Coachinginterview

ASTANA COACH ON ZONE 1 TRAINING | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

with Vasilis Anastopoulos — Head of Performance at Astana Pro Team

49:50·29 September 2025

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VASILIS ANASTOPOULOS

Head of Performance at Astana Pro Team

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Vasilis Anastopoulos is Head of Performance at Astana Qazaqstan Team and one of the most influential coaches in the modern peloton. A former Greek national champion turned coach, he has worked with Mark Cavendish through his record- breaking 35th Tour de France stage win and now leads the performance staff responsible for Astana's 2025 ranking turnaround. His coaching philosophy blends classical Italian endurance methodology with contemporary durability testing and an unusually athlete-first approach to training prescription.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Zone 1 is the bit most amateurs skip. Below ~55-60% of threshold, fully conversational. Astana's elite riders now spend more time in zone 1 than zone 2 because the racing intensity demands more recovery-pace volume.
Skip zone 1 and you'll feel great for a month, then hit a wall by month two or three. The mitochondrial base is what everything else (zone 2, threshold, VO2) is built on top of.
Keep 6–8 second sprints in the programme year-round, not just base phase. Two or three short neuromuscular hits during a zone 1 ride stop the high end going stale.
Durability test (Italian-coach protocol): 20-minute effort fresh, then 3,000–4,500 kJ of work, then repeat the 20-minute. Target <3-5% decay for GC / classics riders; more decay means durability is the thing to fix.
Build flexibility into the week. Of ~5 weekly sessions, only two need strict intensity discipline. The rest stay flexible so social riding and rider happiness aren't sacrificed — happiness is part of the performance picture.

TOPICS

CHAPTERS

Vasilis Anastopoulos, head of performance at Astana Pro Team, thinks most cyclists are skipping the bit that actually matters. Zone 1 riding. Not zone 2. Zone 1. Below 55-60% of threshold, easy enough to hold a conversation, and most amateurs treat it as junk miles.

Key Takeaways

Anastopoulos is clear on what happens if you skip zone 1 and go straight into zone 2 or interval work. You get a month of feeling like you're flying, then a wall. After 2-3 months the performance drops and you can't recover between hard sessions. The mitochondria and endurance base that zone 1 builds is what everything else sits on top of. Miss that, and the zone 2 blocks and threshold work won't hold. He also said short anaerobic triggers — 6 to 8 second sprints — should stay in the programme year-round, not just in base phase. Two or three of those per session during zone 1 rides, just to keep the neuromuscular system ticking.

On durability, he uses a protocol that goes back to an unnamed Italian coach from the 1980s and 90s: 20-minute effort in a fresh state, then 3,000 to 4,500 kilojoules of work, then repeat the 20-minute effort. For GC and classics riders, he's looking for no more than 3-5% decay between the two efforts. He's seen one rider actually go 5 watts harder in the fatigue state. That's the outlier. For most riders, if the decay is creeping past 5%, the durability work needs more focus before race season.

Vasilis Anastopoulos, head of performance at Astana Pro Team, states that zone 1 riding (below 55-60% of FTP) is required before zone 2 training can be effectively applied, and that skipping this phase leads to performance decline within 2-3 months. He references Dr. Inigo Mujika as the coach whose work underpins the modern zone 2 concept as commonly practiced. Anastopoulos prescribes Fat Max efforts in 20-30 minute blocks, maximum twice per week, rather than the multi-hour continuous Fat Max sessions observed at teams such as UAE Team Emirates. His durability testing protocol requires athletes to complete a 20-minute maximal effort, accumulate 3,000-4,500 kilojoules of work, then repeat the 20-minute effort, with an acceptable performance decay of 3-5% for GC and classics specialists. On team strategy, Anastopoulos confirmed Astana grew their UCI points tally from approximately 6,000 (21st place, previous season) to 14,000 in 2025 by targeting lower-category races and positioning multiple riders for top-10 finishes rather than chasing outright wins, noting that three riders finishing 4th, 5th, and 6th in a 1.1 race accumulate more total points than the 125 awarded for the win.

The Bora endurance episode covers similar ground on how world tour teams structure their base work. And if you want to see how this applies without a coach, the five fixable mistakes episode for self-coached cyclists is worth your time.

CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

Each tagged with the strength of evidence behind it.

EXPERT
Vasilis Anastopoulos, head of performance at Astana Qazaqstan, argues elite WorldTour riders now spend more training time in zone 1 than zone 2 due to the rising intensity demands of modern racing.
Source: Vasilis Anastopoulos, interviewed on the Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Skipping zone 1 base work in favour of zone 2 / threshold tends to produce a one-month performance lift followed by a decline at 2–3 months as the underlying aerobic base fails to support the training load.
Source: Vasilis Anastopoulos, Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Astana use a durability protocol of a 20-minute effort in fresh state, followed by 3,000–4,500 kJ of work, followed by a repeat 20-minute effort, with a 3–5% drop between efforts considered acceptable for GC and classics riders.
Source: Vasilis Anastopoulos, attributing the protocol to an Italian coach from the 1980s–90s, on the Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Anastopoulos prescribes short 6–8 second neuromuscular sprints (2–3 per session) embedded in zone 1 rides year-round to maintain the high end without disturbing base-building stimulus.
Source: Vasilis Anastopoulos, Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Astana strategically optimised UCI points accumulation in 2025 — choosing races and result targets relative to cost and logistics — and roughly doubled their ranking to escape relegation.
Source: Vasilis Anastopoulos, Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
The "zone 2" concept popularised by Dr Iñigo San Millán sits at the high end of Coggan zone 2 / low end of zone 3 (close to tempo) — Anastopoulos warns that to do long sessions there safely you need a developed zone 1 base first.
Source: Vasilis Anastopoulos referencing Iñigo San Millán's research, on the Roadman Cycling podcast

