Hour of Power- A Thank you
Comments
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I got it from toks on here. He got it from Bill Black
Print this off (in black and white if you like
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Go at maximum pace you can sustain for 1 hour (measure this by power/HR/ Percieved effort whatever you like).
Every 2 minutes, do 30 seconds all out effort.
Collapse."In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
I'm suprised you say you only warm up for 5 mins, I would have thought a longer warm-up would have been in order given how hard you're going? I'd def struggle to hit mid-80s heart rates in that time frame without pushing quite hard before i was properly "warm" - sounds a bit risky to me?"And the Lord said unto Cain, 'where is Abel thy brother?' And he said, 'I know not: I dropped him on the climb up to the motorway bridge'."
- eccolafilosofiadelpedale0 -
mclarent wrote:I'm suprised you say you only warm up for 5 mins, I would have thought a longer warm-up would have been in order given how hard you're going? I'd def struggle to hit mid-80s heart rates in that time frame without pushing quite hard before i was properly "warm" - sounds a bit risky to me?
The idea for me is that I get my HR up to about 75% in the 5 mins warmup and then click up a couple of gears to kick it over to the 80-85% range in the first couple of 2 minute sections. I also tend to spin quite fast on the turbo meaning i'm not putting that much stress on the muscles.
I find that my heart rate does respond pretty quickly too, there's nothing to say you couldn't warm up for longer, as we all know how different people are, especially when it comes to training by Heart Rate."In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
Had a crack at this at the gym lunchtime today - pretty hardcore! Only did 40 mins cos I'm a wimp / had to get back to the office, but I can see how you would see the benefits pretty quickly."And the Lord said unto Cain, 'where is Abel thy brother?' And he said, 'I know not: I dropped him on the climb up to the motorway bridge'."
- eccolafilosofiadelpedale0 -
disgruntledgoat wrote:Go at maximum pace you can sustain for 1 hour (measure this by power/HR/ Percieved effort whatever you like).
Every 2 minutes, do 30 seconds all out effort.
Collapse.
Something I'm not clear about. Surely the maximum 1-hour effort is (or should be) exactly that - the maximum wattage output one can achieve in an hour. Doing 30 x 30 second bursts will take you way above that total wattage output if you sustain the maximum effort for the remaining time.
So your original maximum 1-hour effort can't have been your actual maximum. Now, if you were to say 90% of your maximum then that would make sense.
a serious case of small cogs0 -
toontra wrote:disgruntledgoat wrote:Go at maximum pace you can sustain for 1 hour (measure this by power/HR/ Percieved effort whatever you like).
Every 2 minutes, do 30 seconds all out effort.
Collapse.
Something I'm not clear about. Surely the maximum 1-hour effort is (or should be) exactly that - the maximum wattage output one can achieve in an hour. Doing 30 x 30 second bursts will take you way above that total wattage output if you sustain the maximum effort for the remaining time.
So your original maximum 1-hour effort can't have been your actual maximum. Now, if you were to say 90% of your maximum then that would make sense.
The idea is to improve that maximum one hour pace. Your pace/output will very likely decline throughout. PLus it's only 24 x 30 second bursts.
I think you are probably right though, i tend to aim to start off my hours at about 10bpm (~5%) below my 25 Mile TT Pace."In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
Maybe I'm soft but 24 * 30 second flat out sprints with full recovery would be a horrible session in itself - and you are supposed to do this and maintain a pretty high effort in between ? And someone said they were doing this three times a week !
it's a hard life if you don't weaken.0 -
Tom Butcher wrote:Maybe I'm soft but 24 * 30 second flat out sprints with full recovery would be a horrible session in itself - and you are supposed to do this and maintain a pretty high effort in between ? And someone said they were doing this three times a week !
I wouldn't think so. The "Hour of Power" is building up over the 1st 20mins to FTP power then every 2mins do an effort for 10secs. This maybe dropping down a gear and will probably be only an increase of 40watts or so. Because there are no rest periods and is pretty much at your threshold there is no chance that you will do a 30secs max effort repeatedly throughout the hour.0 -
Perhaps if you actually asked Bill it might help.....
