Master Heat Training Like The Pros Do

All right. Uh, all right. There we are. Welcome everyone.

This is a live stream uh with coaches Steve and Ricky. Hello gentlemen. >> Howdy. >> I gotta get rid of that. Uh so everyone we are talking about heat training and um particularly how to do it uh when to do it uh how hot you need to get, how often per week and we have two professional coaches that not only heat train themselves but they help their athletes heat train. So um we're going to take your questions if we get any.

And I'm just going to pause right now and let Steve and Ricky introduce themselves and say a little bit about their heat training. Yeah, I'll start. Um, both uh Steve and I ride for the project here in the US and internationally and um I think heat training has [clears throat] excuse me has probably become something that is I don't know the one of the more popular training techniques in the past five years for good reason. I think there's a lot of uh validity to it and a lot you can do, but I think there's um a lot of ways you can do it incorrectly as well.

So, I think um both of us have probably had some trial and error with with doing it and you know through either reading studies or just trying different ways of doing it. I think we've kind of refined um the best kind of practices of what when you know how to kind of do heat training. >> Yeah. And listeners, if you are tuning in, uh you can drop us a question in the chat on the YouTube live stream and we will take that question and answer it for you. So, uh yeah, go ahead and ask us your burning heat training questions.

And yeah, Steve, tell us about your uh heat training experience. >> Yeah. Um I've been doing it probably started in 2019 with just super basic. It was uh Knoxville Nationals is always going to be hot and humid. So, was doing some really basic just overdressed outdoors and then a little bit of trainer in the garage type situations.

Um, and then I think probably from that experience, I've shifted a little bit in how I do it from from instead of just wearing a gaba for a 4-hour ride, trying to do like a more concentrated and acute stress for like, you know, 30 minutes to 1 hour and really get hot. And I think that has provided a better adaptation than just doing a little bit hot for a long time. So that's something I I definitely factor into my training rides in the summer. Sometimes trying to do, you know, start a little earlier so that you're not doing a 5 hour ride all in the heat and getting super fatigued.

So maybe you start two hours earlier and you get that first two hours in when it's not super hot and then you cook yourself in the last two or three hours just to to kind of balance it. I think it's like anything, you know, you don't want to do you're training to be a bike rider, so you can't do all gym to be a good bike rider. You can't do all heat to be a good bike rider. So, um, just keeping the balance so that it's not overwhelming the rest of your training, I think, is is super important. >> Nice.

Yeah, we'll get into how often to do it per week, uh when to do it uh per week, and like you know, before or after, and we'll talk about passive and active heat training. Um but real quick, uh like just basic physiology is where there's two types of of heat training, right? Um there's the active and then there's passive. And Ricky, you want to um kind of explain what we're talking about there? >> Yeah.

So, two different ways of doing it. Active versus passive. It's kind of self-explanatory. Like active would be doing it on the bike.

Um it would be doing it overdressed. It would be doing it in a super hot environment. I mean, you can do heat work just outside if you live in a hot enough place. Um and then passive would be more something like a sauna.

Um and sitting that for, you know, a period of time. But I think yeah, like going back to Eve and talking about what's happening, why, you know, these adaptations are happening. I mean, the the biggest thing with heat training is getting your core body temperature to a certain temperature for like a prolonged period of time. Um, most of the papers say, you know, somewhere in between 38 and 39.5 degrees.

That's like roughly 100 to 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Um, and really like it's definitely a more is not better kind of thing. You exceed that then you're, you know, possibly risking organ damage. So, we're kind of trying to keep it within that um that tight range there.

And there are a lot of new sensors and devices you can use to kind of track that. Um, and we can talk about that in a bit. But basically what your body's doing is it's getting its core body temperature up and then it's creating adaptations to ultimately save your organs from from failure. So one of the main things it's doing is uh creating more blood plasma volume.

That's basically the passageway for the red blood cells to travel through. So by expanding that volume, it's allowing more blood to kind of pass because basically when you get really hot, that gets restricted and so that's its way of of kind of fighting it. Um, and the other is basically to protect yourself against cellular damage. And um, I don't know, you know, enough about like heat shock proteins, but I think, you know, that's a pretty big buzz word there, but ultimately it's your body's defense mechanism to make sure it doesn't fry itself.

And so, you know, we're looking for somewhere in between, you know, it could be 15 minutes to 1 hour of heat time depending on when you're doing it. And then there's obviously a certain um frequency per week that you have to do it. And then a certain frequency over the course of a month or a year to either elicit a response or maintain that change. >> We'll get into heat shock proteins in a second. And uh as a side note, I studied heat shock proteins in graduate school. uh my master's thesis was the secretion of heat shock protein 70 in astroytes and um well yeah I don't want to like rehash my my glory years of graduate school but uh suffice it to say we we paid attention to the the temperature that was required to elicit heat shock proteins we'll talk about that and then uh you the mechanism and what it did for you but first we got a couple of questions from the audience 69155 says is there a fastcap plan that includes heat.

