In this video we're going to show you how to do an indoor workout that will
help you build strength on the bike through winter. So coach Ken, why are we
doing this? So everyone wants to be a stronger rider and if you're a full-time
professional supplementing your training with some specific work inside the gym
might really help but if you're an amateur athlete with five to ten hours a
week to train you should be spending all of those on the bike but there's no
reason why you can't get stronger whilst you're on the bike and do both at the
same time. So this workout is designed to combine the two and make sure you're
getting stronger whilst you're still improving your aerobic endurance and
still get in faster doing every workout that you can. So what are the benefits of
having more strength? So if you're a stronger rider you can get over steeper
hills, you can turn a bigger gear and therefore time-trial faster there's
really lots of benefits to having more strength on the bike and we're gonna do
that in this particular workout by using low cadence and having you work just
underneath your threshold power. So what is the breakdown of this session Ken?
Okay, so this session starts with a nice gradual warm-up of around 20 minutes and
then we're going to do two main blocks of 20-minute efforts just under your
threshold power but aiming to ride at a very low cadence between 60 and 80 rpm
depending on what you can cope with. So during these two 20 minute blocks of
exercise we're going to be starting you up at 80 percent of your functional
threshold power and then every four minutes we're going to change that ever
so slightly, so we're gonna do it in a pyramid style and every four minutes
increase by five per cent and once you get to 90 per cent we're then going to
come back down the pyramid so for the final two four-minute blocks where 85 per cent
and then 80 per cent all the while keeping a really low cadence.
After the two 20-minute intervals it's important to include a cool-down at the
end, so 15 to 20 minutes of steady pedaling, trying to keep your heart rate
high or your power low to make sure you flush out all of that hard work that
you've done in the main set. So how best to do this session? Well one of the great
things about smart trainers such as the Tacx Neo and Tacx Flux is the ability to
pre-program workouts into Tacx's own app or third-party apps such as Zwift
and TrainerRoad. And what this will do is it'll actually
control the resistance of the trainer for you meaning that you don't have to
concentrate on changing it depending on what interval you're on and for quite a
complicated session like this with lots of changes it's really useful because it
means you can just concentrate on your cadence which is the main aim of the
session. Exactly and if you don't have to spend time focusing on your power output
you've got something doing it for you it means you can focus on other areas like
maintaining good pedal technique which is really important at a low cadence to
make sure that you're not squirreling around on the bike and doing any damage.
So being able to maintain good pedal technique will really help you on this
and for longer efforts such as 20 minutes at a time, if you need any more
motivation or any more entertainment on the screen then using something such as
the Tacx app with built-in videos will really help for this so having something
like Alpe d'Huez a video of that up in front of you will really help you grind
out those big long efforts. Yeah, especially like 20-minute interval it
can be quite boring if you don't have any form of entertainment going on.
That's right. So yeah, something I really like to be able to see that it just it
just gives you far more motivation and it's more fun. So during this strength
session it's really important to give your legs a break and the cooldown
periods and the rest periods in between your two main sets. Sounds good to me.
So instead of maintaining a low cadence make sure you spin a nice light gear and
lift your cadence during the rest periods and then
cooldown to make sure you really are giving your legs a break. Another thing
to add on a session like this is this really nice to have a direct drive turbo
trainer such as the Tacx Neo which means that you're not going to get any rear
wheel slippage which can be an issue in a high-torque session such as this. So
it's one less thing to worry about. If you found this video useful then be sure
to check out coach Ken's other specific training videos in this series and
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