Are there any true NM workouts in the TR workout library and are they worth doing?
Not worthy in terms of design quality but more in terms of timing. Is on-bike NM work reserved for sprinters and/or closer to race day training?
I’ve never purposely done any NM workouts so I’m not 100% clear on their end purpose. After a long layoff from intensity I’m looking to give some stimulus to all systems, get them back on line. Would they be helpful/detrimental in any way?
TIA
What does this mean? (The true bit, not the abbreviation, heh)
From my understanding, a cycling NM workout should be truly all-out 10/10 <15sec efforts. Not to be confused with a high wattage ~150% FTP Anaerobic effort.
So like Berryessa or Mount Tai?
Berryessa is 8x20-second all-out efforts
Mount Tai is 10x20-second all-out efforts
Or is 20 seconds too long?
Tbh, I always treat anything with short power bursts (sub 15s maybe) as ‘go max’, if its set at 140% ftp or more (only works without erg of course)
The other issue here is that I find it difficult to do a proper hard kick indoors - too afraid of wrecking my trainer or fall of the rollers, and also don’t think the body mechanics are the same without leaning the bike etc. Maybe if I had a top-class indoor setup with rocker plate and decent turbo.
Those look about right. Interesting that they are included in Tri plans. 
Still leaves me questioning — are these types of workouts worth doing?
No, coaches and physiologists have concluded they are a waste of time. 
#lockdownlife
Worth doing at this moment in time 
…returning to training intensity…no racing in the near future…etc.
One of the semi-recent podcasts, Chad talks a little bit about why the sprint workouts are in the Tri plans. Part of that discussion is what general benefit they have. (Obviously for a triathlete, they have no specific benefit.)
I think the highest-power workouts in the catalog are Birling, Charing, Detling; Rowdow, Stangate, Titsey. These seem to be mostly 225% x 30 sec repeats.
Would like some of these as well - specifically for strength / muscle gain.
Now that all gyms are shut id be interested in adding something that specifically targets this area…
These are very effective.
They are all the same workout, except for number of sprints. In order of least to most, it’s Birling, Detling, Charing, Titsey, Rowdow, and Stangate, with 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 sprints, respectively.
IME, I get diminishing returns after 6 (Charing). The idea being, if I can do 7, 8 or 9, I could have done 5 or 6 at higher power, which IMHO is more beneficial for this type of workout. YMMV.
I do them seated at 120-135RPM cadence. Doing them consistently, 3-4X a week for 4 weeks noticeably improved my 30s to 3 minute power, as well as my ability to repeat 5-15 second efforts. As expected, they did not improve my max power.
As the workout text says, these need to be scaled to your ability, which is different for everyone. If anaerobic ability is one of your strengths, as it is for me, you’ll find yourself bumping up the intensity significantly. 120%, 130%, or higher is all fair game with these.
It’s easy to use some mental tricks to excel at these workouts. For one, you can tell yourself that you can do anything for 20-30 seconds. Second, because the efforts are short and few in number, you can feed your desire to hit vanity numbers. For example, why settle at 590 watts when you can bump it up to 610? Or 690 to 710, or 790 to 810?
if you need justification then perhaps review SSB-2 and General Build.? Even riding alone I still need to deal with wind gusts and sharp gradient changes. Wouldn’t restrict my thinking to #lockdownlife as you put it, IMHO continue developing neuromuscular capabilities no matter group riding or not.
I fell obligated to try this one at some point in time. That seriously looks like it may kill me.
I’ve always found the concept of neuromuscular workouts confusing. Sometimes, they are low rpm, high power exercises and then sometimes they are things like one legged pedaling or cadence pyramids.
I guess the whole point is to try and recruit more muscles or muscle fibers during the exercise?
Has anyone every done a lot of this stuff and seen a huge improvement?
Coincidentally, I was listening to Mitch Docker’s podcast with Adam Hansen. They were talking about the Leomo - which is sensors fitted to your body which measures muscle and pedaling dynamics. Adam was saying that he’s tested fellow riders and across the board, the best riders had the best pedaling dynamics.
Looks terrible. That said, also looks like a much different type of workout.
With Tom, you’re throttling the sprints such that you can still [attempt to] complete 4 min @ 110% right afterwards.
With the SIT workouts like Charing, the sprints are meant to exhaust you completely. The instructions say to keep increasing intensity until you just about reach failure at the end of every single sprint, barring maybe the first one or two.
I do all my SIT training seated at high cadence, 120-135RPM.
I saw general wattage gains across the board, mostly in the shorter durations under 3min, but even FTP did get bumped up a few %.
More importantly, I noticed my IF/NP going up substantially on longer rides, e.g. 0.80+ over 5 hours, due to drastically reduced fatigue from hard efforts. I’d hold Z2 and tempo for most of the ride, but even 4 hours in, with adequate fueling and hydration, I could still put out very strong short efforts, significantly bumping up NP.
I’m fairly sure that if this one was included in any training plans, it’d have been given some severe revision by now. The failure rate is pretty high.
It’s that 4min block that would make me cry.
You should be banned from the forum for posting that! 
