Drumnagorrach

I have been useing my spinning bike indoors this last couple of months,the weather being wet and windy this autumn.
I am 60,my max HR is 155. I train for one hour every other evening ,warming up for 5 mins,then go as hard as I can for 1 min,lower the resistance and recover for 4 mins and do it again at the 5 min mark for the hour,my version of interval training.
My HR gets to 150 at the end of the minute,and returns to around 115 after the 4 mins recovery, I might add that I am gasping for breath at the end of the minute,and recover after maybe 2mins to fairly fast breathing but not panting.
Is what I'm doing any use ?. Is there any benefit from not having the rest day inbetween?
Any other suggestions
At the moment I enjoy the exercise,it keeps me lean,but really I want to improve as a road rider,I have managed 50 miles in 3.5 hours on fairly hilly routs,but I realise that is quite slow.
Cheers
Lee

ericm979

It's useful if your riding has you doing a lot of short hard efforts. Trying to be fast for 50 miles does not, unless maybe you're racing in a very agressive pack.

BUT, I find trainer work to be very tedious and doing more endurance focused training, let alone base training, would be torture indeed. If you can stand doing 20 min intervals that will help you goal more than the short intervals. But if you can't take that without going crazy then short intervals are better than nothing.

HR lags effort, and it's a poor gauge of effort. BY lags I mean that if you start an interval putting out constant power, say 300 watts, your HR will rise quickly over the next few minutes (say from 115 to 150) to reach what appears to be a steady state. But your power is the same the whole time. If you keep going at the same power your HR will keep going up, slowly. That's called "cardiac drift".

As far as rest days go, it's important to rest when you need rest. You need both stress and rest to improve. Doing only stress is not much better than doing only rest.

gregf83 

Do you ride outdoors as well or just the trainer? If you're restricted to the trainer then it sounds like you have at most 4 rides in a week. If you are really are going all out for the 1 min that's a pretty tough workout and would likely require a recovery or easier day.

I prefer to ride more consistently so would tone down the workout to something you can manage every day. I just do two 20 min intervals with a 5 min break and a 10 min warmup for 60 min total. I do these at a high tempo/low threshold intensity but it's something I can do consistently if necessary.

Today I went for a group ride with 4 or 5 others. It was dryish at the start (4°C) but the rain started halfway through. Riding into the wind with rain blowing in my face I still thought it was preferable to riding the trainer

bigfred 

Yes, it's of use for training your body to perform 1 minute efforts with reasonably long recoveries between effort.

That would depend upon how your body recovers from the first day, what you have planned for the second and subsequent days and whether you'll ultimately have enough recovery time to accommodate the increased stress to your system.

Round out your indoor trainer time with other types of intervals and efforts. I happen to have a copy of the Sufferfest cycling videos. They provide a reasonable selection of various workout types. Everything from 60 seconds efforts like yours but with less recovery between them to 20 minutes at or around your aerobic threshold. I would recommend the purchase them or something similiar. There are lots of option out there. Or, if you don't enjoy watching stuff while you train, design your own alternate workouts.

I've spent the last year working at getting better as a road rider, or, returning to form that I once had. I have utilized a weekly indoor trainer session in addition to one or two solo road workouts and a weekly group ride. My weekly trainer session has utilized the aforementioned Sufferfest videos. My solo training road rides have focused largely on selecting routes with as many significant hills as possible. These average in length from about 60 seconds to just over 10 minutes. If I perform a second solo training ride in a week it will usually focus on either foot speed, form, maintaining a given level of effort for an extended period (great than 40 minutes) or simply a nice easy ride if accompanied by my wife. The weekly group ride is typically 2.5-4 hours.

If the total extent of your training is performing 60second sprints seperated by 4 minute recoveries I would suggest that you start utilizing some other workouts and that you'll see plenty of improvement.

hamster

I'd vary the duration of intervals between 1 and 10 min, and try to get rest to work ratio down at least to 2:1 if not even lower.

