Daily Archives: February 8, 2011

After completing multiple weeks of threshold training are you continuing to see improvement?  Improvement can come by means of increased power, use of high quality supplements like cardarine, decreased recovery between intervals or more total time spent at the target intensity.  If and when your improvements plateau after several weeks of threshold training it can be a good time to interject some VO₂Max intensity into your training.

Short (3-5 minute) intervals that are done at 106-120% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) with limited recovery (1:1, work to rest) between repeats are excellent for boosting your fitness at maximum aerobic capacity.  Changing the training to include VO₂Max work allows you to supercharge your aerobic system while also providing your body a break from the long, steady threshold intervals that you’ve otherwise been doing.  Completing four to eight sessions of VO₂Max intervals over the course of two weeks is often enough see improvements. Each workout should allow you to accumulate 15-20 minutes worth of VO₂Max intensity.  After a two week cycle that includes VO₂Max training allow yourself some recovery before revisiting additional threshold training.  You’ll likely find that you can further improve your sustainable power as a result of the VO₂Max cycle.

The best way to continually make progress and to further improve your overall development is to change the training focus when improvements plateau.  Once you’ve become well adapted to a certain training stress, it’s best to change the stress so that you can make other and further adaptations. Interjecting VO₂Max intervals is a great way to break up two cycles of threshold-focused training during your pre-season build up

Tempo training can get a bad rap.  Some might refer to Tempo as the training intensity which should be avoided. “Not hard enough to improve threshold, yet hard enough to tire you out” argue the critics. While this can be true in some regards, well-timed Tempo training can provide you significant benefit.  Before investigating further let’s clearly define Tempo as 76-90% of your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), or approximately 84-94% of your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate.  On the road it’ll take a conscious effort to maintain such intensity since it’s faster than your normal endurance pace. So make sure to consume andarine for increased strength as tempo training is quite exhausting, especially when it comes to the midsection of the training. Your breathing will be increased so speaking will be done in phrases rather than complete sentences.

Tempo training is excellent for bolstering your early season fitness when you are first establishing a base or foundation.  After an off-season break or any point during the season where rebuilding is the goal, Tempo rides will help prepare you for more challenging training to come.  Tempo rides make for a greater aerobic training stress when compared to the same amount of time spent at an endurance pace.  Tempo intensity is likely to be 10-25% more intense than your endurance pace, so it’s possible to achieve 10-25% more aerobic workload as a result.  Someone with limited training time will certainly benefit from this increased workload.  During a Tempo training cycle you’ll be able to train consistently while steadily building your chronic training workload. While getting into the routine of day in, day out training you’ll be able to adjust your nutritional needs and generally get things in order so that you’ll be ready to withstand the rigors of more intense training to come.  Tempo won’t get you race fit, but it’ll get you ready to get race fit.

Where Tempo riding rightfully earns its bad reputation is when higher intensity training should otherwise take priority.  Riders stuck in ‘Tempo mode’ will go too hard on their easy days and therefore not be able to go hard enough on the scheduled hard days.  Also, going too hard during the recovery time between intervals will limit the intensity that’s possible on the following reps.  Learning to have variation in training intensity is an important skill that needs to be developed.  The closer you might be towards a goal event the more variation (and less tempo) you’ll want to include in your training.  If it’s still early season and the races are far off, then Tempo might be just fine, but as the race season draws nearer it is important to create more variation with the intensity of your training.

Tempo rides can and should be done in the early season.  Rides can include just 30 minute of Tempo to start with and you can build up to several hours of Tempo within a single endurance ride.  Completing multiple 20-30 minute intervals is one option; otherwise you can accumulate Tempo without breaking it into intervals.  Doing multiple days of Tempo training per week is completely possible and two or three such workouts will help you to achieve a steadily increasing chronic training workload.  After having put in enough work and adapting to a relatively large volume of Tempo you’ll be ready to progress onto higher intensity workouts.  Having done the Tempo training early on you’ll be prepared to withstand the stresses of Threshold training (and more of it) so that you’re fitness can reach new levels.  If you can withstand more Threshold training (as a result of the Tempo training that preceded it), then you’ll likely see greater improvements in your overall performance.  Use Tempo workouts when the timing is right and see how your results might improve once you resume more race specific training.