It is a true love-hate relationship for most of us. We love intervals because we get a lot accomplished in a short period of time, and because we finish them with a real sense of accomplishment. But on the flip side, they can really hurt and most of us don’t look forward to what we know is coming up.
The big question is how do you stay motivated when you’re months into your training plan and you have to do yet another set of intervals instead of having a weekend race or group ride to look forward?
So, today, we decided to have a roundtable conversation with our team of coaches to discuss how we approach intervals with our athletes. We’ll talk about why we do intervals, how important execution is verses just going really hard, and tips on how to do the different types of intervals like thresholds, VO2max intervals, and sprints. More importantly, all of this will be discussed in the context of how to make interval work more motivating. Sometimes, doing a perfect set of threshold intervals is incredibly motivating, but other times, just going and repeatedly hitting a short climb as hard as we can is what gets us out the door.
The entire team has given their thoughts on interval work many times on past podcast episodes, but today we’re going to dive deep and share our experience, as coaches, on how to get the best out of your interval work.
So, find your motivation to go hard – really hard – and let’s make you fast!
RELATED: Episode 267: Are Your Interval Workouts Effective?—with Dr. Stephen Seiler
RELATED: Episode 311: Not All VO2max Intervals Are Made the Same—A Physiology Deep Dive
RELATED: Episode 332: How to Measure Running, with Nell Rojas
RELATED: Episode 113: The Duration and Intensity of Rest Periods Is As Critical As Your Intervals, with Sebastian Weber
References:
- Billat, V. L., Flechet, B., Petit, B., Muriaux, G., & Koralsztein, J. P. (1999). Interval training at VO2max: effects on aerobic performance and overtraining markers. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 31(1), 156–63. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-199901000-00024
- Edge, J., Eynon, N., McKenna, M. J., Goodman, C. A., Harris, R. C., & Bishop, D. J. (2013). Altering the rest interval during high‐intensity interval training does not affect muscle or performance adaptations. Experimental Physiology, 98(2), 481–490. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1113/expphysiol.2012.067603
- HELGERUD, J., HØYDAL, K., WANG, E., KARLSEN, T., BERG, P., BJERKAAS, M., … HOFF, J. (2007). Aerobic High-Intensity Intervals Improve V˙O2max More Than Moderate Training. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 39(4), 665–671. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1249/mss.0b013e3180304570
- Kellogg, E., Cantacessi, C., McNamer, O., Holmes, H., Bargen, R. von, Ramirez, R., … Astorino, T. A. (2018). Comparison of Psychological and Physiological Responses to Imposed vs. Self-selected High-Intensity Interval Training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Publish Ahead of Print(NA;), NA; Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0000000000002528
- Laursen, P. B., & Jenkins, D. G. (2002). The Scientific Basis for High-Intensity Interval Training. Sports Medicine, 32(1), 53–73. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200232010-00003
- Midgley, A. W., McNaughton, L. R., & Wilkinson, M. (2006). Is there an Optimal Training Intensity for Enhancing the Maximal Oxygen Uptake of Distance Runners? Sports Medicine, 36(2), 117–132. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200636020-00003
- Rønnestad, B. R., Hansen, J., Vegge, G., Tønnessen, E., & Slettaløkken, G. (2015). Short intervals induce superior training adaptations compared with long intervals in cyclists – An effort‐matched approach. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 25(2), 143–151. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.12165
- Schmitz, B., Niehues, H., Thorwesten, L., Klose, A., Krüger, M., & Brand, S.-M. (2019). Sex Differences in High-Intensity Interval Training-Are HIIT Protocols Interchangeable Between Females and Males? Frontiers in Physiology, 11, 38. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2020.00038
- Seiler, S, Jøranson, K., Olesen, B. V., & Hetlelid, K. J. (2011). Adaptations to aerobic interval training: interactive effects of exercise intensity and total work duration: Effort-matched interval training. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 23(1), 74–83. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2011.01351.x
- Seiler, Stephen. (n.d.). It’s about the long game, not epic workouts: unpacking HIIT for endurance athletes. Unplublished.
- STEPTO, N. K., HAWLEY, J. A., DENNIS, S. C., & HOPKINS, W. G. (1999). Effects of different interval-training programs on cycling time-trial performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 31(5), 736–741. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-199905000-00018
- SYLTA, Ø., TØNNESSEN, E., SANDBAKK, Ø., HAMMARSTRÖM, D., DANIELSEN, J., SKOVERENG, K., … SEILER, S. (2017). Effects of High-Intensity Training on Physiological and Hormonal Adaptions in Well-Trained Cyclists. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 49(6), 1137–1146. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1249/mss.0000000000001214
- Turnes, T., Aguiar, R. A. de, Cruz, R. S. de O., & Caputo, F. (2016). Interval training in the boundaries of severe domain: effects on aerobic parameters. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 116(1), 161–169. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-015-3263-0
- Wen, D., Utesch, T., Wu, J., Robertson, S., Liu, J., Hu, G., & Chen, H. (2019). Effects of Different Protocols of High Intensity Interval Training for VO2max Improvements in Adults: A Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 22(8), 941–947. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2019.01.013
Episode Transcript
Trevor Connor 00:00
Trevor, hello and welcome to fast talk. Your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host. Trevor Connor, here with Coach Rob pickles, Coach grant holicy and Chris case, it’s a true love hate relationship. For most of us, we love intervals because we get a lot accomplished in a short period of time, because we finish them with a real sense of accomplishment. On the flip side, they can really hurt, and most of us don’t look forward to what we know is coming up. The big question is, how do you stay motivated when you’re months into your training plan and you have to do yet another set of intervals instead of having a weekend race or a group ride to look forward to? So today, we decided to have a round table conversation with our team of coaches discuss how we approach intervals with our athletes. We’ll talk about why we do intervals, how important execution is, versus just going really hard, and tips on how to do the different types of intervals, like thresholds, VO, two Max intervals and sprints. More importantly, all this will be discussed in the context of how to make intervals more motivating. Sometimes doing a perfect set of threshold intervals is incredibly motivating, but other times, just going and repeatedly hitting a short climb as hard as you can is what gets you out the door. The tire team has given their thoughts in interval work many times in past podcast episodes, but today we’re gonna dive deep and share our experiences as coaches and how to get the best out of your interval work. So find your motivation to go hard, really hard, and let’s make you fast. Well, I’ve been looking forward to this episode, guys. We’ve been talking about a round table to give some practical advice on something we’ve talked a lot about on the show, which is intervals. And we’ve done just looking back at the numbers. We have episode 267, with Dr Seiler, we talked about effective intervals. We have Episode 311 with Neil Henderson, where we talked about the different ways to do vo two Max intervals. But kind of a theme, and grant, I know you love this theme that we have talked a lot about is there is no one perfect interval, and we shouldn’t really think of each interval type hits entirely different systems. So picking intervals based on what is the exact system you want to hit might not be the way to go, but intervals are tough. They’re hard to do. You got to find motivation to do them. So really thinking more in terms of, how do we make intervals more fun, more motivating, so that you’re going to go and do them. I would say that’s kind of the theme of this episode.
Rob Pickels 02:22
Fun and Games. Trevor cycling is serious business.
Trevor Connor 02:26
Well, pain is fun. You know, my pain and anger, that’s fun.
Chris Case 02:31
Whoa, yeah,
Rob Pickels 02:32
it’s funny. Back when I was at pieromi, we had actually gone through a really big rebranding, because everything was about pain and suffering. And then it the time I was there, it switched to fun and adventure, and it doesn’t have to hurt. So it is interesting to see how different segments, subsects of cyclists approach the sport.
