Turbo Man's Fitness Blog: Short, Sharp Shock

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'It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.' Theodore Roosevelt 23 April 1910

Friday, 23 July 2010

Short, Sharp Shock

Regular readers of this blog may recall details of a turbo session I use which I obtained from an article in Cycling Weekly, that of 30 seconds of flat out sprinting followed by 4 minutes of recovery at moderate cycling pace (about 32kmh for me as opposed to barely turning the pedals 'do nothing' type of recovery). The article suggested that the limited scientific research behind this session suggested it bought about the same improvements as a 2 hour Level 2 road ride, and yet it was completed in 47 minutes including warm up and warm down.

Well guess what? In the Research Corner of the 15 July issue of Cycling Weekly there is an article that compares a 7 x 30 second 'all out' sprint interval session with a 3 x 20 minute long duration aerobic interval session (carried out at 87% VO2max). Without boring you with the details (get hold of a copy of the magazine and read the whole article if you want the details), the scientists concluded that the short sprint intervals were just as effective as more traditional longer aerobic type intervals to develop aerobic performance. I'm quite pleased about this as this is the sort of training I have been doing this year - avoiding the 75-90% chronic cardio zone and working either below 75% of MHR or above 90% of MHR. I haven't done as many of the 30 seconds flat out intervals as maybe I should have but this will become a weekly staple in my training programme from now on.

Train smart folks.

1 comment:

Cavegirl said...: Glad you found that article encouraging, I certainly did and I think you proof has been in the pudding ... ?

K; 26 July 2010 at 18:41