Uh, and the answer is no, not really because what you do is just add it to your existing training. I mean, I reckon we could create like a zone 2 plan, but that that's kind of like one of the challenges with heat training is that you do have to integrate heat training with your existing training. And if you try to do like the Lorenzo method, which is I think 10 days in a row of 90 minutes per day at certain temperatures, it interrupts your training. So, we'll go over like a days per week when you're riding like zone two and when to add at add heat training.

But also, um, C Greenspoon Spawn says, uh, and we were going to talk about this anyway, so I'll read this question off. Is there a way to heat train without purchasing an expensive core heat monitor? Yes. So, yeah, you can you can use uh like a standard mouth thermometer um and that'll work pretty much just as well.

Uh definitely easier to do that in a trainer situation, probably not out on the road so much and having to having to catch that in your mouth while you're riding. But yeah, especially especially in a controlled environment, that's an easy way to do it. Um either an ear or a or a mouth thermometer um will give you all the same all the same data. Yeah.

Um, Alish Hobbycene also asked the same question. How do I know I'm heat training without a related center sensor, i.e. the core 2. >> And I mean this is like sometimes there is a little bit of guess work here. And like Steve said, I mean the thermometer is like a pretty cheap inexpensive way to do it. I mean sometimes we can look at the kind of power and heart rate data.

Like say you're doing active heat training. Say you're you just did 90 minutes of endurance. you're going to finish the last 30 minutes off um overdressed or in like a painters, you know, hot Tyveck suit. Um you can basically, assuming that your core temperature is probably already high because you've been riding, you can pretty much set it at like a moderately high or sometimes even just moderate zone 2 power and you can just watch your heart rate continue to climb and just we call it just heart rate drift. And so when you really see that heart rate continuing to climb and climb and climb with the power staying pretty much the same, sometimes even the power declining because the effort feels so high, um you can make an assumption that your core body temperature is probably pretty elevated.

Like is it exactly in that 38 to 39.5 range? Like you don't know unless you have some way of measuring it. Um, but seeing that heart rate drift is a pretty good indicator that your core temp is pretty high and especially if that effort is feeling kind of hard and unsustainable and it's usually a pretty easy effort. >> Yeah. Yeah.

Um, long ago I was at a coach's conference at the Olympic Training Center and Alberto Salazar, uh, if anyone remembers that name, I think he was an Olympic runner. Um, and his coach was presenting and his coach was having him uh he was monitoring his core body temperature and this is long before the core sensor. And uh he was describing using a rectal thermometer for Alberto and having him go around the corner in track workouts and sticking a thermometer, you know, where where it was and that was the best place to get an accurate core body temperature. Since then, there are um uh swallowable uh temperature sensors you can swallow and it'll take your core temp from your your stomach.

That's also a pretty good uh place place to measure. A lot better than a rectal thermometer. So, yeah. Uh let's see real quick.

Um, let's talk about let's talk about active heat training and then passive heat training and then let's go over and talk about the use of of saunas that uh everyone can can get um at for at home use. >> Steve, you want to take this one? >> Um, passive versus active. So, uh, passive passive is anything where you're not, you know, riding the bike. So, um, a lot of people could do a hot bath. Um, kind of depends.

I I've tried this several times. It really does depend on your water heater situation. I lived in an apartment in Spain that happened to have a double water heater. And so, it was a super easy way you could get that you could uh I actually had to buy a water thermometer to make sure I wasn't getting it too hot.

Um, and then you could start, you know, a protocol where you did 12 minutes, 14 minutes, 16 minutes, 18 minutes, etc. Usually that method you would kind of top out at 20 minutes and then you would get out and basically sweat uncontrollably for about 30 minutes. I would I would put a sheet over a over a chair in the living room and just go out and collapse. And uh that's part of the process too is keeping or is really slowly coming back to normal.

So, you wouldn't want to finish a heat training session and jump in a cold shower and get your core temp immediately down like you would say if you were in a race and you want to immediately start recovering. Um, a lot of this adaptation is taking place during that, you know, return to center. So, um, that's one note I would have is like, you know, if you're if you're soaking in the garage, you might want to just stay out there for a few minutes, like let the body come down a little bit before you get in the shower. And um and that's a really important part of the process. >> I think a lot of athletes ask when they hear about heat training, they ask about, "Am I getting heat training benefits when I'm riding in 105 degrees Fahrenheit?" Or if I'm riding in the garage in a stationary trainer and it gets really really hot. >> Yeah, for sure.

For sure. Those are all all ways to do it. Um, I think one of the biggest like best case uses for this is those early season races or if you're preparing for a specific race that's hot. Um, feels like every year at Redlands, somebody gets caught out on, you know, stage one, two, or three there's there's a super hot day.

Um, yeah, Ricky maybe had some trouble. >> Um, where So, if you're listening to this and you're going to Redlands, you don't need to do heat training. It's totally fun. No, I'm kidding. Um, but yeah, it's it's those early season races where maybe you can't simulate it outside and uh and that's a really good time for it.

I remember one year uh just licking my chops looking at nationals because the weather in Boulder was unseasonably cold for like the six weeks before US Pro and I was just uh I was just looking at all the guys riding in 40 degrees and and getting really excited um knowing that they wouldn't necessarily have the the advantage. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh Ricky, we got another question. It says uh ind what direct or indirect impact does heat training have on pre- during and after rod fueling nutrition?

