Empirical Cycling Podcast Watts Doc #60: Durability's Limitations
Dec 18, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Kyle Helson, a NASA scientist and national champion sprinter, explores the concept of durability in endurance training. He delves into the history and definitions of fatigue, questioning traditional metrics like kilojoules and their implications on performance. Kyle critiques recent literature on durability, emphasizing the importance of standardized protocols and the interplay between power and endurance. Listeners gain practical advice on improving their durability, alongside insights into the nuances of training adaptations.
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Fatigue Is Task-Specific And Transient
- Fatigue is a temporary, task-specific decline in performance that recovers with rest.
- Durability builds on fatigue by measuring how performance deteriorates across prolonged tasks.
Race Conversation Sparked Durability Thinking
- Cole recalled a race with two long climbs where a friend asked about training two back-to-back 8-minute efforts.
- That question sparked thinking about training repeatability across multiple hard efforts.
Definition Matters: Physiology vs Performance
- The 2021 Monder paper defined durability as time of onset and magnitude of deterioration in physiological characteristics during prolonged exercise.
- Cole warns this frames physiology as deteriorating rather than performance expression declining.