What would a custom VO2 max progression look like?

Training
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Hey Samus - Apologies if you think I was being negative towards your effort - I was merely pointing out a small thing I could see in your graph - as I said in my original post the 110rpm ramps the HR up a touch quicker which if it gives you 10 secs an interval more in zone than over 5 intervals that’s nearly a minute more which is what I took as the main objective of VO2 training.

@kurt.braeckel feel free to tear apart my graph and offer suggestions to make the intervals better so anyone who reads these can do their blocks as good as possible if you so choose.

Understand people pay for your advice so no hard feelings if you choose not to.

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Oh, I did not think you had a negative tone, so no worries. The thrust of my remarks were at how our attempt to compare and contrast charts felt like reading tea leaves without a solid understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

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I think the only significant difference I can tell between the two of us - based on our own words - is the cadence differences.

From what Kolie said on the pods - as you seem to be aware - the 110+ gave us the best chance of eliciting the physical response we are after.

My graph loos the way it does because I made that - 110rpm - the focus of my block with everything else being secondary and analysed after the fact.

The final session of my block I couldn’t get my HR as high for the same effort/RPE as I did during the early phase indicating that I was probably done.

Kurt is far more educated than me to give any advice and I’m glad he freely offers that to all of us out here trying to get our best out of every session

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A lot of it is subjective, really. Being cranky, tired, etc. A key to this is keeping the rest of your rides really easy, like bottom of zone 2, easy endurance pace or lower. If you do these blocks right, the mental fatigue is as much a factor as the physical, if not more. Being able to go truly max for that many days in a short period is hard.

I think the too hard hard start is probably limiting the overall effectiveness of the intervals. Done properly, you aren’t building power throughout and finishing strong. I think you’re leaving some work on the table, while creating some muscular fatigue that we’re generally trying to avoid with these.

As happens with some people, you’re overcomplicating these with the hard stuff followed by lower and steadier IMO. Take a look at the graph I shared above - that’s really what you’re looking for. You want to be going as hard as you reasonably can at basically any part of the interval, keeping in mind you’re doing this for 20 min. If at any point you’re really managing your power (except probably the hard start in many cases) while spinning like a crazy person, you’re leaving some on the table.

Spin fast, go repeatably all-out for the duration of each interval. Recover (up to 1:2 work:rest ratio). Go again. If you’re doing it right, the fish out of water breathing takes care of itself. :laughing: I absolutely do not obsess over HR in real time as a standalone metric at any point during these blocks.

Actually this is a completely normal and expected response. There are numbers that I look at (and Kolie’s coaches do too) during these blocks that can help us determine from afar if progress is still happening or if you’re cooked. Kolie protects it on his podcast, and out of respect for him, I’ll just stick to my usual guns of, “I manage these blocks very closely with my athletes for a reason.” Kolie and his coaches do the same. (Disclosure is while I was coaching a couple years ago I hired Cory Lockwood from EC to coach me for my race season - coaches need coaches too!)

I talk face-to-face with all of my athletes before a block like this to go over interval execution. These can be tough to explain and get right, but once you get them, you “get” them and you know the difference. I also typically lead into these blocks with high cadence work such that it’s not such a shock to the system, especially for people used to riding at like 80rpm.

Don’t be afraid to fail an interval early in one of these blocks. It can help you learn what your sustainable/repeatable all out is, and then you can keep going back to that feeling over and over again and you’ll get a lot more out of it. I usually start people with something like a 3x6 just so they can f around and find out, then execute the 4x5 and 5x4 type sets more effectively.

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Another follow-up. I didn’t get to my 12/12 VO2 workout due to some work things coming up. So it was just 11/12 over three weeks. Took a week and a half off the bike. Did a bit of lifting. Finished a long (3x15 min) threshold workout today, attempting to maximize a steady power output during each interval. (Not interested in a ramp test.)

  • ~14% increase in TR AI-estimated FTP compared to the start of the VO2 block. It is possible that FTP was a little underestimated at the start of the block, so this # could be closer to an 10% increase.
  • ~7% increase in Garmin VO2 max compared to the start of the VO2 block. Confounded by some weight loss. The estimation today is the same as the estimation during the last VO2 max workout.
  • 45 average “fitness” (intervals’ CTL) during the block.
  • 4h of cycling per week during the block.
  • 1h40m of sauna per week; I would do 20-30 mins of sauna immediately after; I’m already heat- and volume-adapted as a regular sauna user prior to this.

Anyhow, I’m pretty happy with these improvements, especially given how low the volume was.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing in the interim before I start my next block. I figure I’d just throw in some some threshold work before my next VO2 block. But would SS be better? I could also go out for a Z2 century. I’m trying to find some info on the empirical cycling podcast about what is best.

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Well done :clap:

Ease back into it and don’t do any more VO2 Max work for at least 3 months, I think.

What you do next depends on your goals, but you should expect your new shiny FTP to mean a shortened TTE, so as a default you probably want to extend that out.

SS and threshold are basicially the same.

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Results are in.

10w improvement in FTP or 4% that’s after a 3/1 VO2 max block and a 3/1 SS/Threshold block.

My gut feel is that my AIFTP was too high originally and now my FTP is set based on Kolie’s VO2 test.

Looking at my 1 min and 5 min power increases over the same period I think my true FTP gain is probably closer to 20w and 8% over the 8 weeks.

My TTE is most def better and the SS and threshold work I did was solid and def proved the underlying fitness was real as I was able to complete over 60 min of SS work for the past 3 weeks finishing with 65 mins. All TR workouts.

That’s based on the ‘new’ FTP numbers and not the old numbers so I was confident if anything my FTP then might have been too low.