Does it stay the same to achieve the objectives or will it be um adjusted? >> Yeah, that's that's a really that's actually a really good question. I mean um the thing about heat is it it is another stress like that is like I I can't emphasize that enough. um similar like it is not the same as altitude but it has similar effects um as altitude. It it causes power reduction um that that RP is going to be higher and that can definitely change your fueling strategy if it is hot outside in terms of if you're doing um like a protocol and you're doing heat training how that necessarily changes um your fueling. I I would say that like if you were doing like a 30 to 45 minute active heat session at the end of a ride like on the trainer, it might be more difficult to fuel.

I mean, you can definitely get GI distress from higher heat just because um basically your body is like shifting its priorities from trying to digest to trying to keep itself cool. So, like in that regard, um you might want to try to frontload a little bit of fuel in instead of like trying to fuel heavily during that. Um after, like Steve said, you do want to let your core temperature come down slowly. So, it's not like you want to immediately have a slushy or, you know, a really cold bottle of water right when you get off.

But, you know, there is um definitely like the need to replenish the fluids you lose after is going to be super great. I mean you basically have to hyper hydrate after you have to replace your electrolytes you have to replace sodium. So on those heat training days that hydration need is just going to be um that much higher kind of after. But then also while you're doing it you don't want to be consuming really cold liquids.

There was kind of back and forth between you didn't want to have any liquids during it to then people being like well you can just to make just make sure it's at room temperature. And I think, yeah, you don't want to go overboard and just like hydrate and hydrate while you're doing it because you're trying to kind of elicit that response, but a bit of room temperature water is is not going to bring that core temp down that much. But yeah, basically the main thing is that you have to kind of balance the stress of it and you have to not do anything that's going to bring that core temp down. >> Nice. Uh, one other uh, viewer asks, "My expensive my experience with the Core 2 was less than optimal.

I switched to an inexpensive digital in-ear thermometer. Uh, what do you think about the effectiveness of this method?" Yeah, I mean the core temp sense like while it is very cool, I think the Gen one had problems with being very um inaccurate and um the Gen 2 kind of had connectivity problems where it was more accurate but it would just lose yeah connection all the time. Um, it's hard. You know, I have a lot of athletes that use the sensor and sometimes we get good data out of it, but they have to kind of match their RP with it as well because I'll have athletes where it'll say they're at 39° and they're like, "Nah, dude.

I was just I was chilling at that point and I had the fan on." Or it'll they'll be doing a heat training session and it'll say it's at 375 and they can't get it to move. And so it can be a little bit frustrating. um not to bash them because I do I have seen really good data out of them and I've used it myself to good effect sometimes and then others not great but I think the core temp is really more useful when you're in like an outdoor setting where you're not going to probably carry a ear thermometer with you um and so you know us as coaches we have the ability and you know in apps like Training Peaks to look at your core temp sense as it like overlays with where you are in the ride and so if accurate, it's great. But if you're on the trainer, it's almost like a thermometer is going to do you just as much good. >> Yeah. So, real quick, can can y'all explain what the deal is with these uh painters suits that you see on the internet like like you're breaking bad? >> Yeah.

So, the painter suit is basically like a Tyveck material, so it has zero breathability. So, [clears throat] you can kind of create a super hot microclimate just around your body. um they are uncomfortable. Um they get very clammy very fast. And uh one trick that I've used is using like a very high um shoe cover.

It's like a shoe cover I use outside called a spats that is kind of knee height. And that way you can kind of tuck the um the paint suit into the top and it doesn't have to go all the way down to your ankle. So it kind of frees up some mobility around your knee. Uh because that's one of the things that kind of bothered me was feeling like it's pinching and pulling. >> So yeah, a super high shoe cover can can kind of give you that same insulation with with uh freeing up a little bit of room. >> Yeah.

And and is that what y'all would recommend for the the first time athlete that wants to try heat training? What what would you recommend if you were coaching someone and they say, "Hey coach, I want to I want to do some heat training." I mean, the the painters suits a pretty low barrier to entry as is. I mean, Steve, what are they maybe like 20 bucks for like two of them? They're they're cheap and they're nearly like >> I don't want to say they're disposable, but you're not going to get like you're if you're doing it three four days a week for like a few months out of the year, you'll probably need a few of them cuz they're not like super heavy duty and you can't really like you can wash them obviously, but you can't dry them or it's they're, you know, you'll go through a lot of them, but um but I mean even your winter jacket or a rain jacket like a non-permeable like not breathable rain jacket.

I mean, the key is that you're trying to cover a large portion of your body. You really, and you have like kind of key points, too, that you want to make sure like your hands, um, your ears, the top of your head, like those are all big sources for basically releasing heat and cooling your body down. So, you want to make sure those areas are covered. Some of those Tyvex suits have hoods that cover your ears and they just kind of have a little face hole.

