Easier turbo - focus cadence
bahzob
Posts: 2,195
Many of us will be hammering the turbo over the next few months. Here is a simple approach I have found makes my indoor sessions feel easier and produce more power. It needs some sort of cadence sensor, though I guess counting rpm may work as well.
My warmup is short ramp up to around 80% of MHR. Then I do some short 30s-60s at target power/effort. These are part of the warmup andyway but also I use them to set the resistance to a level where I am hitting the right power numbers at around 80-85rpm.
For the intervals I then blank out all measures except cadence and just focus on keeping legs turning at 80-85rpm. If I feel good it will be more towards 85, bad more towards 80. It's that simple.
(There is nothing magic about 80-85rpm. It's just that for me I have found this to be the ideal cadence, it may differ for others)
The end results of this, in terms of power, are better than if I try to hit a power zone. This may sound a bit cheesy but I think there are a number of reasons for this
- If you have a cadence sensor rpm is more straight forward and easier to keep constant. HR takes a while to build to target level. Watts are better but (due to the inherent way they are measured/displayed) tend to fluctuate around a mean even when keeping power stable.
- If you have been training by numbers for a while then you know from hard experience that some numbers = pain. In my case for example I know that doing long intervals over 300W or short ones over 400W is tough. Now it may just be coincidence that these numbers correspond to thresholds but I think it's also partly mental. When he 100s digit changes I expect things to hurt and so they do. RPM doesn't have this association. 85 rpm can be easy or hard. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and what I have found that in terms of perceived pain a session done via rpm results in around 10% more power than a session looking at watts.
- When the going gets tough its good to have something to focus on. Just trying to keep rpm above 80 rpm helps block out pain and works well with techniques like mantras to keep pushing through the red zone. I train with background music which has a bpm aligned to target rpm which also helps.
This approach can also transfer to the road. I use pretty much the same approach towards long steady efforts like mountain climbs and TTs, though this sometimes also needs the occasional gear change to keep rpm constant when conditions change.
My warmup is short ramp up to around 80% of MHR. Then I do some short 30s-60s at target power/effort. These are part of the warmup andyway but also I use them to set the resistance to a level where I am hitting the right power numbers at around 80-85rpm.
For the intervals I then blank out all measures except cadence and just focus on keeping legs turning at 80-85rpm. If I feel good it will be more towards 85, bad more towards 80. It's that simple.
(There is nothing magic about 80-85rpm. It's just that for me I have found this to be the ideal cadence, it may differ for others)
The end results of this, in terms of power, are better than if I try to hit a power zone. This may sound a bit cheesy but I think there are a number of reasons for this
- If you have a cadence sensor rpm is more straight forward and easier to keep constant. HR takes a while to build to target level. Watts are better but (due to the inherent way they are measured/displayed) tend to fluctuate around a mean even when keeping power stable.
- If you have been training by numbers for a while then you know from hard experience that some numbers = pain. In my case for example I know that doing long intervals over 300W or short ones over 400W is tough. Now it may just be coincidence that these numbers correspond to thresholds but I think it's also partly mental. When he 100s digit changes I expect things to hurt and so they do. RPM doesn't have this association. 85 rpm can be easy or hard. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and what I have found that in terms of perceived pain a session done via rpm results in around 10% more power than a session looking at watts.
- When the going gets tough its good to have something to focus on. Just trying to keep rpm above 80 rpm helps block out pain and works well with techniques like mantras to keep pushing through the red zone. I train with background music which has a bpm aligned to target rpm which also helps.
This approach can also transfer to the road. I use pretty much the same approach towards long steady efforts like mountain climbs and TTs, though this sometimes also needs the occasional gear change to keep rpm constant when conditions change.
Martin S. Newbury RC
0
Comments
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For what it's worth when I do sessions on my LeMond Revolution I do the same, set a cadence for what ever gear I'm in and concentrate on maintaining that number.0
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Likewise. When I get to the target power I maintain it using cadence rather than power. I find using power that I over correct and so oscillate above and below the target power. I guess I could try using 30 sec power instead of 3 sec but using cadence works well for me.0
