how many 30min intervals are you doing in a row?
edit: it appears i am blind and cant read
you can def keep building, and it doesnât have to be all in one go, you could go 2x35, 4x20, 3x30, 2x40, etc. adding time to either total time in zone or individual efforts (or both) and before too long youâll be doing 90min effort easily
Personally I schedule my vo2 blocks after an extensive SST block. I will be finishing my current one soon (worked up from 4x10 to 3x30 and now 1x90) recover and then start up some vo2 work.
Hey one question regarding the extending sweet spot times - are you simultaneously raising power as well as you feel fitter?
not necessarily, subthreshold and threshold work donât always lead to increased ftp, so itâs better to keep things roughly the same and then test threshold tte (see kolie moore test thread). this type of work is more to work on the long steady engine. thatâs not to say you canât use rpe to stray from the target a bit, but a trap you can fall into is increasing that target so much that you canât then do the longer durations
I donât until I test my ftp and know that it is higher however if someone is new or coming back into the sport I could see raising power if their fitness is rapidly progressing.
The worry I get with adding power is you can quite easily do a bit too much and burn yourself. I find it better to just add time and when your able to do 1x90 or so rest and retest.
Ok got it. So in a nutshellâŚjust focus on extending current power for longer duration rather than raise power at current duration (which has been my focusâŚ).
Also for what itâs worth, especially after dealing(fighting) with ramp test numbers for years, I have not tested and dont plan on testing haha. Iâm doing everything off rpe and HR to set my power targets. Basically I aim for stiff but not painful, HR topping out in workouts high 160s low 170s (my max ir 196-198).
Not trying to be obtuse, but why?.
Say 8 or 10x 2min with 1min rest are pretty hard, what makes 6 x 3min with 3min rest better?
How do you measure that they are better?
Thank you for the guidance. Iâve done several VO2 max blocks over the years, sometimes as hard as possible, and sometimes consistent power using erg mode, but I guess I never specifically focused on high cadence. Maybe Iâll give that a shot first.
I did 525 hours last year, which was typically 12-15 hour training weeks. When you say riding 8 hours but doing three workouts, do you mean 8 hours for the week? Iâm not sure if you mean that would be a lot of riding or a little but to me it would feel like a light week, even with the VO2 work.
When I was trying to develop resilience:
- Week 1: 4x3â 4â rest / 3x4â 4â rest
- Week 2: 5x3â 4â rest / 4x4â 5â rest
- Week 3: recovery
- Week 4: 3x5â 5â rest / 4x4â 4â rest
- Week 5: 3x6â 6â rest / 4x5â 5â rest
Week 6: recovery
When I was trying to develop power at VO2max
- Week 1: 4x2â rest as long as needed / 5x2â rest as long as needed
- Week 2: 6x2â rest as long as needed / 4x3â rest as long as needed
- Week 3: recovery
- Week 4: 7x2â rest as long as needed / 5x3â rest as long as needed
- Week 5: 8x2â rest as long as needed / 6x3â rest as long as needed
- Week 6: recovery
Personal notes I made for my workouts
- 100+ RPM
- For durability: aim to have ragged, uncontrolled breathing, and 9/10 RPE by at latest the second half of the interval.
- For power development: go hard out of the gate, breathing should become ragged and uncontrolled within the first 30 seconds of the interval, vision should become blurry and arms should start shaking during the last 30 seconds. Milk out everything you got for the last 10 seconds. Rest until ready to go again. Workout is done when you feel like you need to vomit or canât pedal fast enough to get uncontrolled breathing.
Youre speaking about vo2 âresilienceâ and power as if theyâre two separate things to train and that isnât exactly the case.
Yeah. I do think thereâs a difference btwn:
-
Training to raise VO2 Max; and
-
Training to raise power at âtypicalâ VO2 Max durations.
The former is purely about increasing aerobic capacity. The latter is a mix between aerobic and anaerobic, and so whatâs needed and what workouts are needed depend on which front the athlete has more room to improve.
Resilience = I can pedal hard over and over as needed.
Power development = I can dump out more power after emptying my anaerobic capacity.
I donât think itâs efficient to train both VO2max resilience and power development at the same time, the fatigue would be such that either I wouldnât be able to do more than a couple sets, or the interval would be too long and I wouldnât be able to finish before I collapsed.
My general approach (which changes for a lot of athletes based on several factors) is this. Extensive SST/Tempo + Endurance (BASE!) â VO2 â Threshold/FTP â Race Prep.
How that periodization works and the timing is largely event- and athlete-dependent. If youâre prepping for ultra-distance stuff, race prep is going to be quite a bit longer (and less intense) than standard road or XC MTB-type stuff. E.g. you might have a 3-month race prep for Leadville vs 2-6 weeks for a roadie. Threshold FTP 4-8 weeks (1-2 blocks of 3-4 weeks); VO2 3ish weeks + recovery. Take your goal âpeakâ time and back it up from there.
No. Extend time or eliminate in-workout rest. Adding power comes later. You feel great on a 3x20 day, make it a 1x60 or add 10 min to the last interval., etc.
Speaking specifically to VO2max work (not specifically power development): once you get to the breathing and relative HR/Power we are looking for, you want to stay there. I see that often take about 90s for me, personally, and most people are probably in that neighborhood. So then do you want to stay at that breathing/stimulus level for 30s or do you think 2-4 min would be better? If youâre doing 20 min of work in two minute segments, you might only hit that breathing for 5 min. If you do 20 min of work in 5 min blocks, you can spend 12-13 min breathing like a fish out of water. Thatâs winning. 
Donât conflate that with 90% max HR. Thatâs a somewhat poor proxy for what Iâm looking for with VO2 work, specifically (again, DIFFERENT than 2-6min power development âMAPâ work in my little world here). Pretty common that you might not get much time above 90% max HR especially as you fatigue toward the end of a concentrated VO2 block. Donât care as long as the breathing is right and youâre giving max efforts.
Side/unrelated note: 2 min max efforts are the hardest thing you can do in endurance sports. Donât @ me lol.
2 min on 1 min off, can be a really hard workout, but I would guess the quality of those intervals is going to be pretty variable first to last, and itâs going to be really hard to achieve the stimulus that weâre looking for late in the workout due to fatigue. Itâd be hard, itâll help you develop some power and repeatability for 2 min efforts, just donât think thatâs optimal VO2max training.
Youâll probably already know. If you have a 1500w 30s PR, but your FTP is 3wkg, you need aerobic work. If your VO2 Max is 80ml/min/kg and is unlikely to go higher but youâve almost never ridden over 600 watts and youâve never even looked at a barbell then doing gym work and workouts aimed at increasing your anaerobic capacity are going to do a lot more for your 5 minute power than trying to eke out further VO2 Max gains.
@kurt.braeckel âŚyesâŚyes they are the hardest thing in endurance sports 
. I canât imaging doing more than 3 or 4 intervals of 2x1 before vomiting.
Iâm a former 800 runner. The last 30s of any 2-ish minute near-maximal effort are 
This is me, well, close as I capped out at 2.7 w/kg for my FTP. Doing extensive and intensive VO2 work (a la time crunched cyclist), gave me the biggest performance boost ever. Agree that it really needs to be done after a solid base and threshold block.