Quads burn during build phase

Same

Maybe you didn’t push yourselg hard enough during FTP test?

Post ride the hard efforts are felt around the knees. Sore quads after a trainer or outdoor ride? I can probably count the number of times per year on one hand. Everybody is different.

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It depends what your limiter is. For me it’s my heart/cardio system, not my legs. I hit 187 HR during my ramp test which is the highest I’ve seen my HR in 5 years, and it felt like my heart was going to explode (which would be bad!). My legs were tired, but not the reason I stopped.

My legs do get sore after strength sessions, which I do 1x per week, and have been doing for 30 years. So maybe it’s a different kind of loading/stress than cycling required to get my legs sore.

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Same.

Agree with @skraburski , if your legs are never sore I’d question if you’re pushing yourself enough to adapt and get stronger. Legs are sore because they have been broken down.

When muscles are required to work harder than they’re used to or in a different way, it’s believed to cause microscopic damage to the muscle fibres, resulting in muscle soreness or stiffness.

You recover and come back stronger (supercompensation)

It’s not the only way to grow ftp. It seems a lot of my ftp gains come from increasing upper lactate threshold (or % I can ride at).

See my post above about heart/cardio being my limiter.

I think this limits the amount of stress I can put on my muscles when cycling.

Note: I do not do any sprint training on the bike - l’d bet if I did, my legs would be sore.

My legs are also rarely sore after TR sessions. Sure they feel tired but not sore. I try to keep my cadence up around 90 to 95 which according to coach chad puts more emphasis on the cardiovascular system as opposed to lower cadence sessions which work muscles more.

I’m not even referring to increasing FTP. I did Traditional Base MV and my legs were sore from doing mostly Z2 and a little low tempo work. My FTP actually decreased initially but my legs were still sore (new stimulus for me with LSD rides).

I think we’re splitting hairs referring to sore vs “tired”. I’m not sure what tired means in reference to muscles.

Everyone is different. I can do z2 work day after day without feeling sore. I did traditional base 1 high volume and all it did was make me hungry after each workout. And I picked up some nice aerobic gains after 4 weeks. And @mcneese.chad reported similar as you while experimenting with polarized training.

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My cadence is 95-107 normally with my average for the workouts being upper 90s. The shorter the workouts (1:30 and under) the higher the cadence. So cadence can’t be the reason for muscle soreness, but to your point I agree.

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My legs are mostly sore after I’m doing sprint trainings on trainer, I guess my weakest side is lack of strength and during build phase I’ve started doing spring trainings for the first time. My cadence is usually high 90-95, during intervals 105-110, if they’re really hard 120 or more for short time. Outdoor my legs are used more for longer (10-60mins) steady climbs, I think I have to train strength but hate doing this in the gym.

Yeah, I experienced DOMS from 4 hour long rides at Endurance effort with no coasting or pedaling breaks. It was the long and slow with no relief that took an interesting toll on my muscles from an “easy” effort.

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Yeah - possible what I am referring to as tired is mild soreness. When I think sore, it’s the kind of sore I experience after strength training - which is way more than anything I get after riding the bike.

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Back to your original question, I “Googled” (using Duck-Duck-Go) the upcoming edition of the classic power meter book and the 7th result was a Coggan pdf that appears to have been written before the first edition: Training and Racing with a Power Meter 3rd edition at DuckDuckGo

assuming your build phase has a strong dose of VO2max work:

last column… “strong to severe sensations of leg effort/fatigue”

My brain does a good job of ignoring the burning sensations during hard efforts, and instead I really notice the labored breathing. However I definitely feel the leg burn during my late afternoon workouts, and by the time I wake up the next morning the leg burn is usually/mostly gone and the only thing I notice is a little soreness around the knees (due to biomechanical issues I continue to work on).

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@bbarrera Thanks for digging it out :smile:

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here are levels 4-7 of that table:

As mentioned above, I’ve spent a lot of time doing Level 4 / LT at longer and longer intervals, and mentally am now pretty good at ignoring the muscle burn.

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Looks like level 5/6 in build phase is what made my quads :fire:.

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What type of work engages the glutes?

I’m at the end of the season and for the last month or two every year, by legs fry on the bike. Wondering how to manage the transition since last race two weeks ago and legs still feel lousy.