Can someone shed some light on the benefits of 30 second repeats @120% like Gendarme versus 3 minute ones like Charybdis (or the reverse)?
I am strictly an endurance kinda guy (think Paris-Brest-Paris) without a desire to improve my sprinting capabilities. I do want to increase overall speed and get better with climbing (steep) hills. My current training is basically SSB lv with one sweetspot replaced by vo2max, and one 4-5 hour slow outdoors ride added.
Should I pick VO2Max workouts with many short intervals, or less but longer intervals?
Not sure about the actual science and physiology benefits behind the short vs long intervals, but personally I always prefer doing the longer 1-5 min intervals. The shorter ones feel just too much like standard low intensity sprints from which I donāt really get that much out of. They feel too easy for me at 120%, but when I do a couple of 3-5 min ones I can feel that it actually went into my legs
I used to do the 8x 20/10s during a long commute, because it just about fit on the bit of uninterrupted bike path. It was before power meters, so I just tried to go max and easy.
Iād do your set, but my limiter is very much more ftp than vo2max, so not right now.
Iāve been dwelling heavily on this and some other things Iām dealing with training wise.
Bear with me, this is all anecdotal
The thing I wonder about 30/15s and definitely 30/30s, 1m/1m or 2m/2m has to be about energy systems.
If we want to increase VO2max, we have to really tax our aerobic systems. Now I notice for instance when doing 30/30s or 1m/1m, you know when my breathing starts to go mad at the end of the interval, when doing the interval it all feels fine. And we add onto this my ability to really DRIVE this intervals (talking 150%+), Iām beginning to think that having a good anaerobic engine what is responsible for this contribution. By the end of the 1 minute interval, when itās rest timeā¦ it is THEN I start gasping for air. So 1 minute isnāt actually really stressing my aerobic systems.
I need to test 30/15s and 60/30s though because Iām sure that 15 seconds is not enough time to clear the oxygen debt that is created (I can even see this in HRā¦ slow as it is to respond, even in 30 second intervals, that is enough to get it to really start dipping)
There are a wide variety of intensities that can elicit VO2 max ā it simply depends on the manipulation of duration, intensity, and rest interval.
Here it helps to look at how coaches in other sports create sets to train the fast glycolytic fibers and elicit VO2 max over the course of 10-15 min of work.
For example, a runner doing one 400m at their current 1600m race pace wonāt be enough to elicit VO2 max, but 3 of them on :30 rest would, and a set of 6 of them would get them there, and keep them there for the last half of the set.
Many ways to get there and stay there ā they key is how to accumulate the most time in zone, for that individual athlete.
To oversimplify the interactions of our āenergy systemsā during VO2max intervals for a sec, this is actually where I think hard-start intervals can be used effectively:
If you go all-out or close to it for a set of 30/15s, 40/20s, whatever (I would suggest 2:1 work:rest) youāll (a) rapidly approach VO2max within a few reps (higher powered hard-starts will elicit faster VO2 onset kinetics) and (b) quickly deplete all of that anaerobic work capacity and be left with whatever power your aerobic system can sustain.
Or arguably sustained hard-start intervals might be more appropriate for more āanaerobic-dominantā athletes, since after depleting that anaerobic work capacity/Wā during the hard-start, you wonāt get any micro rest intervals to reconstitute any of those anaerobic resources. Youāll be running on the dregs of whatever VO2 you can sustain (probably near maximal) for the extent of the sustained interval.
Agree, as I said above, I feel like in short-short intervals, the first few seconds are always āfreeā. In longer intervals, you only get this once, and then youāre into air-gasping territory
I do wonder if those first few seconds are actually anaerobic though, or rather CP-ATP based.
Youāre right, traditionally the first few seconds are thought to be primarily produced via āalacticā PCr-ATP turnover. Which is still āanaerobicā. Anaerobic includes alactic = doesnāt produce lactate, and fermentative = produces lactate (ie. glycolysis)
I wonāt go too far down the rabbit hole right now, but current understanding is actually that oxidative phosphorylation (āaerobicā metabolism) at the cell is active virtually instantaneously and consuming O2 to reconstitute PCr. So while OxPhos possibly doesnāt contribute much directly to power output for the first few seconds, aerobic metabolism is virtually always working in the background.
A simple visual example is that muscle O2 saturation (measured with eg. Moxy or Humon) begins to decline almost immediately at interval onset. As shown below
Iāve long done just 2-3min intervals on 3-4min rest at VO2max. I started Short Power Build a couple of weeks ago, and the 4-5min jobbers that run 15/15-20/15-25/15 are just BRUTAL for me right now, so Iām figuring I get some kind of good adaptation from that scheme. 30/30s like the Taylors and such seem pretty easy to me, but the longer work/shorter rest durations like 20/15 or 25/15 in moderate doses seem really effective.
Thank you, Brendan - really enjoyed this and learned a lot. Iām one of those sickoās that actually looks forward to VO2 work, and I will definitely be polishing my VO2 game from what Iāve learned here.
I think thatās why the rumours are a) 30/30s etc are used in the beginning of a VO2 phase, basically to prime the body & brain; and b) to do these same workouts at higher %s ā 140-150%.
Always good to remember that VO2max is a physiological process, not a power target. It could take 115% or 150% to train that process. Do what ya gotta do.
Short on time this morning, mistakenly subbed Bashful for Bashful +6. 60/60 was trivial until I went up to about 130%. 90/60 at 120% broke me in the fourth interval of five on the third set. I find the longer stuff harder, but short-shorter is relatively new on a bike for me, so Iām hoping for good adaptation. Just screwed the pooch this morning. SPB shifts to the long ālife choice questioningā stuff second half, so we will see.
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