3-4 workouts per week should be plenty. Short intervals like that can stress your muscles, and those take longer to recover. If your muscles are still sore after 48-hour rest, delay the workout an extra day or do moderate spinning instead of intervals on that day.

mr_pedro

You might want to read something like https://www.trainingbible.com/pdf/Train_with_Power.pdf
Even if you dont have a power meter, just to get an idea about the different training zones.
You need to train differently for high short bursts of power or for longer efforts. The 1 minute intervals you do now are for training the short burst, but doing 20 of them might not be reaching that objective at all as you will not be able to reach your 1 minute power after a few. There are guidelines for when to stop depending on the performance drop in an interval.

If you want to improve on the longer efforts of e.g. 1 hour you would need to do something like 2 x 20 min intervals at The "right" intensity, which is not going all-out but a little below.

Carbonfiberboy 

It's odd that this is not more widely known. What you are doing is technically known as High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT. HIIT is known to improve both VO2max and endurance more than an equivalent amount of time doing what is usually called endurance training. There is considerable question which exact protocol yields the best result. There is evidence to suggest that 30 seconds on and 4.5 minutes off is slightly more effective than what you are doing. I think you might do better to do this 2 or 3 nights a week and do normal endurance rides for the same amount of time the other nights. You'll have to try different things and see what works best for you.

Since, as Eric pointed out, HR lags effort, the good thing about these very short intervals is that effort is simply maximal for that time period. No need to look at a HRM except possibly for recovery.

Sources:
https://www.sportsci.org/jour/0101/cf.htm
https://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/how-...ed-cyclists-54

hamster

Your first link refers to an article that says that, yes, 30-second intervals were somewhat effective, but the protocol that produced largest and most consistent gains was 4 minutes on, 1.5 minutes off at 80% peak power.

There's a later article https://lunekildecoaching.com/Web15/i...cyklintopt.pdf which compared short supermaximal intervals (175% of VO2max for 30 sec) vs. longer maximal intervals (100% of VO2max for ~2.5 minutes, followed by recovery until the heart rate returned to 65% of HRmax). Both produced superior results compared to "regular" low-intensity program, but the second protocol resulted in 2x greater improvements of VO2max and power output, compared to the first.

On the second protocol, previously highly trained athletes managed to increase their peak power by 6% and their VO2max by 8% after 4 weeks of training, 2 HIT sessions per week, with an average of 4 intervals per session.

Cog_wild

sounds like you're doing excellent work, now find a good group ride and you'll be surprised at what you can do once the adrenalin and hormones kick in.

Drumnagorrach

Well, plenty to think about there , Thanks chaps. My home brewed efforts are loosely based on the "Fartlek " (could be spelet wrong) method.
I would love to get out and ride ,but the only remotely rideable days, have seen me stuck in work,as I type this ,yet another Atlantic low is swirling around us bringing high winds and rain,we are quite a long way north (lat 47) so it's hardly getting light ,but then the solstice is passed now,can only get better.
Cheers
Lee

Carbonfiberboy 

Well done study - I hadn't seen that, thanks. First one I've seen that compared recovery times. Harder to do the longer intervals, and to figure the appropriate intensity. 2.5' at VO2max is going to hurt. Do you know a protocol for determining Pmax without a power meter?

hamster

Yes, 2.5' at VO2max is going to hurt, and you don't get much time to recover, to boot. The other finding in the study is that the same 2.5', but with longer rest intervals, was less productive. "The present subjects were pushed to exhaustion in nearly every HIT session. Indeed, only 64% of the prescribed number of HIT bouts could be completed."

A properly paced 4-minute all-out effort should get you within a few % of Pmax.

Carbonfiberboy 

The way I read it, G2 did the best. G2's recovery was back to 65%, regardless of the time it took. Is that not correct?

hamster

Yes. G2 used recovery to 65% of HRmax, which was, on average, 2 minutes after interval 1 and rising to 4 minutes after interval 8 (for those who managed not to fall off the bike trainer for 8 intervals). G1 used recovery times of 120% of Tmax, or, on average, 5 minutes.