Like, that's great. Um, but yeah, I mean, you don't necessarily need that. You could just do bib tights, gloves, shoe covers, hat, winter jacket, rain jacket, you know, buff. Um, sometimes those can get a bit saturated in sweat and ultimately like kind of cools you down a little bit, but it'll still get the job done, but like Steve said, it's like literally a microclimate in the painter suit and it just creates humidity basically in there, so nothing's getting out and it's >> wildly uncomfortable.

Yeah, I think yeah, it does it does help cut down if you have just your bibs and, you know, a thin base layer on there. Uh, it cuts down on the laundry quite a bit. That's that's kind of the downside of if you do it with the clothes that you already have is you end up with a pile of wet, stinky clothes very quickly, especially if you're doing it day on day on. >> Um, you can end up with a lot of laundry. [laughter] So, um, can y'all comment or speak to So, brand new heat training to brand new to heat training athlete. Um, how like explain like the introduction to it, like how long how many weeks you'd have them heat train, how many days per week on what days uh you would have them do it, and kind of like what you're looking for in the data, and also just what they're what they're telling telling you, giving you feedback on. >> Yeah.

I mean, you know, with a lot of my athletes, like we start kind of slow and I think it might be contradictory to maybe what some studies say cuz, you know, with with you look at any study, it's going to be very black and white. It's going to be you need 30 to 45 at this temperature, this many days, this long of a period. And while like in a perfectly controlled environment, sometimes that's great, but like I don't think that's always how it works. So like with my athletes, we might start with just turning the fan off um on the trainer.

And the the whole point of this is like your body is going to continue to get more and more adapted. So someone could be really like not that heat adapted at all. And one way you can really tell as you start to get more heat adapted is your sweat rate and your on your sweat onset becomes quicker and your sweat rate becomes higher. Typically that's its first line of defense in cooling itself down.

So, we might just start with turning the fan off and riding the trainer in, you know, like a semih hot room, you know, 75 degrees or something like that. And we might do 20 to 30 minutes like at the end of the ride um three times per week. And and then we might move on to like the Tyveck suit or the overdressing. But basically, the dose that I tend to give my athletes is somewhere in the way of 30 to 45 minutes at the end of a ride. um three to four times per week depending on the athlete and there's a few different ways you can do it.

You can do it there's a few different ways in terms of timing. You can do it early in the season and you can just do like a pretty big block of it especially when the intensity is lower. It's kind of the key and then you can create that kind of stimulus and you can create that adaptation and then you can do maintenance periods where you actually lower the frequency in which you do it a bit and so you're not doing it four days a week. Maybe you're just doing it two days a week for, you know, a month or 6 weeks and then maybe something like 3 to four weeks before an event.

You try to up that a little bit. But the key is like timing of when you're doing those sessions because like I kind of said before, it's a stress. Um, and it's a stress that'll carry on to the next day and it's like a stress that can ruin your next day's workout. So, what I kind of try to tell people is like we want to do it on days where we know the next day we we don't have a critical workout.

So, let's just say like you have two intensity days on Tuesday and Wednesday. Um, and then an endurance day on Thursday, a rest day on Friday, and then maybe um a hard ride on Saturday, and then an endurance day on Sunday. Great days would be Wednesday because you're going into an endurance day the next day. We can afford to have you not 100% for your endurance day.

You can knock that endurance down a little bit if you're tired. We can do it that next day on Thursday. It's an endurance day that day and we have a recovery day coming up the next day. We don't want to do it on the recovery day.

I mean, and if we do, it's a very low dose, a very light amount, but typically I like to keep recovery for recovery. Then we could do it on Saturday because we know we have an endurance day the next day and then we could do it on Sunday. So, it's kind of like a two and two and we either want it with an endurance day the next day or a recovery day the next day. Um, and that'll give you four days.

I think the key is just like you do it on a Tuesday and then you have a V2 session on Wednesday. You might just fry yourself for that. And that's what we're trying to avoid. It's kind of like Steve said in the beginning, we're we're just the only way you're still going to get better at on the bike is by riding the bike, doing the intervals.

Well, that's priority. Heat training is not going to be that magic thing that brings your FTP up 50 watts. So like always keep the quality days quality and the recovery days recovery and then work it around that. >> Yeah. Yeah.

I agree with all that. And um just the biggest thing I see people do is they do three sessions and then they expect it to to work. So I would kind of put it in the same category is like if you're going to do strength work, doing it once a month isn't really going to work. You have to do it really consistently.

And another thing I would say to somebody starting out is to probably try and build in one, two, three sessions to kind of work out the logistics, work out all the kinks of are you wearing enough clothes, are you getting hot enough, are you ruining your wood floor because you're sweating on it, all those kind of things that that maybe you don't think about and it's it's hard to just figure out um without actually just getting the practical experience. So, just like you maybe, you know, the first couple gym sessions you do in the fall, you would probably, you know, run through lightly for a day or two just to make sure. I think the same thing kind of applies here. Cool.

Let's move on to So, that was, correct me if I'm wrong, that is active heat training where you're actually you're exercising and it's hot. And then let's let's talk about passive heat training where I think it's really popular these days especially on social media with saunas and can can you guys give us like a brief intro uh for for saunas like what you do what you need to look for and then uh finish with uh maybe sharing with the the watchers the viewers of how they could uh what they need to buy. Yeah, I mean sa, you know, the the sauna protocol can be similar. I think one of the main things is like when you it's really convenient to do um heat training, right?

