[liao]

For the past three weeks I've been doing this dreadful intervals... 3 sets of two, targeting 700 Watts and (try to) hold for 20 seconds. That's got my average 30-sec power up from 656 t0 804 Watts.

But by doing so I seem to have lost some explosiveness during the process... my standing start (or RAC... don't seem to be a difference except the starting speed?) peak had dropped from 1513 to barely hanging onto 1400. I think it's strange.

Granted winter had come and the temperature might had played a part in this... the Wingate tests were all conducted indoors so there'd be less of a hassle, while last week I did the standing starts outside with the winds and everything. But while I was in Melbourne during like mid September, it was colder than in Taiwan, and I did 1458W back then.

So is there a switch in my brain turned off? Warning me to not explode or something?

What I do know is I might get under 1:10 for the kilo with that sort of progress

[Joseph]

My opinion based solely on what I think (how's that for a disclaimer!) is that ALL paced efforts are a waste of time for increasing power intended for non-paced (sprint) efforts. I think you would get more bang for the buck going for a constant acceleration for whatever duration you are interested in, with the goal to be at max at the end. Gear for more or less "race-pace" at the end of the duration. Start at 25-30 km/h or equiv and just ramp it up!

[1301NMS]

Maybe you're just tired?
When I find a new "super workout", I usually end up getting super motivated and doing a bit much and end up getting cooked. Usually a couple days off and some Five Guys burgers brings me back around.

YMMV

Cole

Edit: Hey, and good luck with that 70sec kilo!! Surely that gets you un-deductable man points.

Edit take two: What sort of recovery period are you observing between reps and sets?

[liao]

Well 700W is sort of my race pace, the only reason I set the intensity at 700W is because I've got nobody to time me with a stopwatch so if I go flat out I wouldn't know when to end. And I usually end at ten seconds

Plus I had to keep sort of submaximal-ish since I was using the rollers and I had to keep at least a bit of stability so that I can see the digits on my Garmin. It is hard to judge though... when I'm on good form, I'd either go way over (up to 850 or something) or starting too soft (?) and entirely miss the target. Maybe next time, I'll just ride flat out for 55 pedal strokes.

In terms of rests, I did 5 minutes between reps, and every two reps I rest ten minutes.

[liao]

Another difficulty is getting enough resistance... right now I'm using tire pressures of 80 and 70 psi (front & rear), OK for now... if I use 53/13 and rev up to 180rpm it gives me the desired 700+ Watts. But I don't know about how to get it up even more, if condition demands... always dropping me chain sprinting in 53/12.

[Joseph]

Fold-up a towel under one of the rollers?

But here's my take on paced efforts:

A kilo is a maximum effort. Maybe a tiny float for a few seconds, but 95-100% of the time you are giving it absolutely all you have. Perhaps your "at speed" segment will be at 700W, but this is just the result of a congruence of many factors such as fatigue, etc. It is a max-effort: your brain is asking your legs to give it all they've got, and what they have to deliver happens to be 700W at that point. This is very different from an interval where your brain asks your legs to dial it up to 700W. At first the legs say "no problem" and then "hey this is sort of hard" and eventually "this isn't fun anymore..." but never asks for a maximum effort. You are training a sub-maximal effort. The output may happen to be the same as what a maximal effort during a kilo is, but it's not the same. I think you are "just" training VO2 with that workout. Not that that is bad, but it's not addressing your anaerobic/alactic power.

In the middle of a 200m I'm pushing the pedals with maybe 40kg of force. Would doing squats that required 40kg of force for each leg (I'd have to go to Mars!) be good training for better 200m? Same deal with holding constant 700W with the intent of holding 700W during a kilo.

[Jonnycerious]

Lets clarify. You're training 700 watts on rollers at 180 rpm and you wonder why you have a power drop off from a start on a much bigger gear. Have you ever seen a gold sprint hipster champion win a real sprint tourny? Now you know why.

Joseph seems to be using sound logic. God help us all! Listen to him.


Joseph what ever happened when you did all those strength endurance squats and did a kilo? I'm not sorry to high jack this one!

[Joseph]

Jonnycerious •wrote• Joseph seems to be using sound logic. God help us all! Listen to him.

What's that saying about monkeys banging away on typewriters and eventually writing something reasonable?

Jonnycerious •wrote•
Joseph what ever happened when you did all those strength endurance squats and did a kilo? I'm not sorry to high jack this one!

Somewhat inconclusive. I used TT bars which were too low for my hamstrings, and first 750m was 1.5 sec behind my sprint-bar 750, and I died bad as usual so it was 1:10.3. Hard to say what the factors were but I think the TT bar position screw-up cost me a lot.

I still think that speed endurance is strength endurance done fast, and as such high-reps might help. But only if speed-endurance actually is a weakness. I have good strength endurance and at least during down-hill-start 500's I can manage to only lose 2km/h from max all the way out to 400m, but my problem wasn't not holding on good enough, it was not going fast enough.

