The intervals were actually significantly long. @geraldm24 is basically referring to the length between the surges. The workouts are building towards an HOP workout - so 60 min of tempo with 30s surges every five min. If he did the same workout as me the two blocks were around 48 min and 38 min.
Here’s an interesting calculator I made trying to compare zones based on heart rate reserve, max heart rate, and threshold heart rate.
All of the cells should be locked but the ones outlines in red.
This is awesome. Thank you. My guess is, if you search “Guy Thibault MAP intervals”, you might find out something about the 2m intervals. Just guessing…
Yes but don’t always start this long depends on the athlete.
Short recovery between intervals 3-10m so the heart rate starts higher the second interval and they have to maintain a ceiling and allow power to just happen. If you find they are the same then there is likely lactate accumulation in the intervals (if you were to hold same power for instance, not heart rate as I prescribe them).
avg power divided by avg heart rate for the entire interval. I just know for the races they are competing in that 1.8 is a top 3 and around 2 is first. MTB stage racing over 5-7 days.
Yeah, based on using the interval to calculate the EF, I would agree.
After listening to the WKO5 webinar last night, EF metric was mentioned and a question asked what would be a good value. An improvement was the acceptable answer.
I have tried something that may not be exactly what you are discussing.
The two most common types I tried were.
Hold a wattage above fatmax but below fat/carb crossover (for an athlete where there is a difference). Hold this wattage until heart rate reaches what I feel should be the goal heart rate for this wattage. Once they reach the heart rate and it starts to continue to climb, stop pedaling until heart rate reaches 60%. Started this to try and give athletes not used to long intervals different things to think about and have a wee break, but it turned out to be a pretty good way to progress them to a long interval. Recovery to 60% would get shorter and shorter and the intervals would get longer until they naturally were doing long intervals.
The other with fitter athletes was to ride at what I call Lactate Balance Point or where muscle o2 sat would be just stable to slightly rising over long sessions over an hour, the athlete would hold this heart rate until power would decrease by 10% or they would reach 2 hours. I would repeat this for 3 days in a row, complete a recovery day, complete a strength day and coordination drills on the bike day, repeat.
With the above example, it is basically how I used to train athletes for about ten years, likely my most successful time as a coach. The program was a little dynamic in nature as some athletes could only do 2 days in a row and follow the rules while others could do 5. It was likely the best way to build an endurance/tempo base I have really ever tried, but it was monotonous. Although it worked I was worried and athletes becoming mentally stale (which never seemed to happen, but I was worried nonetheless.
There was a little more to it than above but that was mostly it.
Thanks @steveneal . Sounds like the best way to train.
Last year when researching COPID (that polarisation in every session, vs a polarity per session) I countered the monotony by making interval duration random, but the total time of work bouts was managed through a setting.
Today I would reason that ‘dynamic duration based on physiology’ is even better, but on the other hand, randomly generated ‘short’ intervals are beneficial to strength development.
I think the average athlete needs a goal in every session to keep the motivation up. Dynamic duration will do that because you want to better than yesterday.
The random duration had the same effect on my: i want more power for the same duration and heart rate.
Here’s my shot at @steveneal tempo. I only did 50 minutes as I’d already done 3 hours easy this morning. It took me the first ten minutes to find the right intensity, but the last 40 look good I think. SmO2 (bronze line) sloping upwards. Heart rate was between 154 and 156. Max is somewhere around 188, so right in @steveneal’s 82-83% zone.
