"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - Very low cadence intervals

I was reading a magazine that recommends an early season trianing regimen of doing very low cadence, 50-55 rpm, high gear intervals, interspersed with an overspin period between the intervals.

Has anyone tried these and what do they think? Effective training technique?

I do that during the winter as part of my strength training. No way to know if it helps or hurts, but I do it. Friel recommends this exercise, too, in his training bible.

They seem to work. I did one of those Wednesday night on my trainer. It is a good bit of resistance trainer, and leaves you a little sore. Soreness usually means you did some good work.

It's just strength training for the most part. You might be interested in reading this as it relates to your question (quadrant II training)
http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411/quad.asp


Does anybody actually do quadrant analysis of their training/racing?

It's just strength training for the most part. You might be interested in reading this as it relates to your question (quadrant II training)
http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411/quad.asp


Does anybody actually do quadrant analysis of their training/racing?

yeah, I did that some last season for my races and then compared the results to selected workouts.
I ended up making some changes to my cadence based on what I saw. It was a pain to set up though
so I didn't do it very often.

I tried them this morning and wow, do they ever feel wierd. Pedalling hard at 50 rpm is just wrong! I can definitely feel my quads, and to a lesser degree, my hamstrings.

Is a 53/13 too small a gear for these intervals, or am I doing them wrong? I was getting into the 70's really easy.

I was reading a magazine that recommends an early season trianing regimen of doing very low cadence, 50-55 rpm, high gear intervals, interspersed with an overspin period between the intervals.

Has anyone tried these and what do they think? Effective training technique?

I intersperse VLC into the century rides I do this time of the year (for base) on the weekends. The group I ride with are not particularly fast, so there's lots of opportunities to do VLC work.

I tried them this morning and wow, do they ever feel wierd. Pedalling hard at 50 rpm is just wrong! I can definitely feel my quads, and to a lesser degree, my hamstrings.

Is a 53/13 too small a gear for these intervals, or am I doing them wrong? I was getting into the 70's really easy.

It's tough to say what gear is right, due to variances in trainer resistance. If we're going by heartrate, I'd say keep it in Zone 4 or below (going by Friel's zones)

Carmichael also mixes in low cadence work in his climbing DVD. I have been doing them for the past few months and find it useful. If you're spinning 70rpm in the 53x13 gear, your trainer isn't at full resistance or is faulty or you're a monster. I put mine (traveltrac mag) on full resistance and can hold 50-55rpm in 53x18 right at LT. When I focus right, I can really feel the hamstrings and calves getting a good workout.

http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/setraining/index.html

a counterpoint from BF poster andrew coggan

http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/setraining/index.html (http://home.earthlink.net/%7Eacoggan/setraining/index.html)

a counterpoint from BF poster andrew coggan

for some context, Andrew isn't just a BF'er. Andrew Coggan, Ph.D. and exercise physiologist.

I do them VO2Max pace for hill repeats around here. 55-60 rpm for 4 minutes at 380-400W each repeat. I do them at 50-55 rpm occasionally as well (39-21 @ 8%-13.5% grade).

Lance did similar workouts on the same hills here (low cadence steep hill repeats)

I do them VO2Max pace for hill repeats around here. 55-60 rpm for 4 minutes at 380-400W each repeat. I do them at 50-55 rpm occasionally as well (39-21 @ 8%-13.5% grade).

Is this before, or after, you bonk?

Carmichael also mixes in low cadence work in his climbing DVD. I have been doing them for the past few months and find it useful. If you're spinning 70rpm in the 53x13 gear, your trainer isn't at full resistance or is faulty or you're a monster. I put mine (traveltrac mag) on full resistance and can hold 50-55rpm in 53x18 right at LT. When I focus right, I can really feel the hamstrings and calves getting a good workout.

Monster I am not, I wish. I'm doing them on the road (live in So. Fla.), flat with relatively no wind. Maybe an 11 is in order.

I tried them this morning and wow, do they ever feel wierd. Pedalling hard at 50 rpm is just wrong! I can definitely feel my quads, and to a lesser degree, my hamstrings.

Is a 53/13 too small a gear for these intervals, or am I doing them wrong? I was getting into the 70's really easy.

These are better done from a stop as "stomps" (insert stupid Carmichael TM). Once you get on top of the gear, stop and start again.

http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/setraining/index.html

a counterpoint from BF poster andrew coggan

Thanks for posting that.

These are better done from a stop as "stomps" (insert stupid Carmichael TM). Once you get on top of the gear stop and start again.
I can't remember what a "stomp" is [I feel cheesy even mentioning it], but it seems like doing the seated accelerations would give the most benefit [at least in the seated position, instead of the standing-sprint position].