RESOURCES MENTIONED

KEY QUOTES

“In zone 2 in reality, the zone 2 concept came after Dr. Inig Milan. And uh for the riders that are using uh the zones, the Kogan zones because almost everybody is familiar with that. It's the high end of zone two and the lower end of zone three. So it's close to your tempo zone. Uh but in order to be able to per to do some long sessions in this zone, you have to to build your zone one first.”
Vasilis Anastopoulos — Head of Performance at Astana Pro Team

“If you skip this step, the first step, uh, one thing is for sure that probably can see a rise in your performance. But then you are going to see immediately a decline. So after 2 three months, you will start watching what happened. The first month I was flying, I was going really well and now I cannot turn the pedals.”
Vasilis Anastopoulos — Head of Performance at Astana Pro Team

“We know that for example you need to do uh 5 minutes in X bars per kilo after 4,500 kilogjles in order to to win a uh a war to race. So this is something that we can stimulate on training nowadays uh that it wasn't possible to do it uh previously because we didn't have all this uh as I said all these softwares.”
Vasilis Anastopoulos — Head of Performance at Astana Pro Team

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT10 SECTIONS

Why Happiness Fuels Performance

Everyone thinks the secret to becoming one of the best riders in the world is going harder, going longer, going faster. But what if the key is actually going easier? Much, much easier. Today, I sit down with Vasilis Anastopoulos, the head of performance at Aana. He's the man behind some of the most radical training methods and philosophies in pro cycling, and he explains why the very best riders on the planet are turning to zone one riding. Yes, even easier than zone two. and how this counterintuitive approach is unlocking new levels of performance that they previously didn't think possible. That's not all. If you stay right till the end of the conversation, myself and Vasilus get into it about UCI point structure and he reveals exactly how Estana gained this UCI point system in 2025, transforming the team from the brink of relegation last season to one of the highest ranked squads in the world this season. This isn't just another conversation about Watson and intervals. It's a master class in how modern cycling really works on and off the bike. It's Facilus Anastas. Welcome back to the Roadman podcast. It's my pleasure to meet you again. Yeah. No, it's a it's a pleasure to be back. Something which we I was reviewing our conversation last time and something which we started to touch on but we we kind of ran out of time on it. It was the idea of happiness and a happy athlete is typically a fast athlete. How do you see that role of a athlete enjoying himself? Do you see that as a powerful driver in performance? Yeah, definitely. Especially nowadays, uh the sport has become so competitive. Uh you know the numbers that the riders are producing now are really really high. So if you are not 100% committed in this sport, you cannot succeed. There are many riders who just stop the sport because they cannot do it anymore. So happiness is uh really important. We have to do everything we can to have uh the riders fit and ready to race, but also to be happy to perform as best as possible at the races. It's it's a really really high competitive sport nowadays. Cycling uh the demands are uh so so high. So we have to be the the best holiday for the riders to to make them happy to be happy at the start not only on the race but also in the morning when they wake up and they want to go out for training. Yeah. Because I think about this from an amateurs perspective like we're all well aware of the power of compounding. If it's you know you take a small amount of your wages and you put it away each month and you invest it, it ends up in a big number 25 30 years from now. But to bring it and ground it in a sporting example, most of the best amateurs I've seen, they're not coming into the sport in year one and blowing it away. Year two and blowing it away. It's a five years, six years, seven years, 10 years later, they start to become complete bike riders. And I look at the data driven culture we're in now where everybody's measuring, you know, whoop their sleep data. We're tracking everything across training, heat, sweat rate. Amateurs copy the pros for better or worse. That's what we do. We look to see what the pros are doing. And we go, "Oh, can I do that?" And now we're drowning in data. And I'm seeing so many riders who are missing out on the power of compounding because they're getting so stressed out in performance right here and now that they just walk away from the sport because they're not enjoying it. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. That's what we're seeing now. So, you know, if a rider now signs for a cont team, probably he's not going to get paid or he's going to get paid a minimum a really small amount of money, which means that either he has to do a work or has to rely on his parents to support him for a couple of years and then he will try to do everything to make the step to the pros. So, it's a really really stressful period now, more stressful than it used to be, as I remember 10 years ago. Uh, as you said, everybody's trying to copy what the pros do. So, if Pocket puts a a file on Straa and do 20 minutes for a X climb, they will try to do the same because they think they can do that. Or if a pro puts uh the the session of the day on Straa or another uh platform, they will try to stimulate the same session and probably they will end up failing. they will get disappointed and then they will try one or two times more and if they fail again they just going to stop uh the sport. So from a coaching perspective if you were to look at not just your world tour riders but looking down through this lens to view amateur riders as well. How do you think about when you're prescribing a training session or you're viewing someone's training week? Obviously the primary goal is to get that physiological adaptation and the best way to get that adaptation is if they do every single session the way you've laid out every single session but then we have kind of I would call them conflicting demands within that and this is maybe more prevalent for amateurs or I've even heard Garant Thomas talking about it like the idea of training with friends you know if you're training with a friend it's not exactly the session sometimes there's a bit of compromise on both parties or you can extend that further saying training with a friends and stopping for a coffee.

