MUCH ADO ABOUT ZONE 2

The cacophony of praise for Zone 2 training of late left Chris Sidwells scratching his head. So he decided to find out what all the fuss was about

- Chris Sidwells

Why is everyone banging on about Zone 2 training? That’s the question I’ve found myself asking repeatedly during 2023. It’s not as though the benefits of training at a low to moderate intensity are a new discovery. Endurance cyclists have been doing their long rides mostly at Zone 2 for years, so why all the attention now?

The reason, so far as I can tell, is Tadej Pogačar, or rather his coach, Iñigo San Millán. In several podcasts this year, notably a lengthy and detailed interview with US longevity specialist Dr Peter Attia in his ‘Drive’ podcast, the Basque-born coach claimed that it was this type of training that lay behind Pogačar’s phenomenal success.

A number of fellow coaches and exercise physiologists weighed in to strongly disagree with San Millán. This has stirred up some confusion around the importance of Zone 2 training – confusion that this feature seeks to resolve.

What is Zone 2?

The perplexity around Zone 2 isn’t helped by there being several zone-based training systems, each with different numbers of zones, from just three to seven or more. They are all based on the same principle of specifying exercise intensity. Different zones represent different exercise intensities, which are defined by heart rate, power output or perceived exertion. In most of these systems, Zone 2 is defined as around 60-75% of FTP or 70-85% of FTP heart rate; more simply, it’s a comfortable pace at which you can chat freely and ride for several hours. The ability to talk is used as a measure for Zone 2 because the top end of the zone is where we meet the ventilatory threshold, a level of effort where we begin to run short of breath – sentences start to be punctuated by gasps.