There’s a really long story behind this but the TLDR is I’d been doing a long endurance base building period and just felt like I needed to do some ‘work’ for motivation purposes. Everything thus far this year has been Trad base 1 and 2. I’m coming back from a very long sustained break from activity (military injury) so I wanted to do some serious base work this year (which i’ve done and will continue to do).
I felt like I needed a small block of intensity so I did it. I’m enjoying it and personally it has had the intended consequence - I’m now ready to get into some real work building the underlying fitness.
Why start with the longer efforts?
I recall my block in early spring and my session felt like absolute misery filled with self-doubt when I did my 5x3’s…Starting with 4x5’s would be a major lesson in calibrating the efforts in the moment.
What’s the benefit of starting with extensive and going more intensive as the block goes on? Is there more time in zone with the shorter efforts cumulatively? Trying to understand.
Generally I build overall time in zone throughout a block like this, but since fatigue builds, it is helpful to reduce the interval time and allow for more rest. The focus is on the overall stimulus from the block more than from any one workout. So while it might be ideal to progress more time in longer intervals, the fact is most people will lose quality in those sets by attempting that progression in an intense and dense block of training like this. Since we are doing usually 9 or more workouts over the span of 3 weeks, spending one workout “calibrating” isn’t a major loss. In many cases, that first workout is of lower quality anyway because it’s such a shock to the system if you’re doing it right. So doing those 6 min efforts allows you to dial in that feeling, play with gearing or trainer settings if you’re doing it indoors, etc, and then the “real work” begins with the 4x5 sets. Going from 5 to 3 min isn’t a change from extensive to intensive. It’s all intensive, but as a matter of fact power usually goes up because interval duration is going down. So you end up doing more time in zone at higher power at the end of the block when you’re the most tired. But really power is kind of secondary here.
Back in my college days at my conference championship I had the 10k/5k double. It was always easier to go longer and “slower”and then come back for short more intense races. (This is for VO2 efforts… Wouldn’t want to do a marathon then a 10k obviously).
Don’t know if there’s any science to back that up, I just know it felt better.
Basically this is why I started week 1 with 5x4s. To calibrate everything while having the time to get it right after the first interval - I think that was a solid idea and I’m glad I did it that way in hindsight
Did the 4x5s last night. Power held to what I did week 1 but HR about 5bpm lower for each rep. RPE was same and I felt like I was pushing full gas. Least I was breathing like I was.
HR seems to be showing signs of fatigue? Easy day today then 5x4s before another easy day and finishing off with 7x3s.
Legs still feel good if not a touch empty but I don’t feel totally wrecked.
I think ‘maximize’ is really in the context of your training. For example, if your max is 8 hours but you’re coming off an off season where you were doing 4-5, then you’d build up to 7-8, max out your TTE (which I’d say 4x20 is pretty maxed), then consider a VO2 block. You might be a bit more limited to number and density of workouts in that block compared to if you were training 15-20hrs but the basic structure is the same.
I guess that’s only something you can answer for yourself. I did a 2.5 week VO2 block in Jan of this year and it was HARD. Like really hard. But I ate a bunch, slept a bunch, and came out the other end with a 25W bump. Now 6 months later it was worth it to me. Even though it was super hard mentally and physically it was such a compressed time period that it wasn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things.
Though I found my power improved a bit until about 75% of the way through the block where the fatigue blanket really started to get heavy. ~+5% or so.
Per recovery, I took maybe 10 days SUPER easy. Then added some endurance in. After 2 weeks I did an FTP workout (3-6x10min) by feel and felt I had a ~10W increase. Then a week later I put an additional 10W on those same intervals for the same RPE. But it wasn’t until another 2 weeks after that that I really felt the gains come on strong.
So nearly 6 full weeks to have the gains realized. In the process my TTE dropped from ~70min to ~40min at the higher FTP so I then started working that back up.
