Happy Thanksgiving! I thought for the holiday week I would write a powerful piece on the cutting edge methodology I've created which I am seeing great results with. While I use this methodology to increase all zones and key areas of cycling, I'm explaining how I use it to increase VO2, which I think is a great way to walk you through it.
While there's just so much talk around FTP, the reality is if you want to get to that next level in cycling, whether it's for competition in today's race environment or for health, you need to prioritize training your VO2 max.
Gone are the days where the rider with the highest threshold could just get on the front of the group and ride away to the win. Modern cycling, both pro and amateur, puts a bigger demand than ever on your VO2 max, your absolute oxygen uptake, your VO2 power, and your ability to sustain and repeat VO2 efforts deep into a ride. Races, gravel events, and even spirited group rides now hinge on riders who can go to the well repeatedly and still have something left.
And beyond the sport, a high VO2 max is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health and longevity. So raising it, and keeping it high, is one of the most meaningful investments you can make in your fitness.
You're probably like, well DUH. But why don't more people lock in and actually move the needle here?
For starters, most riders don't train to truly increase it, they just maximize what they already have. Most riders fall back on the old-school method: brutal 3–5 minute max efforts, repeated until they can't hold the power and then give up. While these can move your numbers in the short term, they create problems in the long term:
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You quickly run into muscular strength limits
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Your mind starts to dread the session
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Your body adapts to the exact same stimulus → diminishing returns
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And as you get older, the "all-out approach" becomes more limiting than productive
I've lived this personally. What used to feel fun and wide open now feels like hitting a built-in governor. Age changes your physiology, but it also changes your psychology. You can still raise your VO2, you just need a smarter system.
That's exactly why I've engineered a better way to increase VO2: a structured, progressive, multi-pillar approach that builds the physical foundation, the technique, the strength, and the oxygen-delivery system you need to raise the ceiling.
In this article I'm going to share with you the framework I'm using with my CINCH athletes (and myself) to massively increase VO2 max power, VO2 durability, and the repeatability needed for real-world racing.
Let's raise the roof.
Training the VO2 With The CINCH System
VO2 is notoriously difficult to progress. If you want to continue raising the ceiling instead of hitting plateaus, you need a planned, engineered approach. My system has four key pillars:
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Framing
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Anchoring
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Aerobic conditioning
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Durability
Each pillar builds on the others, and together they create a powerful upward spiral of fitness.
1. FRAMING: Build the Blueprint for Higher VO2
Most coaches and athletes don't even approach training with this piece. They do a threshold test and then take the current place the athlete is and design workouts around training zones based on percentages. To put this lightly, this straight up holds athletes back. An athlete's threshold is the center of their engine and does not show the physical potential that exists nor does it show where their physical limiters are. When you take this approach you're simply jumping straight into efforts that just make you efficient with what you have instead of first identifying what you're actually trying to build and then working on it.
Framing starts by estimating where you can grow your VO2 zones for key durations: 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes by using a mix of your past years of data, current testing, and training/race files. Once you know the target power for each duration in watts, you break that down to the core torque you would need to produce at your optimal cadence. This torque number is a key part of your "frame" for the future power. Turning this number (without worrying about the cadence) for the key durations becomes a key step of our focus with framing.
So why torque first instead of power?
Because torque shows us a better representation of your muscular ability at this target power. Power is simply your torque being spun by your cadence sending your bike forward.
Every rider has a "VO2 top-end torque limit," just like you have a max weight you can lift for 5 reps. If you only train VO2 with free cadence and let your breathing be your limit, you never actually increase the torque your muscles can produce at VO2 power. The ceiling of strength your legs can achieve for this duration is limited by your aerobic capacity. This is a massive roadblock to progress in riders, and by starting with training to increase your torque ability at this duration, you create new potential.
In framing we build torque first, often through lower cadence and/or variable intervals. You reduce the aerobic load while raising the muscular and neuromuscular ceiling. You're building a stronger engine block before you rev the RPMs.
Two key steps in Framing:
Step 1: Muscle the torque at key durations
Use lower cadence to hit the torque target without blowing up the oxygen system. I like to build intervals using variable power targets. Some of my favorite ways to splice up a good VO2 framing interval are 20:15's, 20:20's or 35:25's. The "on" is the exact torque target you're looking to do eventually for the full, say 4 or 5 minutes. The "off" is dropping down to a lower torque that allows your muscles and aerobic system to recover and balance just enough that you can return back to the targeted higher torque. But, we want this "off" section to keep an aerobic strain on the system that is closer to that of a threshold effort, thus training your body to efficiently use oxygen at a very high level. The art of coaching is really designing the right starting point here so it almost seems easy to the athlete but then carry them to the target endpoint over time where they never feel physically on the limit. This is the secret!