Kind of paired up with your riding because your core temperature is already pretty elevated opposed to going from rest into heat training. Like it's going to take a lot longer. But if you had just done 90 minutes on the trainer and you can hop in a sauna or a hot bath um really quickly, that's great. Now, obviously, like a lot of us don't just have saunas like sitting around, but um to to yeah, like talk about the protocol.

Like it could be pretty similar. I wouldn't exceed 30 minutes. Personally, I don't really ever tell athletes to exceed it. I mean, sometimes it's like 15 20 minutes and you're pretty cooked.

And I think that also is worth mentioning like typically you do not want to exceed 195 degrees in a sauna. Um that's there's a lot of studies that say like after that point you're actually going to start getting declining benefits because it's just too hot. At the same time, you typically kind of want something that's above 175 degrees. It doesn't mean that something lower won't get the job done.

It might just take a bit longer. Um, so we are kind of trying to maximize like what's the shortest amount of time we can spend while eliciting a response and getting that core temperature into that bracket for a certain amount of time. And so yes, it's really convenient if you could go right from the bike, get into the sauna, 20, 30 minutes, like bang bang. And that's realistic if you either have a sauna or you buy something like a sauna box.

Um, Steve and I both have those. It's basically like a tent that has a steam cooker unit thing that pumps steam in. And while it doesn't get up to like 180 degrees, it gets very hot and it takes a lot longer, but it eventually you can get your core temp up doing that. Um, so what that might look like for some people that have to go to a gym to do it is then you get off the bike or maybe even you do your bike in the morning and you do sauna in the evening.

Um, you go to the gym, you hop in there for, yeah, 25, 30 minutes, and you try to basically, unless you're taking your temperature, you know, in there, you're just kind of trying to sit in there for no longer than 30 minutes, but enough that you feel like it's pretty pretty unbearable to be in there. Cool. And then, um, tell us about this sauna box that you have. Like, how much does it cost?

How hot does it get? Like, you know, I've I've been shopping around for for saunas ever since I did this heat training video last summer, and I haven't bought one yet because everything that I see is super expensive. Like, it's in the thousands of dollars. But, um, apparently there's some uh like just tell the the viewers what what you guys use and how much it costs and what features it has and how they could use it. >> Yeah.

So, we have the the sauna box that the team sent us and I think it's around $500, maybe $400 on sale. And so, yeah, it's just a a very small oneperson sized um tent that has basically a rice cooker pumping in steam. And so, it gets very hot and it gets especially hot towards the top because obviously the heat rises. So, that's that's one thing that I've played with.

And um I know our teammate Tyler or ex- teammate Tyler uh former teammate Tyler Stites was doing a lot of you know sit up or stand up sit down stand up sit down to kind of manipulate the heat. Um so it doesn't get as hot but it is at effectively 100% humidity. So um the relative heat is extremely high and uh you're you're sweating quite a lot. >> Yeah. I mean, I've taken my temperature in there and it gets to temperature.

It just probably takes a bit longer. And yeah, because it's because there is no like evaporative cooling or anything whatsoever in there. It's so uh so humid that that yeah, you just kind of feel like you're you're cooking in there and you can't really tell when you're sweating or it's just wet in there in general. But, you know, there are add-ons or not add-ons, like people I've seen have bought um like portable dry units.

You have to be careful because it is a really small space, but they've kind of created a dry sauna in there. Um I think the one thing also to note is like infrared saunas. I know those are really popular right now. Like those really aren't going to do much.

Like those are not going to get you hot enough to the point where you're creating a response. They're just going to make you feel like moderately hot. But yeah, the key is like sweat rate is just a really good indicator of core body temperature. Like once you're just and like sometimes you'll honestly you'll feel it in the sauna where you'll be in there for 5 10 minutes.

You'll feel cool cool and then you'll feel extremely hot and then you'll actually start to cool down just a little bit cuz your body will just start pumping out sweat and then that kind of starts to raise again as your core temperature goes. But like sometimes you can feel that that switch of when your core like your body is basically trying to cool itself down. Um but yeah, it's the same kind of thing. It's like Steve said before, you can't just do it once a week um or 10 minutes and expect to get something out of it.

You have to just be like anything. It's just you have to be consistent. >> Yeah. What I've read is you probably need to do about 13 sessions over the course of three to four weeks. And and the the challenge is you got to start gradually and kind of work your way up.

And and this goes into a question that David Hulesen asks. He says, "I'm trying to fit in two sessions a week on my zone two days. What should I watch for to not overreach going into my off days? I'm a master's rider, so I have to be careful with recovery." >> Yeah.

I mean, I think a lot of that comes down to how you feel the next day. Um, you know, it's it's really hard to say. I think obviously not um overdoing it and starting gradual is certainly a good way to just you know not push the boundaries but just slowly kind of get to the point at which it might you know be enough. Um and then yeah I mean if you the next day you're just feeling completely drained you have no energy.

