After some great advice (again) from @kurt.braeckel planned to start my 3 week vo2max block within a few days. How do you tackle these hard start intervals for a 3x6min approach. I aim not to monitor my power, just look at cadence and HR. (because with higher cadence, I don’t think I reach that high power numbers so looking at power will mentally not be the best idea ;-).
So 30sec, 1min hard and then when HR is above 90% or something more just try to sustain that cadence?
I think the need for a hard start for a long interval like 6 minutes is less important. I would probably advice no to over do it, and may be just ski the hard start all together. But I’d love to hear others opinions.
My advice: it depends a little bit on the athlete - strong anaerobic athletes, less time, and power. People without big anaerobic “engines”, send it for 30s. If I don’t know, I usually have people go for 20s at their 2min power (or something close to it), then settle in at max. Truth be told, it’s not that important on a 6-minute interval. Focus more on keeping the cadence high - 110+ if you can; that’s tough for a lot of people for that long - and of course going “max repeatable”.
That will be very hard for me indeed… 
Apologize if this has been asked and answered before, but is the 110+ cadence important regardless of the persons “natural” cadence?
For myself, I am a slow grinder with a “natural” cadence in the 70 rpm range. Tried doing some hard start VO2 max at cadence over 100 rpm. Power would drop below FTP by end of the intervals. Should I still go for 100+ or modify it to 20%+ over my “natural”?
The idea is to drive the heart rate up with the cadence and save the leg muscles a bit. Personally, I go for 120+ hard start and then settle in around 110.
My normal threshold effort cadence would probably be around 95.
That theory and all makes sense. I am just not sure if the gap in cadence is a bit too high for a grinder like me. From the 3rd 4min interval and onwards, I could not even keep the power above FTP. My FTP should be fairly accurate, as it was set using the KM Protocol.
Three things:
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A couple of times I got distracted by the high cadence, died towards the end of the interval and thought it was because of the high cadence. Only afterwards did I see that I was within a handful of watts of setting a 2 minute power PR at the start of the interval. Lol. So check for that first. It may not (just) be the cadence.
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Yeah. Experiment with cadence going up 3 to 5 rpm each time to find the highest cadence you can reliably perform these intervals at.
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If you’re motivated to do so, incorporate some high cadence work into some or all of your rides.
^^^ this and
hard to say, could be you have a lower anaerobic capacity. Or like me, maybe you find it hard to maintain 100-110rpm at endurance pace for 5 minutes. Two days ago I did 97rpm for 7 minutes, at middle of zone2 / 65% FTP and felt pretty good about it. Knowing myself, it would be incredibly difficult to do 110rpm for the first 4-min.
I do find high cadence hard to execute in general. Outside I either ride my XC bike or my enduro bike. The terrain around me is such that most of the climbing is done at a low gear and low cadence. The local riding here is the typical “winch and plummet”; few flat areas. Either climbing or descending. I blame this for ending up a low cadence grinder 
All my training is done on a wheel-on dumb trainer with powermeter. If I do not try to force it, I typically end up in 70-80 rpm range.
flat here and my rides usually end up in the low 78-84rpm range unless I’m focused on doing a higher cadence workout.
As the Cog would say:
“Alls you can do is alls you can do.”
If you buy into the theory that the primary goal of these intervals is stroke volume remodeling, then you can jack up your heart rate with cadence as best you can and not worry about power. If HR is still near 90% of max and power is at FTP, then so what.
If you are seeking peripheral adaptations with these intervals then you can do them iso power (like 5x5 or whatever you choose at the power you can do for all the intervals).
For sure! I just thought I remembered something from much further up in the thread about ending the VO2 Max workout if you could no longer perform above FTP.
That got me thinking, that what is high cadence for me, might not be high cadence for someone else. Thus maybe it is more about using higher than normal, recruiting more muscles, than going all out in the cadence department 
Nothing magical about 110, but you want to be above your comfortable range and spinning as fast as you can sustain while doing max power. I’ve had some people do them at 105, not much lower than that. I typically have people do leg speed work for a while before these and that does seem to help. Cadence ramps, spin ups, etc.
Not more muscles; more contractions, increase venous return to force more blood volume into your heart to increase stroke volume out.
Try 10-20rpm higher than normal for you, there will be an upper limit at which you can’t push hard anymore so stay just below this. And it’s not about recruiting more motor units, one benefit is that it recruits less and that helps reduce the muscular fatigue you would normally experience. This is how people can do many sessions in a week.
Do you still take the view that the high cadence makes a significant difference in cardiac filling compared to freely/natural chosen cadence? That was my main takeaway from your vo2max series. Of course, reducing muscular fatigue is an argument as well.
Yes, that’s still my hypothesis (an original one I might add, in the spirit of Cog) and I’ve got enough data to be fairly confident in it, though there are some other potential parallel mechanisms at play which can’t be ruled out. The reduction in muscular fatigue is a nice benefit, and some would say the main benefit.
Thank you for the reply! These blocks really moved the needle for me. I love them.
Or alternatively, FTP (or critical metabolic threshold) is lower at the end of a high cadence high intensity interval session?
Higher cadence raises HR, breathing rate, and VO2 primarily because higher cadence requires more accessory muscle recruitment which costs more energy for the same power output.
Indeed, “high” cadence is dependent on the athlete’s freely-chosen cadence (FCC), and FCC will tend to be higher at greater workloads, which also explains why elite athletes tend to have higher FCC and appear to be more efficient at higher cadence, because their workloads are higher at the same relative intensity.
Training at higher cadences, insofar as it’s been studied, does not appear to additionally improve time-trial outomes, although it may improve metabolic efficiency when performing at higher FCC.
(for those who want to avoid twitter - you’re clearly smarter than I am 
- you can view the entire thread & links to references here: Cadence Affects Everything, and it Doesn’t Really Matter – Spare Cycles)
Vo2max workouts. Indoor or outdoor? Pro/cons? Indoor maybe better to go hard withour risk of external interference? outdoor maybe easier to go higher in cadence then indoor?