What is the proper way to do an anaerobic workout?

Training
#1

Hi All, I did Williamson +2 today, my version with a bit of recovery tacked on at the end. This is considered as an Anaerobic session and I thought it might end up to be harder than some of the VO2 workouts but actually not and my HR was not as high as expected. The original version had IF @ 0.91 but I tacked on 15 more minutes of recovery ride and the IF dropped to 0.88. A much friendly sounding IF but the hard bits are still all the same.

So, what is the proper way to do such a ride? High cadence to increase HR or my normal cadence and really work the muscles in the high wattage bits? I tried both, first group I used higher cadence than the last groups.

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#2

I don’t want to come off wrong or like an a&& but the workout notes should answer some of those questions. I haven’t done this workout yet but the workout notes say
” high cadence of 100-120rpm, higher watts, higher spin “

#3

Yes, I read that so for anaerobic exercise, the higher HR is more important than the stress on the legs? I understand the purpose of anaerobic exercises but to optimize the return on it, is it high HR based?

#4

Looks like fun, but far more of an aerobic than an anaerobic session.

4 Likes
#5

This Tom Bell article might help:

2 Likes
#6

That’s what I do. Mixing it up makes it less boring too.

2 Likes
#7

Aerobic because the recovery between intervals is way too short?

I’ve been editing workouts like glacier and wynne and adding more recovery between intervals to make the workouts more anaerobic:

  • at least 10 min after 90 sec/2 min intervals (± 140% ftp)
  • at least 7 minutes after 1 min intervals (± 160% ftp)
  • at least 4 min after 30sec intervals (± 200%ftp)
  • at least 4 to 3 min recovery after 20 and 15 sec intervals (200% ftp or higher)

And the total workout never exceeds 90 minutes (60 minutes most of the time)

Would that be the way to go?

#8

Makes sense to me.

1 Like
#9

In that case I wonder why all the anaerobic workouts in the TR library do not take this longer recovery principle into account.

Maybe because we’re endurance athletes at the end of the day and not pure anaerobic athletes.

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