Question on Coggan Power Level 5 (VO2max)

Work periods only - if you include the rest periods as well, the average power will be significantly less than 100% of functional threshold power (and the normalized power will be ~100% of functional threshold power, at least if you're hammering yourself the way you should be 🙂).

Any continuous effort of 3 min or longer at (or above) the indicated intensity could be considered a "VO2max interval". IOW, you don't necessarily have to do these as part of a shorter, structured workout with specific rest periods. You *might*, though, be able to train at a slightly higher intensity and make better progress if did do them that way.

BTW, here's a couple of recent articles that are semi-related to your question:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16177614&query_hl=1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15387806&query_hl=1

(I found these interesting because 1) my long-standing habit has been to take just 2.5 min rest between 5 min intervals, since that "felt right", 2) the fact that blood lactate levels in the 2nd study were close to the OBLA level of 4 mmol/L, which is in keeping with the normalized power concept, and 3) the total work duration in both studies was 24 min, which is consistent with my experience that doing 6 x 5 min at such an intensity is a lot harder than doing 5 x 5 min.)

Great! Thanks for the clarification Andy.

Part of what drove my questioning was whether a shorter (<1hr), higher interval level, and higher *NP* workout would produce greater results. I'll take a look at the studies.

acoggan said:

Work periods only - if you include the rest periods as well, the average power will be significantly less than 100% of functional threshold power (and the normalized power will be ~100% of functional threshold power, at least if you're hammering yourself the way you should be 🙂).

Any continuous effort of 3 min or longer at (or above) the indicated intensity could be considered a "VO2max interval". IOW, you don't necessarily have to do these as part of a shorter, structured workout with specific rest periods. You *might*, though, be able to train at a slightly higher intensity and make better progress if did do them that way.

BTW, here's a couple of recent articles that are semi-related to your question:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16177614&query_hl=1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15387806&query_hl=1

(I found these interesting because 1) my long-standing habit has been to take just 2.5 min rest between 5 min intervals, since that "felt right", 2) the fact that blood lactate levels in the 2nd study were close to the OBLA level of 4 mmol/L, which is in keeping with the normalized power concept, and 3) the total work duration in both studies was 24 min, which is consistent with my experience that doing 6 x 5 min at such an intensity is a lot harder than doing 5 x 5 min.)

Good question, and good response. This supports a lot of VO2Max training ideas of reducing the rest interval as one gains fitness. I made it to 6:3 (four intervals) this season, and if you ask me another three minutes of recovery would just be boring and would lead to cooling down.

Spunout said:

Good question, and good response. This supports a lot of VO2Max training ideas of reducing the rest interval as one gains fitness. I made it to 6:3 (four intervals) this season, and if you ask me another three minutes of recovery would just be boring and would lead to cooling down.

I've always done 5:5, going from 4 intervals to 5 more recently. Would I gain something by decreasing the rest as I get fitter before notching the power up?

The first study addresses that question. The work period level didn't improve appreciably with the longer rest, and the work VO2 was slightly higher with the 2-min rest (vs. 1 or 4 min rests).

From the study:
"CONCLUSIONS: Under self-paced conditions, varying rest duration in a range of 1 to 4 min had limited impact on performance during repeated 4-min high-intensity exercise bouts. Approximately 120 s of active recovery may provide an appropriate balance between intracellular restitution and maintenance of high VO(2) on-kinetics."

There is one important factor that the studies did not address. Mental stress is much lower (for me) with a 1:1 ratio for level 5 work. Total VO2 is only slightly higher with shorter rest intervals.

yzfrr11 said:

There is one important factor that the studies did not address. Mental stress is much lower (for me) with a 1:1 ratio for level 5 work.

Sure it does: (from the first link) "...peak RPE was slightly lower during the 4-min rest condition (17.1 +/- 1.3, 17.7 +/- 1.5, 16.8 +/- 1.5, P < 0.05)."