Grant Holicky 02:54
Yeah, and I not to get on the tangent of sports psychology here, but you know, the suffering for a lot of us is the fun. Yeah, yeah. I was talking to an athlete earlier this year about, like, when I said something along the lines, if you gotta have a little bit more fun, man, he was, I’m racing though, like, I’m not going to be smiling and waving at people. That’s not necessarily what I meant by fun. You know? What I meant by fun is the challenge and the difficulty and the looking back on it afterwards and going, Oh, I was able to push this side of me or that. So I think it’s important that people define fun, and I think this is important to this episode of that, yeah, what we’re defining as fun is often rewarding, especially
Rob Pickels 03:37
when you term it challenge and difficulty and maybe not pain and suffering. Ultimately, you’re talking about the same thing. And so Trevor, one of the things I want to kick off with this episode is how you enter and approach your intervals will 100% change your outlook and how you execute them
Trevor Connor 03:57
100% if we go with Outlook and we go with approach. If you’re looking at this stuff as a chore, as another thing on your list, it doesn’t matter what we do. It’s going to be a struggle. It’s going to be hard. If you can frame this as an escape, as a process, as a building block, as those pieces of the puzzle, this way I get away from the rest of my work day, think about how much better I’m gonna feel at the end of this. Some of that reframing goes a really long way to help people enter into the set of intervals. I don’t know that people have that. Most cyclists don’t have that much trouble mid block of intervals. We all have those times, right? We all have those times like we all have those moments, but most of the time it’s getting on the bike, or this time of year, getting on the trainer, that’s what’s really difficult. But
Chris Case 04:49
first we need Trevor to give us his Vince Lombardi moment. Here, we need to set the stage about what we’re talking about and define. Explain the big word of the day, which is interval. This is the football speech, come on. Vince Lombardi, I actually
Trevor Connor 05:05
love the fact because you didn’t know that that was No, I always use that this is a football as the example of go back to the basics. And I never remember who that’s from.
Chris Case 05:17
Well, now you do, so try to remember that
Trevor Connor 05:19
you have, we can go back to old episodes. You have reminded me of that five times. Okay? And next time I use it, I will not remember Trevor’s
Rob Pickels 05:26
like some football coach I don’t know he was out of high school. Do you remember?
Chris Case 05:30
Do you know who Vince Lombardi? Yes, I do. You
Rob Pickels 05:32
know there’s a trophy? What? What? You know you’re a big deal when there’s a trophy.
Trevor Connor 05:40
Very true. There’s a super something at the end of the season, super nachos.
Rob Pickels 05:45
That’s what it is.
Trevor Connor 05:47
I mean, it is Green Bay. It’s practically freaking Canada. You should know,
Chris Case 05:54
all right, Vince, this
Trevor Connor 05:56
is a football moment, so, and this is everybody can jump in. But let’s start with, why do we do intervals?
Rob Pickels 06:04
Because they’re fun. That’s why I do intervals. Yeah, right. No. I mean, we do intervals because it allows us to practice and sustain workloads that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to do, right? And I mean, an interval is just a term, right? We’re it’s just we’re human. We like to put things in boxes and give things names, right? But when we’re talking about intervals, we’re talking about just defined periods of work where we probably have an objective that we’re trying to achieve. That objective might be, you know, different based on our goals. The
Trevor Connor 06:34
other thing I will bring up, from a pure scientific standpoint, is, you know, we’ve talked about the pathways of adaptation, and that all training kind of hits the same pathways. But what you see is it is additive. So you can get a lot of adaptations from just going out and riding long and slow all the time, which is what I love, but you can’t get to your best form that way. You can get a lot of adaptations from doing high intensity doing interval work. But again, there’s going to be limits to that, so you need to combine the two. So you need that intensity. It’s just doing the right amount. And
Chris Case 07:09
in a very general sense, the term interval doesn’t actually indicate anything about the intensity. It has to do with time. Correct interval
Trevor Connor 07:18
was correct me, if I’m wrong on this, but my understanding of the history was people just used to go out and just go hard, but there was no structure to it. You just kind of went until you couldn’t go anymore. And then, when they started doing the first research, they discovered, oh, if you take breaks in the middle, you can actually go harder for longer and get more gains. Well. And I think that
Rob Pickels 07:35
that describes a lot of the intervals that people do, right? I have a five minute interval, so I’m just gonna go as hard as I can for five minutes. You know? Well,
Grant Holicky 07:43
I think one of the things that’s valuable about defining intervals is time and zone, right? So how you are breaking up in a period of time you’re trying to spend in a metabolic zone, and what you’re trying to do is this a really high end zone. Is this more of a threshold? The zone is this a below threshold zone? The interval is how you split up your total time that you’re trying to do in that zone.
Rob Pickels 08:07
And the thing I would like to again point out is that, because we’re human and we like to put things in nice, neat little boxes, sometimes we act as though a watt higher or a lot lower is a completely different workout. Yeah, you know, if you’re one watt into your sub threshold zone, it’s not that much different from being one watt into your sweet spot or whatever tempo zone. And the
Grant Holicky 08:29
other thing that we often do, the reason intervals came in, and I think the the origin of a lot of intervals come from running in track, and a little bit from swimming, where you’re taking a race and then breaking that race up into smaller, achievable chunks for training, because you can’t go out and run a 5k every day to try to prepare for a 5k so you can go out and run five 1k so you can go do some variation or split of that total race time. And what’s
Rob Pickels 08:59
interesting about those sports is that they have pre defined lengths at which you’re right, one lap around the track, one length of the pool or whatever else. And Cycling is a little bit different in that we don’t necessarily do that. Not a lot of people are riding on velodromes. So it is interesting how we have accommodated sort of that thinking into the open roads. Right?
Trevor Connor 09:20
So in those sports, you often have a distance based interval. Cycling, we’ve moved to a time based interval, definitely. And cycling, you now basically do it based on power. And you know, they’re trying to get power meters into other sports. But really, that was a big shift. Did you still running? Used to all be paces,
Grant Holicky 09:40
and it’s a blessing and a curse. Watts represent a way to extrapolate a metabolic zone. There’s a lot more going on, if we’re trying to be a threshold, than just watts. It’s heart rate, there’s respiration rate, there’s metabolic there’s a whole lot of things that are going on there. There’s a blessing in that, swimming, running. And cross country skiing, you can’t measure on the fly quite the way you can measure in cycling on the fly. The curse is that we have moved to a point where the Wat is life and death, as you were alluding to rob, where that’s just not the case. We don’t live in that vacuum. And
Rob Pickels 10:19
for more discussion on this grant, and I had an awesome conversation with Nell Rojas in episode 332 about how you’re quantifying run training.
Trevor Connor 10:28
So, you know, the one thing I’m just going to add to what you’re saying is exactly that don’t get obsessed with those numbers. If you go LA, you know, if you last week, you did the whatever particular intervals at 330 watts, and this week, you do them at 320 don’t get off the bike and go, Oh, this wasn’t nearly at a workout, but you’re getting the same game for 100 reasons. Yeah, there’s so many different reasons. And I mean, this is even one of the reasons why, while I love the value of testing, I think over testing can be incredibly dangerous, because testing is but a snapshot. It is but a snapshot of where you are, even if it’s lab testing, even if we’re testing blood, even if it’s with the mask on, even if we’re on a metabolic heart, it is still just the snapshot of where you are if you haven’t been sleeping, if you haven’t been drinking water. We always used to talk about when people came in, when we’re back with Neil at Apex or at the center, make sure you’re hydrated when you come in and you do these tests,
Rob Pickels 11:22
yeah, throws your heart rate zones off, and then you do everything relying on that one test. Moving forward, that test better be active right when I’m working with athletes, if I’m making any changes to zones or whatever else, I’m doing, it based on inspection and trends that I see in their training over time, and I think I actually test less than my athletes would like, Oh, I do. And when I do test is more to characterize them as an athlete than to set their specific training zones well.
Trevor Connor 11:52
And I think that’s a fair point, and I’ll finish this piece of the discussion on that point. What we’re trying to do when we’re trying to get in a zone is put the body under a certain level of stress. That level of stress may be achieved at a much lower wattage due to where you’re doing those intervals in a ride, where you’re doing those intervals in a block of training, how fatigued you are, in general, how fatigued you are, acutely mentally, where you are, all
Rob Pickels 12:19
of those other things. So it’s huge substrate availability, super
Trevor Connor 12:23
important to substrate availability, such a technologically correct way to say I got, I
Rob Pickels 12:30
got to bring the intelligence to this conversation.
