Cycling training has gotten complicated with all the different methods and technologies flying around. As someone with extensive cycling experience, I learned everything there is to know about this topic. Today, I will share it all with you.

Zone 2 Cardio Training: What Actually Works

I spent three years training wrong before I discovered Zone 2 cardio. And honestly? It kind of ticked me off. All that time hammering every ride, thinking I was getting faster, when I was actually just making myself tired.

Let me explain what Zone 2 actually is before we dive into the practical stuff. Your heart rate zones break down roughly like this: Zone 1 is basically walking around, Zone 5 is all-out sprint effort, and Zone 2 sits at about 60-70% of your maximum heart rate. It feels easy. Suspiciously easy. And that is exactly the point.

How I Figured Out My Zones

There are fancy lab tests you can do, but here is what worked for me without spending hundreds of dollars:

Take 220, subtract your age. That gives you a rough maximum heart rate. For me at 38 years old, that is about 182 bpm. Zone 2 would be 60-70% of that, so somewhere between 109 and 127 bpm.

Now here is the thing nobody tells you: these formulas are approximations. My actual max heart rate is closer to 188 based on field testing (sprinting up a steep hill until I wanted to quit). So I adjusted my zones accordingly.

The talk test works too. In Zone 2, you should be able to hold a conversation without gasping. Not easy chatting, but not huffing and puffing either. If you can only get out one or two words at a time, you are going too hard.

Why This Feels Counterintuitive

Every instinct tells you to push harder. We are conditioned to believe that more suffering equals more gains. But Zone 2 training builds your aerobic base – the foundation that everything else sits on.

Think of it this way: your body has two main fuel systems. One burns fat efficiently at lower intensities. The other burns carbs for high-intensity efforts. Zone 2 training develops your fat-burning engine, which means you can go longer without hitting the wall.

I did not believe it at first either. Then I tried it for eight weeks and my endurance jumped noticeably. Same perceived effort, faster average speeds.

What Zone 2 Sessions Actually Look Like

Here is my typical Zone 2 ride: 60 to 90 minutes, keeping my heart rate between 115 and 130 bpm. Sometimes this means soft-pedaling up hills that I would normally attack. Sometimes it means sitting up on flats where I would usually be in the drops hammering.

It feels weird at first. You might get passed by people. Your ego will suffer. But your fitness will improve.

The key is consistency. One Zone 2 ride will not change anything. Three or four per week, sustained over months? That is where the magic happens.

The Biggest Mistakes I Made

Let me save you some time by sharing what went wrong in my own training:

Going too hard. This is the classic Zone 2 mistake. You feel fine, so you push a bit harder. Then a bit more. Next thing you know, you are riding at Zone 3 or 4 intensity and defeating the whole purpose.

Not tracking properly. I tried doing Zone 2 by feel for the first few weeks. It does not work. Get a heart rate monitor. Chest straps are more accurate than wrist sensors, but anything is better than guessing.

Getting impatient. Zone 2 benefits take time to show up. We are talking weeks to months, not days. I almost gave up after three weeks because I was not seeing results. Glad I stuck with it.

Balancing Zone 2 With Harder Training

Zone 2 should make up the majority of your training volume – somewhere around 80% is what most coaches recommend. The remaining 20% is your hard efforts: intervals, tempo work, race efforts.

For me, that looks like three or four Zone 2 rides per week plus one or two harder sessions. The Zone 2 rides are longer and easier. The hard rides are shorter and more focused.

This polarized approach sounds extreme, but it works. You recover better from the easy rides, which means you can actually push hard on the hard days. When I was doing everything at medium intensity, I was never fresh enough to really dig deep.

Does Zone 2 Help With Weight Loss?

Kind of, but probably not the way you think. Zone 2 burns a higher percentage of fat as fuel, but that does not directly translate to losing body fat. Total calorie expenditure matters more than where those calories come from during exercise.

That said, Zone 2 lets you train more volume without burning out. More volume means more total calories burned over time. And the improved aerobic base makes you more efficient at burning fat as fuel in daily life.

Bottom line: Zone 2 supports weight loss as part of an overall strategy, but it is not a magic bullet.

Getting Started Without Overthinking It

If you are new to this, here is my simple recommendation: do your next ride at an embarrassingly easy pace. Seriously. So easy that faster riders pass you. So easy that you could talk on the phone without sounding winded.

Stay there for 45-60 minutes. Notice how you feel afterward – probably not very tired. That is the point. You are building base fitness, not chasing fatigue.

Do that three times a week for a month. Then add one harder session. See what happens.

I wish someone had explained this to me years ago. Would have saved me a lot of frustration and plateaued training. Hopefully this helps you avoid the same mistakes.