Vo2 Max adaptations: your experiences please!

[Ade Merckx]

Hey dudes I'm interested to hear how effective you've found Vo2max training in terms of performances in races (TT'or RR's). What have you noticed - e.g better all round FT, better performance on short climb, breakaways, and general sensations. What appears to be the optimum training period 2 weekly sessions of 4-5mins 3-6 weeks perhaps. I tend to bail out on these after two weeks and return to threshold sessions but after recent stage race performance where I couldn't stay with the front group on the toughest 3-15min climbs I wanna really give the VO2 sessions a real go. Cheers

 

[frost]

My experience with powermeter is very short and I do structured L5 very sparingly but the handful of times that I have put once a week session into my routine there has been quite good increase in all power levels (~5-6% in L5 interval power, a bit less in FT) very shortly. But as I said the history is so short that it is very difficult to say if it was because or inspite of adding L5.

Last summer I think the longest period I did was 5 weeks. I used a progressive approach from the gym training experiences so that I started the first week a bit low power and tried to add 5-10w every week to interval power. The last week started to feel a little bit like banging the head against the wall.
Now I have done three weeks once a week not particularly quality sessions to prepare for the masters nationals (which I decided not to participate after all because the bad L5 workouts) and yesterdays short 15k TT was power vice a nice surprise.

One thing I can say for sure though is that it rescales the PE so that L4 suddenly starts to feel very enjoyable sunday riding

 

[nmcgann]

No difference for me. I can do L5/VO2 work until I am blue in the face and I don't gain anything either at that level or below.

Neil

 

[Ade Merckx]

No difference for me. I can do L5/VO2 work until I am blue in the face and I don't gain anything either at that level or below.

Neil

Wow! are you saying that there's not even an increase in power output at the duration your training, eg 3-6mins

 

[baker3]

Wow! are you saying that there's not even an increase in power output at the duration your training, eg 3-6mins

I also find that hard to believe

Probably not doing them hard enough

 

[nmcgann]

Wow! are you saying that there's not even an increase in power output at the duration your training, eg 3-6mins

Yup, that's correct. No increase and that's doing 4x5 sessions as hard as I can, so not slacking on intensity.

The lack of improvement does make these sessions feel like pointless torture

Neil

 

[Ade Merckx]

mmm...I'm on my 3rd set of 4 x 5 in 10 days. At the end of today's session I kinda felt a bit stronger although the legs are a bit sore. I kinda floated up this 1 mile drag when I headed home. There's no power meter so I can't quantify the results; so far but the sensations are good

 

[Piotr]

Yup, that's correct. No increase and that's doing 4x5 sessions as hard as I can, so not slacking on intensity.

The lack of improvement does make these sessions feel like pointless torture

Neil

Fatigue? I had some great VO2max sessions after a team camp followed by a "rest" week, but have found that doing them while trying to build CTL is quite unproductive.

 

[Bill Black]

Yup, that's correct. No increase and that's doing 4x5 sessions as hard as I can, so not slacking on intensity.

The lack of improvement does make these sessions feel like pointless torture

Neil

Neil:
There is a solutiont o your lack of progress -- it simply requires that you determine how to stress yourself in different ways in order to induce the physiological adapatations necessary to show improvement in your power numbers. Try the following (I do it on a trainer but you can do it outside as well) -- warm-up well then 60min. comprised of 1min. of max effort followed by 4min. of twaddling and doing 12x of those completes your hour. Do those for 3 weeks, once per week with one other quality day each week and endurance/recovery riding on the other 5 days making sure that you are well rested for this workout and your other quality day. The take another crack at your VO2max numbers and let me know how you make out.
Best,
Bill Black

 

[nmcgann]

Neil:
There is a solutiont o your lack of progress -- it simply requires that you determine how to stress yourself in different ways in order to induce the physiological adapatations necessary to show improvement in your power numbers. Try the following (I do it on a trainer but you can do it outside as well) -- warm-up well then 60min. comprised of 1min. of max effort followed by 4min. of twaddling and doing 12x of those completes your hour. Do those for 3 weeks, once per week with one other quality day each week and endurance/recovery riding on the other 5 days making sure that you are well rested for this workout and your other quality day. The take another crack at your VO2max numbers and let me know how you make out.
Best,
Bill Black

Hi Bill,

It's not just 5min intervals, I've also been doing a mix of sessions with 6x2min at higher intensity (5min recoveries) and 12x1min (1min recoveries) at similar intensity to the 2min ints (the incomplete recoveries limit the power).

The powers for these sessions have stayed the same too.

Neil

 

[Bill Black]

Neil:
Make sure you note the other and verry important point I made -- your quality sessions must be done when you are fresh. If you are not fresh/rested enough to really take things to the limit, the sessions will do nothing but continue a chronic fatigue pattern.

Best,
Bill Black

 

[nmcgann]

Neil:
Make sure you note the other and verry important point I made -- your quality sessions must be done when you are fresh. If you are not fresh/rested enough to really take things to the limit, the sessions will do nothing but continue a chronic fatigue pattern.

Best,
Bill Black

Hmmmm, yes. I'm very, very bad at resting and doing sessions at a low intensity.

Food for thought....

Neil

 

[Bailsibub]

In my experience, VO2 intervals lead to a peak in FTP, and of course, VO2 power. This past spring I did a weekly session or two for five weeks leading up to my priority race, a 9-day stage race. I had a hard time the first couple workouts, completing like 3 or 4 intervals. But the last two workouts, I completed all 5 intervals, and power was 10-15 watts higher than the first week of them. FTP also went up from 310 to the 320s during that time. Nothing that amazing, but 15 watts is enough to make me happy.

 

[Ade Merckx]

In my experience, VO2 intervals lead to a peak in FTP, and of course, VO2 power. This past spring I did a weekly session or two for five weeks leading up to my priority race, a 9-day stage race. I had a hard time the first couple workouts, completing like 3 or 4 intervals. But the last two workouts, I completed all 5 intervals, and power was 10-15 watts higher than the first week of them. FTP also went up from 310 to the 320s during that time. Nothing that amazing, but 15 watts is enough to make me happy.

Thanks mate thats good to hear. I really wanna stick with them so I can see some results. Its the end of week two and things are getting tough! Damn that soreness in the legs tends to hand around for quite a while My remaining races are mainly crits and the odd 2 hour road race so I think I can afford to sacrifice some CTL (don't have a PM). I tend to do lower level 4 workouts of 60-90mins to keep FT going.

How did you go in the stage race?

 

[Bailsibub]

Like Bill said, these workouts should be done on fresh legs. So if you've got some CTL to give up, then that's a good thing. It gets really challenging when you're trying to do these workouts and recover, but also build CTL.

For sure, stick with them. To me, these efforts feel like the moments when the smack is getting laid down in a race. So they've gotta be good. Oh yeah, and they do raise power, at least in my experience.

You might want to program some tempo efforts in your routine. They keep the workload up and don't seem to be too hard on the legs.

The Tour de Korea was quite the experience. I posted about it on the board earlier. Here's the link if you've got some time: http://www.cyclingforums.com/cycling-training/468121-tour-korea-recap.html

 

[Ade Merckx]

oops my Bad, I remember reading it now