Balancing Structure and Social Rides

It's obviously more social, but it's less physiological impact. How do you think about that, you know, distribution of I should be 100% focused on the session versus 100% social and where is the right balance or how do we find that? Let's say that uh a writer has to do five sessions per week because probably going to take one day off and uh end his day. So, you can ask them to do the long ride with the friends, go out, have a coffee. You can put a session uh with some short intervals, but knowing that he's going out with friends, you know that probably he's going to sign who's going to sprint for signs or he's going to sprint for the for the bridge or anything. So, this can be a little bit more flexible and then you have just two sessions that you're asking from the rider to be disciplined to follow it exactly as you ask. I think if you follow this rule, you can have a a nice program uh well executed and also the writer can have some freedom to play around a little bit with his friends, not to lose the social uh component. Uh because it's about cycling is about being social, being about uh out with friends uh having good a good time, enjoy the ride, stop for a coffee. And if everybody's doing his own structured training session, then the social element will be lost. Yeah, I see this and not to pick on triathlon because they're always the brunt of every joke. But I see some triathlon clubs and instead of a group ride, they're literally all going at their own pace and it's like one's half a wheel in front of the other comes to a downhill. They're like trying to ride 55k an hour on slippy downhills to stay in zone two because the coach said to them, "Hey, it's a zone two ride today." It's Yeah, it's it's hard to understand sometimes for me. Maybe I'm viewing it all through too old school of a lens. Yeah, I've seen that also with some cyclist uh club cycles also. So, we're not talking only about the pros, but I'm talking about club cycles. And they just lose the, you know, the pleasure of riding the bike because think when you wake up in the morning, you want to go out to have some fun to spend some time with your friends and have a smile in your face. As I always say, this smile of the face is getting lost when you have to do okay, I have to do 190 to 1955 BS because that's my zone too and I have to respect it either it's uphill or downhill or turns or whatever you are telling riders and robots if you just if you are really strict on that you can do a zone to ride you can prescribe the bus you can have a variety so you can say you can do 180 to 200 but if you have a downhill section you can stop pedaling it's Okay. It's not going to harm your uh your preparation. It's going to it's not going to be a step back to your preparation. And have you can you see even within the world tour the the conflict in this? Like I know I've spoken to some writers who are friends and at world tour teams and their coaches will not only make them to have a certain session but to train at a specific time of day like, "Hey, you're a professional cyclist. training starts at 9:00 am and they get a bolican if they're going out the door at 11:00 am instead of 9:00 am I've seen that but personally I'm not doing that I'm not following this uh this advice the riders are free to go out whatever fits because don't forget that they have families they have school kids they have to bring school they have some other uh commitments during the day so if they do their training session for the day it's it's fine by me and uh I'm always flexible with the bats So if I ask you to do 4 hours and you do 4 hours 10 or 350. Okay. It doesn't change to cycle around the car park. Yeah. Exactly. Which I've seen as well. No, I have seen some riders uh going back home and turning the, you know, turning the wheel, pushing the pedals in the air so they can have the necessary hours on the on the Garmin. Because you can see it on Straa files where like they finished on 3 hours 40 and then they just ride around the neighborhood for 20 minutes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I don't know. When you when you look at the end of the year, the difference between success and failure, is that 20 minute cycle around your local car park the difference? I'm not sure it is. I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. Another area we touched on, but we never really got to go deep on it last time, was the idea of zone one and zone 2 training as a collective. So, anything to the left of LT1. I think a lot of amateurs dismiss this easier training as junk miles. Can you explain to us kind of the the physiological and the psychological importance of these easy long rides during those easy rides?

Zone 1 vs Zone 2 Explained

It's uh where you built your mitochondria. It's uh while you build your your endurance, let's say it really uh really clear. You need those easy rides, the zone one rides, the long rides without stressing your uh your metabolic system uh before going on zone two. In zone 2 in reality, the zone 2 concept came after Dr. Inig Milan. And uh for the riders that are using uh the zones, the Kogan zones because almost everybody is familiar with that. It's the high end of zone two and the lower end of zone three. So it's close to your tempo zone. Uh but in order to be able to per to do some long sessions in this zone, you have to to build your zone one first. So those rides to me are really really important. The easy long rides, I'm not talking about the completed recovery rides, but I'm talking about the rides that you can easily have a conversation with your friend. Uh those those rides are uh the foundation of uh of the endurance that it's coming and on that you can build up later on. You can put the zone two, you can put some intervals, some high intensity training sessions. But if you don't, if you skip this step, the first step, uh, one thing is for sure that probably can see a rise in your performance. But then you are going to see immediately a decline. So after 2 three months, you will start watching what happened. The first month I was flying, I was going really well and now I cannot turn the pedals. I feel tired or I don't uh I cannot recover after some sessions, some hard sessions. So the answer is that you're missing those. How do you differentiate between so using that Kogan format? Uh I think zone one is below 55% of thresholds if I remember Kogan's one correctly. Do you differentiate between a zone one ride and a recovery ride within that even though he doesn't differentiate that in his zones? Recover ride just uh I define as a cough ride is a as low as you can go. So minimum pressure on the pedals. Yes. Exactly. Then we're talking about the zone one on around 55 to 60%. Yes. So like top of zone one, bottom of zone two and his zones. You'd collectively all just call that zone one. Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And are you easing back if there's like we talked about those triathletes are all going different speeds. If you're out on one of these rides, are you knowingly easing back as soon as there's a drag to make sure you're not going into upper zone two or does it matter if you're briefly into a different zone? It doesn't matter if you have a climb and you go a little bit on zone two. If you spent 10 minutes on zone two, it's not going to change anything. So, it's not it's not bad at all as far as the majority of the ride is uh isn't about in that zone, the zone one as we describe. And what markers would you look for if you're coaching an athlete to know when you can start layering in some zone two? Is there like a you know I'm thinking like an aerobic decoupling or other type signals you can look for? Yeah, the aerobic decoupling is the best uh indicator when you can uh make the next step when you jump up to some more uh endurance rides some zone two rides and also the time that you have uh accumulated in zone one. So the total time that you have spent on zone one for each rider of course it's different but uh when I see that the rider has spent a signific significant time uh on zone one they can start progressing on zone two and building up from then on. So in terms of programming this schedule do you look to do the zone one rides as soon as they come back after their winter break? Yes. Yes. in the first two weeks. Uh I like to do a lot of zone one rides and uh just like to implement some uh uh high anorobic short sessions to keep the stimulus. For example, some some short sprints or some uh short uh rolling starts 6 to 8 seconds maximum just to to trigger the system and then we can start uh building up the the zones. And will you still incorporate on one alter the season or is this just a base period? No, I uh personally I try to to keep this short sessions for the whole season long because uh uh in every s in every phase of the season apart of course for the really heavy racing program you need to have this uh smaller anorobic uh triggers to the system. Interesting. And I I was talking as you shouldn't uh Straa files from some of the best riders in the world. And there's definitely some clear trends we've started seeing within teams. Like particularly if we look at UAE, UAE seem to do a lot of these what we're termin rides. I would just call them upper zone two rides. They're almost tempo rides. And even listening to Garant Thomas talking about he won't even train with Civicov.

