I know you have spent a lot of time this winter on the
indoor trainer doing workouts watching videos of everything from Rambo to
“real-life” cycling videos like the ErgVideos.
These are great tools to increase your fitness in the winter, go to the
next level and also to maintain your hard won fitness from last season. It’s
always a battle in the winter with cross-training exercises, cold weather (for
most of us!), indoor riding and just how much intensity to do indoors and
outdoors on the good days. I prescribe a
lot of tempo and “sweet-spot” work in the off-season in order to limit the
upper intensities. If you ride at the higher levels in the winter, you risk
peaking too soon and creating a lull in your fitness in March, right when most
of the racing starts in the US.
To
prevent this from happening, it is important to continue this building of your
power foundation.
I really don’t like the phrase, “Base Training” because it produces
images of long, slow distance training where your watts are at 60% of your
threshold and you just putter along in your ride. Too many athletes and coaches believe that
an athlete has to do “Base training” first and before any other type of training
can be started. Now, I’ll concede that
if you are a Pro cyclist and training for a huge season in Europe in 2014, then
yes, you should be doing some serious “Base training”. Riding your bike for 4-6 hours a day at
endurance pace will help continue to develop your aerobic system and also prevent
you from peaking in January. But,
everyone else? Forget it.
We don’t have the time to put in 4-6 hours a
day at a slow pace, stopping at coffee shops along the way and enjoying the
sights. For most of us, we have only 1-2 hours a day to train and we
have to make the most of those hours, optimizing our training for the highest
ROI. If we took that 1-2 hours a day and
rode at endurance pace, then what would really happen? We would lose fitness and get slower. For
most of us, riding that slow will not be challenging enough to create any
training stress and therefore adaptation (improved fitness). There is a relationship between time and
intensity that must be respected and when you ride at lower intensities, then
you need to ride longer in order to create enough stress for adaptation. Therefore, I like to call what most of do in
the winter and early spring, your “Power Foundation”. This is the type of riding that contains more
tempo and sweet-spot work, essentially more intensity (but not too much!) than
riding around at endurance pace.
Building your power foundation, I believe, is critical for the coming
season in improving your FTP, and also preparing for the entire season of
racing, so that you are consistent throughout the year. In the
late winter/early spring, you should be finishing the power foundation phase
and transitioning from indoor riding to outdoor riding. This signals the time in which you need to
solidify your winter fitness, especially if you have risen up a level (!) and begin
adding in more and more work at your threshold and a little above.
Before beginning to ride right at your FTP for extended
periods of time (longer than 10minutes) I would recommend you to do some final
work at your sweet-spot (88-93% of FTP) and then move onto work right at your
FTP and above. This is one of my
favorite workouts that I use for many of my athletes regularly in February and
March.
Sweet-Spot with
bursts
Warm-up:
15minute warm-up with (1) 3 minute effort at 90% of your FTP,
then 5minutes easy,
Main Set: Nail it at 88-93% of your FTP for 60 minutes, with 20 bursts (every 3 minutes!) to 120% of FTP, hold for 15 seconds, and return to previous pace (88-93% of FTP)
EASY 10 minutes riding at endurance pace 56-75% of FTP
Then do 30 minutes at 88-93% of FTP and this time do big gear intervals- every two minutes. Slow down to 12mph, put your chain in the 53:13, stay seated and then use strength to explode on that gear and push it hard for 30seconds or if you reach 90rpm, stop when you reach one of those criteria first and return to 88-93% of FTP.
In order to start transitioning into race fitness, finish
with 5 hard sprints – Start in your 53:16 from 20mph and sprint for 250 meters
each, 4-5 minutes rest between each.
Cool Down: 10 minutes easy spinning at less than 56% of your FTP.
To remind you of the Coggan power training levels, see figure 1.
During February and March, along with continuing to ride at
sweet-spot, you need to begin incorporating riding right at your functional
threshold power and also doing some forays above it to prepare for the higher
intensities of racing. I recommend at
least one day a week of training specifically at your FTP and then one day in
which you incorporate shorter intensity as well. I like to incorporate the shorter intensity
on the weekend when you are doing a longer ride, by including it in the first
two hours and then using the last hour or two to focus on your overall aerobic
endurance through tempo and sweet-spot work.