Step 2: Extend that torque to full VO2 durations
Now we stretch that torque into 1, 2, and 5-minute frames. This process should be gradual and done over weeks and months. The art here is that the athlete feels challenged each session, but can complete it with the normal nutrition and recovery going into each session. I pride myself in being able to design a progression for athletes they can nail each step of the way. If done right the athlete will comment after the workout "I looked at this and it didn't look hard, but man that was a beast of a workout." This means the workout focus looked similar to what they've been doing, but my little progressive tweaks loaded their system just enough to stimulate a response from the body to grow, but did not break the athlete at all. The result is a nice, smooth, trackable progression without injury, illness, or burnout.
Technique Is Critical Here
It can be easy, especially with these big power efforts, to throw the technique out the window and reach for the power. I hate to say it, but I've been guilty of this as a pro and now as a Master's rider. You want the big numbers and you want them now. But as I've learned, and am constantly reminded of, doing numbers you can do with the right technique will result in much higher potential for you long term. To unlock true VO2 gains, you need to incorporate techniques that:
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Optimize the glute into the downstroke with the quad using heel positioning
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Use the hamstring in its strongest position and bring in the hip flexor at the top of the upstroke
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Connect the transition points between downstroke and upstroke powerfully
Without these key techniques riders are leaving top-end power on the table as well as wasting energy by hitting friction points in the pedal stroke where one leg literally fights the other. This not only wastes energy, it caps the torque you can generate.
Every Framing session needs a technique focus so you can actually produce the torque needed for VO2 gains.
2. ANCHORING: Build the Support to Produce High Torque
You can't build or maintain torque without anchoring your body to the bike. This is one reason so many riders fail to raise VO2—they feel the limitation in their lungs or legs, but a hidden limiter is poor structural support.
I've found massive success with well-engineered and targeted training of the muscles that stabilize and connect your pedal stroke. I call this anchoring.
These key areas are:
Upper Body (hands, arms, upper back): You need strength here to lock into the bike and control the force you're generating with each piece of the pedal stroke. An example of this is training your hand position to hold the bars with a strong grip which engages the arm and back muscles to hold the body on the bike while you pedal. This must be trained in a way where you have the strength and endurance to be able to hold this position for the duration of the ride.
Core: The core is king straight up! It's the main stabilizer in cycling and as you can imagine, a strong core is critical to maintaining VO2 level power. The core holds the body strongly on the bike during the effort, stabilizing the bike underneath you while you're furiously pedaling, and muscles in your core are used with the legs to create torque into the pedal stroke. Core strength is also important to anchor you strongly to the bike in a way you can freely breathe. Sounds simple, but there's a way to support yourself on the bike, produce high power, and free up the chest and stomach to breathe freely. I've been obsessed around this idea when designing my latest blocks of training and I can already see a major difference in the power I'm seeing produced from my athletes. I will write more on this in later articles. Lots of good findings!
Hips, Knees, Ankles: To be honest, I never gave this area the credit it deserves. I was always very much in the camp of building strength and activation for prevention of injuries. But working with the top strength experts I've learned how there are key muscle groups around these areas that MUST have a certain level of strength to allow the key pedal stroke muscles, like the quads, to fire. For example, the quadriceps are the prime movers (agonists) that extend the knee during the power phase (the downstroke) of the pedal stroke. In this motion the hamstrings act as antagonists and also as stabilizers (synergists) to control the movement. Each pedal stroke is a one-legged effort and puts a massive stability challenge on the knee, hip, and ankle. These joints must be stable enough to allow the prime movers (glutes, quads, hamstrings) to produce maximum torque without collapsing. What I didn't know, and this is important for all of us trying to increase our VO2 power, is that the brain will not allow these agonist muscles (quads, glutes) to drive at their potential force if the antagonist muscles (hamstring, hip flexor) are not strong enough to support them. What's unique, and important to note about cycling, is that these key antagonist muscles not only are used to support our drivers, but they're used on the opposite side of the pedal stroke in the upstroke! In other words, strengthening them is an easy way to anchor more driving power as well as more torque in your pedal stroke!