You're just you know yeah just feeling like got life got sucked out of you probably is a good indicator that you might have done a little bit too much. Yeah. >> Um, heat training is completely a case of more is not better. Um, if anything, I have athletes air on the side of doing a little bit less even at the expense of maybe it's not the perfect response. Um, again, just because these like white pages say that you have to do this amount of time, you know, for this many days, doesn't mean every single person's the same.

Especially if you're not heat adapted. You don't want to jump right into that. you want to ease in so your body can gradually become more heat adapted. >> Yeah. And I'll I'll say one of the one of the things I've noticed if I feel like I've overdone it is my sleep quality. Um the the night after overdoing it really really falls.

So if you're seeing you're not able to sleep through the night and having a lot of problems like that then I would say it's too much. >> You track your uh in addition to your sleep do you look at HRV and resting heart rate as well? Have you seen any correlations with overcooking it to those metrics? >> Um, I don't track it, but definitely that is one thing to note is usually with a heat training protocol, your resting heart rate will drop a few beats um at the end of the protocol. >> Yeah. >> But yeah, I think I've noticed like HRV probably being lower during those key kind of sessions too, those heat sessions. Um, yeah. You know, I think one thing of note is if you are doing this late later in the day, maybe you're doing in the evening, maybe you're doing it after dinner, after your kids went to bed or something like that, there's kind of two sides of it.

There's there's one side where, you know, people say take a hot shower before you go to bed because your body will then like elicit a response to cool itself down. But to a certain point, if your core body temperature is super elevated and maybe you had done, you know, a decent endurance ride, maybe you did a three-hour endurance ride followed by sauna and if you sauna late in the day, that still is going to like bring your core body temperature up. So like sometimes you do have to do things to bring it down. Sometimes you do like have to ease in colder water, do maybe a bit of a colder shower.

And this is after, you know, this is after, but your your core body temperature can stay elevated for like a decently long time after that. So, you know, sleep quality is obviously going to be super important. So, you kind of need to do whatever you can to make sure that before you go to bed, your core temperature is down. Making sure your room's not too too hot.

Um, a lot of little things to if you again are doing your heat training, but it's at the expense of sleep quality, it might not be worth it. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a push pull. The two things I would add, David, are uh make sure you're drinking profusely before, during, and and after to eliminate that as the cause of of too much heat training.

And when you're doing that, and then also you take your rest day, you monitor how you feel. You probably should not feel great because it's your rest day anyway. So that you got the you got all your training load plus the the heat stress on your rest day. But then when you resume training following your rest day, when you get out there on the bike and out there in the morning, you just want to ask yourself, how do you feel?

And do I feel more wrecked than normal, or do I feel like I've had a good rest day and I'm ready to to train again? So the the feel is what I would really pay close attention to as well. And you can also not heat train and and and ask yourself how you feel after your rest days when you haven't heat trained. And if there's a difference, you know, you're going to have to rectify that w with by balancing out the amount of heat training you've been doing. >> And it is worth saying too that there might have to be a little bit of compromise with the training itself.

So if you have 90 minutes of um zone 2 on a Thursday and you decide you're going to do a heat training day, I wouldn't necessarily do 90 minutes and then 30 minutes extra zone 2. I would do something in the way of 45 minutes to an hour of zone 2. and basically sacrifice the quality of that last 30 minutes in order to do heat training. Again, we're, you know, this doesn't have to be just completely extra on top of what you're doing. You can work it into your plan.

And again, it's a stress, so reducing a little bit of what you're doing on the workout in order to make a bit of room for heat training can be pretty beneficial. I think for mast's athletes too um just because it is going to take a bit more to recover I would consider lowering maybe the volume you know by you know a small percent um or you know just making sure that you're not yeah drastically increasing um just the overall stress on your body on a given day. It's not quantifiable by OTS or TSS, but it's there and it's um if you're, you know, used to a certain amount of stress, adding this in is going to add more. >> Yeah. Along those lines, would you recommend heat training?

Is it does it play nicely with all phases of your training or is it like you want to be doing it during your base training when your intensity is low or can you do it when you're you know in a race block or doing highintensity interval training? I would say let's I would try and you know preload it um and and try and do it more in the base phase and be in the maintenance uh level of heat training by the time you get to those really hard training and races. Um I would kind of compare it to like trying to get to your your race weight um before the races and not be dieting midra. I think these are kind of recipes for disaster if you're trying to do um a lot of things at once. >> Yeah.

And can you guys speak to uh timing on a on a per like a annual periodization type level where the the times of year you want to maybe do an introductory heat training phase and then the times of year relative to like your A events. >> Yeah. I mean, you know, I think I've changed my tune a little bit. Like, I think earlier can be better. Like, I don't think there's like a reason not to start at a certain point because you can always go down to the maintenance phase.

You can always go back up. It's not like a thing where you have this really, you know, defined period of when you can do it. Um, so I mean even if you're in your lifting phase and you're in like November and your your your volume is really low, your lifting might be pretty high, but your overall bike volume's low. It's not a bad time, especially if you're going to the gym to hop in the sauna for 20 30 minutes like after.