Trevor Connor 12:34
I would be like food, food
Chris Case 12:37
stuff in your blood, but
Trevor Connor 12:39
you are actually really getting into which the next thing we wanted to discuss, which is the potential issues with intervals, and that one of getting overly obsessed with the numbers is a big one. Give you an example from last week. So I was just down in Florida for a little over a week, and I was doing my five by five minute camp. Whoa, secret training. Trevor. There we go. So I was doing my five by five minute threshold intervals down there. I have a bike down there. It doesn’t have a power meter. You’re doing them
Rob Pickels 13:04
on overpasses.
Trevor Connor 13:08
Yeah. So my grandparents place is close to the one big bridge down there, and people from Miami will bike an hour and a half to come and do the 70 foot climb of this bridge. So I am spoiled that I’m that close to that bridge, but no more to my point, I was doing those intervals. My heart rate monitor. The strap crapped out, so I had no guys just did the intervals completely by feel. And I ended up doing three sets while I was down there, because I was actually like, this is nice, and it’s flat roads. So the one thing that you have that’s consistent, kind of like runners, is speed. And what was interesting was I looked at the data afterwards, like I just what I realized I had nothing out on the road. I just really focused on going by the field. I came back and looked at the data and compared the three workouts, and I was actually remarkably consistent in the speed. You can do it very well with very little data. Well, this is one of the main reasons I like variation in intervals is because it pushes people away from getting overly obsessed about one workout. If you’re doing five by five all the time, and this is your marker, once a week, I’m gonna do this, it’s really easy to get overly tied into that number one week you’re at 300 and the next week you’re at 295 and you’re really worried that somehow you’ve lost fitness in that week, and you obviously can’t have lost even if you did nothing for that week, you didn’t lose fitness. But variation, different ways to do the exact same idea tend to sometimes keep people from over obsessing about the Y number. If
Rob Pickels 14:38
it’s five by five every week. You begin comparing week to week to week to week to week. And you look for the nuances. You look for the Oh man, I was super strong three weeks ago. Why aren’t I doing but if you’re changing it, it’s five by five one week, that’s 25 minutes worth of work. Maybe we do four by seven the next week. It gets harder to kind of compare. Them. And so you look at them as individual workouts, and you don’t fret over any different what is counter arguments
Chris Case 15:05
here? Let’s hear this counter argument here, Trevor, because I know you’re a fan of five by five, so do them often
Trevor Connor 15:11
that, I mean daily. That has always been, yeah, that has been my winter work, yeah. And I do it for a long time, and I don’t look at the day to day variants. I don’t care if I’m 291 week and 210 the next week, I ate a lot of what I look at is the change over time. So I start them in December, and I will look at what was I doing them in December? Or what ranges are you doing them twice a week, and then what am I doing them? End of February, beginning of March, pretending to shoot himself in the head. Good god, I would I like the fact that in a good base season, I will see the range of my wattage, like kind of what I’m averaging in December and when I’m averaging, by the time I’m done, it’ll go up 4050, watts. Yeah, good season. It’s nice thing to see. It’s
Chris Case 16:06
funny to see you guys have such different approaches, because don’t take this the wrong way. But you thrive on being a bit of a machine, like a robot. Yeah? Put yourself in that place, and it is about perfecting or execution is what you’re going for, and that represents quality. Execution is a really good word there. Yeah. And for you, executing variety is what drives you in a way, and you need that. So this is not a right or wrong situation whatsoever. It’s what works for the individual. And I think both work 100% and
Trevor Connor 16:41
I think one of the things that’s really valuable to understand about me is that part of why I moved to variety, for me personally, is that if I did what Trevor was doing, I couldn’t necessarily look at it well. The way Trevor looks at the way Trevor is able to look at it is to say, I’m gonna do the same thing over and over again, but I’m gonna take this 10,000 foot view and only look at the progression over a three month, four month period of time. That’s incredibly hard for me to do for a lot of people, especially coming from a sport like swimming, where two one hundredths of a second is the difference between success and failure. So it’s very easy for me to get over data driven about some of those things. And I think maybe at this point in my life, trust me, I can see the comfort and what Trevor does and kind of going, all right, going and doing this again. I just struggle sometimes with that motivation. Yeah. So first of all, I am going to say you have actually changed me, because I used to be the you know, I pick an interval, I do it for an extended period of time. I still love my five by fives through the winter, but during the season, I’ve gotten a lot more variance. Like last summer, every day I went out, I went, I have to do something high intensity, and I would just go, what am I motivated for? One day I might go out and do 15 fifteens. Another day, like I won my best workouts last summer. I just went over to this hill. It’s about a one minute Hill. I’m just like, I’m just gonna hit this hill really hard. Yeah, come back down. Hit it really hard. Again. Very little structure, but it was what I felt like that day, and it was very motivating. The last argument I will make for the consistency, which is also what I’ve read in some of the research, when you are constantly changing it up. You are always in that phase where you’re learning the execution, and so you’re not executing the intervals as well. And what I find is when you learn the execution, there are benefits that you can get that you don’t get if you’re always changing. So example with the five minute intervals. My first three, four weeks of them is just getting used to the oh, this hurts. I don’t like this. How many minutes I have left, and then you get over that. So when I was down in Florida doing them, that was a lot of fun. Now I’m like, Okay, I’m back to where I used to be, five by fives. Doesn’t sound like a chore at all. And if you remember, in an earlier episode, I got fit on my bike right before Tobago and fitter is like, you’re not using your glutes at all. And something I used to do when I was doing the five by five minute intervals all the time is once I got used to doing them, then I’d really focus on my pedal stroke pulling through. But I couldn’t do that until I’d had several weeks of them in my legs. And I need to get back to that. And I think part of the reason I stopped using my glutes as much is because we talked about this in a previous episode last year. I was not really motivated for the interval, so just jumping in Zwift races all the time and not focusing on pedal stroke at all, yep, yep.
Rob Pickels 19:30
You know, I’m more of a variation person myself, but I will say I think that the consistency that Trevor is talking about is really good at avoiding another issue that I see with intervals, and that is when people are creating intervals that are too hard or impossible. On paper, seems like a great idea, that combination of workload and power and then not being flexible enough to make decisions and changes on the fly and adhere. Or feeling like it’s a failure because you couldn’t execute a workout, when, frankly, it was probably impossible to be executing anyway.
Trevor Connor 20:07
Well, I think that’s interesting too, because I think so much of our sport trickles down from the top levels of our sport, and we’ll see intervals and coaches talking about what they’re doing with professional athletes. And we hear numbers, and we hear this, and we hear that, and we hear, you know, six by eight or something, just that feels unbelievable. And then we’re creating that interval session for ourselves. If they can do it in their good, you know, I can lower my power and I can do it. But what we often talk about, in a lot of ways, is if I’m doing and Sadler, I think, has talked about this too, if I’m doing x by a What should I do? If I’m getting comfortable with that, Should I raise the power or should I raise the time under load? Usually the answer is raising the time under load. And I think most people’s response yes is to raise the wattage. Do the same thing, but do the same thing. Go harder, and it changes the workout in a different way, and overloads fatigue, and overloads a lot of these things. And so I think that that’s a really important point. Dr Seiler said that right on the show that is really about increasing time at intensity. We actually had Dean golitch say that as well. He’s like me. He loves doing threshold intervals, and he said he loves to give his athletes four by six teams at kind of 92 93% of thresholds. What he has seen is riding at threshold versus 93% of threshold, same gains. So why not ride at 93% of threshold and add more time? Yeah, exactly. And
Rob Pickels 21:37
that’s people run into problems when they do four by 16 at 105%
Grant Holicky 21:41
well, they even run into problems at base when they’re riding at the high end of base, which, over time, is creating a cardiac drift that’s driving you into tempo that isn’t necessarily sustainable for the same amount of time. You know, a lot of base training isn’t supposed to be hard at all. And I mean, I remember way back in the day, and I don’t know that there’s 100% true, but I would always say I don’t think you can go too easy. And remember, I’m talking to athletes, right? I don’t think you can go too easy on your base rides. Just go ride. If you’re pedaling your bike, you’re doing fine. Now I can’t say that to pros, because they know how to go easy. An hour and a half ride, and I’ll watch guys come back with 20 TSS. Like, that’s going easy, yeah, but that’s, that’s all the animal. I
Trevor Connor 22:29
think you brought up. Another thing that I just want to raise as another issue with intervals is when you see athletes get obsessed about the TSS, it is something. So we’re talking about my five by five minute intervals, and let’s move away from those. But I’ve had a lot of people listen to the show, go and try those intervals, and then they email me because they go, it was only like 70 TSS. I’m not getting any gains out of
Rob Pickels 22:49
- Yeah, it’s like point eight, four, if for 50 minutes, or something like that.