The base load for HOP is ~ 90% of your FTP (1-hr TT pace).
Here is the image of power, & HR during an HOP by none other than Bill Black himself. In this I have marked with the horizontal dashed line Bill's FTP (365W). His base load in this instance is 330W. I've also included the key summary stats.
Note the HR line and how is continually drifts higher. If your HR during such an effort gets up to a level fairly quickly and then plateaus, then during the effort your power will be falling gradually.
and here is a zoomed in section showing a couple of surges. I included the cadence line for reference. You can see that Bill drops it into a harder gear for the surges.
This is not to say one can't make variations on a theme but this is what Bill himself has published as "The Hour of Power".0 -
So my guess of around 90% was correct. Also, from the charts I's say the bursts are every 3 minutes, not 2, and probably only 15-20 seconds, not a full 30. Whilst still punishing that seems more realistic.
a serious case of small cogs0 -
That's about right. Like I said, there are variations on a theme.toontra wrote:So my guess of around 90% was correct. Also, from the charts I's say the bursts are every 3 minutes, not 2, and probably only 15-20 seconds, not a full 30. Whilst still punishing that seems more realistic.
The fact that Normalised and Average power are similar is a clue that the surges are relatively short (i.e. they don't "trip" the NP algorithm as much).
As for the other proposed variants, one test as to whether a proposed workout is feasible (apart from actually attempting it) is to calculate the Normalised Power. If it exceeds your mean maximal power for the duration, it is highly unlikely you'll be able to actually complete it.0 -
Well apologies to BIll Black and anybody else who feels it's due then.
I'm completing what I've detailed once a week on the turbo and once on the road (much easier, good old variable terrain!) however, and enjoying it."In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
This sounds good, but how does it compare to other interval workouts such as HIIT?Cycling never gets any easier, you just go faster - Greg LeMond0
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I'm pretty certain this workout would be impossible if you performed the 'recovery' at FTP, after all, 1 hour at FTP is the most you can do by definition, nevermind throwing in 24 sprints! 90% FTP sounds more reasonable, although it still sounds really really hard... too hard for me I think. I agree with Tom Butcher, the thought of 24 sprints is bad enough!
I do a similar (but much easier) workout whereby I ride around 40k at sub-threshold level (somewhere towards the top of Coggan's tempo range) with sprints every 10k. This is just intended as a tempo workout with a little bit of sprint/recovery practice though, the HOP is obviously aimed at improving top-end power (and makeing you ***king hard!)0 -
HIIT is a pretty broad term. What do you mean?Gav888 wrote:This sounds good, but how does it compare to other interval workouts such as HIIT?
If you mean efforts at an intensity that induces VO2 Max, or above, then they will both have a positive effect on aerobic power, however they are primarily targeting different things.0 -
Wow. Just tried the first HOP and the results were pretty surprising. I was fairly modest and set off at 90% of my FT, with 15 second bursts at 120% every 3 minutes (so 19 of these). Apart from fairly easily being able to complete the hour, I actually felt better as the hour went on and increased the bursts to about 130%.
I've been doing power intervals (L4/L5/L6) at least twice a week for over a year now and although there had been a slow progression in power they were getting really boring. This has really sparked me up. Whereas with 2 x 20 minutes at L4 is a fixed effort, the HOP seems as though it will be infinitely variable, allowing me to adjust to the exact effort I feel able to expend on each session. Also, the mere fact of having to change the effort every 3 minutes breaks the monotony of the L4 intervals.disgruntledgoat wrote:Well apologies to BIll Black and anybody else who feels it's due then.
I'm completing what I've detailed once a week on the turbo and once on the road (much easier, good old variable terrain!) however, and enjoying it.
