# Power Zone Question..



## ZoSoSwiM (Mar 7, 2008)

In the book Racing and Training with a Power Meter they recommend 7 power zones.. However WKO only has 5 zones automatically created for me. I used the chart in the book to create my 7 zones and manually put them into WKO and my Edge 705.

I thought that since the book so strongly pushes the use of WKO that they would match up and I would see the same number of zones. A friend of mine trains with 5 zones and his team also trains with 5. 

What is best? 5 or 7 zones? 

Just curious what you all think on the subject.

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## stevesbike (Jun 3, 2002)

it's useful to use 6 - active recovery, endurance, tempo, threshold, vo2max, and anaerobic capacity - these are the 6 that WKO generates for me if I look at power distribution binned by training zones etc. The seventh is neuromuscular power, which is binned under ac. What zone is missing from yours?


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## ZoSoSwiM (Mar 7, 2008)

Neuromuscular...

WKO creates 6 based off Coggan's formula.

Active Recovery, Endurance, Tempo, LT, VO2, and Anerobic.

I can understand leaving Neuromuscular out of the zones since it's really not a real zone since it's beyond what you can normally measure.. and so short you can't often repeat it.


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## Alex_Simmons/RST (Jan 12, 2008)

ZoSoSwiM said:


> In the book Racing and Training with a Power Meter they recommend 7 power zones.. However WKO only has 5 zones automatically created for me. I used the chart in the book to create my 7 zones and manually put them into WKO and my Edge 705.
> 
> I thought that since the book so strongly pushes the use of WKO that they would match up and I would see the same number of zones. A friend of mine trains with 5 zones and his team also trains with 5.
> 
> ...


WKO does match the levels in the book. Since Neuromuscular Power isn't related to threshold power, then you can't really define it in software as such as everybody will be totally different at 1-10 second peak power.

The training levels are descriptive, not prescriptive.

Levels are designed to provide some guidance to the question "how hard is hard?"

The idea being to identify the elements of training adaptation primarily (but not exclusively) associated with each. 5, 6, 7, 8 or 20 levels doesn't matter a great deal if your training is good. In reality training adaptations occur on a continuum at all levels, so it's just a matter of degrees.

Dr Coggan went with the 5 + 2 (recovery and NMP at either end) as he felt it was the minimum to adequately describe the primary adaptations being elicited as well as keep it simple enough to use in a practical sense.

We have one more level in our training levels using Max Aerobic Power as the anchor point, with a little more distinction in the endurance power levels. Also several of our MAP based levels actually overlap, which just reinforces that training adaptations are not discrete to level.

Here's a blog item and chart I did comparing them:
http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com/2008/01/graphical-representation-of-training.html


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## Ghost234 (Jun 1, 2010)

Sort of a stupid question, but let me make sure I am doing this right: 

Zone 1: Active Recovery
Zone 2: Edurance 
Zone 3: Tempo
Zone 4: Threshold
Zone 5: Vo2 Max
Zone 6: Anerobic Capacity 

is this right? If I was asked to do intervals of zone 3 for 5 minutes I would aim for the Tempo range?


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## ZoSoSwiM (Mar 7, 2008)

Thanks for that info Alex! 
You've confirmed what I was thinking. Exact wattage in each level isn't really the important thing... More important is the approximate wattage around that level.


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## Alex_Simmons/RST (Jan 12, 2008)

Ghost234 said:


> Sort of a stupid question, but let me make sure I am doing this right:
> 
> Zone 1: Active Recovery
> Zone 2: Edurance
> ...


Well if you call Level 3, Tempo, and want to do a Level 3 effort, then yes. 

However most L3/Tempo riding is done as efforts from 20-120 minutes duration.

You need to validate what your Level 3 intensity actually means (as there are a gazillion training level schemas out there).


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