Overall, when these areas are strong and trained for your VO2 demands, you can:
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Produce more torque
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Maintain better technique
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Take deeper, more controlled breaths
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Sustain VO2 power longer
Anchoring is the hidden VO2 superpower.
3. AEROBIC CONDITIONING: Train the System That Delivers the Fuel, Oxygen, To Your Muscles
This pillar is about training to advance the cardiovascular system. My training approach, the CINCH approach, is to look at this pillar in its own separate light. This means creating specific training with this development in mind.
While this sounds obvious, it's not because the majority of cycling training groups train this system while training the pedal stroke strength. My approach has specific workouts that shift the focus to that of aerobic conditioning which allow the athlete to make needed progress here without any muscular constraints that could come from a lack in strength from the muscles or excess fatigue from the muscles.
To focus on improving the aerobic conditioning I create training that focuses on several key components: higher cadence, longer durations, variable zone patterns, and zone builds & drops.
High cadence: High cadence is viewed by most as an option, but in high performance cycling it's a staple. If you've gotten this far in the article, you probably now can see where I'm headed with our training methodology. But if not, here it is: The watts which make you go fast on your bike are the torque your muscles can sustain multiplied by the cadence your aerobic system can endure. The pro secret, and the one you should utilize too, is that if you can train your body to do a high cadence at each zone's key torque for each key duration you will in fact massively increase your power output. So to increase your VO2, it's not an option to perform your high-end efforts at a high cadence, it's simply the only way to get more power from the maximum torque you can produce. Wild huh to think of it like this, but this is the magic right here folks.
When training the high cadence to improve the VO2 aerobic system I create workouts with two different overall approaches.
Longer, lower power intervals: This is raising the cadence while lowering the power and increasing the duration of the efforts. This takes the strain off of the muscles and places it onto the aerobic and neuromuscular systems. The intensities and durations of these are determined by the phase of block training the athlete is in, but in general they're done in zone 2 (medium) and threshold intensities. Just like the framing, a well-engineered progression designed by the coach is the secret to setting the right numbers here to maximize growth. A basic FTP test and percentages around that often will see the athlete leaving a lot of potential on the table.
Variable power intervals: This is creating intervals that do short sections of VO2 power with high cadence with short periods of lower power and lower cadence right after to keep the lactate lower which comes from being at the limit of what your aerobic system can handle.
Both these types of training work extremely well to raise the aerobic capacity to match that of the muscle ability which has been created in the framing and anchoring pillars. I've found using this methodology super effective for raising the VO2 of my athletes in a very controlled approach that allows for constant growth and progress throughout the year.
Transitions in body position: You can improve your aerobic condition by using other body positions such as standing as well as add in transitions in and out of the saddle to increase the aerobic demand for training purposes. This approach is used greatly in the pro cycling world and I use this in many of my aerobic conditioning intervals for CINCH athletes. First off, standing and transitions in body positions can be ways to create more power and more speed. But they require lots of practice and in most cases, athletes aren't super efficient in these positions so adding them into their training adds more aerobic demands without stressing their muscular systems.
Diaphragmatic Breathing:
Another part of aerobic conditioning is training your breathing and guiding it with specific techniques. Diaphragmatic breathing is a simple technique that can be trained to improve the aerobic ability of your system, especially at the VO2 intensity level. As the intensity crosses over your threshold the need for deep breathing increases but it becomes challenged due to the rapid breathing rate. Here is where muscular strength around the diaphragmatic breathing comes in as key. Using devices such as the Tymewear breathing sensor we've seen the difference in VO2 performance between a trained diaphragmatic breathing ability and a non-trained breathing ability. Training this technique is a substantial component of aerobic conditioning.
VO2 is your ability to pull oxygen in, transport it quickly, and use it efficiently. Your job is not to suffer through it, but to train the system to fuel your torque engine.
Overall the Aerobic Conditioning pillar focuses on:
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Increasing lung capacity
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Strengthening and coordinating the diaphragm
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Improving oxygen delivery and extraction
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Speeding up oxidative energy production
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Linking high torque → high cadence → high watts
4. DURABILITY: The Capacity to Repeat VO2 Efforts
This is the important step where you convert your increased VO2 max to real performance.
Durability is the ability to repeat an effort multiple times as well as the ability to repeat this effort multiple times after and around other zones being used. This is really where the best separate themselves from the rest.
