference. 55% of VO2max is about 63% of max HR…
I highly doubt Joe actually tested that, Joe likes intensity, although he manages it reasonably well, part of the reason is he and many of his athletes over trained… How many cyclists want to go that low of HR as a specific training goal? Very few. It’s hard to get them to do zone 2. Maffetone clearly demonstrated that lower zone 2 (which means also a lot of upper zone 1) is very beneficial so that aligns with the science I can find. Unless you can find some level of science or these coaches have a way of backing up this claim.
I’ll study it tomorrow, now some rest before my 4h+ of Z2 ride of tomorrow.
I’m just saying that surely there is a minimum hr, and if you go below there will not be any adaptation. 63% of mhr is not peanuts in any case, low, but not 50 or 40%. Just saying that.
E.g. During last week 3.5h ride with my kids, my hr peaked at 85 bpm, 46% of my mhr. Surely no fitness adaptation, except for the patience