-bullseye

These are also known as "Extreme Knee Pain Intervals" or EKPI as Carmichael calls them.

I ride a fixed gear in the winter. This makes every hill a VLC interval on the way up, and a VHC interval on the way down.

my coach has me do these all the time. i like em more that high cadence drills

Is this before, or after, you bonk?

That's low man. ;)

To be clear, I did bonk after yesterday's hill repeats. It's a 30 minute ride from the hill back to the office, and I bonked about 5 minutes from the end. The worst of it was inside the building trying to get to my lunch.

These repeats were 60-64rpm though (shallower, longer hill).

I ride a fixed gear in the winter. This makes every hill a VLC interval on the way up, and a VHC interval on the way down.

+1. And it's hilly as crap here.

Az

Here's a Joe Friel workout that I'm doing.

10 Minute warmup in an easy gear and 80 - 90 rpm
10 Minutes 53 * 15(for me) you may want a 12 - 13t 50 rpm HR in Zone 3 - 4
5 Minute recovery in and easy gear and 80 - 90 rpm

Repeat 4 times, substituting the last 5 min recovery with 10 minutes of cool down 80 - 90 rpm

1hr and 15mins ---- Pretty good workout for a cold rainy or snowy day inside.

I saw in pez or something that some pros were describing big gear low heartrate workouts. An ex-pro (in Europe) that I know told me about these workouts soon after he started riding there (early 90s). I figured that they were sort of like "weight lifting on the bike". My cynical side thought that perhaps with the PEDs they were using, the workout would show vast improvements in strength (sort of like how "innovative" lifting techniques showed massive increases in muscle size when in fact it was the steroids everyone was taking).

Nevertheless I tried the workouts and incorporated them into my riding. It's mentally easier for me, it forces me to focus on pedal stroke, and it works muscles that I found I neglected. I found I neglected them because after races I'd be sore, the same way I was sore after these big gear workouts.

Take it easy if you feel your knees complaining.

cdr

I do them once a week at around 60rpm and think they are useful. Some argue that you should do them in the gearing you would normally use if hill climbing.....

Low cadence stuff is strength training. Any benefit gained will be biased towards peak wattage and short anaerobic bursts. There are some folks who believe the peak sprint wattage in bike racing is irrelevant and will point to a study that asked the wrong question to show strength training is useless. Some of them have written books.

Others with as good or better credentials see worth in this exercise. I'm just lumpen proletariat but I can see direct gains in my sprint wattages when I've done this exercise. Less so these days, but I'm old and have peaked.

You make the call.

A friend and I have been riding big gear (53-13 or so) with low cadence (around 55) about once a week for the past 2 months. It's not really intervals though, we started by doing it for 30 minutes straight and have worked our way up to 80 minutes since then. We also did big geared hill repeats last week. In my opinion it's great strength training, dunno if my opinion means anything though.

have worked our way up to 80 minutes

overkill?

I've been doing a single 20-minute strength effort uphill in my 53x15 at about 50 rpm once per week for the last 12 or so weeks during Base 1-3. Despite little to no intensity efforts during this period, I've gained about 20W on my 20 min power.

Friel states that those with the least leg strength have the most to gain from these efforts, and that certainly seems to have been the case for me - Bonebag McSkinnyquads.

:lol: I've never really felt I gain much from the low cadence aspect (been doing this for years), but this is just how you climb steep hills in Austin if you're running a 53/39 - 12/23 or 11/23.

Low cadence stuff is strength training. Any benefit gained will be biased towards peak wattage and short anaerobic bursts. There are some folks who believe the peak sprint wattage in bike racing is irrelevant and will point to a study that asked the wrong question to show strength training is useless. Some of them have written books.

Others with as good or better credentials see worth in this exercise. I'm just lumpen proletariat but I can see direct gains in my sprint wattages when I've done this exercise. Less so these days, but I'm old and have peaked.

You make the call.

Do you have a source for this? I can't believe someone would take this position for criterium racing. Peak wattage and short anearobic bursts are irrelevant in the final sprint, when you are trying to break from a group, when you are sprinting to catch when a gap has opened up in front of you, getting back on when going around a corner?

Doesn't make sense to me.

