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
