Favorite Winter
Workouts
By PCG Elite Coach
Christian Sheridan
The winter workouts I give to my athletes fall into two
broad categories - pushing functional threshold power (FTP) up from below
through tempo and sweet spot rides, and pedaling efficiency drills.
Tempo and Sweet Spot
The intensity of the FTP building workouts ranges from
76-88% FTP for tempo rides, and 88-95% for sweet spot rides. To determine the duration of the intervals, I
use the time to exhaustion (TTE) metric available in WKO4, which measures the
maximum time a rider’s FTP can be maintained.
Because we’re pushing FTP from below, we want to exceed TTE. A typical tempo workout on the trainer might
be:
WU: 10-15’ with 3x1’ fast pedaling
efforts.
MS: Ride at 76-88% of FTP for a
time equivalent to 175-200% TTE. If you
struggle to ride the trainer for that extended period of time, you can break up
the effort up by standing up every 3’ for 15-20” but be sure to keep power
above 76% even when you sit back down.
CD: 10’ easy spinning.
Outdoors, you would want to keep the tempo duration the
same, but to make the workout even more effective, ride at an endurance
intensity (56-76% FTP) for up to an hour first.
Doing the tempo work with some fatigue already in your legs will help
make the training stimulus even more potent.
Of course, depending on your time constraints and tolerance for riding
the trainer, you could do the entire workout indoors. However, I tend to see about a 90’ limit for
indoor rides among my athletes.
Sweet spot rides raise the intensity, and are generally done
after doing a block at Tempo. Start with
riding a time equivalent to TTE and add time every few rides until you can do
150% TTE. A typical workout might be:
WU: 10-15’ with 3x1’ fast pedaling
efforts.
MS: Ride at 88-95% of FTP for a
time equivalent to 120% TTE.
CD: 10’ easy spinning.
One last variation on the pushing FTP up from below theme
deserves mentioning, and that is the sweet spot criss-cross workout. For this variant, you ride towards the lower
end of the sweet spot range (88-91%) for a time equivalent to 110-120% TTE, but
every 3’, you push the wattage up to 120% FTP for 30”, and then recover back to
88-91%. This workout simulates the less
regular pacing of mass-start racing and forces your body to recover from a
suprathreshold effort at a relatively high intensity.
Cadence and efficiency drills
I have two go-to workouts for increasing pedaling
efficiency. The first is spin ups. After a good warm up, I have my athletes
shift to their small ring and 3rd easiest cog in the back (say 39x19) and spin
for 15” at their maximum comfortable cadence.
After 15”, shift to one easier gear and try to raise cadence; after
another 15” shift one gear easier and try to raise cadence again. Shift back down to your starting gear and
spin easy for 4-5’. Repeat that process
at least 5 times.
The second efficiency drill is 1’ high-cadence spins,
preferably on rollers. This workout is
as simple as it gets - in a very easy gear, spin as fast as you can for 1’
while still riding “quiet” - no bouncing, no chain slap, no vibrations from the
band linking the rollers. Recover 2-3’
and repeat 8-10 times.
Finally, if I have an athlete who has a dual-sided power
meter, and we note a serious imbalance between legs, I will prescribe
one-legged pedaling drills. Starting
with 30” one-legged, with 1’ spinning both legs before switching sides, and
progressing until the athlete can spin at least 1’ on each side equally. To get the most from this workout, it helps
to have a box at about the same height as your pedal at bottom dead center to
rest the non-working leg on.
Those are some of my favorite workouts for athletes stuck
indoors this winter. Adding these into
your routine will both help push your FTP to new heights, as well as help you
make even more efficient use of all that new-found power.
Learn more about Christian Sheridan, PCG Elite Coach from Charlottesville, VA.
