Developing your VO2 max without overdoing things will give great fitness benefits, but doing too many intervals at high intensity will force the body to recover, limiting and restricting further fitness gains. Completing this session intelligently will see great improvements in your fitness. This session is great for triathletes, road cyclists, and mountain bikers.
Each Wednesday I’ll post a Windtrainer Workout that you can do in about 60 minutes to enhance your cycling. See a previous post about training intensity (Levels) to know how hard to work. If you are working directly with Coach Ray he will in most cases prescribe either a Power Zone or Heart Rate Zone to work within if you are training with these tools.
The inspiration for this session comes from an article by Jesper Medhus from Training 4 Cyclist, you can read the article here.
Jesper Medhus’ Avoid Failure Training
- 10min WU Level II;
- 5min Level III;
- 3min Level III/IV;
- 2min Level IV;
- ??x 30sec Level V, 30sec Level II;
- 15min CD Level II;
- 10min Stretching;
Start the workout with a ten-minute Warm Up (WU) riding at Level II.
Follow this with a further ten minutes of an incremental Warm Up (WU). The first five minutes of this are done at Level III. Then three minutes of riding at the top end of Level III and the bottom end of Level IV, then finish with two minutes of riding at Level IV. This will lead you nicely into your main set.
The main set is made up of a series of short intervals. They are 30 seconds in duration at Level V, with a 30-second Rest Interval (RI) at Level II after each rep. Do as much as you can without any noticeable drop in power. If you can not maintain the required power move to the Cool Down (CD) at that point.
Complete a Cool Down (CD) for ten minutes at Level II.
Finish with ten minutes of stretching to assist with your recovery.
If you would like further advice feel free to contact me.
I am the Head Coach & Director of Qwik Kiwi – Endurance Sports Consultant.
I specialise in assisting first-timers and recreational athletes to achieve their sporting goals. I can be contacted at coachray@coachray.nz and 021 348 729. Make sure you sign up for my informative newsletter.
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