Sprinting when to fit into plans

Hi everyone.

The TrainerRoad team spend a lot of time talking about sprinting in race analysis etc, and it’s all really useful and interesting

However I just don’t know at what point in base build speciality to do this? I ride crits mainly but some road and fast group rides. I’ve done rolling road and crit speciality previously and neither have any specifically “sprint intervals” prescribed. Why is this surely it can and should be training prior to crits, etc?

Especially when using plan builder around events there is no space left for sprint training. The guys clearly do extra training around their own programmes it would be nice to see this stuff work there way into the plans

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Think that the best way to incorporate it into an existing plan, is to do sprint exercises during your weekly long ride (if you do one):

For example: 6x 10 sec with 5 min rest in between and repeat the set 1 or 2 times.

That’s what I do on top of TR (edited) short power/crit specialty

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I think this is a really fair challenge to TR. You need dedicated time to do your sprint drills if you’re going to do them properly and it’s not just something to do once or twice before racing as a tune up.

I’m not sure if they’ve made recommendations on the podcast but they probably should be in the plans themselves.

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My coach tacks a 3-4 x 10s sprints at the end of workouts, 1-2x a week. Some are at the end of a hour workout, some at the end of 2hrs. On the 2hr ones, I feel like it’s a good gauge of my fueling.

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It is a little frustrating to be fair. I’m getting a bit annoyed with all the chat in the podcast about multiple strategies that don’t seem to fit into any of the plans. There must be 3 podcasts on sprinting and no one workout in a crit plan, I don’t see how that can be reasonable.

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Look at your plan existing endurance ride variants, quite many of them have sprints. Even PettitPettit +1 has them.

From personal experience, you don’t need very many sprints to push your power way up. Over 2 weeks / 6 workouts my 10sec power increased +50%. It is not so much about power itself but more muscle recruitment improvement. Although it comes quickly but also goes quickly. Couple months without sprints I’m now back where I started :wink:

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They can be sprinkled in on Wednesdays’ and Sundays’ endurance z2 rides, as they’re recommended in my Specialty XCO. If you look at the workouts “Endurance with Bursts” you’ll find plenty and you can choose your duration. Right now TR has my Wednesdays with Bays and even sprints during my recovery week with workouts like Gibbs +1. Sprint workouts are probably best in the weeks leading up to events/races where you’re expected to need sprints.

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Everyone’s goals and needs are different, so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to incorporate these into the default TR plans. If technique is your issue, you need to start early to develop the muscle memory. For a veteran racer, a handful of sprint sessions right before race season is sufficient.

Also, the chances you’ll win or lose a crit due to your max sprint power is generally pretty slim anyway. It’s more about everything that leads up to that final sprint.

Reviving this thread to see what current views are on this. Adding sprints to endurance rides seems to be a popular option, but it kinda goes against the idea of having easy and hard days; if you add sprints to your easy days then they aint easy anymore!

Thoughts? CX season is approaching and I need to squeeze some sprints in somewhere.

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I think it depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

If it’s technique and neuromuscular practice for all-out sprints then throwing a couple of 10 seconds max efforts into an endurance ride should do the trick without turning it into a hard ride.

If you’re going to do repeated hard efforts/accelerations to build anaerobic capacity and repeatability then that workout would need to replace a hard day.

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Do 5-second jobbers, max effort. I’ll toss in 2-4 at the end of the ride. Thats enough to work on neuromuscular and technique, but not so much as to impact upcoming workouts. I’m not on a TR plan, and in-season I’ll do some speed work in a mixed workout format, for example a handful of 20 or 30-second full-gas repeatable accelerations, followed later by some sweet spot / tempo. When transitioning from base to build/race I’ll do max effort versions, to rebuild some anaerobic capacity.

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