Jonas Abrahamsen won a Tour de France stage at 78kg. He was 60kg when he was struggling to keep his contract. That 18-kilogram gain is the whole story.
Key Takeaways
The numbers are hard to argue with. At 60kg, Abrahamsen's peak 30-second power was 650-700W. At 78kg, it's 1100W. Five-second peak went from 950W to 1400W. He wasn't a different rider on a different programme. He was the same rider who stopped trying to be a climber and started eating enough to actually recover. His collarbone broke 16 days before the Tour de France. He was on the turbo the next day. Five days later he was outside. The doctor said he was healing like a 10-year-old. He thinks the weight, the muscle mass, the better recovery state had something to do with that.
On heat training, Abrahamsen started in 2019 with a five-week protocol in Lillehammer: 37-39°C room temperature, 50 minutes, five sessions a week, targeting a skin temperature of 38.5-39°C, riding under 200W. His VO2 max went from 70 to 84 ml/kg/min in those five weeks. He does it now at home with the bathroom cranked to 30 degrees. The thing he's clear about: don't do it when you're already cooked. He did heat sessions straight off the Tour last year while under-recovered and paid for it. The stimulus is real but so is the cost.
You Might Also Like
If you want context on what pros actually do in winter that most amateurs miss, the episode on five things pros do in winter covers a lot of the same ground. And if the VO2 max jump from heat training caught your attention, the seven fixable reasons your VO2 max is low episode is worth your time.