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There’s no certainty in this world except death, taxes and – for us cyclists – torturous VO2max sessions. There’s no escaping the fact that top-end work, however deeply unpleasant it might be, is a training essential. Usually completed sparingly towards the latter part of a training block , VO2max workouts turbo-charge your performance, giving you a potentially race-winning edge on the big day. But before we start dreaming of podium positions, we’ve got to actually complete these intervals in a way that yields the greatest possible dividends. Here’s how to approach those dreaded red blocks of work …
In layman’s terms, VO2max intervals are short bursts of very hard work (approximately 106- 120% of your FTP, or Zone 5), which stimulate adaptations that enable you to tolerate so-called ox ygen debt, climb better and ride harder for longer. These intervals pull your threshold power up from above, adding the icing on the cycling fitness cake.
In terms of duration for each block of work , the range is bet ween one and five minutes. Efforts of less than two minutes are liable to make you just go too hard, leading to fewer cellular changes within the muscles. My favourite, therefore, is three-minute efforts at first, building up to four-minute efforts. These are optimal because you get everything out – long enough but not too long. Depending on experience, aim to complete bet ween three to six of these intervals.
Hard, harder, ha-argh!
Training at this intensity starts to smart more or less from the outset. The first minute is OK-ish, you can do it and you might even feel like you’re going too easy. After a minute, the biochemical byproducts of the hard effort begin to take hold, causing discomfort. In the third minute, you’re pulling funny faces and hanging on in there. And then in the fourth minute you really want to stop.
If you’re new to VO2max sessions, you should be wary about how you go about them – manage your expectations. This form of training is hard, as it must be, since cycling is a really tough sport. It ’s about endurance. You’ve got to give it time and be patient. As with all things, practice makes perfect. The more you do, the better you become at them. Physically you will be better equipped and mentally you’ll be more resilient and better at pacing your efforts.
In general, people prefer riding outside but completing this high-end work indoors will garner the optimum outcome, crucially in a safe manner. It’s easy to lose yourself in the heat of a hard effort and be distracted from external factors (like cars!). Training indoors also gives you the choice to pick out some of your favourite high-energy tunes and drown out the sound of your groans of distress with so
