His question was more about a block style, in his case, doing 9 workouts over the course of 3 weeks. The going theory with the coaches I know that use this style (which includes me) is reducing the interval length allows athletes to get through the block with a maximal overall load, where if they tried to do 20-25 min of long intervals nine times in three weeks, they wouldn’t be able to complete the block before the fatigue became too great.
I think physiologically what you say is obviously true: larger stimulus, more time at high HR/breathing rate and power is better as an individual workout. I don’t dispute that at all. The question becomes is it better to do a solid block with a massive stimulus by mitigating the effects of fatigue, or is the more continuous style where you do one workout every week for nine weeks, but those workouts are all 5x5, “better” compared to 9 workouts in 3 weeks?
I think the answer is probably “it depends”. I have seen success with a number of athletes with the style of block I use, which includes the reduction in interval length as “progression”. The goal of these blocks is a big stimulus to break a plateau. I don’t do it with people where I am seeing gains by doing simple mixed protocols.
(My point of reference is the time that I did Hickson intervals 3x/wk for 18 wk in a row…or more recently, the fellow I know who has been doing that for months and months on end.)
Anyway, “block training” as I know (of) it emanates from Dean Golich, who would prescribe multiple days of hard training in a row, and reduce the duration of the efforts day by day. I’m not sure what benefit there might be to shortening the sessions when you have 48 h of recovery in between…and if cumulative fatigue were the concern, then it would make sense to keep them the same length within a week, but shorten them week by week.
In any case, variety is the spice of life and all that, so if mixing things up is what it takes to motivate someone to keep pushing on, then that’s what it takes.
I can say with me personally, 48h between HARD workouts isn’t enough for me to recover to 100% anymore. And if I stack 3 in 5 days, 9 in 18 days, there’s a slow “degradation” in what I can handle. For me I’m almost always failing in the legs as opposed to breathing / heart rate. It doesn’t bother me as much if I’m doing lower intensity workouts, but it shows up in harder Threshold and VO2 workouts.
Could be my physiology (I’ve always been somewhat predicated towards DOMS, and can really wreck myself in the gym if I’m not careful) or just that I’m 46 y/o without any endurance background before the last year and a half.
This is, as we say in the UK is ‘interesting’. Very few folks can work at the intensity required to trigger adaptations several days in a row. It’s also a recipe for over training and burnout.
I think the idea is to go nice and easy for the rest of the block to account for the big lump of stimulus at the start of it, and to make the recovery week afterwards a real recovery week.
I totally agree that not everyone has the recovery ability required to do intensive blocks of hard VO2 Max work, but I also suspect that a fair proportion of those who could pull it off haven’t tried it because it’s intimidating.
My experience with VO2 blocks is the same as yours. The stacked 3x2days worked, but buried me for a long time. I’ve gotten solid gains as a 40+ guy with the 3x weeks.
It CAN be a recipe for that for the wrong people or without knowing what you’re doing. Doesn’t mean it automatically will cause that. Part of the reason I watch VO2max blocks very closely.
Yes, this is essentially what I do. I go into it with 2 workouts at the initial length planned, but if the athlete appears to be handling them well without being overly fatigued, I might stretch that to a third or fourth or more before dropping down the interval length.
This (assuming 40% FTP as rest) would mean 42m with IF 1.05, I personally would never be able to do that TBO. But yes, the idea of the progression is correct for sure.
I think I got just over 1.03 for 42.5 minutes (though my maths could be wrong). In either case, I’ve personally never managed to stay at over 110% for 6x5. I have just about managed 5x5, iirc.
I think that, like many of these progression workouts, completing the sequence kind of relies on the base FTP number improving as the series goes on.
Out of curiosity, how much difference to the effectiveness of these workouts does the high cadence make? I.e. Is it a marginal gain or a BIG deal? Am I better off with more power at say 85rpm or lower power at 100rpm if both feel ‘eqially hard’?
I’m doing longer intervals at the moment as I’m doing them outside and 3.5 to 4 mins works perfectly for a local hill. If I’m on the turbo I’d be doing 30 / 30s or 30 / 15s. The longer intervals up the hill certainly get me breathing heavier and heart rate higher than 30 / 30s. Longer intervals bringing me up to 94/95% of max HR each interval.
I think there’s something to be said for doing the style you find the hardest. Then switching it round again from time to time.
@plaursen is a Canadian academic sports physiologist who trains elite professional/Olympic athletes, and specialises in VO2 max as a critical part of training. Why not invite him to contribute to such threads, ask him direct questions, etc. Paul’s research seems to indicate that very short (10, 20 or 30 sec), very intense, high reps, inactive total rest in recovery, are the best.
As @freoishome mentions, our belief is that VO2max type training should be a critical part of an athlete’s training microcycle, which is why you will find it in all of our Athletica plans and in every sport we cater to. From our HIIT Science foundation, we like to think in terms of a targeted approach to training. So in your week, you want to target the VO2max aerobic stimulus. Why? Because most of the other forms of training don’t hit (as well) the cardiac demands (stroke volume and ventricular hypertrophy) or engagement of your larger fast twitch fibers.
Of course, as contributors to this thread allude to, there’s many ways to skin the cat. Which way is best? As always, it depends. Not only on the objective, but your individual own genetic make up. If you are more of a diesel engine type athlete made of lots of aerobic slow twitch, you’ll milk up long intervals. If you’re prone to overtraining, you’re more likely to thrive on short intervals where the passive rest period lowers the anaerobic contribution and associated sympathetic drive. This phenomenon is called the anaerobic speed/power reserve, as taught in our course on the matter by the founder Prof Peter Weyand and grand tour sport science trainer, Dajo Sanders.
@plaursen Without asking you to divulge too much proprietary/paid for information, I’d be very interested if you’d be willing to share one or two of the workouts that @freoishome references above -
and a brief explanation of the rationale,.
This especially interests me as someone prone to overtraining who’s always felt they don’t gain much from the shorter, sharper stuff.
Totally understand if you don’t want to give too much away, though
Here we have options for 20/10, 30/30, or 10/20. They all have a similar training load (i.e., TSS) but different durations and different physiological effects. The blue line is a proprietary algorithm called Workout Reserve. Initially think of it like your battery level. You can see that the bigger drain on your WR naturally happens in the 20/10 and 30/30 sessions - larger draws on your battery. 10/20 not so much.
While I only know you from your username (RecoveryRide) and what you have written here…
… my guess is that you might be either a hybrid or twitchy phenotype (step 1). That is, you probably don’t recover well from hard training. As per our recommendations (step 3 and 4), you’ll likely do better with short over long intervals and you’ll need to be cautious with too many long intervals or threshold type work, which will heighten your sympathetic stress and eventually bin you. I can go further into mechanisms (myoglobin, etc) if it interests, but that’s likely more than enough to start.