Trevor Connor 22:54
So they want to do two sets of them, things like this. And I point out to them. Even when I was racing professionally, I just did five by five, and I might bump it up to five by six, or six by five, or seven by five, but believe it or not, I see huge gains. And it wasn’t like I was getting off the trainer dead, producing 200 TSS. You don’t have to do that.
Rob Pickels 23:15
They’re getting off. And this is something that Neil
Trevor Connor 23:18
just because you can doesn’t mean you should exactly
Rob Pickels 23:21
and oftentimes, when we’re talking about interval work, what matters also is what you’re doing tomorrow. And if you are so wasted from going 110% today, that’s not necessarily effective training at certain times of the year. I do push for things like that without question. But when we’re looking at the bigger picture, we need to really understand how that interval fits into the rest of the plan, and how hard that interval session really ought to be. And that’s
Trevor Connor 23:50
something Brent buelter said to us on the show. Is that every once will I like to empty the tank, yeah, yeah. But more often than not, I like to look at the week as a whole and make sure the week is productive, as opposed to one particular Exactly. The magic wand has been waved. You can’t see this. Chris has grabbed the pen, which he has said as his magic wand. It’s mostly
Rob Pickels 24:11
So Trevor can’t bang it on the table. Yeah, that’s,
Chris Case 24:13
there’s, there’s multiple reasons why I have it in my hand right now. All right, let’s move on to interval types in general, and talk about the differences between them. If there are, do they all hit the same systems? Are they supposed to hit the same systems? What’s going on when you’re out there doing a hill repeat versus doing five by fives, versus doing 15, fifteens, etc, etc, what’s going on?
Trevor Connor 24:38
I got grant looking at me, I love this conversation, because there you go. So much on the side of the system’s idea that every interval hits a different system, and you got to figure out what system you’re trying to hit, and then find the perfect interval for that. And I’m, for example, looking at a study. Now where they compared 32nd intervals, one minute, two minute, four minute and eight minute, and found that the 32nd basically sprints and the four minute threshold intervals produce mostly the same gains. That’s awesome, which is a few variants, but mostly the same gains. The ironic thing was, the one place they really varied was the four minute intervals produced bigger gains in peak power than the sprint intervals. That actually, to me, makes a little bit of sense. Yeah, I think it is surprising how much crossover there is, right? And not surprising. I mean, when you look at the research, it’s not shocking, but anecdotally or conventional wisdom wise, we feel like these things should be so different, they should all live in their own bucket, in their own world, and they don’t. I think that’s why you can train with a sweet spot based program, or you can train with a high intensity or polarized or very much, and you get 90% of the way, or 80% of the way to the same place. There’s
Rob Pickels 26:02
only so many pathways that we can affect right? Let’s be honest. Yeah, you know. And I will say, I think that I’m a little bit of an energy systems guy, right? I do believe that fundamentally, we are working things in a different manner. But I also believe that how we structure those intervals and that we can’t just say a 32nd interval or a five minute interval, because when we say, Okay, we’re going to do 32nd repeats. What does that mean? 30 on 30 off. That’s very different than 30 on five minutes off, right where you’re going completely 100% all in and then full recovery. I’d say 3030s or more threshold, even than they are anaerobic, metabolically speaking, you know. And same thing, five by five with you, Trevor. I every time you say that, I make the clarification for people, because a lot of people would think five by five. VO, two, Max, yes, not how Trevor does it. And his are amazingly effective, but they’re different than I think, what people have in their mind. So we need to be talking about the manipulations that we’re able to do. And as we’ve there’s 100,000 million ways to skin a cat, pick whatever number you want, right? But how we go about it is more important than whatever we’re labeling it. Well, let me
Trevor Connor 27:16
give an analogy here. And this could be a horrible analogy, because it
Rob Pickels 27:21
just came up with it. It’s terrible. It’s gonna be terrible. This is a weakness. Does it involve a house and a roof? I
Trevor Connor 27:29
love coming up with analogies, mostly because Rob hates them, or they’re just so bad, but here’s my analogy. So think of this like cooking dinner.
Rob Pickels 27:39
Oh, cooking dinner,
Trevor Connor 27:43
sprinkling salt. So no, no, we’ve had that one. Yeah, it’s a horrible analogy, I’ll admit. So if you think of systems like the steak is one system, the vegetables are another system, the salads a third system,
Chris Case 27:57
steak system,
Trevor Connor 28:00
I do kind of intentionally make you guys just go. So here’s my point, the way I used to think a lot of the way systems people think is thresholds are all about cooking the steak, and sprints are all about the salad and your anaerobic capacity, or Tabata are all about the vegetables, and it’s completely separate. The argument I would make is all of them prepare the whole meal, which is, when you’re doing thresholds, you’re doing a little more steak, a little less vegetables. Okay, I think that was a stretch. And I think what what food group? That was a nice way of saying that’s a crappy analogy. But what’s my real problem was, what food group you assigned to each energy system just didn’t make any sense in my head. But
Rob Pickels 28:45
if I can try to make this a little better, I think that when we talk about energy systems in the work, what we’re actually talking about is how we’re cooking, right? We have a walk. They all microwave steak. The microwave they all cook steak, they all cook vegetables.
Trevor Connor 29:01
And I’ll take this another step, Trevor. What Trevor is is saying is like systems people look at it and say, okay, the meat over here, the vegetables over here, and none of them are all the touch training is a meatloaf. Man. Everything’s going right. Everything’s combined. But the point I wanted to make about intervals that I think is always lost, not always, but so often lost is the focus on intervals. And this goes back to your point, Rob, is the time on. Intervals are just as much about the time off. I
Chris Case 29:34
just want to mention we did an entire episode with Sebastian Weber quite a while ago, which was an excellent episode, Weber. Weber. Episode 113, the duration and intensity of rest periods is as critical as your intervals. It was great. Episode we used
Trevor Connor 29:50
the vacuum analogy in that one. Did
Rob Pickels 29:52
he that he liked? And the dude can’t remember the first line to the podcast. He remembers i. What
Trevor Connor 30:02
vacuum analogy I see, I love doing my bad analogies with Grant, because grants, actually, I’m gonna give you full credit. You’re great in analogies. So you take my analogy and fix it. It is a meatloaf. Yeah,
Rob Pickels 30:12
yeah, my oven was good. No, it is good. But listen,
Trevor Connor 30:17
there’s, there’s, there’s multiple ways to cook the meatloaf, right? You can do a meatloaf in an oven. You could do a meatloaf in a smoker. You could do a meatloaf. You could, I better be creating a smoker. I bet you could do it in a microwave. That would probably be terrible, but
Rob Pickels 30:31
that’s Chris’s life. No, I don’t use my No, he’s
Trevor Connor 30:35
a smoker. His way, his way would be like, Okay, I’m gonna put it on here for four days at 120 degrees, and eventually it’ll get there, and it’ll be amazing, because I just waited for it. He’s like, the definition of a six marshmallow guy. Remember that the study where, if you the kid got one marshmallow, if they could eat it right now, but if they waited, they got two. Chris would be like, I waited. Where’s my third? Where’s my
Rob Pickels 30:59
fourth? Yeah, I’m still waiting. I’m still here.
