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Success with Intervals?

4K views 31 replies 17 participants last post by  dracula 
#1 ·
Has anyone had measurable cycling improvements by lowering mileage or training time and adding high intensity intervals? I saw a British documentary last year which showed measurable affects of a very short but very intense bouts of exercise 3 days a week: The Truth About Exercise on Vimeo

It's hard for me to believe this stuff, but it seems like a credible documentary. Just a few minutes a weeks and clear increases in key fitness measures.

We are all faced with limits of our time. Have we been doing it wrong and can we achieve greater results with less time?
 
#4 ·
Pick up Joe Friel's new book, Fast after 50.

Fast After 50: How to Race Strong for the Rest of Your Life: Joe Friel: 9781937715267: Amazon.com: Books

That's what he recommends for older athletes.

That's also what Chris Carmichael recommends for "time crunched" cyclists.

The Time-Crunched Cyclist, 2nd Ed.: Fit, Fast, Powerful in 6 Hours a Week (The Time-Crunched Athlete): Chris Carmichael, Jim Rutberg: 9781934030837: Amazon.com: Books

SPOILER ALERT: you still have to ride, and intervals are still very hard if you are doing them right. There is no free lunch. Not even a deeply-discounted lunch.
 
#5 ·
You get better by increasing your training load (up to a point). You can either ride more and by necessity ride slower, or ride less and ride harder.

Either will work until it doesn't, then you change things up. With winter time and crappy weather and little daylight, threshold and tempo intervals within a one hour ride can be a big boon to fitness on relatively low hours.

I wouldn't actually do many hill repeats unless they're 10+ minute long hills and it's a measured (i.e., not all out) effort.
 
#6 ·
yep, they worked for me.
 
#7 ·
Disclaimer: I didn't watch that documentary.

Will you be able to beat your own power records by just using short interval training, especially these HIIT that's all the rage now? Yes, I'm sure.

Will you be able to put out that power for that duration in the final minutes of a race/ride that's a couple hours in length? I highly doubt it.

Unless you have a good fitness base you're going to completely lack the endurance. Being able to say you did 350 watts for 5 minutes is one thing, but saying you did 3x350 5 minute efforts at mile 20, 40, then 60 is another.

Base building (not necessarily slow long rides, but building up your CTL) is an important aspect of most training plans for this reason.
 
#15 ·
One thing that most people don't understand is not just an "interval" but what levels of performance and intensity you are trying to attain.

When coaches push you in intervals you are reaching beyond your current capability in the interval. Do 1/8 mile sprints .. do them FASTER and harder.

Most people talk about their thresholds, etc.
But in real training you don't care about thresholds. Your threshold is your limit that you want to go beyond. You want to push them higher and higher. This takes dedication and a drive to push oneself while doing intervals or what ever other training you are doing.

Right now I'm doing some fairly high intensity intervals and I have seen the massive improvements in just my winter trainer based training since late October.

But I've got a Loooong way to go. Too many years of lack of training.
 
#18 ·
When coaches push you in intervals you are reaching beyond your current capability in the interval. Do 1/8 mile sprints .. do them FASTER and harder.

Most people talk about their thresholds, etc.
But in real training you don't care about thresholds. Your threshold is your limit that you want to go beyond. You want to push them higher and higher. This takes dedication and a drive to push oneself while doing intervals or what ever other training you are doing.

.
Uh, what? No, in real training you very much care about your threshold.
 
#20 · (Edited)
I watched the video you linked, and I believe you missed the essential point of the segment that utilized high-intensity intervals in an effort to achieve two specific benefits. A number of physiological benefits from interval training at various intensities have been well established for about two decades. That's nothing new. It may have been an awakening for the host, but it certainly isn't for those who have been seriously training for the past decade in about any athletic sport. The real message was that the exercise regimen needs to be tailored to the individual, as genetics is a significant determinant of what and how much benefit is realized. If you recall, the host realized a modest improvement in glucose response, but no effect on aerobic capacity as measured by VO2max, and that his genetic markers predicted that he wouldn't alter his VO2max under the defined study conditions.

So, yes interval training can be used to improve a number of physiological metrics, but they are not the answer for all benefits sought, and depending on what is being sought it may work to varying degrees because of genetics.

edit added I meant to link this paper in the post above as a general reference. However, the one inadvertently linked is also good - it is a technical paper describing a specific study, but includes reference to a variety of interval training studies going back into the id 90's, with good introduction and discussion.
 
#21 · (Edited)
I've had a fairly unusual chance to be close to 2 generations of endurance athletes during their careers. Both my step-father and sister are World Championship gold medalists in rowing; my father has been a rowing coach for 40 years.

At their level and time (and for a shorter duration sport) -- they were doing base. Not exclusively, but my sister was doing 5 hour endurance sessions regularly, and not on the water.

Asking /them/ about my less committed, much less time life (and cycling), I was universally recommended to do intervals, though of linger duration than your typical Tabata protocol. Both from the coaching and competitor side, they felt that was the 'bang for the buck' for training intensity and load.

Not cycling, exactly -- but...
 
#27 ·
It's a comparison you can't actually make with an individual. Anyone who has regularly done interval training has likely achieved some measure improvement in several physiological functions. How much they might have achieved with old school long time base training in comparison remains unknown. You can't do both from the same starting point. The best that can be done is to look at comparable groups to gauge the relative impact. There are many such studies.
 
#28 ·
I'm an average joe...I've done massive base followed by specificity. I've done a ton of JRA/group rides to get in shape. I've done 5hrs/week HIT. By far the best results, fitness whatever you want to call it come form massive base followed by specificity. Power numbers are all up and while I can't prove it my ability to recover from efforts is vastly better than other methods. Especially late in the game when the winning move goes. Seems like this is always overlooked here on RBR. Everyone is too obsessed with an absolute number for example but, it's always the nth time + 1 for 10 seconds longer than you want to go that is the hard thing to measure.

I assume this is because the quality and total duration of intervals after base is plain and simple better/more. I'm able to absorb more stress before fatigue=more adaptation.

If I only had 5 hr/week max to ride and wanted to get as fit as possible it would be 100% intervals of varying length.
 
#32 ·
Interesting documentary. Thanks for posting the link.

The scientist in the study who performed the genetic test of the sensitivity intervall vs endurance on the author holds a £5 million research grant for researching this.

"We are all faced with limits of our time. Have we been doing it wrong and can we achieve greater results with less time?"

You could be within the lower 20% and no matter what you do intervalls would have no impact whatsoever. But you could be sensitive to endurance. It wasn't clear from the documentary if this lower vs upper 20% only applies to endurance.

Btw on another note: the London based scientist researching fat in the documentary was wearing one of the worst suits I have ever seen. And those trainers in combination with a suit (maybe it was not a suit after all looking at how it is being cut).
 
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