I’m going into an 8 week Sustained Power build following TR program and progression where I will begin my crit season at the end of the block.

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Nice!

Next steps sorta depend on what you have coming in the next months. I would definitely caution doing another VO2 block like that for at least 3 months (probably closer to 6). The gains can be great but they are super fatiguing.

To me, dropping back to SS is too much a step back. It would be fine to start with FTP intervals and to start to extend your new FTP from 3x15 up to 60 or more minutes TTE. If you have racing coming up then it would be a good time to start peppering in race specific intervals (if you do crits then 30/30s and such are good).

It’s always a good time for long Z2 volume. No matter the intensity your block is focusing on you should almost never drop your volume too low for too long. It’s the foundation on which all other adaptations are built upon.

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For the people recommending 3+ months before the next VO2 max block, what is the rationale behind this? Are we worried about stressing the heart out too much?

I could probably try a 4x15 next, or work up to it. I attempted another 3x15 the following day and that was a MISTAKE. For whatever reason, my body handled back-to-back VO2 max workouts better than back-to-back 3x15s.

I do ultra endurance so my main goal is to get my Z2 sustainable pace up.

For the purposes of maintaining VO2 max gains? On the flip side, I have found endurance gains to stick around for long periods of time, even after being completely off the bike for a while.

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From what I understand it’s mostly about just the stress of a VO2 block. It’s such a concentrated amount of stress that requires a lot of recovery afterward that you tend to miss out on lots of other kinds of training. Like when I did one it took me nearly a month afterward to feel completely normal again. To lose a whole month multiple times a year would start to add up. You also get more from the VO@ block when your FTP begins to bump up against it’s current TTE limits. So it’s good to take time to let your fitness build up at your new, higher level before attempting to break through again.

I could probably try a 4x15 next, or work up to it.

I’d work up to that. IME it’s more reasonable to expect like 2-4 min increases between weeks or workouts. So leave your intervals flexible and be prepared to stop early if you feel you’ve reached TTE.

Lol yeah FTP workouts consume large amounts of energy and are pretty difficult to do successfully back to back. I think because the VO2s have such an anaerobic contribution you are able to hit them back to back better.

Yup, don’t forget that another way to raise your VO2 is by high volume endurance riding. It’s not completely the same adaptations but there is a lot of overlap. And it’s much much easier to maintain gains like that than to improve them.

Though someone can maybe answer that better than me. I mostly race crits so through race season I’m not doing many VO2 intervals but I’m still touching on that during a 60min crit. So you might need to do something different if your competitions are more long and low.

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Without doing another block, could most of the gains be held on to by doing, say, 1 x VO2 session per week?

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You don’t need to do specific VO2 Max work to maintain your VO2 Max.

Endurance riding volume will do it. Whatever else you’re doing will also do it.

The only possible exception is if you’re old and crusty and are fighting against the decline of middle age.

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#IFeelSeen

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I posted it entirely self-referentially :joy:

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In most cases, you don’t need to do these intervals to maintain VO2max gains. If you’re riding, that’s really enough, and certainly if you’re riding with any meaningful intensity (sweet spot+), you don’t need to worry about doing periodic VO2s.

The only people I give routine VO2s to are brand-new riders or supermasters (60+). And in those cases we aren’t doing a block anyway.

You need time to “bed in” the gains. You will not be able to just keep increasing stroke volume ad infinitum and that’s not really the point. It’s a combination of the stress of these blocks along with training for performance. In most cases, people aren’t training to see a VO2max number go up. They’re training to be able to put out more watts for a longer period of time - improved performance.

Focusing on this one single aspect of performance for more than a few weeks each year probably isn’t necessary for most athletes, and may be a mistake for many.

Post VO2max blocks, I focus on raising FTP, and then raising TTE at the new FTP, which are both usually quite a bit more relevant to my clients than making VO2max go from 62 to 64 or whatever.

The best approach in my athletic and coaching experience is to tap out gains from other sources (TTE work, FTP work, added endurance) first before going with the relatively nuclear option of high-density VO2max blocks. Probably better to think of these as a plateau buster than something you should be aiming to do multiple times per race season. I personally never did more than 1 block per year, and I have not prescribed more than one block in a year to any of my clients. I’m much more likely to do ZERO VO2max blocks than 2 or 3 in a single training year.

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So, N=1. I did my first VO2 block, documented somewhere in this thread, starting in December. My ftp went from mid-upper 180s to mid-190s. I folded on self-coaching and paid for coaching starting in May. I did a second VO2 block in July (3 weeks of two back-to-back sessions per week, fwiw). FTP is up to ~200. Not saying I recommend it, but with 6-7 months between blocks and someone looking over my shoulder to monitor fatigue and progress, I had to take a lot of recovery time afterward, but I didn’t die.

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Middle age started decades ago for me.

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I’m trying to figure out where my short comings in trainings are based on this most recent race effort. I couldn’t keep up with the group. With nearly 30% of this 25 minute effort being at and above Vo2 Max, would focusing on a Vo2 block have helped me? Also, this 25 minute effort was immediately preceded by a 3 minute effort at 400w in which I set all time power PRs from 1:08-1:12. Was this because I didn’t focus on my Vo2 in training or was I just not strong enough to hang? I realize I may have gone too hard in that 3:00 minute effort just before, but I had to as it led into a pinch point.

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Well, I suspect that normally you’d look at 25 minutes at 0.86 IF and think that would be very accomplishable, right?

So, perhaps it’s either that the stochastic nature of those 25 minutes that was the issue, or the fact that you burned through too much of your anaerobic capacity beforehand, or both.

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What’s your max HR?