I've added this Pez article (http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=4527&status=) from a little over a year ago to my training "library". The muscular endurance intervals section refers to LCIs as a way to add some variety to the base period, aka zone 2 death marches. :)

I used to do these a lot and they seemed to help my strength a bit, which I never really had an overabundance of. I primarily do them on my Fluid 2 trainer, usually 5-10 minutes at a clip. Gearing, I would typically do my 50x11 or 12 (depending on which bike/wheelset I was using), and in the 50-60 rpm range. Sometimes it would climb to around 60-65 rpms, but that was more of an effort.

Oddly enough, I found these really "easy" to do on the trainer, but climbing outside, not so much.

I need to start doing them soon. Just got back on the bike Jan. 9th after nearly 2.5 months off the bike, so probably in the next couple weeks I'll start them again.

Do you have a source for this?...Doesn't make sense to me.

It's the "weight training has no value" crowd. Coggan's among them and has posted so all over the 'net. To be fair, none of them has declared that sprinting ability is unimportant.

Most of this opinion seems based on one study with "trained cyclists" that didn't focus on where most people would see the benefit, but rather on aerobic improvements, of which they saw none. Not exactly shocking stuff there. The problem with a lot of these studies is people take a narrow result and want to apply it wholesale to the broadest application. Sadly some of them do so in a pretty arrogant and dismissive way that tends to kill reasoned discussion.

I know several folks who are highly credentialed, both on and off the bike, who are staunch advocates of this kind of training.

I also know of numerous examples of people who improved their sprinting ability (in some cases dramatically) by doing low cadence and weight work. In one case the friend was a ultramarathon cyclist.

I can go back through my records and show a pretty direct correlation between my peak, 5, and 10 second sprint wattages and my increase in weights during the winters from when I started working with a power meter. Those improvements have, not surprisingly, become much smaller as I'm hitting my genetic (and age) limiters.

My racing experience has been that if two (or four or six) riders are more or less equal and arrive near the finish with some gas in the tank, the guy with the better sprint will win. That goes for crits and climbing races. Again though, folks can look at this stuff and make up their own mind.

And Andy did comment grudgingly on the power forum that he supposed if you were a "sprinter" weight work couldn't hurt.

I feel that people can be profiled into responders and non-responders towards these types of workouts.

Those likely to be responders are women (low testosterone), masters (low test and age related reduction in muscle mass) and those coming from ultra-endurance event training (long term neglect of fast twitch motor units).

Those unlikely to benefit are hormone filled young men and those who come from a background of weight or sprint training.

It's the "weight training has no value" crowd. Coggan's among them and has posted so all over the 'net. To be fair, none of them has declared that sprinting ability is unimportant.

Most of this opinion seems based on one study with "trained cyclists" that didn't focus on where most people would see the benefit, but rather on aerobic improvements, of which they saw none. Not exactly shocking stuff there. The problem with a lot of these studies is people take a narrow result and want to apply it wholesale to the broadest application. Sadly some of them do so in a pretty arrogant and dismissive way that tends to kill reasoned discussion.

I know several folks who are highly credentialed, both on and off the bike, who are staunch advocates of this kind of training.

I also know of numerous examples of people who improved their sprinting ability (in some cases dramatically) by doing low cadence and weight work. In one case the friend was a ultramarathon cyclist.

I can go back through my records and show a pretty direct correlation between my peak, 5, and 10 second sprint wattages and my increase in weights during the winters from when I started working with a power meter. Those improvements have, not surprisingly, become much smaller as I'm hitting my genetic (and age) limiters.

My racing experience has been that if two (or four or six) riders are more or less equal and arrive near the finish with some gas in the tank, the guy with the better sprint will win. That goes for crits and climbing races. Again though, folks can look at this stuff and make up their own mind.

And Andy did comment grudgingly on the power forum that he supposed if you were a "sprinter" weight work couldn't hurt.


Yep, my best racing season was when I did heavy weights for about 3 months during the winter season. Didn't have power meters back then, but the proof is in results.

Didn't have power meters back then, but the proof is in results.

The only change you made was the weights?

I feel that people can be profiled into responders and non-responders towards these types of workouts.

That's training in a nutshell.

The only change you made was the weights?

2 weeks of riding in Florida in December and weights. I lived in Wisconsin at the time so I don't think the Florida riding made much of a difference. Couldn't get back on the road until say March/April.

I think cycling takes several years before you really start seeing results. That year was my 3rd or 4th year of riding with really no athletic preparation before that, other than playing hockey in my early teens, a good 5 years before.

Low cadence stuff is strength training.
You make the call.

Exactly. Although I am not in the category with Mr. Ex I can see definite benefits to doing ME, (muscular Endurance), intervals on the Computrainer. I do them by slowly building wattage while maintaining a cadence below 60 RPM.

