What worked for me:
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Learn how to do basic hard start VO2s. There’s a particular Empirical Cycling podcast episode that gets referenced. Like this user, I listened to it 5x to get all the pieces. It’s not the most organized in presentation, so it took several listens for me to develop a good mental model about what makes a quality VO2Max workout. I’ll dump some notes below.
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Do the workouts. Focus on the markers RR and HR. According to Kolie, breathing (“gasping like a fish”) should be the primary indicator that you’re at the intensity you need to be, followed by heart rate. I found that these flipped in priority for me sometime last season. I can no longer get to the point of gasping, so I lean on HR a lot more. (I want it > 90% max.)
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Try out a different interval lengths (2, 3, 4, 5, 6 min) and see what works best. Leverage any psychological tricks you can. (Eg, when I do two-a-days I always make sure my second session has one less interval, even if they are longer. Feels easier.)
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Sustainability and consistency is key. Compliance with hard-start VO2s is probably the lowest of all the different interval formats. So you really need to focus on what you can sustainably do each week/season. Gotta manage the mental fatigue as much as physical.
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[Optional] During/after each workout focus on the subjective experience. How do you feel after a successful workout? What variables make you feel better/worse? What symptoms are correlated with gains in the data? I get a particular slightly sick feeling after a good VO2 workout. My “sitting on a couch” HR is elevated by 20-30 bpm for hours afterward. My sleep is a tad more restless. My nighttime RHR will be ~5bpm higher. Stuff like that.
The goal is to learn what quality VO2 training stimulus feels like. Once you learn what quality stimulus feels like you can start deviating from the rules of thumb given for the average rider to maximize gains for your individual physiology. (Eg, for me, a lower cadence, 90-100rpm, gets a better response.) I’ve personally found that calibrating subjective experience to the objective gains is a powerful way to train. I did this with lifting many years back and can get bigger gains with less hours than my younger self. But “vibes training” only works if your experience is well-calibrated and you’re not the sort that will use the freedom to cheat the work.
Oh, and I guess I’d mention that these hard-start VO2s are not very compatible with ERG. Some people have tried to make custom ERG workouts but I don’t see the point. I can say from the experience the power targets for an all-out effort can easily be +/- 5% on any given day. Just seems like you have more to lose from ERG and not much to gain. Either ERG with be too hard, leading to failed workouts, or you’ll undersell yourself stimulus-wise. You can grab VO2’s from TR, just turn off the ERG.
VO2 Cliffnotes
1. Focus on Maximum Effort (Ignore Power)
- Go Max Effort: Do not constrain yourself to specific power targets (e.g., a percentage of FTP); instead, push yourself to a truly maximal effort. Assigning power targets is often considered one of the biggest mistakes made with VO2 max work.
- Pacing Strategy: Start the interval hard, approximately 20 to 30% harder than you think you can maintain for the full duration. Do not, however, begin with a full-on sprint. As your power output fades, keep pushing with maximum perceived exertion.
- Check Your Breathing (Rate of Perceived Exertion): The session should feel deeply uncomfortable. You should be breathing hard enough to feel like you are gasping like a fish in a boat. Paying attention to your breathing is a useful way to gauge if you are in the right zone.
2. Maximize Cardiac Stimulus with High Cadence
- Increase Cadence: Adopt a high cadence, such as 110 RPM, during the work intervals. If you struggle at 110 RPM, aim for 10 to 15 RPM above your normal preferred cadence.
- Prioritize Cadence over Power: Even if using a higher cadence results in slightly lower power output, continue with the high cadence, as the stroke volume improvements are worth the temporary power drop.
- Mechanism: High cadence helps the “muscle pump” mechanism increase the return of blood to the heart, maximizing diastolic filling volume and cardiac output, which is the key mechanism for long-term VO2 max improvement (eccentric hypertrophy of the heart).
3. Structure Your Intervals Appropriately
- Minimum Interval Duration: The shortest effective duration for a VO2 max interval is typically two minutes.
- Total Work Time: Work up to a total interval time in the range of 15 to 20 minutes per session. A common bread & butter structure is 5x5 minutes.
- Recovery: Ensure the recovery interval between efforts is sufficient to maintain high quality in the subsequent interval. A basic guide suggests making the recovery interval around two and a half times as long as the preceding work interval (e.g., 2 minutes work followed by 5 minutes recovery). You can start with shorter rest periods and add more time if you feel you need it to go hard enough for the next interval.
4. Training Frequency and Recovery
- Initial Frequency: If you are fairly new to VO2 max work, you can start by incorporating these intervals into your training once a week.
- Recovery is Crucial: When executing maximal efforts, the session requires careful consideration of recovery. Full recovery from an intense VO2 max block can take weeks or months to see the full benefits.