After 2-3 weeks I started to get a little worried that the block didn’t do anything but I had to stay patient and then was super happy after 6 weeks with the improvement I saw.
My plan was TTE, VO2, rest, TTE, gravel event but not getting the VO2 quite right and then influenza kind of screwed it all up.
When I do a VO2 block again, I’m going just do less - 4x3, 3x4, 3x5 - keep it under 15 minutes. Or, I will just do the longer mixed block (1 vo2 and 1 threshold workout per week).
Nice, yeah shorter is probably the way to go. For reference, I’m 28yo, 310FTP, and ride ~13-15hr/wk and I don’t think I ever did more than 20min of interval time in a single workout. 5x5 is the ‘standard’ probably mostly cause it’s just simple and sounds nice and round. But just like the ‘standard’ 3x20 FTP, it’s not gonna work for everyone.
5x5 isn’t “the standard”. It’s a total misnomer and people have applied it to a really broad swath of workouts. Kristen Armstrong among other pros laud 5x5, but people don’t look at how they’re doing it. It’s not VO2max work like we are talking about here. Again, the power they’re riding happens to be in the VO2max “zone”, but the reality is the 5x5 workout “standard” tends to be more like suprathreshold work.
I have never given 25 minutes of max-effort VO2s like we are talking about here and I doubt I ever will (not that I’m the standard ). Minimum effective dose absolutely applies to these workouts.
Yeah I put ‘standard’ in quotes trying to be more like sarcastic air quotes but probably wasn’t clear enough about that. It’s just the go to response for people who don’t really know what they’re talking about to “What VO2s should I do?” “Oh idk, 5x5.” They’ve heard of them, it’s a nice round sounding interval set, and they just parrot it without realizing the real implementation details of it.
Maybe a stupid question, and not vo2max workout focus but…Is there another road in improving Vo2max? Maybe @kurt.braeckel knows this better but…When I look at improving vo2max. It seems like a 2-3 week block would be optimal (8-9 workouts). Then 1-(2) rest weeks. And then after 3±4 weeks you would (hopefully) see some adaptations. So for an event 5-6 weeks before schedulde this approach?
But…What if you have much time to train. Is there another pathway, the pathway of easy endurance? 3-4 weeks of 15-20h of 60-65% zone2. Would that be same adaptations? Or does this have to be 7-8 weeks? And are the adaptations the same?
Yeah this is pretty much correct. VO2max improves over the long term with high-volume aerobic work. Those adaptations are largely peripheral. The style of block we have mostly discussed in this thread is targeting stroke volume. And then get better genetics.
So ride your bike a lot consistently + target VO2 blocks periodically. I usually do 1x/year, and that’s largely driven by the fact that people have events. Re: volume - a couple of blocks may help newer athletes, but if you’re well-trained already, it’s got to be high volume all the time if you want to move it.
Also remember that VO2max declines as we age, generally starting in your 30s (for some could be earlier or later). So older masters athletes need to hit the intensity a bit more often to stave that off. That’s where doing shorter sets every other week or so can be helpful (my general approach for my older masters racers… year-round shorter MAP sets every other week or so).
Other people answered your other questions. But to answer this, I would schedule it well before that. You should take into account that it could take up to like 6-7 weeks to see the full adaptations. Then consider that you’ve now rested for ~2 weeks and then had a slow build for the next 3-4weeks. At which point you’ve hopefully seen the FTP bump but you’re not feeling particularly ‘racy’.
So you’d probably want at least another block (3-4wks) of training to sharpen up before a race. Now if that event is a C race (like just some local crit you don’t care too much about) then it might work. But for an A event you’d want to schedule this type of VO2 block probably 10+ weeks in advance.
You have to remember too that once you get these adaptations it is easy to maintain them. So it’s not something you have to time super precisely around your goal event to see the benefits from.
Thx. Super answers from you all. After my holiday I Will check my planning and how I can incorporate my first vo2max block ever before an event in November.
). Minimum effective dose absolutely applies to these workouts.