Three zones, five or seven? Which model to actually use
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Open three training books and you will find three different zone systems. One has three zones, one has five, one has seven, and a fourth source will insist on six with different names. This is a reliable way to make a new rider think they have missed something fundamental.
They have not. The zones are not a discovery about the body; they are a filing system laid over a continuum. The only question worth asking is which filing system suits what you are doing right now — and the honest answer is that you want more than one.
What the continuum actually looks like
There are two genuine landmarks in cycling intensity, and they are physiological rather than arbitrary. The first is the effort at which lactate starts to rise measurably above resting levels — the first threshold. The second is the highest effort at which production and clearance still balance, above which lactate climbs until you stop — the second threshold, near what most riders call FTP. Everything else is a line somebody drew.
Those two landmarks are real, they move with training, and they are worth knowing. Our piece on lactate threshold: LT1 and LT2 explained is the background to everything below.
The same axis, filed three ways. Only the two dashed lines are physiology; every other boundary is a convention someone found useful.
The three systems, side by side
Three zones
Below LT1 · between LT1 and LT2 · above LT2
Use it for: Deciding how your whole week is distributed.
Maps onto physiology rather than arithmetic, and it is the model almost all training-distribution research is framed in.
Useless for prescribing a session. "Ride zone 1" covers everything from a café spin to four hours of solid endurance.
Five zones
Recovery · endurance · tempo · threshold · VO2max
Use it for: Everyday training language and most plans.
The sweet spot between precision and being able to remember it. Enough resolution to write a session, few enough zones to talk about.
The boundaries are percentages of a test number, so they inherit every bit of that number's error.
Seven zones
Adds neuromuscular and anaerobic capacity above VO2max
Use it for: Track, criterium and sprint work, and detailed analysis.
The top end matters enormously in some disciplines and three zones flatten it into nothing.
Above threshold, duration governs the effort far more than a percentage does — the extra zones describe more precision than exists.
The practical answer: use the model that fits the question
For planning the week: use three
Polarised, pyramidal, threshold-heavy — every argument about training distribution is an argument about the proportions of three zones. Five zones make that conversation harder, not easier.
For writing a session: use five
"Two by twenty at tempo" is a usable instruction. It is the level at which a workout can be described, followed and repeated.
For the top end: use seven, or use time
If you sprint or race criteriums, the space above threshold deserves detail. But past about 3 minutes' duration, how long you can hold an effort tells you more than which zone it sits in.
This is not fence-sitting. A coach discussing whether you ride too much tempo is having a three-zone conversation; the same coach writing Tuesday's session is having a five-zone one. Insisting on a single system for both is what produces the confusion.
The percentages are softer than they look
Every five- and seven-zone system defines its boundaries as percentages of a test result. That is convenient and it hides two problems worth knowing about.
- The anchor moves. Your FTP number is a snapshot with real error bars, and it drops as a ride goes on. Zones drawn from a fresh test do not describe hour four — which is the subject of durability.
- The percentages are averages of people, not of you. Two riders with identical FTPs can have first thresholds a long way apart. One of them will find "zone 2" comfortably aerobic and the other will find it quietly too hard, which is exactly how riders end up in the grey zone by accident.
- Above threshold, duration rules. A 3-minute effort and a 20-second effort can sit in the same zone and have almost nothing in common. Past LT2, look at how long you can hold something instead — that is what critical power vs FTP and your power curve are for.
What to do on Monday
Pick five zones for your sessions because that is what plans are written in, and keep the three-zone view in your head for the week as a whole. Once a month, check the split: if far more than about a fifth of your riding time sits in the middle zone, you have drifted into the grey area that polarised vs pyramidal training discusses, and it is usually worth pulling the easy rides easier.
Moveee works out your zones from your current numbers and keeps them updated as those numbers move, so the targets on a workout reflect the rider you are this month rather than the one who took a test in February. Have a look at your plan — and if the split surprises you, that is the useful part.
Sources 6
Where this article summarises a study, the study itself is linked — not a write-up of it.
- 1 Seiler S What is Best Practice for Training Intensity and Duration Distribution in Endurance Athletes? · International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance · 2010
- 2 Seiler KS, Kjerland GØ Quantifying training intensity distribution in elite endurance athletes: is there evidence for an 'optimal' distribution? · Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports · 2006
- 3 Stöggl TL, Sperlich B The training intensity distribution among well-trained and elite endurance athletes · Frontiers in Physiology · 2015
- 4 Faude O, Kindermann W, Meyer T Lactate Threshold Concepts: How Valid are They? · Sports Medicine · 2009
- 5 Jamnick NA, Pettitt RW, Granata C, Pyne DB, Bishop DJ An Examination and Critique of Current Methods to Determine Exercise Intensity · Sports Medicine · 2020
- 6 Jones AM, Vanhatalo A, Burnley M, Morton RH, Poole DC Critical Power: Implications for Determination of VO2max and Exercise Tolerance · Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise · 2010
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