“I hear from a lot of Visma riders that there is a shift” – UAE star suggests rivals are rethinking their formula

For much of the past decade, Team Visma | Lease a Bike built their performance identity around a polarised training model. Long, easy volume paired with short, extreme intensity became a defining feature of the Dutch squad’s rise to the top of men’s stage racing. But from inside the peloton, that picture may no longer be quite so fixed.

Speaking from the perspective of a direct rival, UAE Team Emirates - XRG's Florian Vermeersch has suggested that Visma’s long-standing approach is beginning to blur, with more riders leaning towards sustained zone 2 work rather than a strictly polarised split.

“I hear from a lot of Visma riders that there is a shift,” Vermeersch says in quotes collected by Wieler Revue, pointing to what he has picked up through conversations rather than official team messaging.

His comments sit within a broader reflection on how elite racing has changed. The defining efforts in today’s biggest races increasingly come after hours of sustained pressure, rather than from short, isolated bursts of peak power. According to Vermeersch, that reality is influencing how riders prepare.

“I worked a lot this winter on durability, to be able to increase my power even after heavy fatigue. What you can still do after four hours of hard racing is the most important thing in racing nowadays.”

That focus on durability aligns more closely with the philosophy long associated with UAE Team Emirates - XRG, where extended zone 2 riding has been a central feature of training for several seasons.

Vermeersch is careful not to frame the discussion as one approach replacing another. He stresses that different riders respond to different stimuli, and that Visma’s historic reliance on VO2max work has delivered results at the very highest level.

“I’m a rider who can handle a high load and a lot of fatigue, so for me, training in zone 2 also works well. But I wouldn’t dare to say that Visma’s VO2max approach is the wrong one.”

In that sense, the reported shift is less about abandoning polarisation and more about adapting emphasis. The demands of modern racing, where the pace is relentlessly high from the opening kilometres, leave little room for riders who can only deliver their best numbers in isolation.

“These days, the big races are ridden so hard from the start that it’s important to have as much reserve left as possible at the end of the day,” Vermeersch explained, adding that fatigue resistance has become a shared focus across the WorldTour rather than a single team’s trademark.

Despite the intrigue surrounding Visma’s internal evolution, Vermeersch also played down the idea that training methods alone explain performance gaps between teams. “No team trains in zone 1 during a winter training camp in Calpe. You see all of them pushing on in zone 2 or even zone 3.”

For him, the margins between rival philosophies are narrower than they often appear from the outside. What ultimately separates teams, he argued, is not a single zone or model, but the depth of talent executing it. “I’m not saying that zone 2 training is a miracle cure. Our biggest advantage is that we have the best riders in the world.”

Whether Visma’s reported shift represents a meaningful philosophical change or a natural convergence shaped by modern racing demands, Vermeersch’s words underline a broader truth. At the sharp end of the WorldTour, even the most successful formulas are rarely static.