I put this as the fourth pillar, but to truly create it optimally, you must start training it as you create the new zone. While most people absolutely skip over this step and focus on only the height this zone can achieve, the real art is building it up while training your ability to repeat it. The other massive mistake people make is taking a whole training block off from creating and training the durability around the VO2 zone. If you saw what I see, you would never do this. To be brutally honest, I've been so passionate around coaching this concept because I made both of these mistakes. I would do entire training blocks only focused on zone 2 looking to "improve" my aerobic system. The result was lost time progressing my VO2 ceiling and more importantly, many injuries as I tried to build it on weakened tendons and ligaments from all the zone 2 only training. I then would make mistake number 1, which was only training the height of my VO2 and not the durability. The result still haunts me which was having a massive VO2 Max with low durability around it. In fact, here is why so many state the size of the VO2 max is not what determines the performance of the rider. It's true if you don't also train the durability around it. And the reality is, training true VO2 max durability takes time, it takes many months. There's not enough time to be training in the Winter without this focus and expect to perform well in the following season. Even if you get these zones to a good place you just don't have the reps to truly have the durability around it. Just look at any rider who's winning consistently right now. They're following a planned program that develops these VO2 zones and efforts early while training the durability with them in a progressive method.
So what does the durability look like for the VO2 zone?
I've put these durability abilities into these categories:
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Repeated VO2 surges of 1-5 mins over the course of a ride or race duration
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Not losing power with the constant surges and attacks of the group you're in
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Being able to lift and use your VO2 zones at the top of a long climb
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Being able to hit your VO2 numbers after repeated threshold and zone 2 efforts
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Being able to use your threshold and zone 2 zones after repeat VO2 surges
There Are Two Key Parts of VO2 Durability:
Fast-twitch endurance ("doing the reps")
This is as simple as doing the reps. How many reps do you do? Well that falls under that "art of coaching." Each person's needs are different, but I like to create "standards" that each level of rider needs to be able to meet physically. I create this based on what I've learned works best both for building fitness as well as meeting certain demands in competition.
When training someone for a specific event I like to forecast using past data how many VO2 reps will be needed and train that athlete to be able to comfortably meet those needs. Race day should not require the athlete to "pull the rabbit out of the box" in terms of fitness. The demands in the key zones, like the VO2, should be regularly practiced in training.
It's funny, people cramp out of races most of the time because they're going over their trained demand here in the race. This could be from not completing key training sessions as planned, racing above their zones, or not fueling their trained zones properly. Or all of the above! But most interpret cramping in their race due to not having "the miles" of the race in their legs. This is an absolutely empty statement with zero value. It all comes down to the reps and fueling the reps. You either have done them and fueled them, or you haven't.
Expressing VO2 inside the chaos of real riding
Robust performance durability isn't: "Do ______ kj's of Zone 2 before your VO2 repeats."
This is Zone 2 durability! While it has a place, it's missing most of the other parts of the puzzle. Just like the race requires you to "do all the things" you must train your body to "do all the things."
The art of coaching in this case is finding "how much of the things" must be done to get the response I need to be able to do this in the race. In my opinion here is a key place that separates the best coaches from the rest. If you can train your athlete to be able to win Unbound with workouts that train this in 1.5-2 hours then that athlete can perform more consistently during the season and progress faster than say a training program that requires 4-6 hour rides during the week. I did this with Lauren de Crescenzo who not only won Unbound dominantly off of 8-12 hours of riding a week but also won the massively competitive and physically demanding races of SBT GRVL and Gravel Worlds just months after, with the latter two being back to back in the same week.
How you engineer the durability is as important, if not more important than the actual durability. The reason for this is durability is built around efficiency. If the rider becomes over trained or fatigued, then they actually become less durable with the VO2 zones than if they didn't train this at all! Read that again! Wild huh, but so true. This is why you see the best athletes with the best coaches stay at the top while other riders come and go. The art of coaching is real.
Raising Your VO2 Is No Longer A Should, It's a Must
Whether you're training to improve your racing or training to improve your health, your VO2 focus matters. It's the ceiling that limits your potential and if you truly want to grow you need to move that ceiling higher. As I've gone into depth in this article, moving that ceiling higher is best done with a well-planned strategy rather than an uncalculated forceful approach. You need an expert to determine where you can best build those limits who can also create the support to hold it firmly in place to endure the many planned and unplanned storms that will come your way.
I hope this opened up the way you see your physical potential and lit the fuse on the growth possibilities you have in front of you. Now go ALL IN! Let's do this!
