How Tadej Pogačar Trains (and Why He Got Heavier in 2026)

For all his explosive, attacking racing, Tadej Pogačar trains in a way that looks almost boring: a huge volume of easy aerobic riding, with only a small slice of genuinely hard work on top. His coach, the physiologist Iñigo San Millán, has said Pogačar spends roughly 80% of his training days in Zone 2, the easy, conversational, fat-burning intensity that everyone now talks about partly because of this pairing. The flashy bit on top is real, but the unglamorous base is what makes it possible. And in 2026 he changed the recipe in a way worth understanding: he deliberately got heavier. The method below explains what's actually transferable to your own riding.

The foundation: a mountain of Zone 2

The core of Pogačar's training is volume at low intensity. Zone 2 is easy aerobic effort, just below the first lactate threshold. It's the pace where you could still hold a conversation. San Millán's whole emphasis is that this intensity is where you build the cellular machinery of endurance: more and better mitochondria, denser capillaries, a greater ability to burn fat and clear lactate. Those adaptations respond to time spent, not to how much a session stings, which is why a pro will pile up hours there week after week.

The lesson for the rest of us is an uncomfortable one. Most of your training should feel too easy. If you ride everything at a moderate "gray zone" effort, you get the fatigue of hard training without the deep aerobic adaptation of easy training. Learn to actually train Zone 2 and hold it.

Polarized, not gray

That 80/20 split (lots of easy, a little very hard, and not much in the middle) is the polarized model. Pogačar's easy days are genuinely easy so that his hard days can be genuinely hard: short, sharp threshold and VO₂max efforts that drive the top end. The discipline is in the separation. Amateurs almost universally make their easy rides a bit too hard and their hard rides a bit too easy, blurring both. The pros keep them apart.

Volume, altitude, and racing into form

On top of the intensity distribution sit the things a full-time professional can do that you can't fully replicate: very high weekly hours, altitude training camps, and using early-season races as hard training rather than peak targets. He doesn't arrive at the season fully sharp. He races himself into form, letting competition supply the highest-intensity stimulus while building toward his real goals. The transferable idea is patience: form is built over months of consistent volume, then sharpened, not summoned in a week.

Strength work in the gym

Pogačar also does real strength training, and it matters more to his racing than it looks. The explosive, high-cadence seated attacks that win him races are partly built in the weight room, where heavy, low-rep work improves the force his muscles can put into each pedal stroke without adding much bulk. Strength training is one of the most evidence-backed and most neglected additions for endurance athletes, and it's a genuinely copyable habit: a couple of focused gym sessions a week.

The 2026 change: bulking for the Classics

Here's the headline shift. Over the 2025–26 winter, Pogačar deliberately added muscle and weight, aimed squarely at the spring Classics, where success comes from explosiveness, repeated maximal efforts, and raw power over cobbles and short steep climbs (think Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège), not from being feather-light up a 40-minute mountain pass.

He was refreshingly open about it. After the Tour de Romandie he admitted, in his own words, "I'm not going to deny that I weigh more than normal. But I feel good on the bike," and even joked, "Maybe I also overdid it a bit with the gym. I really enjoyed it and got fully into it." His team played down any concern. As UAE's Joxean Matxin put it, you shouldn't "get too hung up on a kilo or two in a cyclist."

The key concept is periodized body composition. Pogačar doesn't hold one physique year-round. He builds muscle and accepts a little extra weight for the one-day races, then trims gym load and adjusts nutrition to get lighter for the grand tours, where every gram matters on the climbs. His nutritionist Gorka Prieto frames the goal as power-to-weight ratio rather than a number on the scale: lean and low in body fat, but strong enough to stay healthy. For 2026 the stated direction is more strength and more intensity while keeping the big aerobic base intact.

What you can actually steal from it

You're not Pogačar, but the principles scale down cleanly:

• Make most of your riding easy. Aim the bulk of your volume at Zone 2. Set your bands with the heart-rate, power or pace calculators, then have the discipline to stay in them.
• Keep easy easy and hard hard. Don't live in the gray zone. A polarized week beats a week of moderate sameness.
• Think power-to-weight, not scale weight. Your climbing is decided by watts per kilogram, and you raise it more reliably by building the engine than by under-eating. Chasing a low number on the scale tends to cost you power and health.
• Don't try to peak year-round. Periodize: build a base, sharpen for your goal events, and let your body change with the season instead of holding race weight all twelve months.
• Add a little strength work. Two focused gym sessions a week is a high-return, low-cost habit.

The takeaway isn't that you should copy a Tour winner's volume. The shape of his training, overwhelmingly easy, occasionally very hard, patiently built, and periodized rather than static, is exactly the shape most amateurs get wrong. It's also the part you can apply tomorrow.

For the same era seen from the opposite temperament, read how Jonas Vingegaard trains: fewer race days, measured thresholds, and a much more clinical plan.

Sources

Iñigo San Millán has described Pogačar's roughly 80% Zone 2 training distribution in numerous interviews (Cycling Weekly). Pogačar's 2026 weight-gain comments and the Classics-focused muscle-building strategy are reported by Brújula Bike and Cyclingnews. Quotes are attributed to those reports.