That's a great way to start that. Um, but like Steve said, you know, base phase, um, when the intensity is not very high, we can we have a little bit more room to play with in terms of sacrificing quality of the bike, but like we can't really sacrifice quality of the bike during your build phases. Um, that's when you need to be fresh. That's when you need to have the energy to be able to do these really hard sessions.

And so heat training is going to kind of fall on the outside of it. Now, there is, you know, after the maintenance phase, sometimes you do have to kind of ramp back up a little bit when you're closer to your event or if you're doing a protocol where you're doing maybe just six weeks leading up to an event, you just have to be really intentional with when you do it. And it it really has to make sense in your plan. And it kind of goes back to like what we talked about before, like you can do it into recovery days and you can usually do it into zone 2 days, but don't necessarily do it or I would never do it into an intensity day and I would try to not do it on an intensity day for most people.

Sometimes you can. Sometimes you can get away with it a little bit, you know, doing it on like a moderate intensity day. But if you're doing um a 4hour day with threshold blocks sprinkled within that day and then you're cooked by the time you get back, doing it after is not going to necessarily be better. It just might be too much and you might just not be able to recover.

Your body, you know, might just be tired. You might get bad sleep. You might get sick. Um, and needless to say, if like it's already summer and it's hot outside, you know, you don't need necessarily need to be doing like supplemental heat work.

If it doesn't get hot enough where you live to, you know, really get that RP really high when you're riding outside, then maybe you do. But like, you don't necessarily need to be doing this throughout the summer, too. Like, a lot of times naturally, you'll get that in. Or maybe you can just do two sessions per week and then you get second sessions on Saturday, Sunday on your group ride when you're already just out there cooking.

So, you know, just think about >> when does it make sense in your schedule, when does it not make sense in your schedule. Um, and always prioritize the intensity sessions. >> Yeah, I I like that a lot. I the way I rationalize it with the athletes I coach is I want to do uh two phases. The first phase being experimental. so that we learn and that when we do the second phase with the timing just right in relative to their a event, we already know how they uh reacted to the first phase so that we are not experimenting.

We're like actually just going through the the motions because you know that close to an A event you can you know mess yourself up and you don't want to do that. So, it's funny, you know, we're talking about heat training uh on January 21st, 22nd, and we're about to face like the coldest, you know, winter uh you know, winter temperatures of the the year so far. But I think like right now for the serious athlete that's thinking about heat training, you want to be experimenting now. dial in uh you know the balance of the the heat stress to your training times per week, you know, your your logistics and everything so that when you go back and you do it again um maybe this spring to peak for an event or prepare for a race at altitude, uh you already have this experience and you you kind of know what to expect and how to balance out the the recovery to the training. >> And [clears throat] you you just made a good point there. there. Heat training is not only going to benefit you in the heat.

Like, yes, that's primarily what we're talking about here, but like we work with a lot of Leadville athletes. Like, you know, other than Unbound, Leadville is probably the second, you know, most popular race um in the athletes we coach. And a lot of them don't live at altitude. They don't have time to go to altitude 2 weeks before.

They don't have time to do an altitude training camp. So when we're kind of like scrambling to be like, "Okay, what are we going to do?" Heat training is a really good place to actually turn to. It's not a one one for altitude training. It's not going to you're not going to be suddenly completely altitude acclimated, but it can help cope that, you know, lack of oxygen basically with increased blood plasma volume for allowing basically more blood to get through to your muscles.

Then we're we're kind of doing something similar. So, um I had an athlete last year who lived in Austin um and his a event was Leadville and we're like, "Well, all you got to do is ride outside, man. It's going to be sauna work. We just know that it's going to be 95 to 100 degrees when you're riding.

So, that's all we need." And then the other point is like even if your event is going to be cooler, you can still do heat training and have benefits from it. Um there are physiological benefits similar to coming down from altitude raising sea level. It's the same kind of thing. You can you can get a little bit of a boost um if you do the protocol. >> Yeah, Rick is uh Wi-Fi breaking up a little bit.

It the altitude um using heat training for altitude is real and it is of an immense benefit. If you live at sea level and you cannot heat train, it's kind of like a biohack a little bit where you can do heat training at sea level and get the benefits of of altitude training. But the the the important point is the timing. You're going to have to be doing heat training in July relative to that August 10th start date of of Leadville.

And so it's real close to the event. So, you have to have gone through an experimental heat training phase like this time of year so you don't cook yourself in in July because then you'll just be too fatigued going into to to a Leadville event. So, but yeah, it's very very beneficial. Um guys, real quick before we uh need to wrap up, Eli Ziskin asks, "Are there practical markers to gauge individual responsiveness to heat training during the early adaptation phase?" >> Yeah, there can be.

And I mean, yeah, with um without actually, you know, doing any sort of crazy tests, I think a few things like that increased sweat rate and that onset time of when you start to sweat can be a really good indicator. Um yeah, it's contrary to what some people think. You know, they think like, oh, I'm just sweating a ton. I must not be heat acclimated.

It's the opposite. It's your body's kind of first response, but then what we're kind of looking at is like what is your actual composition of your sweat? And that's where you can either do things like sweat tests. I mean, Gatorade makes like a really cheap one.

