5x5 Intervals

kesa

I am doing 5x5 Intervals where I ride 5 minutes at FTP with 5 minutes rest in-between intervals.

What sort of hr should I be seeing? At the end of my first interval my hr is 89% max and at the end of the last interval my hr is 92%max.

It feels challenging but I'm not sure how hard I should be working.

wavefront

Your HR is in a similar place to where mine would be when doing short FTP intervals. However, your HR will be skewed by your tiredness / freshness.

However, my Q back to you is what are you wanting to achieve with this session, and that really because you said ‘I’m not sure how hard I should be working?’

For me, as an individual session it seems quite vanilla not really targeting anything other than doing some work at FTP. But I don’t know how it sits with others in your training plan. My personal preference is to do shorter intervals like 5mins at a much harder intensity, with less rest, and my FTP intervals are generally a lot longer.

imposter2.0

If you are training with power then your HR is mostly irrelevant, but it’s not surprising that it goes up during the session.

What are you actually training for?

N0bodyOfTheGoat

5*5min VO2 max intervals would be a good workout to improve your FTP. I've attempted https://whatsonzwift.com/workouts/less-than-60-minutes-to-burn/the-gorby a few times, it's quite brutal if using honest current FTP data!

But 5*5mins FTP intervals should be well within your capabilities, if using a recent FTP test and you aren't injured or unwell. Ordinarily, there's not much benefit to that workout at all.

Heart rate % sounds about right, for me personally it's a little high, more like % I get from The Gorby.

ugo.santalucia

As above, it seems a waste of time, as far as training is concerned.
The idea is that if you want to improve a particular figure, you need to work shorter times at a higher figure, so as suggested above, maybe a few minutes minutes in the VO2 max range.

kesa

Thanks everyone.

I don't have any particular goal except to maintain a certain level of cycling fitness. I guess raising my ftp is my goal. I'm not competitive so a vanilla workout is fine with me.

My ftp is rising. I feel stronger on the bike. I am no longer scared of hills or headwinds. I like the mental resilience the training is giving me.

The riding I currently do is one hard session on the trainer once a week and maybe a couple of 2 hour long rides. I also strength train once a week.

It's funny someone mentioned the gorby. This is actually where I got the idea!

MidlandsGrimpeur2

OP - your heart rate does seem to be a touch high for ftp sessions as has been suggested above.

I would disagree very slightly with some of the above with regards vo2 max intervals. Those intervals will certainly improve your anaerobic fitness and help your top end power/speed but not necessarily your aerobic fitness and ftp, which it seems is your goal.

It is dependent on your overall fitness and physiology though. Before I started lab testing I did a lot of vo2 type stuff combined with a lot of plodding around at too easy a pace. Lab tests showed I had good anaerobic fitness but poor aerobic fitness.

Doing a lot of steady state and sweet spot really helped improve ftp and overall aerobic fitness. For me this was 60-90 minute tempo rides outdoors, combined with 8-12 minute intervals on the turbo, anything from 80-95% of ftp.

This pushed up my ftp, as well as improving 1, 3 and 5 minute power without doing very much vo2 max interval work for a year or two.