No problem. As Alex says there are definitely variations on the theme. Thanks very much for bringing this to my attention.
a serious case of small cogs0 -
Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:
HIIT is a pretty broad term. What do you mean?Gav888 wrote:This sounds good, but how does it compare to other interval workouts such as HIIT?
If you mean efforts at an intensity that induces VO2 Max, or above, then they will both have a positive effect on aerobic power, however they are primarily targeting different things.
The HIIT that ive been doing is 3m at a stead state, no idea what VO2 max, probably 60%, then 30 seconds flat out, probably 95% to 100% VO2 max, no idea? then repeat until I cannot carry on, which is roughly 40 min at the moment.
Cycling never gets any easier, you just go faster - Greg LeMond0 -
Just for fun, and as circumstances panned out, today I did a HOP workout. Well sort of a HOP+ workout. Here's a pic of the workout.
The horizontal lines mark 90% of FTP (1-hr max power) and FTP. I did the HOP, then "hopped" off for a few minutes to change my leg (my prosthetic gets loose and the leg liner needs to be dried off and re-fitted every so often), then back on for another 30-min of solid tempo.
My "efforts" were every 3-min and at ~ 130% of FTP.
Like toontra, I got better as the workout progressed. It won't be like that everyday though.0 -
Gave this a go last night.
I set up an ipod playlist of 20x3min songs, went ~125%FTP for the first 30secs of each song and ~90% for the remainder.
It was a really tough workout for a turbo and I ended up averaging 96.5% FTP. :shock:
For the last 15 minutes I was finding it difficult to concentrate on maintaining recovery effort. I'm still tired today.0 -
I did a similar workout yesterday - 25 seconds of about 130% FTP each 3 minutes over a base of around 90% FTP. As you say, the recovery after each burst becomes increasingly difficult and I was suffering by the end (and still am today).
I think the HoP's work though. My FTP has moved up 20 watts in the few weeks I've been mixing these in with the usual intervals.
a serious case of small cogs0 -
I found a significant improvement in the other high intensity workouts I do after a few HoPs, both in Av. Speed, Av. Heart Rate and percieved knackeredness at the end.
I'm glad to say that as I'm moving towards Sportif traning for the next 3 months, i won't be doing it as part of a 4 hour ride and I've put the turbo away too. Just one on an undulating road course every 2 weeks."In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
His Max HR must surely be wrong in that image?0
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SunWuKong wrote:His Max HR must surely be wrong in that image?
In Alexs graph? There's no HR - just power and cadence.0 -
This is exactly the workout I devised for myself for Hog Hill after someone suggested that the hill was about a 30 sec climb and comes round every 2.30 minutes. I haven't lasted an hour yet.
Nice to know it works, I'll put more determination in to lasting an hour.0 -
Got no power equipment and no turbo trainer, but I get the main idea behind it. I'll give this a go on the road next time i'm out at 4am and the roads are empty.
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Any HR data that appears (e.g. in the summary data) would be erroneous, a false reading from something else (e.g. sometimes I move the ipod and it generates a few seconds of HR data in the SRM PCV). Sometimes in races I get some readings off other riders.stjohnswell wrote:SunWuKong wrote:His Max HR must surely be wrong in that image?
In Alexs graph? There's no HR - just power and cadence.
I don't wear a HR strap anymore.0 -
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About 15-seconds. I think much more than that is too long for that base load (90% of FTP) and frequency and maybe why toontra found it difficult to sustain the effort. Nothing wrong with having a go though!Shavedlegs wrote:Alex,
How long were your bursts?
Alex0 -
Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:
About 15-seconds. I think much more than that is too long for that base load (90% of FTP) and frequency and maybe why toontra found it difficult to sustain the effort. Nothing wrong with having a go though!Shavedlegs wrote:Alex,
How long were your bursts?
Alex
Does being able to do 30 second bursts and sustain it for an hour make me double hard then? "In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
Thanks Alex. I know what I'm doing tonight now, entering a world of pain.
I haven't got a power meter but with cadence and gearing I should be consistant.0