Trevor Connor 31:02
So the point I’m trying to make with the analogy, whether we go with what method you’re using to cook it, or the meatloaf, or whatever, is get away from the thought that this type of interval only hits this system, this type of interval only hits that system. They all hit every system. But there’s going to be nuances. It’s going to be a little bit of different mail loaf, or it’s cooking it a slightly different way. And for some of us, that doesn’t matter if you’re Tour de France athlete and you’re focusing on the time trials versus trying to go for the green jersey, those nuances are critical. Yeah. And the thing I will throw in here that we cannot have this discussion without the mental side of this too,
Rob Pickels 31:43
you would bring this, I would, wouldn’t. You would even
Grant Holicky 31:45
going back to what Trevor’s saying about five by five and doing them over the course of a winter, when you start doing the five by five, I would argue that it’s less of a physiological problem that you’re having with the sustainability of five by five and more of a mental strength piece getting used to that feeling two minutes in, two and a two minutes in, when you look at it and go, I have three minutes left. Oh, god, oh, two minutes in, I got three minutes left. I’ve done this a bunch of times before I know how to do this. I’m okay. I
Trevor Connor 32:17
think that’s exactly why I didn’t see the gains when I would do one interval and then jump right to Zwift race, because I was avoiding the pain. I was avoiding the five minutes of you did
Rob Pickels 32:28
a Zwift race to avoid
Trevor Connor 32:31
the pain. What you did to avoid the pain? You were avoiding monotony. You were avoiding the I’m here mentally, wildly uncomfortable, and I need to just sit here, and I think that is so much what I tend to tell people when they get back on the bike after a two week break, I’ve lost everything. I’m so out of shape. I’m like, No, you’re not. You’re not out of shape. You’re still probably very, very fit, but you don’t have the natural painkillers in your system the way you did when you were training hard and just not used to it. This is what I think being stale really is for so many people. I just got there I was stale, or I didn’t have the good legs. I will always, not always, but often, argue that the bad legs is the bad brain in some way, because,
Rob Pickels 33:20
as you’ve said, nobody has bad legs like when they’re winning a race, right? And things are going successful, you feel amazing. It
Trevor Connor 33:27
doesn’t matter. We will say this to the cows come home with cross. Everybody’s back hurts in cross. It’s just whether you’re winning or losing about how much your back hurts. So I had exactly this conversation with an athlete last summer because he had to take four months off the bike, and he was building towards in fall event, took two weeks off for travel, and then he came back, picked up a bug, had to take another two weeks off, and so he basically had five, six weeks to prepare for this event. He’s like, am I screwed? And I’m like, believe it or not, you haven’t lost most of your form. So what you’ve lost is your ability to hurt. And I said, Do you want to get ready for this event? For this event? He said, Yes. And I went, be ready. What I do is throw work at you that’s going to hurt like hell. And his form came back fast, but he said that he’s like, those are some of the most miserable weeks I’ve ever
Rob Pickels 34:12
had. So on that topic of hurt, I want to hear 10 second hot takes from all of you on the pros and cons of doing stuff in ERG mode versus having to do it yourself, Trevor. So me,
Trevor Connor 34:24
we’ve identified. I’m struggling now with monotony, which I need to relearn 10 second hot take. So I think ERG mode is great for dealing with monotony. So I’m doing mine in ERG mode. Got it great, because when you do it yourself, you can vary.
Speaker 1 34:40
I love longer intervals in ERG mode because they also force you to just sit and stew in the difficulty of it. It depends on the athlete, because some of them are really good at certain things, they’re really bad at other things. So using ERG mode or self select to push them towards what they’re good at or what they’re bad at, depending on where we are in the system. Christopher,
Chris Case 35:00
I mean, yeah, there’s advantage to both the ERG mode forces you to hurt sometimes, like you don’t want to hurt, and then the other side of it is that’s not real. So it’s nice to be able to try to sit at a level that you maybe struggle to but hone in on a skill for me,
Rob Pickels 35:17
I do a lot of work in ERG mode, but I will say, I think ERG mode helps me dissociate from the pain a little bit. It’s the computer hurting me, right? It’s not me hurting my you’re not making that that choice Exactly. And sometimes it’s really hard to choose to go, that hard if you have the choice to stop. And so I do like to do stuff outside of ERG mode, because then I have to stay on the gas, even though I know I have the choice to back off if I want to. So
Trevor Connor 35:46
here’s the other question I want to ask all of you. Is execution motivating? Meaning, you know, we’ve talked about people love to go and do intervals and see what wattage they can do it, and they go get off of the bike. I did this at five watts higher. I’m so excited. But can going into an interval session and executing it really well be motivating to you. Is
Speaker 1 36:06
all about what you’re creating as your goals. If you’re stepping in and you and your coach have effectively created a process mindset where the goal is the day in and the day out. I don’t love this word, but the grind, you know, really becoming one with the grind, then execution becomes a really, really vital step. I always, as a coach, am preaching execution more than overachieving kind of thing, because training is a monotony. Training is a non linear movement forward, and so we have to find things that aren’t about a number or about a data point, because we’re gonna go through these periods of time where we feel like we’re just not getting better, but the execution of the intervals in the way they’re written, is us getting better, whether it’s showing in the moment or not. I think
Chris Case 36:54
some athletes absolutely thrive on hitting the mark, doing what they’re told to do, yeah, getting green, the green light,
Trevor Connor 37:03
the green and training
Chris Case 37:05
if or looking at the data and seeing the line that you’ve created trace exactly what it’s supposed to be. I think that that is completely motivating to certain types of athletes. And I would put myself in that category, and I was gonna say, sounds like, Yeah, I’m not a, you know, like some people absolutely thrive on that pleasing the teacher sort of mentality. You know,
Rob Pickels 37:28
I think that back in the past, especially when I was focused on things like hurdles, execution, perfect every time, hundreds of reps practicing the same thing, hugely motivating and getting because, as you pointed out, a 10th makes all the difference in the world in 110 meter race,
Trevor Connor 37:45
yeah. And I like that idea of execution, because you can extrapolate from very small things to very big things, yeah, like an interval section, you can extrapolate out to how you race a race.
Rob Pickels 37:58
I will say, I think, though now I paint with a much broader brush in that, you know, I kind of see execution like a narrow race course, and you’re just trying to sneak your way through as fast as possible. And now I would much have a broader, wider race course that I could be more creative with my lines and explore different things. And that’s I’ve been both ways. You know, 20 years ago, I was one way, and 20 years later, here I am now.
Trevor Connor 38:23
And some of that’s driven by what you’re trying to get done. If it’s a very distinctive goal, a very distinctive endpoint, it’s much easier to get that narrow path. Yeah,
Rob Pickels 38:33
and I do think that maybe what I’m trying to achieve now, I don’t know what’s coming right when I’m doing multi day sort of mountain bike things. I don’t know what happens on day three, and I got to be ready for whatever that is. Just
Trevor Connor 38:45
to finish that thought, that is why I like variance. That’s why I like variability with intervals, because I feel like bike racing in a pack, in a group, is so variable, it is so unpredictable, and it is so much about Chris shows up. He can hurt me in a way that is very Chris. Pat Warner shows up, he can hurt me in a way that’s very Pat. Like, if I can go hurt people in a way that’s very me, it’s about the matchup, yeah, and so being able to do some of those, all of that stuff, is super important, and that moves away in cycling from so many of the other sports, where it is, how quickly can I move through 10k how quickly can I move through I just heard you with my analogies.
Chris Case 39:35
That’s true.