Rethinking Fat Max Training

He said he just stays on the pedals all day and it's just not enjoyable to go training with him. That it's just not a tradition Garant has come up riding with. What deteriorate these fat max rides and is it something you prescribe? Yeah, of course I do prescribe max but uh as you prescribe right now they do the majority of the rides on FatMax. Uh I am prescribing fat max rides but probably two times per week of course depending on the on the period but maximum two times per week and then I'm working also on threshold and no overunders and some uh really structured intervals. So I think everybody is doing fat max probably the ina they do they devote a lot of time on fat max probably they do I don't know 3 hours fat max uh while I do 20 minute blocks 30-minut blocks 30 minute blocks on fat max sounds less stressful yes yeah so like where's this come from is this always like I don't ever remember these fat maxs I remember closer what you were talking about where I'd have like a 20 minute tempo effort in the middle of an endurance ride, but it seems like the Fat Max seems to be just below tempo. Like when you look at Civicov's rides, they're basically like five watts under his tempo zone from what I can see. And he's doing three, four, five hours of this. Yeah, I think the concept comes from the tempo rides that we used to do uh 10 years ago. For example, 10 years ago, a standard train program would be 4 hours with three times 20 minutes on tempo. So you just lower a little bit the Vs and then then you extend the period. And it seems like a gray line for amateurs as well because if we talk about one of the biggest mistakes that amateurs that don't have a coach and don't understand really structure and training zones, one of the biggest mistakes they make that I see is they just head out the door and ride kind of hard every session where they're kind of on the pedals hard enough to create fatigue, but they only get that narrow band of adaptations associated with training in zone three because they do 90% of their training distribution just in zone three. Fat Max rides seem like they're very close to that edge of just riding kind of hard. Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's why they accumulate a lot of uh fatigue and they feel tired after two three days of doing that. So, you have be you have to be really careful how you how hard you push the pedals immediately after you step out the door. Yeah, they are. It's a super interesting everything's changed in the last few years. We were just talking off air a little bit about the idea of we do have just now new words to describe stuff that's been happening for a long time. And we were mentioning durability. Durability training has been around for as long as there's been wheels on bikes, I'd say. Yeah, it's it's been around since the 80s or the ' 90s, I think. But back then, we didn't know uh we didn't have a a word for this term. For example, a really famous Italian coach was asking these riders to do a 20-minut test after a warm-up, then do a 4-hour ride, a specific loop, and then repeat this test. So, what they did back then, they did a 20-minut test in a fresh state and a fatigue state after having spent around 3,000 kilogjles. But back then, we didn't have the tools and the means to measure all this work. So, it existed since uh so many years, but now it's just a new trend. Is it a trend you're buying into? Is it something you think there's I guess we can separate trends with trends with substance and trends that just kind of come in a marketing campaign and no substance? No, it's really useful because now we can use uh all the software we have to measure the the specific effort that we ask from the rider to do in a fresh state and a fatigue state. We can uh prescribe exactly how many kilogjles we want to be done. So we can stimulate the race scenario and we then can see if the rider will be able to perform for example a five minute effort uh on the same power as he did in a fatigue state as he did in a fresh state. So after that if we do a test then we can uh restructure his training or can modify his training because now we know what it's needed to win in a really high level in the best race of the world. We know that for example you need to do uh 5 minutes in X bars per kilo after 4,500 kilogjles in order to to win a uh a war to race. So this is something that we can stimulate on training nowadays uh that it wasn't possible to do it uh previously because we didn't have all this uh as I said all these softwares. So how do you think about setting up the signposts for this? So, if somebody has a, you know, we'll come up with a really basic durability protocol like you gave the Italian coach back in the day, 20 minutes, 3,000 kilogjles, 20 minutes.

