Threshold Power Intervals on the trainer - Page 3

That is exactly what I meant.

It may be little more work you on the planning side, you know, to try few different paths (virtual reality circuits) and see which one brings you:
- What you need physiologically speaking
- In a "format" that is motivating

But that alone may be sufficient to allow you to perform decent 20min intervals maybe once a week, who knows...

Enjoy!

Yeah, but when that 1-speed is done at 400+ watts you really don't need too many other "speeds."

Well you do need to get a gap first -- then the '400W' can be partly real and partly psychological . IOW, if you're a proven TT specialist, that can help discourage chasing once you have that gap established.

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rmur

its a little counter intuitive but doing threshold work isn't the best way to imporove your threshold. they best way to do it is long rides.

Back in base phase i imporved my threshold 25 watts doing nothing but base work. Seriously, my heart rate didn't go over 140bpm for 3 months (except once a month to test threshold)
Its kind of an old school method, but threshold work should come after you've developed a base. Not just randomly when you want to do them. If you don't have a large base, don't do threshold stuff. While you will see some improvements, they will not be as great as if you have a solid base.


Ok so you don't want to spend 3+ hours on the trainer. The 2nd best way to improve FTP...

do 'sweet spot' intervals(solarEnergy alluded to this). In other words ride at 87-93% of your functional threshold for 12-15mins. Do this at the beginning of your ride, the middle of your ride, and the very end of your ride. So 3 times over the course of 2 hours or however long you choose to ride. The rest of the time ride at base wattage/HR. This tricks your body into thinking that you've been training longer they you actually have been. Its good, but not as good as just riding 4 hours. 4 hours is more solid, But i understand that 4 hours on a bike isn;t for everyone.

Another benefit of doing just subthreshold work is that you don't incure the recovery cost of threshold work. So you can do 'sweet spot' stuff 4 or 5 times a week whereas If you'r actually doing threshold intervals correctly, you should probably only do them 2x a week before it gets counterproductive

also as far as bordom goes, noone really talked about cadence. This is one of my favorite things to keep me less bored on a long trainer ride. 1min highcadence/1 min lowcadence, 15 mins high/15 mins low cadence. 2 mins high/5 mins low. It doesn't really matter how long you do of each, but it help to pass the time.
hope this helps.

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it never get easier, you just get faster.

I know all what you wrote and i'm agree with you. My problem is simply one, i cannot train like a normal guy, i have not time to do it ( i study medicine and is not so easy to find free time ;-) ), and i cannot do also of course long ride. So i prefer to focus my training plan on short but intense training session, specific for the period.

As i wrote before i know perfectly that is fundamental the periodisation of the season, that's why i already did some long and boring weeks of training where i focused all my attention only to the endurance level. After this i passed to work on the tempo ride increasing day by day the period to the "sweet spot", and now after few month i'm working on the threshold and Vo2 Max.

In 2 weeks i'll finish my session of exams and i will be more free to train and also to add long rides to my sheulde, expecially in the recovery rides.

I worked till now on this way and i can assure you (if you don't trust me i can send my files) that my threshold is growing up or at least growed up and not of 25 W even if i have to say that my starting point was of an unterained guy, was 200 W now is 265 W. I stopped for 1 year completely my activity, but i did 4 years of races in criterium with each year 17.000 km per year approximatevely.

Hope to be in the right way. If i made mistake please tell me!

Antonio

I'm hiding behind my chair after reading this one. Stating that threshold work isn't the best way to improve threshold sounds a little, err, wobbly to me.

I'm sure more learned minds than my own will chime in at greater length, but as far as I'm aware: threshold power determines fitness level, threshold work improves threshold power therefore threshold work makes you go faster. SST helps as well, but tootling along at a low heart rate (if anybody seriously into this kind of work still monitors HR) seems a waste of time.

There appears to be a clash of old school vs new school in this idea.

I just have a chortle when I remember how Damiano Cunego announced he thought PMs were a waste of time and he's going back to the old methods. Then he sits and watches PM users dance away from him on stage-race climbs...

Early season rides are about long rolling training rides and as the season progresses you move on to faster paces maximum O2 deficiency paces.
Of course opinions like abilities vary.

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Dope,when training and talent just aren't enough.

I've wasted many hours on day-long rides in my youth so I know all about the long rides way of thinking.

Now I go no further than 100 hard kilometres and was in with a shout in a 135km handicap race so it's not about how far you go, it's about what level of power you can put out.

I don't have time to put in huge distances but what I do manage keeps me up with blokes doing way more than me.

Like you say, opinions and abilities vary. But I'm sure being more efficient in training is something we can all benefit from.

Yes l remember reading that after l had picked him for a top 10 finish in the tour, lol... what a tool. Did he go back to training with a pm?


That 135km race has been moved forward by 3mths this year
ya gunna have another crack?

If you did them properly, and they were well structured into your program then you would not have been wasting time.

Absolutely. You? And without long 'base' mileage too.

So long hours in the saddle was wrong? Amazing. Don't forget, this was back in the 80s when 120 miles in the rain was the way to do it. Wish I'd had a power meter back then.

Yup l'll be there a bit fatter than last year but with a little more base milage
not too much more though!

I think he was saying that if you'd done them properly - ie not twiddling mini-me gears with legs spinning like bees wings, then getting in quality miles over many hours can be beneficial.

Not quite,
Long rides, in this case say 4-6 hours, just like any form of training are great if you do them at the right intensity, the right amount of times during a training cycle and at the right time of the year depending on your specific races etc.

2x20 is a waste of time if you don't do it hard enough, same goes for a 5 hour ride. Problem is a lot of people equate long ride to mean easy ride, but that is far from the mark.

In my opinion, there's nothing like going out and jamming 5000 cals, not worrying about intervals just finding a nice loop or set of hills and putting the blinkers on and riding, hard, like sweet spot training if you had unlimited time, in my personal experience it put my threshold up a few notches before doing any threshold specific work