Trevor Connor 39:37
We’re going to show up to the first road race of the year, and Trevor, before we go on. Let me this race is like a box of chocolate anyway. So I wanted to actually give an example with an athlete that I’ve worked with of where the execution could be really motivating. He was an athlete where if he hit wattages, he didn’t really care if his wattage went up. That wasn’t overly motivating for him. But if I gave him an interval. Workout where the first time he tried to do it, he couldn’t complete it. Man. He was like, No, we’re going to be doing these intervals. I want to go out and do them. So I’ve discovered with him the execution was motivating. So like, one interval he loved that I’d often give him in April, was these one minute so really long to Bottas, one minute on, 30 seconds off, and you do six in a row, and the first time he would do them, he might get through three. And I didn’t even give him power numbers. My way of defining that workout is always do the one minutes as hard as you can without blowing up, and then 30 seconds just spinning the legs. And they were so motivating. He’d get through three the first time and just blow up. And he’s like, Oh, we got to keep doing until I can get through all six and it was great. It worked well for him. I wanted
Chris Case 40:44
to go back to the discussion probably 10 minutes ago, when we were talking about energy systems and what intervals were hitting and what not hitting, etc. I’m curious if this is going to sound strange, but do intervals have a marketing issue? Why do we call them threshold intervals and VO two Max intervals and all these intervals, if they’re all hitting the same thing, have they been put into these categories that confuse people and make them think something that is a slightly erroneous Yes, yes, right? So they have a marketing problem? No,
Rob Pickels 41:19
no, that’s it. The interval board. That’s the whole conversation. Yeah,
Trevor Connor 41:21
we’re done. Yes, yes, not even right. Yes. I definitely think they do right, because even five by five is going to act differently than one by 25 they’re both threshold. They’re both same time under load at threshold. But of course, they’re very different in a lot of different ways. VO, two, Max, we’ve had whole episodes. So we did a wonderful episode with Neil Henderson on what is a vo two Max interval that they’re just erroneously named, yes,
Rob Pickels 41:49
well, and I think things get named because of the workload of the zone is, is where it is, right? And this is why people would say 3030s, are a vo two Max workout because you’re in the VO, quote, unquote, VO two Max zone, right, right? But I think we’re all in agreement you’re not really, it’s not a vo two Max workout here. So now I do think that thinking about what we’re trying to achieve, both from a physiological standpoint, but also from a performance standpoint, and I think those are very different, and this is where we can begin talking about other factors like robustness or whatever that become important for people that I do think interval design can begin to affect
Trevor Connor 42:33
Absolutely. And I think, yeah, that’s a wonderful way to say it. I always love your distinction Rob between performance and physiology. You know, am I trying to create the highest FTP, or am I trying to create the best performance? And at different times of the season you’re trying to do one or the other?
Rob Pickels 42:51
Yeah, different times in athlete development, yeah. I mean, I always spend a whole year on physiology and then a year on performance, I think,
Trevor Connor 42:58
go back to physiology sometimes. And if we’re changing disciplines, that’s
Chris Case 43:02
100% true right now that I’ve asked the question about whether they have a marketing problem. The next thing on the list is to go through bucket by bucket and talk about threshold intervals and VO two Max intervals, and explain the traditional, maybe the traditional way to do it, or standard way to do it, and how often and so forth.
Rob Pickels 43:22
You know, if we kick off this conversation with the threshold intervals, right things that are perhaps designed or in that zone, the biggest thing for me is introducing variation. I don’t like it when people set ERG mode at 92% and just Pedal, pedal, pedal at exactly 92% it’s not, it’s not like that. Trevor is waving to us. Hi, Trevor, yeah, so, so even if I will program, say, an erg mode threshold workout, I have variation in there, maybe it’s 92 for a minute, and then it goes to 99 for 30 seconds, and a quick spike to 105% for 30 seconds before coming back down. Because I think that that mimics what we’re doing on the road. It puts a little bit more load in the body. We produce more lactate. We drop back under threshold. We are shuttling that lactate around. I don’t like total monotony. For threshold, work,
Trevor Connor 44:25
counterpoint, Trevor, I love monotony. Well, I think, Well, I think it’s easy to wrap your head around monotony. In some ways. This is the Sprinter versus the time trialist conversation, and we used to see this when I was at the center training in a group the sprinters, we do Hill Climb threshold work, and me being the time trialless, the more consistent I could be going up the climb, the happier I was where the sprinters had to change it up. They would go faster and then they would slow down well. And I long used to the joke with Neil, and Neil and I would raise you. Each other that I would probably rather do a time trial as the 4020s and I’d probably go faster, just because that was motivating to me to go over and have a little break, and go under and have a little break. But I would argue that some of what Rob’s point is is even when you’re doing a time trial, there’s a lot of variants in terrain, wind speed, corners roll, all of those things that you’re actually preparing better for a time trial if you’re doing a small amount of variance within the interval, I will offer a suggestion of how to do intervals as much as I love my five by fives. This is my favorite threshold workout that can accommodate people like me, accommodate what you’re saying. And as you said, give you a little more real world experience. I love doing threshold work on a climb, where I pick a start spot and a finishing spot tree, sign whatever. And I try to have the intervals be somewhere in that kind of seven to nine minute range. And then you do your first interval, and you try, you know, I tried to do a little more by feel, make sure I’m at that threshold intensity. See what my time was for the first one. Then come back down. And whether I’m doing four or eight, or how many of them I’m trying to do, try to hit basically the same time each time you’re going to the same spot. Yes, do the same spot. And that’s where sometimes I have to vary it a little more, yeah. And you start learning you hit like, if it’s an eight minute interval, like you’ve, where am I at the two minute mark? Where am I at the four minute mark? And you start speeding up or slowing down, depending. So you start varying it. And you have to deal with corners. You have to deal with changes in grade. All I care about is, if I did that first one at 810 I don’t want my next one to be 830. Most want to be eight. Holding
Rob Pickels 46:42
your kind of workload the same across all your efforts and
Trevor Connor 46:45
and you’re using the time to keep you within an energy system, because you can’t go too far above or you’re going to have to recover.
Rob Pickels 46:53
I will say this, it’s so funny. I love doing stuff like this too, where I’ll say, hey, find a hill that’s about this long. Do you know how much that blows people up? They’re like, What do you mean? It’s not exactly five minutes? I’m like, Dude, I don’t care if it’s five minutes and 47 seconds, like, climb to the top of the stupid Hill. Yeah. You know I
Trevor Connor 47:12
had, I had a discussion with an athlete recently where we were talking about wondering whether we forgot how to hurt a little bit because we got into so much structured training. And I said, I want you to find some hills or some efforts somewhere between 30 seconds and minute half. And I don’t really care how long they are, do it more on terrain or a distance, and just just go so deep you’re over the bars, and you’re in that place where you’re scared, that you’re breathing so hard that you can’t quite keep up, and that variance can be freeing, and it can be incredibly agitating
Rob Pickels 47:49
when people embrace it, I find they do really well, but it is a scary thing to enter a little bit of the unknown and not have a perfectly described effort that you ought to be doing exactly five minutes at exactly 100% FTP is a very safe place mentally for people to be sometimes.
Trevor Connor 48:09
So one of the things that I also like with variance and threshold intervals is varying the time a five minute interval takes a very different mental capacity and a mental willingness to sit in a place than a 20 minute interval, be aware of what you have to do sometimes with a percentage of power in those places. If you’re going to a 20 minute place, trying to be right at threshold probably doesn’t quite as effective or make quite as much sense. Lower that down into that, maybe that 92 to 94% range that can be feel a little bit more achievable. And then a five minute interval, maybe that’s where you go, closer to that 100% and just kind of mock, like, just soak in it. I
Rob Pickels 48:48
mean, I’d say Trevor’s five by fives physiologically, not that much different from just a 25 minute block mental only a minute off. Yeah, exactly. Hugely different.
Trevor Connor 49:00
That was actually the exact invention of them, which was they found you got the same gains as like going out and doing a 20 minute all out time trial, but it was mentally easier on you. Well, this is the whole thing with threshold in general, right? What’s the theoretic threshold? It’s the Hour of Power. And people would try to measure threshold with an hour of power that is a monument to do mentally difficult task.