Reading Rider Form and Fatigue

If there's a deviation of X between the first test and the second test, do you start to get worried and say that's too big of a deviation? How big would X have to be for you to say, hey, this is a bit of a problem for us where we need to focus on it? It depends on the rider. Uh if we're talking about a classic rider or a GC rider, uh I'm always looking for a small uh small margin of around 3 4% maximum 5%. I have seen some riders that have performed better on the last uh effort. Seriously? So in fatic state and fresh state. Yes. What's that? Just a special rider. It was just a classic rider. So just to give you an example, we start the the ride. We did the the first hour with some opener, some sprints. Then we did the 4m minute all out test. Then we did we spend the next 3 hours accumulating around 3,000 kilogjles. And then we did again the 4minut test and uh he did five much five more on the fatigue state than the previous uh what an absolute hero. Oh, that was Yes, I was a good rider. So, I was a copy of cos that day. From the first ride on two wheels to the biggest races in the world, every pedal stroke counts. That's why Lloyds is proud to be there at every stage of cycling, supporting grassroots initiatives, nurturing talent, and standing alongside the pros, just like they did at the recent Lloyds tour of Britain. I still remember when my dad brought me to see the Tour to France Grand Theart. That was back in 1998 in Dublin. I was just a kid back then, but that memory, it's never really left me. I remember that roar of the crowd, the blur of the colors as they went past. I was just mesmerized by the sheer energy that was in the air. It was electric. That was the moment probably that I fell in love with cycling. So, I know how experiences like that can stay with you for a lifetime. The Lloyd's Tour of Britain had that same magic. As the UK's largest free-to-end sporting event, it brought world-class riders to towns, villages, and cities across the country. Fans lined the road to cheer. Kids saw their heroes fly past, and entire communities came together to share in the excitement. However, it's not only about Lloyd's leaders jerseys, and stage wins. Lloyds believes the race represents something bigger, inspiring us all to take our next turn of the pedal. Whether you're commuting to work, you're going for a family spin at the weekends, or you're chasing a new fitness goal, cycling is for absolutely everybody. By partnering with British Cycling, Lloyds is helping more people experience joy of riding and showing how those small personal pedal strokes can move us all forward. So, if you haven't already, now is the time to get out on the bike yourself. Lloyds, they're at every stage. Is there new technology or software that you've started to use in the last few years to help to understand when a rider is ready to absorb harder work when you can move them into a phase to accept more fatiguing stimulus? I'm always using WKO5 uh to analyze the training sessions but uh I with the help of my data engineer I just try to d deeper on the sessions and to uh analyze a little bit more the the efforts and the the recovery between the efforts and all those things. What's the role of the data engineer now? When I talk to coaches like you, physiologists within teams, it seems like there's a a little bit of an arms race behind the scenes to get the best data engineers the last couple of years. Yeah. He's doing the work that I would uh would take me two three hours uh two years ago. He's doing that in two minutes. So I'm taking the segments. I'm taking the I'm analyzing the efforts of the riders. I have immediately analysis of the average VS uh normalized power, heart rate, everything. Uh and then I can see how hard they went and how deep uh how deep they went in reality. It's a kind of a profession in flux I'd say at the moment with so many new software technologies and hardware technologies coming along like continuous lactate monitors are coming along. long time. Whereas coming home with the respirator core has been there for the past few seasons, it seems like that role of data scientist is just going to expand and expand over the next couple of years for us to just try and make sense of the amount of data that's coming in from each rider. Yeah, we need to be really careful with all this data and how we use this data. uh of course we take into consideration as you said all these uh new technologies that I'm coming on board but uh to me at the end of the line at the end of the day the question that if rider needs to ask to answer every morning is how he feels to me this is still the best uh the best data we can get from the rider uh we can have the HRV we can have the whoop score we can have the recommendation from our arming saying that you have to do an easy ride or a long riding today.

Tailoring Sessions to Personality

But we have seen that many times. This is just off the line and uh we just need to ask the rider how he feels, how he slept, uh how he wake up in the morning. Of course, take into consideration the morning heart rate, the color of the urine and all those things. But uh before stepping the bike the answer that we have to the question we have to answer is how do you feel? As simple as that. How much does a rider's personality then we talk about how does the rider feel? How happy are they? Which is maybe a surprising conversation for listeners to think that we're not as focused on the data as we are on thoughts and feelings. But how much does the writer's personality feed into the type of training plan that you build them? Like I've a good example is I had a coach my first year full-time and he used to give me this session. I can still remember. I can it gives me PTSD. I can see it on my training peaks. It was a 4-hour ride and every Wednesday in the middle of the 4-hour ride he gave me 90 minutes basically full gas. He called it medium intensity endurance but it was at like 330 340 watts which is like pretty much me full gas for 90 minutes considering I was in the middle of a 4-hour ride. As soon as the programming came in for me on a Monday, I'd already be looking at that Wednesday session going, "Oh, like I'm gonna sell my bike if I have to do this session again. I hate this session. It stress me out. I'd be bitching and moaning about it." And I fed this back and the session kept coming. The session kept coming. I was like, I'm like, I got to quit cycling. Like, this session is killing me. That's like an example of a session that just made me miserable. But do you take into account an athletes personality with the type of training programming you're giving them? Definitely. But did you ever ask your your coach? Did you discuss about it? Yeah, I think you just No, the way I see that everybody's different. So that's why the training session that prescribed to each rider is completely different to to another rider. Even though we're talking about the same riders for for example for the classic guys or for the GC guys, they do complete different sessions because everybody is different. And of course when I prescribe the training session before I put on train no after I put it on train pics I just call the rider have a conversation then I go through the session for the whole week I can explain him why he's doing the ex uh session on Wednesday and not on Thursday and the vice versa and then we agree on the plan. If you don't agree with your athlete on the plan that it suits perfect to him, that it's going to uh be beneficial to him, then the plan is not going to work. I just want my riders to be happy after they when they see the plan and I explain him about the sessions, I want them to be happy and agreed. So, I'm the happiest guy in the world. When they tell me, "Fine, Raj, this is what I was looking for. I'm really looking forward to this session. Even it's going to kill me. I know that's going to be hard for me, but I really like it and we go for it. So, it's up to the end. Yes, exactly. Sometimes they don't like it or they want to change something and at the end I'm open to discussion. Uh there's no to me there's no okay, this is the plan, take it or leave it. We can always change a little bit and play around because we're talking to professional riders. Some of guys are 30, 32 years old, 36 years old. They have been pros for so many years. they know probably better than you what worked for them and then you can have a conversation and uh if it's okay by you, you can just change a plan and let it go. Yeah, I think that's super important is that knowing what works for you. It's difficult to maybe quantify, but we still don't understand or at least the gap between training stimulus and adaptation is so wide. Like you could give somebody a block of 2x20 threshold, observe them for six weeks and it's six weeks later before you understand if how effective that 2x20 prescription was. If he's able to say to you, hey, 3x2 threshold has always worked better than 2x 20 threshold for me. Like that's an invaluable data point. Yes. Uh till now we don't have all the necessary tools to say 100% that okay this is definitely working for you and this is not working for you. So it's up to the coach up to his uh to his experience to his feeling. That's why I think AI will never replace the coach because uh coaching is an art. You need to take all this data, take your experience and your own personality and then analyze them on your own way and come with your own conclusions. Uh that will help the rider to perform best. The focus of the team has changed a lot this year.

