One of the presentations at the Colorado conference was on “Myths”. The myth that caught our attention was the idea that there was another way of building base on the bike other than “hours and hours of long, slow” bike rides. There seems to be more and more evidence coming out that the judicious use of HIGH INTENSITY workouts would give the same overall physiological, muscle adaptation and VO2 Max improvements as the tried and true long slow aerobic base ride.
While we are luckier than most in regards to weather here in NorCal, our outdoor time is somewhat limited at this time of the year, and it seems that if anything could give us the same conditioning in significantly less time would e of interest. However, you should not interpret this to mean that you just need to ride shorter distances at a faster pace. The high intensity efforts that are called for in this theory are very HIGH - all out efforts – usually 5 minutes or less and should be approached with a certain amount of caution. Also, if you try to attempt a Half Ironman or Ironman distance event with just a few weeks of Wingate sprints as your base, you will be asking for a certain amount of trouble including injury.
There is still research to be done in this field to understand all of the implications, but there seems to be enough evidence in favor of adding these workouts in to your routine especially if time, weather and other factors are conspiring against you in terms of finding time to put in the traditional base work. For more information, check out the links below. For more information about training with our team, Kain Performance -- visit our website www.kainperformance.com.
~ Coach John Magee
No comments:
Post a Comment