Rob Pickels 49:25
And so I would say, with Trevor’s, I would not take that as a reason to do five by fives. I would you know, oh, it’s it’s easier, but you get the same gains. I would say, hey, sometimes that’s what we want to focus on, but sometimes we need to challenge you mentally, and you should be doing that 25 minute block because that’s the skill, or what you need to improve your performance versus your physical
Trevor Connor 49:47
and that’s a really good way to use variance at threshold bingo. And when I’m doing my five by fives through the winter, once a month, I do that longer time trial just to see where am I at. How well can I do this now? What about.
Chris Case 49:59
Changing cadence, things like that, within threshold intervals. How much do you do that? And when
Trevor Connor 50:06
I think it’s absolutely great thing to do, and I will tell you I’ve given athletes five by five minutes on the trainer, and tell them hold 100 rpm, and I’ve given them five by fives, or I told them I want you doing these at like 50 RPM, completely different workouts.
Grant Holicky 50:21
One of my favorites is 12 minute intervals and four minutes low, four minutes self, select, four minutes low, and then flip flopping on the next one, going four minutes self, select, four minutes low. Self, select, I think it changes what you’re doing with your legs. It feels different, and it provides variance. It’s a little bit easier to get to a four minute mark and then change
Chris Case 50:41
right? Yep, it’s chunking within a chunk and chunking is
Trevor Connor 50:45
hugely important for performance. Last suggestion I will give for anybody who’s interested in doing threshold intervals. We’ve heard Dr Seiler talk all the time about it’s really about time at intensity. And I think this type of interval work more than any other, is where that is really true. So I see a lot of people who, as you said, they have to be right at FTP, or 101% of FTP. You’re getting basically the same gains at 95% of FTP, but you can do more time. And you do see that where, if you can do the longer intervals at just a little lower intensity, when it comes to the threshold work, you might see better gains from that.
Chris Case 51:19
All right? Next bucket. VO, two, Max, anaerobic work. Talk about it. What’s the standard here? What are some variations you like to see? I think the standard
Rob Pickels 51:29
for people is to go completely 100% over your head, all in on the first one, right? Kind of do the second one and ride home for the third one. Not saying that’s the best, but I think it’s what most people do. Yeah, I
Trevor Connor 51:43
think, you know, we’ve talked about this a lot before. I feel like the really traditional vo two Max workout is four by four with equal rest. And people really love that. And I think that’s great, but it is a that’s a mental ask. We can’t really do them up here physiologically. I think that’s a really year being at altitude
Grant Holicky 52:04
and elevation. It also, in a lot of cases, takes the right grade. It takes the right setup. I think it’s hard to complete minute on minute off, two on two off. Some of those things are a variation of very similar time under load, very similar gain, very similar mentality, all those things with a lot of variants, you get a lot of difference in it. I think you start getting into 30 on 30 off. That is a different animal. You can’t quite go as hard on 30 on and recover in 30 seconds that you could do otherwise. But that’s one variability, I think, where I think the variability really can come in and view it to max stuff is what we’re manipulating, the rest longer. Rest means we’re going harder. It means we’re training a different goal. Maybe we’re training lactate production. Maybe we’re training lactate tolerance, the mental capacity when we’re talking about this bucket of types of workouts is huge.
Rob Pickels 53:02
Yeah, I think one thing that’s interesting is separating the workload from the purpose of the workout. And when we talk about vo two Max, oftentimes we’re talking about vo two Max workload, but we can also talk about consuming as much oxygen as possible. And this was Trevor. We had done an episode. It was one of the ones where we were talking about bent Ronstadt. He wasn’t in it for this one. I think we were talking about his research. And those were pacing of variable intensity, VO two Max workouts, not to maximize power, but to maximize oxygen consumption. And for me, that’s a very interesting topic here, because if we’re maximizing power, you should just go straight to steady the highest workload that you can maintain. But that might not be the best way to consume as much oxygen. And his research and something that he pushes is like a fast start, VO two Max interval, where that first minute is hard, and you’re consuming a lot of oxygen, and for the balance of that interval, you’re actually riding easier than you normally would for a vo two Max. But because you racked up so much oxygen debt, your oxygen consumption is still firing, even though you’re only at like, 105% of FTP, not at 120% like we might normally think, and
Trevor Connor 54:21
change that even to a different way to look at it. Your average power for the duration of that interval may be lower, and the interval is going to feel way harder. That actually really surprised me when I saw that in the research, and there was the ronistat study, but there’s been multiple studies where they showed you actually can get more gains from intervals where you you vary it like that, than just the steady, constant wattage.
Rob Pickels 54:42
And prior to that, I was always a peg it at the highest workloads. You can hold that same workload throughout. And when we talk about recruiting muscle fibers, I don’t know, maybe that’s something that’s great, but when we talk about oxygen consumption, it is clearly not the best way.
Chris Case 54:58
This. Only for vo two Max, though, or would you also consider this for a threshold workout, where you went super deep at the start? This is different, right? Right? Because
Trevor Connor 55:07
if you’re doing a threshold workout, you go super deep at the start. You’re changing the energy system. You’re going anaerobic, even though
Chris Case 55:13
they all hit the same, right?
Rob Pickels 55:14
But I will say something I love to do is to do some anaerobic work into steadier blocks of threshold, plastic
Trevor Connor 55:21
Batmans. Something that’s important there that we didn’t mention the thresholds is your body’s initially going to rely more heavily on anaerobic energy, because it takes a while to get your aerobic system up and running. So when you even when you’re doing threshold work, that first interval, even though it’s probably gonna be your highest wattage, is a throwaway because you’re relying too much in the anaerobic systems. You need to get the aerobic system up and going. And
Rob Pickels 55:44
you can see that because your heart rate for that first one’s typically a little lower, right? Yeah.
Trevor Connor 55:48
And so there is some argument, if you’re really trying to work threshold to, as you said, do some anaerobic work really clear out the anaerobic energy systems. They have no choice but to rely more heavily on your aerobic system. So when we are talking about these vo two Max intervals and anaerobic capacity intervals, I think the other thing that you can say is there’s almost an unlimited number of different types of intervals you could do. Yes, there’s only so many different type ways you can hit the threshold system. Yeah,
Grant Holicky 56:15
that’s fair, because by definition, threshold is a fairly steady state for an extended period of time, and you’re just kind of sitting there, you can do some variance with how Rob and I always will argue 4020s are a threshold workout. You can go a little above and a little below, but you can’t get too far in those extremes, or you’re starting to go a different place.
Trevor Connor 56:35
But something I will point out, because you said that the traditional vo two Max event workout is the four by fours. It is a bloody hard workout, right, right? And so hard I’ve heard Neil say this, and I’ve kind of head in this direction too. And for example, I’m looking at a study right now, aerobic, high intensity intervals improve, VO to max, more than moderate training. But what I really ignoring the title, what I really got out of this study, they were looking at impacts on performance and time at VO two Max, and what they found were the most effective intervals were the four by fours. So the four minutes, the VO true, VO two Max interval, and then the 15 fifteens, 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off. And they basically said exact same gains from those two even though they’re just completely different. Feel work, but they feel completely
Grant Holicky 57:21
different. And this is part of my argument about I’ve come to this place lately that even four by four, even one minute on minute off, it isn’t ultimately that much different than 30 on 30 off. If you’re extending that period of time because you are at a capacity of work, and you sit at a capacity of work. There’s a ceiling to that capacity of work where I really like in this world, and we’ll move to this in sprints, but where I like this is what I said before. What I like with VO two Max is varying the rest change the rest to change what the ceiling capability is. Maybe I can go higher on that ceiling now, or maybe the ceiling is lower because the rest is shorter. But changing that rest really changes what you’re trying to do. You’re when you’re talking about a minute on 32nd off, Tabata. Obviously, everybody’s going to say that’s a vo two Max workout, but you can’t do many of them. That’s a pain workout. You
Trevor Connor 58:18
can’t and also, like I learned those intervals at a time trial camp, because it’s really more more benefits than that sustainable power. But you know something I will say when, when you’re dealing with motivation, something you get out of those four minute vo two Max intervals is just learning how to dig deep. They, they toughness. Hurt. It’s a toughness. I also how often equate four by four to an hour power? Yeah. So what I will tell athletes, like, if you’re really motivated, like, you want to go out and tear up the road today, do the four minute VO, two Max. Like, get that extra gain of just learning how to hurt. If you’re going out and saying, I’m not that motivated today, you’re not going to get through them. Don’t go there. Do the 15, fifteens. Do the 3030s, you’re going to get most of the same gains, but you can get through it. Yeah, you can survive it. 100% sprints go.