Astana's Points Turnaround

I assume you don't you don't have Cavendish around the place this year. What what's that been like? You missing Mark? Of course I miss Mark definitely. But we have some other targets this year. And uh as a team we try as a team we try to win as many races to take as many points as possible to stay in the first 18 teams on the world tour. And uh we uh we just refocus and we changed our uh strategy from uh the project 35 that was our main target last year to making top to top 18 uh teams in the world this year. So help me understand how you guys have done this because you were this time last year relegation must have been a real conversation inside in the squad. You've gone from six thou you'll know the numbers better than me. I think it was you said 6,000 points this time last year to 14,000 points this year. Yes. How has this transformation happened? More than double the points in a single season. Yeah. Last year we finished the season 21st. So we're based on the mathematics on the calculations were out of the world two for this year. There was no way that we can uh score some points. But uh immediately after the project 35 last year as I call it. on uh on August last year, we start making an analysis of the new riders that we had signed uh of the races that they traditionally perform on the scoring of our of the races during the whole recent racing period during the calendar. Of course, there the uh the help of the data engineer was uh huge. I think without his Alice we wouldn't have done all this work and u after that we start building up the calendar. We saw that we have to target specific races. We saw that in some races we have to sacrifice chasing the win and focusing on the on putting as many placing as many riders as possible in the top 10 because just to jump in there Vasilus because this is huge if people aren't quite understanding what this means like with these UCI relegation rules teams are effectively deciding that it's not a priority to race for the win in a race that it's more beneficial to race for two or three people inside the top 10 because of points mathematically works out as a greater numerical number of points to put three in the top 10 than it does to win the race outright. This is a profound effects on the entire professional level of sport. Yes, exactly. It's uh it's exactly like that. For example, I'm going to give you a small example. If you win a 1.1 race, you get 125 points. The second place goes for 80 points, 70 points, so on so on. So if you have a rider who no you have three riders finishing fourth, fifth and sixth, the amount of points they gather in this race is higher than the 125 that gets from the win. So you have to make a strategy and say either I go full out to have one guy winning or I try to put as many riders posing in the top 10. Definitely every team wants to win because also that's what the sponsors want. You want to finish the the to cross the finish line first. But if you start trying to get as many guys as possible top 10, ultimately you will end up winning. If you don't, it's not the end of the world. It also changes recruitment as well though, like because you think about even from a sprinter's point of view, like you had the greatest sprinter of all time on your team last year. It almost doesn't make sense to hire the best sprinter if you can hire the second, third, and fourth best sprinters. Now, instead of sprinting with a focused lead out like you had for project 35, you're sprinting maybe a lead out guy as the third guy from the end and you're sprinting two guys against each other to try and come in the top five. Exactly. That's exactly what happened this year. We had the counter and Maluchell in the team and there are so many races that we go to to a race with two sprinters and they just try to make four or fifth and uh fifth and sixth or trying to be top 10. Of course, the target is to win, but we know realistically that sometimes they cannot win. So, they have to be in top 10 both of them. While last year, we just devolved the whole year on uh on our sprinter trying to deliver him to the to the end. But if we look back, Mark won a stage until the France last year and took him only 180 points or 200 points, I think, which is not valued for us this year. Uh, as Venoro said last year, yeah, I had 35 I had the win until the France. I accomplished this the target of the season, but it would be better if I had 5,000 points from this win, not only 200 points. But as a fan, this is so to hear because and I don't think a lot of fans, we know the system exists, but we don't know the pragmatics of how you organize internally as a result of this system.

