Sprints

richlong28

How long should these be and at what intensity?

of late i've found myself obsessed with doing them whenever i can, albeit on my mountain bike, most of the time its cycle into work coming out of a juntion when i'm in a bus lane and have to sprint not to get mushed but sometimes i do them just down the road about 40m or so as hard as i can

fuzzynavel

richlong28 wrote:

How long should these be and at what intensity?

of late i've found myself obsessed with doing them whenever i can, albeit on my mountain bike, most of the time its cycle into work coming out of a juntion when i'm in a bus lane and have to sprint not to get mushed but sometimes i do them just down the road about 40m or so as hard as i can

To be honest if there is no aim then what is the point. If you are using it as a form of training and have a goal then you will be far more likely to get replies

BUICK

I think that it really depends what you are trying to achieve. Training is specific by nature - so if you want to be able to sprint for 500m at your maximum output then you have to gradually train towards that goal by extending the distance you cover at your threshold in increments to avoid injury. If you want to be able to do a 40m sprint but go faster doing it then you need to look at becoming more powerful in your sprint and that would entail a different sort of training again - such as a formal pattern of training based around sprinting intervals.

Alternatively, if you are just having fun doing some sprints on the bike then keep doing what you are doing and stay safe!

Alex_Simmons/RST

richlong28 wrote:

How long should these be and at what intensity?

Sprint training (i.e. training to improve one's neuromuscular power) is always at maximal effort.

Efforts last from 5 to 15 seconds typically depending on training objective.

If training to last for a long (roadie-like) sprint, then one also need to develop their anaerobic capacity with efforts in the 30-60 second range. These may or may not be maximal efforts, depending on training objective. In any case, they are very, very hard workouts of the "wanna fall over and throw up" variety.