Rob Pickels 59:07
I don’t think people, I don’t think people should be doing sprint workouts. Not 99%
Trevor Connor 59:12
of them define a sprint workout. Yeah, well,
Rob Pickels 59:15
that’s hard to do. I
Trevor Connor 59:17
were sprinting against each other. Was I actually doing a
Chris Case 59:23
sprint.
Rob Pickels 59:24
Yeah, you were sprinting.
Trevor Connor 59:27
You Trevor Connor was sprinting,
Rob Pickels 59:30
I will say, workouts that are designed to increase either the maximal singular power that somebody can hit. I hit 1400 watts today. You know, those are what I’m defining as a quote, unquote sprint workout. Well,
Trevor Connor 59:45
then that’s I would agree, because wattage peaks don’t win anything. Correct? A sprint is a technical piece. It’s a timing piece, it’s a cadence piece, it’s a technical being. The bike piece. It’s a how aerodynamic can you be with that sprint? What’s your acceleration like? Yeah, I would agree with that. I think sprinting is incredibly valuable. Thrown throughout a base ride, thrown at the end of a workout, thrown at the corner city limit sign, I have a sprint that I do into my neighborhood at the end of every ride I do that’s not an easy ride, because there’s a technical capacity to learning how to sprint that is so incredibly important. One of the things I think cross riders never do enough of is start practice. They just don’t do enough starts because there’s so much. What gear am I going to be in? What gear am I going to be in on that terrain? Is it pavement? Is it is it gravel? Is it grass? It’s hugely different. Is it an uphill sprint? Is it a sprint at speed? Sprinting is less about peak power, more about technique. I
Rob Pickels 1:00:53
would agree, even for sprinters, right? Yes, even for winning a race. It’s not necessarily about that one second. But I do feel like when people are training sprinting, they’re just out there going as hard as they can for five seconds, taking a big, long recovery, and then going as hard as they can for five seconds again. And I think that they’re missing the point of what it means to sprint or how that can be beneficial to you, right across riding.
Chris Case 1:01:21
I would almost argue the variation that you need in this
Trevor Connor 1:01:24
okay, I would almost argue that a sprint workout is cadence holds. A sprint workout is big gear sprints where you start a track sprint, where you start from a standing start, and then you’re accelerating up. These things that are forcing you to move the bike, these things that are forcing you to pedal at 120 RPM instead of starting a sprint at 80 rpm, and then hopefully getting to a point where you’re over the pedals, because there’s no there’s no pop at 80 rpm. There’s no acceleration at that so I think if you’re trying to develop your sprint, there’s a whole bunch of different ways to look at it. You can look at it technically, from a you and your position on the bike. You can look at it technically from a cadence point of view. You can and some of these will translate to a higher peak power. Getting better at a higher cadence will translate to a higher peak power. There’s no doubt at all about that in my mind. Yeah. I mean, look at the best sprinters in the world. Are BMX guys, yeah? Downhill guys, flat pedals, incredibly high RPMs, and they’re hitting 2000 watt numbers. So I’ll tell you, I personally use sprints two points in the season. I will actually, believe it or not, have athletes do sprints in the base season. Oh, you’re talking about your athletes, not you, because you obviously do not that’s a scary thing. I do a lot of sprint work, and I’m still that bad. I’m still that bad, but in the winter, it’s more like you’re going out for a long ride. Throw in 10, six second sprints through it, and it’s purely neuromuscular getting that form back. But the other one I’ll do, I love a workout, that is, you find a hill, you do a 22nd all out sprint up the hill, and then you roll back down, and basically, for two, three minutes, you don’t pedal the bike, and then you do another one, and do a set of eight of those. And again, it’s not necessarily that, it’s now you’re going to win the sprint at the end of the race. I like to give that to athletes. When I have an athlete who says, I’m racing pretty well, I’m up in the front group, but when people are attacking, I’m just struggling to close that gap. And I find give them two weeks of those sprints, and all of a sudden they’re like, Yeah, I can when somebody attacks, I can cover it. I can jump gaps really easy. And I would argue that that’s mental and technical in and of itself, right? You’re standing on a bike and pushing a really high gear with a really big load. Well, the biggest mental part when I give them those sprints, I’m like, at the end of every 22nd sprint, you should be gasping for air, right? It’s just learning how to maximally hurt, right?
Chris Case 1:03:44
And that’s a big deal. All right, you’ve done it before. Let’s do it again. Grant, let’s start with you. What’s your take home for variations within intervals? Here, I
Grant Holicky 1:03:53
will always take this to the mental side of sport. I just think that the variation can help with motivation. I think there’s places where repetitiveness helps with motivation. It’s understanding that athlete but variation is going to teach you how to hurt in different ways. It’s going to teach you how to feel confident in hurting in different ways, and just changes. Bike racing is a wicked environment. It’s not a race in a vacuum, where you there’s a lot of controllables, there’s a lot of uncontrollables. And variation keeps people on their toes, keeps in a place where, Oh God, this is something new. This is hard. I got to try to be effective here, and the way I’m going to be effective here is completely different than what I did over there, even if those energy systems are the same. So that’s I like variation for that reason. So I
Trevor Connor 1:04:39
do feel I need to give a little bit of defense of the consistency, because I do like that, yeah, but what I think I’m going to give, as my take home, is I think prescribing intervals, doing intervals, is an art form. I think it could do incredible things for athletes, but I don’t think the art. Is in coming up with the most complex workout on the face of the planet and going, now I’m a great coach, because look at this 50 billion different things you did in this one hour. I think actually some of the best interval work, and being remarkably simple, and it’s just about executing correctly. But I think what why it’s an art form is because what are you trying to improve? Yeah, there is a little variance in what energy systems that can hit, but it’s also what motivates you, what gets you on the bike, what makes you put the little extra effort into this. And different interval works gonna have different responses from different athletes. So I think that’s where the art is not in the most complex interval workout you can design. Robert in
Rob Pickels 1:05:40
general, I think that variation is great. That’s variation within a workout. It’s also variation across workouts. A concept that I work with athletes a lot on is sort of chaos, right? And how clearly well defined are intervals, and sometimes we need that, in my opinion, especially when we’re focused more on physiological gains then being very crisp and clean is awesome. But as we’re moving into performance, as we’re moving into how well you’re doing out on the road or out on the trail, then I like to introduce more chaos, sort of into those intervals, which ultimately is just variation. If you have to do that on the trainer, then you have to program in some of that. Or I love people to be doing this stuff outside and let that natural terrain introduce that chaos for them. Fantastic.
Chris Case 1:06:27
I mean, I don’t really have much to add to all of those. I think speaking from the athlete point of view, varieties, comes down to motivation. And I do a lot of now. I do a lot of the Let’s go out. I know what the purpose is. There’s six items on the menu that serve that same purpose. Which do I feel like doing today? That’s what I do a lot of. But you have to know first of all what the purpose is. You have to know you know what the variety of interval can be and how the two fit together before you can actually just start. Otherwise you’re just kind of choosing willy nilly. That
Trevor Connor 1:07:05
was another episode of fast talk. The thoughts and opinions expressed on fast doc are those of the individual subscribe to fast talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. As always, we love your feedback. Tweet us at at fast talk labs, join the conversation at forums, at fast talk labs.com or learn from our experts at fast talk labs.com for grant Holocaust, Chris case and Rob pickles. I’m Trevor Connor. Thanks for listening. You.