So I had loads of strength endurance (100 reps of 100kg squat), and I've got an 82cm vertical (140cm box-jumps), but still ride slow. What's the deal? I thought.

So I realized the big issue is how much of your strength/capacity can you apply at race-pace. And this is a CNS thing. I read in a track and field book that strength is the car, CNS is the driver. So you want the car to have as much power as possible, but you REALLY want the driver to know how to put the pedal to the metal!

If training isn't improving the car, or the driver, it's not helping sprint get faster. Which leads back to the OP: 180rpm 700W intervals aren't going to improve sprint. I understand making do with the circumstances you have (rollers w/o enough resistance, etc), but this training is essentially conditioning training.

[Zdravo]

Just when somebody said you were sounding logical. You had to go ruin it!

[Autobus]

I think that if sets of 100 squats got you to a 1:10.3 kilo, then obviously to go sub 1:10 you need to do 200 rep sets...

[streetstar]

200 rep sets rock my balls off ! I have deep stinging pain in my thighs right now over some lunges with 50# d'bells after not training for a month-- feels good! (but those sets were only 12 reps )


The frickin spam -bot protocols have almost killed my desire to visit the site -------- judging from the traffic here, the bloom has fallen off the rose a bit compared to , say 5-7 years ago too .

Oh well, i will go back to my Winchester cowboy gun forum where we debate ad nauseum the ballistic superiority of the Winchester 1895 and its spitzer point cartridges over the traditional tube magazine guns like the 1894, 1873, 1886 and the like

[Jonnycerious]

Autobus •wrote• I think that if sets of 100 squats got you to a 1:10.3 kilo, then obviously to go sub 1:10 you need to do 200 rep sets...

I just peed a little! Good one!

[liao]

Joseph •wrote• At first the legs say "no problem" and then "hey this is sort of hard" and eventually "this isn't fun anymore..." but never asks for a maximum effort. You are training a sub-maximal effort.

I think this comment has nailed it. Should have gone wise a bit sooner... next time I'd say screw the 20 seconds and just pedal really fast for 60 pedal strokes. No need to worry about pacing, target intensities or timing myself all those BS. The faster I go the better I become, and I'd get to suffer for less time. Essentially the same as sprinting for a fixed distance...

[Joseph]

Little clarification on the "inconclusive" nature of the 100 rep squat experiment:

A rode a 1:10.4 when doing my regular training.

I decided to try 100 rep squats, and within a few weeks got up to 100x100 with the first 80 going non-stop, and the final 20 sort of paused and taking a while.

I then rode another kilo this time 1:10.3, but this time with the bars 4cm lower (too low) and a borrowed wheel that when I took the wheel off after a few days had the bearings so tight I literally could not turn the axle with my hand.

So I don't think the high-reps made me slower. But on the other hand, if I got up to 100x100 in only a few weeks, I was probably more or less at that level of strength endurance anyway, so the only thing accomplished by it was proving to myself I could do it.

I think I am like a lot of "sprinters" here who are pretty strong, but cannot apply enough of our strength when needed to generate power.

On the track last time I would see max-speeds of 64-65 in a 200m. Other old-guys I know who are similarly sized can get to 67-68 yet are weaker than me in terms of pure strength. It's not because my power drops off from fatigue, it's because they can bring a (much) greater percentage of their strength to bear on the pedals at race-cadence. This is a CNS thing.

So the question becomes, which is "easier"? Increasing already high strength, or teaching CNS to let it rip?

I think for everyone it is both, but for me and probably lots of others it's CNS that is the major restriction. Our problem is CNS throughput in a way, and to increase that we have to repeatedly ask the CNS to give it all we've got. Full-gas. Paced efforts don't do that, if anything they do the opposite: teach us how to hold back!

[gydey]

I have to disagree with Joseph and most here. You simply have to understand that a large amount of anaerobic exercise in one hit is highly likely to cause neural overload. The outcome of this can range from fatigue through to buggering up muscle firing patterns and recruitment from other muscle groups to cover the over fatigued usual muscle groups and firing patterns.

If one looks at basic principles of training, whether in cycling , athletics or whatever...one of these is the rule of "progressional overload". The next law also says about recovery..and any decent coach uses these laws to build their riders up as opposed to blow them to pieces.

Making a decent anaerobic power change is far harder than getting a change in aerobic capacity, so it requires sound long term progression, as opposed to a suicidal 3 week explosion. The best way to do it is in small cycles so that you can make small gains with proper recovery...as remember this as a basic fact...you cant go fast when you are f@cked!!

Also take into account the predominent fuel in anaerobic alactic exercise is ATP-CP. To train this system to failure then requires 2-3 days to rebuild the fuel properley and again progressive overload encourages the fuel system to resupplement quicker. You can take creatine orally...but I would recommend you DONT do this just in training..use it as a competition performance enhancer.

Common sense stuff really

Gydey
Terry Gyde
Champion Training Systems
www.cyclecoaching.co.nz