I don't know if it's very accurate, but like the precision sweat test is a very accurate way of doing it. I don't think it's that expensive. So, you can do a baseline of um your sweat composition, maybe at the beginning of your protocol, and then you can continue to do that. And actually, like especially if you're a very high sodium sweater, you get salt stains all over your jerseys and your bibs, um that salt concentration in your sweat can actually improve and you can basically sweat more with losing less sodium.

And so that could be a way that you can measure >> [snorts] >> um that kind of increased response and um that adaptation to it. And then beyond that, it's like RP and tolerance to it. Um maybe just 20 minutes was unbearable in the Tyvex painter suit on the trainer and you did six week protocol and now you could easily you know push 45 minutes and your heart rate is a little bit lower too or the drift isn't quite as steep. Um there's ways you can look at it there.

I think you know you could if you have a coach you can ask them to yeah like extrapolate it from the data see if the heart rate drift is is lower or but I really think it a lot of times just comes down to RP and like how you're actually feeling and if you feel like you're adapting and it's getting easier to be at that heat then it's probably working. >> Yeah. Another way you could do it is like you might just peg your heart rate at 150 on the trainer um in the painter suit and you would gradually see that power drop off uh start to flatten out and um not see as much of a a sharp decline in power at a set heart rate. >> Yeah, I really like this question. Uh, you know, the other thing I would say, Eli, um, when you're not heat training, after you've done this heat training block, so to speak, for two to four weeks or say, you know, after you get done, um, you know, look at your power output relative to your heart rate, you can look at, you know, did your FTP go up? Did your power go up?

Did your power at like what Steve is talking about at 150 beats per minute go up? Um I mean that's ultimately like what we're looking for at the end of the end of the day is you know increase in power output in you know by way of all these physiological mechanisms. So that plus feel uh would be the the big markers I would look for >> I think like like core body temps obviously they have like a way of being like your your body temperature is you know you are becoming more adapted. Um, the one thing I try to tell athletes to avoid is like, well, Garmins are great computers.

I think they throw out a lot of these like funny metrics like you are 92% heat acclimated and it's just like based off of time and temperature and heart rate maybe, but there's so many variables with heart rate that can change on a given day that like I tell people not to read too far into the Garmin heat training uh, metric just because I don't know how much like validity there really is to it. Yeah. Yeah. Those metrics are kind of I think I feel like they threw them into the watches to help sell more watches.

They're not they're not grounded in in science, so to speak, or they're just Yeah. >> Um, final question comes from Chan Stevens. If heat training during base phase of a plan doesn't, doesn't it fade quickly, therefore less benefit? Uh I think he's asking um if you do heat training during your base phase, does it fade quickly and um you know basically what to do about it? >> Um it doesn't fade especially quickly, especially I think the the biggest thing would be to keep the maintenance session of even if it was just once a week, you could hold on to it for quite a long time. >> Um and then also it's it's similar to going to altitude. every time you do a block of heat training, it's going to get easier and you're going to keep some of that adaptation. Um, just with any kind of training, you know, it's all cumulative and it it stacks upon itself.

So, if you do two blocks, then you're going to get more out of doing one block right before the race. >> Yeah, I think I can't remember the exact metric, but it was something not too dissimilar to altitude, like two to three weeks. If you were to go like cold turkey, >> um, you would lose all that adaptation in something like two to three weeks. Yeah, right on. Well, uh, fellas, thanks a lot for your time.

I think that's about all we we have time for. Uh, we could we could keep going on. Uh, thanks a lot everyone for tuning in and watching this live stream. This is the first one we've done.

I think we'll be able to do more since uh didn't seem to be too much of a technical hurdle. But, uh, this will also live on in podcast form and on our YouTube channel. So, if you have questions, please reach out to us in the comments. we'd be more than happy to field them and try to answer. And if you want to add heat training to your training, uh, reach out to us, especially Steve and Ricky, who are experts in it, and they can talk with you about your goals, design you a training plan, and factor in when to do your heat training.

Uh, and if you're not into one-on-one coaching, you can just ask Coach Cat in the in the chat like, "When should I add heat training?" because uh it's it's very smart. And I will say for everyone before I go um go back and watch the June 8th uh heat training protocol video that we were kind of referencing throughout the the course of this that outlines uh the actual days of the week to put on your training plan. Kind of like what we were talking about on your zone two days, the days before your rest days. And with that, I will uh bid Steve and Ricky Adu.

Have a great day, fellas. Everyone, brace yourselves for the cold. Uh, get your heat suits on and, uh, enjoy your heat training. Thanks a lot for for tuning in.

Learn How to Heat Train from Coaches Stephen Bassett, Ricky Arnopol & Frank Overton

Will take your Heat Training Questions and share our experience. We'll cover:

✅ The difference between active and passive heat training ✅ Why 175°F is the critical temperature for heat shock protein activation ✅ A practical 4-week protocol you can start tomorrow ✅ How elite cyclists like Pogacar use heat training to gain an edge ✅ Whether a dry sauna really works—and how to do it at home for under $500