Absolutely not, in fact I specifically told you how I would train in that zone. I ride and prescribe tempo all the time as well. It is very relevant for cycling. It is not nearly as relevant for cross-country skiing, which is where that whole gray-zone polarized nonsense came from.
The issue isn’t the power level you’ve chosen to ride at. The issue is the protocol you’re using. The intervals are too short and the rest interval is too long. You’ve created a hard workout. Anyone can do that.
4 min at 106% isn’t effective at training VO2max for most people, particularly not with 2 min rest intervals. 4 min at 106% isn’t improving your endurance. If you’re training for some specific performance, then that’s different.
This workout was suggested to me by @plaursen , you might have heard of him.
For sure, but this is not a vo2 workout. It’s threshold, the thing is that you accumulate 40-60 min of work at this intensity in a workout, and that is powerful.
Your argument seems to be, please correct me if I’m wrong: “this is too fatiguing given the benefit you get”, which begs the question:
How do you quantify/measure/estimate the benefits of this workout?..…especially since it seems you haven’t prescribed it enough or at all, to have data backing up the claim?
I have never done 8x4 minutes on 2 minutes rest at 106%. You are correct. I have never prescribed it. What I have done and have prescribed in specific circumstances is 4x8/2 at 105% which is going to be far more effective at training endurance at a supra threshold level for reasons that should be painfully obvious.
I hope you continue to enjoy your training. Cheers.
Don’t get caught up with the 8x, that’s just the introduction. The workout progresses to 12 and more. So it’s quite a bit of Tiz
It’s not painfully obvious to me, sorry. It seems that this workout uses the principle of 30/30’s, where you can do a lot of time at a high power because of the micro rests. So 50min or 1hr of suprethreshold power seems significant.
I also see value in longer efforts. I do those outside. Like 3x15min at 105%……however, these take you closer to vo2 effort.
I’m desperate looking for good reasons to not do this workout, not trying to win an argument.
Sorry it’s not obvious to me, could you be explicit here?
Dean was of the opinion that intensive efforts turn into time trial efforts because of fatigue, and that many would be better off lowering the power and doing more work just below FTP. When you do go intensive and work on the time trial side of it, the last interval of a x8-min or x10-min would be max effort and would carry a lot of residual fatigue.
So the line of questioning becomes, do you care about residual fatigue by working intensively? Might it be more beneficial to lower power and work on duration?
To my eyes, something like an 8x4(2) effort appears to take the intensive side and attempt to manage fatigue by splitting it up. I’m not a runner, however it seems to come from running where fatigue is even bigger issue than in cycling. FWIW my coach had me do efforts like those, but fewer intervals, say 4x4-min at 110+ and I would start at 110 and push up power on each interval. It’s not intended to be max aerobic, which brings us back to Kurt’s opinion that he wouldn’t straddle the middle ground between threshold and max aerobic.
Last summer tried TR POLHV Base that had twice a week those. For my threshold PL=5.1 at that time, AT started gently with 4x9min at 105%. Hard but doable, bitter medicine must be good for you, right? Then came 2x16min at 102%. Not too bad. 2x16 at 104%, 2x16 at 105% (PL=6.8). During those workouts started thinking why I like cycling. Or do I? At that point I started dreading coming hard days, sneaked in easy stuff instead, like 3x20min or 4x16 at FTP (PL=7.5)
Point being: long suprathreshold might be good or not, I don’t know. But being inconsistent definitely isn’t good. Of course, if dealing with lactate for long durations is your strength and you are eagerly waiting for intensity days, go ahead, enjoy
The programming I’m following uses both!. I don’t have to choose. That’s one of the benefits of 3 days of intensity per week.
I get what he is saying, but he is not supporting his opinion with data from coaching. Lots of questions open. The concept of the workout scheme I presented is explained in @plaursen book. So it’s a thing.
True, that might have been better progression, did not thought about it that time, followed only AT. But looking back at 4x9min, appears I spent 17m48s in VO2max HR zone. Maybe it was good workout after all
EDIT: for 2x16min, time in VO2max HR zone was 6m49s, fatigue got me.
This is where I landed with a coach once we really started to click (after a lot of experimenting). And I’ve seen multi-year increases in max aerobic capacity and ftp, without creating huge amounts of stress/strain. Something worked.
Not saying what I’m doing is “optimal” in the sense I could have gotten to some fitness destination in less time. But optimal is debating something neither side can prove. A lot of the subcontext of discussions on this forum is about optimal, in some theoretical sense. At the end of the day, I’ll take my experiments and empirical data over theory.
I’ve done other things that go against accepted training wisdom
The way I understand if you want to work on fatigue resistance over threshold you work on anaerobic stuff to build that over threshold battery, so slightly Supra threshold efforts end up being a not great thing to specifically work on. Again, I think as part of a specific event preparation it might be worth doing but not as part of any type of block where you’re trying to progress in any particular area
and the other subcontext is an assumption (which hubcyclist stated explicitly) you want to do block training to focus on improving one specific thing (one reason: easier to train & test). Block training then becomes about a specific range of durations in the power curve (3-5 minute power), or specific adaptations for example “true” vo2max training focused on heart muscle hypertrophy (?) to improve max aerobic capacity, or “true” aerobic capacity training focused on heart muscle slowly pumping more volume (nobody talks about this one, but its one reason why old school training 20 hours easy / lsd works).
I am opting not to because I don’t care to engage you and your manner any further on this topic. I have data; I have opinions. I owe you neither. It’s really as simple as that. Again, enjoy your training.