The one focused day of threshold work needs to be highly
focused and designed to just address your FTP and nothing more. This allows you to dig deep into the “well of
courage” and push yourself for maximum training effect. I recommend doing this workout for improving
your FTP.
FTP “Well of courage”
Warm-Up: 20 minutes-endurance pace 56-75% of FTP
MS: 5 x 1minute fast pedal over 120 RPM to get legs opened
up with 1 minute rest between each. Ride at 10 minutes easy at 56-75% of FTP
after those warm-ups. Now, dig in the well of courage and do (4) x12 minutes at
or just above FTP- so 100-108% of FTP - Nail these and push in the last minute
up to 110% of FTP! Do NOT kill it in the
first 2 minutes though, so start out and ramp up to your 100-108% of FTP. REST for 5minutes between each.
After completing the (4) x 12 FTP intervals, ride for 20-30 minutes endurance pace (56-75% of FTP).Finish with one more 12 minutes at FTP interval to completely bury yourself! Make sure you push it hard and do your best completing a total of 60minutes at FTP for the day!
Cool Down: 10 minutes at least than 56% of FTP
On your weekends, make sure you are getting in at least one day of group riding as this is fun and it will also help to develop your race fitness with short, hard bursts and simulated attacks.
I recommend to my clients to do a group for an hour or two and then go longer afterward if they can.
This really makes a difference in your endurance and stamina for the upcoming season. On the other day during the weekend, it would be great to work on your shorter, more intense efforts. I recommend this workout:
Weekend: “A bite of it all”
Warm Up: 15minutes at 56-75% of FTP.
Main-Set: Do (3) x 1 minute fast pedaling. Then do (4) sprints- BIG RING –Put your chain in the 53:15 and start from 22mph. Only do two gear shifts in these sprints to 14, then to 13. Rest for 3-4 minutes between each and get psyched for the next sprint!
After you finish your sprints then do (2) x 12 minutes JUST
BELOW threshold- so about 88-93% of FTP watts in order to get in a little more
sweet-spot/FTP work. Do your best to hold it there! Rest for 5minutes between each.
Now, finish the workout with 4 x 2 minutes on a flat section of road. 2 minutes ON, 2 minutes OFF.
Do your best to hold 130-140% of FTP on the effort. Lastly, ride at endurance pace for 20 minutes (56-75% of FTP)
CD: 5 minutes (<56% of FTP)
Training this early spring should be focused around making
sure you have the overall power foundation developed and then building your
threshold power on top of that. It’s
critical that as you get closer and closer to race season, that you begin
incorporating shorter, more intense intervals that stress your anaerobic
capacity(30sec-2min efforts) and neuromuscular power (5-15 sec.). The transition from winter to spring training
is more important than most riders think as the demands of racing are very
specific you must be prepared for them along with prepared for the entire
season. One important final note to
discuss is the importance of entering the race season with your “battery” 100%
charged. This means that you should make sure you rest between hard workouts
and keep yourself relatively fresh.
Digging a hole in this transitory time can be a recipe for disaster. I
recommend taking a rest/easy day after every 3 hard days of training, as this
will guarantee that you are well rested for the next block of training and are
not getting fatigued.
The phrase, “Power Foundation” is how I prefer to talk about
winter and pre-season training as it doesn’t conjure up those dreaded thoughts
of LSD training, and more focuses one on the ‘power’ side of the equation,
since your goal is to increase your power at threshold this season. Overall aerobic fitness improvement is always
something that we all want to accomplish every season as more fitness=more
fitness and you will be riding faster than previously. These workouts are for riders that don’t
have 4-6 hours to ride each day and will keep your fitness higher throughout the
winter than normal, but that means you don’t have that far to go in order to
peak for your key event in the spring.
Give these workouts a shot and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with your
new higher threshold this spring!
Hunter Allen has many of his threshold and sweet spot
workouts available within the TrainingPeaks.com website store. Check them out and you can download them for
your own use. Hunter is a USA Cycling Level 1 coach and former Professional
Cyclist. He is the co-author of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter,
co-developer of TrainingPeaks WKO+ Software, and is the CEO and Founder of the
Peaks Coaching Group. He specializes in coaching cyclists with wattage meters
and is on the forefront coaching with cycling’s newest tool. He has online training programs available at www.TrainingPeaks.com/hunter and you can contact Hunter directly www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com