Time. After health, time is the most valuable thing of all. Most of us are fortunate to have good health. Few of us are fortunate enough to have a lot of time. Most of us are ambitious and goal-orientated. We naturally want to become faster mountain bikers. The good news is that you can improve your pedalling performance in just eight hours a week.
By Mark Carroll
There is a great body of published research that provides the working, non-professional cyclist with information on how to considerably enhance his or her endurance with a minimal time commitment. The challenge is how to divide up the available hours in the week and to get the intensity right.
The most common mistake amongst many cyclists is to make their easy training days too hard and the hard training days too easy. The result is ‘no man’s land’ training and stagnated performance.
The easy days invariably include sections of the ride at over 80% of maximum heart rate, and the hard days are not hard enough, either due to lack of structure or motivation to really push. Effectively, training ends up with too much ‘threshold’ intensity. Threshold in this instance can be described as the maximum intensity you can sustain for an hour non-stop.
Training below threshold
The importance of training below threshold, while maintaining a sufficient aerobic load at 70%-80% of maximum heart rate to stimulate fitness gains, cannot be downplayed. This is where 80% of training time should sit. So if you have 8 hours a week, then approximately 6 of those would be devoted to this type of tempo/endurance riding.
If you have the luxury of a power meter and have tested your zones correctly, then ride in the Tempo zone and then use heart rate to manage the power range within Tempo, in other words, avoid going above 80% heart rate. The added benefit of power plus heart rate is that as your fitness improves, the same heart rate will generate more power, a clear indication of improved aerobic condition – you are getting faster.
If you don’t have a power meter, then start easy for the first 5 minutes, slowly picking heart rate up to 70%. From here manage heart rate in the 70-80% range for the remainder of the session.
Training above threshold
Your other 2 hours are where training gets interesting, this is the domain of HIIT, high intensity interval training. If this is not done hard enough, then performance is unlikely to improve. Ideally, per week, you need 2 x 1-hour sessions separated by at least 48 hours.
A full range of plans is outside the scope of this article but certainly some useful guides, backed by evidence, are easy to incorporate into your training to maximise stimulus and improve your riding.
Study 1: 30-Second Intervals:
Research from Canada using 30-second intervals compared two groups of cyclists who performed six training sessions over two weeks. Total work volume over two weeks compared 13-minutes intense intervals against 10-hours endurance training.
The results showed that the shorter intervals can effectively replace LSD training. The researchers concluded “our results suggest that intense interval training is indeed a time-efficient strategy to induce rapid muscle and performance adaptations comparable to traditional endurance training.”
Study 2: One-Minute Intervals
This second research study used 8–12 repeats of one-minute intervals. The researchers found that the performance improvements matched those achieved when doing endurance training, “High-intensity interval training (HIT) induces skeletal muscle metabolic and performance adaptations that resemble traditional endurance training.”
Study 3: Four-Minute Intervals
This research, done in Norway, compared 4-minute high intensity intervals to LSD training.
This time researchers found that the intervals improved VO2Max better than the LSD, “students that trained at aerobic high intensity (i.e., 90–95% HRmax) increased their VO2max significantly. However, the LSD and the LT (lactate threshold) groups training at 70 and 85% HRmax did not change their VO2max.”
The Training Effect
With the stimulus of repeat intervals, your body will make adaptations that help you recover ever-faster following hard efforts. You can expect improved muscle strength; faster recruitment and fatigue resistance of your fast and slow twitch muscle fibers; improved aerobic condition of your slow-twitch muscle fibers, increased VO2Max, a higher aerobic threshold; greater endurance at high speed…
Performance Effect
Mountain bike riding is full of accelerations in order to maintain momentum, whether through sand, up hills, through rocky sections, uneven shale, or severe gradients. Building the capacity to deliver these high-power efforts repeatedly is going to transform your riding.
Summary
I would not recommend a ‘high intensity’ interval longer than 5 minutes because power is likely to drop too low as your pace has to adjust ever lower as duration becomes longer.
If you keep doing the same thing, you will get the same results, so mix things up. Combine the above in different formats, up hill, on flat ground, technical sections, on sand, and always with the objective to give the sessions everything you have.
A final word, this will tackle your fitness component but remember the other factors that affect your performance such as psychology, bike handling skills, equipment, race tactics and diet!
An example week (8–10 hours)
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 1 hour HIIT
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: 1 hour HIIT
Friday: 1 hour Technical XC ride for both skills and overall conditioning.
Saturday: 2-3 hours Tempo (below threshold)
Sunday: 3 hours Tempo (below threshold)
Note: Ideally, you should also do 2 x 1-hour gym sessions a week with a focus on functional movements that complement cycling rather than fixed machines. Aim for balance exercises, proprioception, core and leg strength. You could add one on a Wednesday and one on one of the weekend days.
Mark Carroll is a UCI Level 2 certified coach and the founder of Cadence Cycling Performance. Cadence Cycling Performance Centres are indoor cycling performance studios that make it possible for anyone to do power-measured HIIT sessions.
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*Originally published in TREAD Issue 39, 2016 – All rights reserved