It is a grinding workout where being smooth and "quiet" build strength and good form.

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p230/gregogarrison/MEIntervals.jpg

I also know of numerous examples of people who improved their sprinting ability (in some cases dramatically) by doing low cadence and weight work. In one case the friend was a ultramarathon cyclist.

I can go back through my records and show a pretty direct correlation between my peak, 5, and 10 second sprint wattages and my increase in weights during the winters from when I started working with a power meter. Those improvements have, not surprisingly, become much smaller as I'm hitting my genetic (and age) limiters.



My question would be is the low cadence work effective at increasing sprint power, or was it the weight lifting? Coggan's analysis of low cadence stuff would indicate that weight lifting is better, or perhaps 'stomp' type workouts with higher force/lower reps than simply low cadence.

Monster I am not, I wish. I'm doing them on the road (live in So. Fla.), flat with relatively no wind. Maybe an 11 is in order.


I do them in the base phase. CTS calls them muscle tensions, and they're supposed to be done uphill, and typically their 8-10 minute intervals.

Living in Florida, its hard to do them right.

For me I've found that 53-11 on a cycleops Fluid2 is just about the right intensity for the 55rpm cadence.

Other alternatives are do the 53-11 into a headwind.

Or find the longest hill (i.e. bridge or overpass) and time them so you're finishing the end of the interval on the "hill"

Ride with the brakes on.

Some combination of the above.

My question would be is the low cadence work effective at increasing sprint power, or was it the weight lifting? Coggan's analysis of low cadence stuff would indicate that weight lifting is better, or perhaps 'stomp' type workouts with higher force/lower reps than simply low cadence.

Most of the directed low cadence stuff I knew of is higher force (hill climbing, that sort of thing). As to which is better, I could think of good reasons to pick either side. On one hand weights would seem to be much more controlled, repeatable, and more easily manipulated as far as force/reps. Even with a power meter it would be hard to push exactly x watts each rep.

On the other hand there's always replicating the exact motion and muscle work you'd be using.

So I'd have to say definitively: I dunno.

Most of the directed low cadence stuff I knew of is higher force (hill climbing, that sort of thing). As to which is better, I could think of good reasons to pick either side. On one hand weights would seem to be much more controlled, repeatable, and more easily manipulated as far as force/reps. Even with a power meter it would be hard to push exactly x watts each rep.

On the other hand there's always replicating the exact motion and muscle work you'd be using.

So I'd have to say definitively: I dunno.

Thanks for the analysis - that's my conclusion as well. According to Coggan, the low cadence intervals are still too little force to elicit the hypertrophy response that you get from weight training - even climbing a 2 minute hill you are doing a hundred reps.

I do know that I had a great season last year in the sprint department after I rode fixed gear most of the winter. It was more or less all that changed in my training, but any gains could still could be due to many other factors.

we do them, 53- ?? on a decent long ride with 3 long climbs once a week.

Best thing is the guys that shoot off and race up the climbs and then you come grinding up past at 50 rpm.

Seriously though, it is good strength training and something we have been doing forever. It's sort of the only weight training lots of the endurance trackies here in Australia will do half the time.

Most of the directed low cadence stuff I knew of is higher force (hill climbing, that sort of thing). As to which is better, I could think of good reasons to pick either side. On one hand weights would seem to be much more controlled, repeatable, and more easily manipulated as far as force/reps. Even with a power meter it would be hard to push exactly x watts each rep.

On the other hand there's always replicating the exact motion and muscle work you'd be using.

So I'd have to say definitively: I dunno.

Using a Computrainer you can hit the wattage every time on the whole pedal stroke. There is no cheating or letting up. The CT keeps the workout honest.

This early in the season we are doing them in six minute intervals. They will progress through 10 minute to 15 minutes hitting finally at 20 minutes. All of the workouts will still be one hour + in length. As the interval time increases the number of intervals decrease.

My focus for these workouts is climbing ability. We have the microburst intervals to work on sprint speed. Same principal in length of interval and number of repetitions.

I think these are a good idea as well for the same reasons other proponents have mentioned.

I only have one thing to add and that is, doing this work on Powercranks blows donkeyballs but has really helped my form and core strength.

I've been riding a singlespeed mountain bike just about all fall and most of the summer, and my legs are definitely bigger than when I was just riding road bikes. I think my pedal strokes are smoother too, especially standing up. When grinding up a hill on the mountain bike, you need to be smooth or your tire will slip and you'll lose momentum. On a singlespeed, that means you're walking usually. Its very possible that this riding will help me this spring, I guess I'll find out come march.