Skipping Classics for Smaller Wins

Because also as a fan, what we want to see is the best riders in the world racing the biggest races in the world to try and win it. But like maybe it makes more sense for you to send a stacked squad to a lesser known race on the same weekend that Par is on because you know well we don't have a writer who's going to beat Vanderpole and Rubé so let's just go and win this lesserk known race with our star riders. I did exactly opposite from what you suggest this year. So this year we tried to avoid all the big races. Uh so we try to avoid races that we knew that uh Everpool will be there, Pocket will be there, uh uh the whole Jumbo team, Visma team will be there and we try to focus on uh on lower category races. That's why we end up for for example winning turf of Hungary uh turfellas turf Turkey placing first and second in turf Turkey you know lower category races which uh going to give us a huge amount of points as I can recall last the week of Les was the best week for us because in one week with the place in Roman D of Turkey and Le Baston we had the fifth place in Baston is uh we accumulated 1,100 points. In order to gather 1,100 points in one week, you need to win a a grand tour. So this the the amount of points that the uh the Jotalia winner takes. So what is better to devote three weeks if you have a rider uh to work uh three weeks long to win zeroia or take from some smaller races three in one week the same amount of points? Roadman, whether you're a weekend warrior or a world tour rider, the right tools can make all the difference. Enter 4's Precision 3 Plus power meter. The latest innovation from 4i, designed to help you reach peak performance. The Precision 3 Plus power meter is a compact yet powerful unit. It weighs just nine grams and it's packed with features that set it apart, including integration with Apple's Fine Mind network, giving you the peace of mind by letting you track your power meter wherever it is. Plus, you've got up to 800 hours of battery life. We all know that accuracy is key, and four eyes delivers a groundbreaking plus or minus 1% accuracy thanks to their unique 3D strain gauge technology. For those seeking even more data, the Precision 3 Plus Pro power meter offers dualsided power meter metrics, giving you detailed insights into pedaling efficiency, torque effectiveness, and left right balance. For eyes offers versatile product options to suit your needs. Choose from ride ready parameters with pre-installed units on Shimano cranks or up for factory installed parameter where you send in your crank set for a custom installation. Ready to elevate your cycling game? Trust Forey Precision 3+ parameter. Precision, performance, and peace of mind allinone. Learn more by visiting fori Iii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.com. That's 4i iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.com. I'm going to put that in the description down below. I think the effects on this are quite profound as well because there there's a recruitment effect where you maybe start to think about now signing two or three really good sprinters instead of just one guy and a full team supporting them. I think there's a huge safety element to this as well. Traditionally, we haven't seen groups coming in for 10th going full gas sprinting for 10th. It's just been a kind of roll across the line. Who cares if I come 10th, 11th or 12th? It's basically all the same. Now we're seeing people fighting for minor placings. Is this a good thing for the sport? I don't think so. This is the UCI rules. We have to play by the rules. But nowadays we see that uh even through the France there are teams fighting to keep their 11th or 12th or 13th position in a GC. While some years ago uh if you are out of top 10 it doesn't matter if you finish 11th or 20th. Now with all this point hunting system, every every single position counts. We are fighting for the 10th place in 1.1 race that's going to give us 20 points for example. And of course as you said that increased the risk of uh the danger of crashing uh the stress uh that we put on the riders uh with the results that we're going to have uh in the next years. Some really not not good results. So, I'm against that uh on that system. It brings so much stress to the riders, so much stress to the teams, and I think I don't think that supportive wise, it's best for the for the audience. It's what the the spectators want to see. Well, yeah, it's changed the incentives, and the incentives are now in the wrong places. Like, obviously, there's still a huge incentive to win races because, you know, it's not just about UCI points. It helps you attract new sponsors for the following year, better riders for the following year. But the UCI points are a huge huge thing in cycle now. So to put that incentive structure in the wrong place, it kind of changes the fabric of the sport that we've been used to watching for the last, you know, x number of years.

How Points Reshape Race Calendars

Yeah. If you take, for example, EF, they used to do some a limited calendar before the new system applies. They used to do some race in uh in America uh most of all the whole calendar and some small races. After this uh rule change they started doing a lot of races because they found themselves in a really difficult position especially at the first cycle. So on I think it was 2021 and 22 uh where they start the season they didn't have any points. So they they just completely change the strategy and they start going to every single small race the same to us the same what to what Astana did this year. So have to go in every single small race. Of course this gives this this uh strate give the prestige to those races. For example, I think many guys were happy watching Petco winning tour of Alula this year. race that he would never do with Inos for example. But this year because of uh his pro probably his preparation uh uh calendar in the calendar of Q36.5 they needed this race to just to get a win and points. So he was there and it was really good really good for the race otherwise he could be there. So uh or we see some war two races going to a 2.1 races that uh they were not supposed to be in the past. Uh so there are two things. It's good for the small races to attract some bigger teams who participate in these in their races but on the other hand the teams don't send their best teams to the high profile races. As you said, what the people want is to see all the best riders in the in the World Tour Bell Pelaton racing the same races. But this cannot be done right now with this point system. It almost feels like what amateurs do to get upgrades. You know, if I'm coaching a guy and he's a cat 2 and he wants to get up to cat one, you're kind of scanning the calendar and going, "Okay, well, in this region, there's the biggest cat 2 cat one race on. So maybe if you don't go there and you drive six hours to this other region, all the good guys are down in region A. You go race in region B and you'll get some soft points to get your promotion to cat one. This feels like the same type of system that's starting to get. It's exactly the same. Yes. Yes. It's exactly what we are doing this year. Yes. And you know what? It hasn't made it easier to understand the sport. Like I tried during the tour to France explaining the tour to France to a friend who's not into cycling at all. Did you ever try to do this? It's the most confusing thing ever. It's like, okay, well, it's a three-week race and so the winner after 3 weeks, well, he's the winner, but then there's a race every day and there's a different winner there, but then we race to the top of the mountain and that's a different one as well. And then we have sprint lines in the middle of the day, which are a different race. And then you'll ask a question, be like, okay, so why are movie star on the front pulling full gas now? And it's like, I don't even know. I don't even know what they're doing. It's like you got to be pulling up the UCI rankings and going, "Okay, so what they're doing is they're trying to get 14th on the stage." Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It's It's really difficult to to explain to somebody that's not familiar with that that we have a race, but we have also four or five races in the race within the race. Yeah, it's Yeah. So, yeah, it's not easy at all. What did you make at the final stage in Paris this year? Was it a good thing removing the ceremonial finish? before the start of the race, we thought that it was an awful idea. We said that it's not it's not right to remove the Sam to move the sprinkers race, but after I after watching the circuit, after watching this race, I think it was really really spectacular. Maybe they could have done it uh in the middle of the race. So, not as a last stage, but uh the crowd in Mon the uh the vibes on the final circuit, it was just uh hilarious. It was fantastic. I really loved it. But the idea of the finish line with 50 km to go like this is a uniquely I don't even want to say uniquely cycle. I think it's uniquely ASO. like this would be the equivalent of saying, "Hey, we're going to blow up the Champions League final with 15 minutes to go." It It makes no sense really to try and explain why you would do this. Yeah, I I would prefer to be to be treated as a normal stage without the regul neutralization race at the end of the at the at the start of the laps. Okay, it was raining that day. It was slippery. Uh it was a bit dangerous but uh I would still love to have a race till the finish line because the absurdity of that is I'm not sure if you know you were probably on the beer but and didn't look at the final results but the absurdity of the situation was Leipovic ended up taking six seconds on Pagatcha on that stage because he was across the 50 kmter to go line six seconds ahead of Pagacha like how does this make any sense?

Closing the Gap to the X-Men

Yeah. And again we have Bugatt going full guards with the front group almost winning the race uh doing the following the Vanderpool on the last climb. So he had two races that day. The race with the for the front guys and then the race for the just to finish the parade. No, I I completely disagree with that. I think it should be done just just as a normal race. Finish on the finish line. Also for the GC guys because there's different skills in Cyclone. One of the skills has been able to position corner in the wet. Like Felix Gal must be counting his lucky stars that was neutralized. Because when I look at the big GC riders, Felix Gal is maybe the worst skillwise in that top 10 who was really in threat of falling out of the top 10 if they had a raced all the way to the finish that day. Especially to the France have to be a complete rider. It's not about the best time trialist or the best climber. It's also about the guy who can descend fast with technical skills to go fast on the white cobblestone section. So to me it just need to be you know to be a race to the finish. Can you bridge the gap to those? I call them the X-Men. Pogy, Yonas, Wout, who else? Vanderpaul. Are they untouchable or is there a way to bridge the gap to these guys? First of all, we are really blessed that we have uh those guys uh competing all together. We're talking about some exceptional guys, but uh they are human beings and we have seen that uh there are people can uh can come close to them. For example, who could imagine that uh during the walls at the time trial uh Ramco would put 1 minute 40 something like that to Pogar more more I think or more. I think he cut him off 230. So you had 240 I think. Yeah, he caught him with 4ks to go. So it was close to 2 minutes to pocket. Who would ever think about this? Everybody thinks that Pogatar is untouchable. Is the uh is is riding like a robot, like a machine. But we see that they are all uh all people. They're all human beings. Uh I can see that there are some uh younger guys coming up also. Uh for example, to me it was Lipovich was uh really really great at this tour to France. this year. Uh so I don't think we have an exceptional uh group of riders, but there are still some riders who are coming up. So the gap is is closing slowly. When you look ahead to 2026, what's your big hopes for Astana? Hopefully we'll finish the season on the top five of the UCI ranking this year. I'm talking about the 2026 season. So I want to continue with this momentum and uh finish next season also around uh top six top seven teams in the world. Uh just continue this momentum to prove that this year was not only the year of uh we're not lacking uh but to get the best programming and the best uh we distribute the our sources in the best way to to fit in to finish high in the world tour racking. So I want to continue like this and win as many races as possible. We already have something like 23 24 wins in the season. So I just want to continue in this with this momentum. Well, best of luck for next year and thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule. Hopefully we'll catch up for our annual chat next year. Thanks a lot. It was my pleasure. said the thank you so much.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is zone 1 cycling training and is it actually useful?+

Zone 1 is riding below roughly 55-60% of threshold power, easy enough to hold a full conversation without effort. Vasilis Anastopoulos, head of performance at Astana Qazaqstan, argues it is more valuable than zone 2 for elite riders because World Tour racing has become so intense that recovery-pace volume is needed to absorb the training load without accumulating excess fatigue.

How much time should cyclists spend in zone 1 vs zone 2?+

According to Vasilis Anastopoulos, elite riders at Astana now spend more training time in zone 1 than zone 2, which is a significant shift from conventional wisdom. For amateurs following a similar approach, only two of roughly five weekly sessions require strict intensity discipline, with the remaining rides kept flexible and easy enough to include social riding.

What are fat max rides and how do they fit into a training programme?+

Fat max rides are low-intensity sessions designed to maximise the rate at which the body burns fat as fuel, typically performed well below lactate threshold. They sit comfortably within zone 1 and are a core part of the base-building approach Anastopoulos uses at Astana, where the priority is building durability and metabolic efficiency before adding higher-intensity work.

How did Astana avoid UCI relegation in 2025?+

Astana deliberately targeted races and results that maximised UCI points relative to the cost and logistics of competing, essentially treating the ranking system as a puzzle to solve rather than a byproduct of general racing. This strategic approach to points accumulation roughly doubled their ranking and kept the team in the World Tour for the 2025 season.

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