Have a look at Chris Carmicheal Time Crunched Cyclist and Joe Friels Training Bible. Amazon have some good deals on both. Buy the most recent copies to benefit from up to the minute methods.

ps I find that my Flow replicates road riding (flat and little/no wind) with the slope set to -1. I can use the same gear/cadence/HR on the road as the trainer. ie I cant push 53×12 for long!

For those of you that struggle with hills, try this workout.

Climbing Repeat Intervals. Put a 6″ block under the front wheel (to replicate the same muscle usage as the real world) and the Flow set to a slope of +6 to replicate a moderate hill. Any greater slope than that and my tyre slips on the roller. (But you might try +4 to start with as long as the power/cadence is within zone)

Get some techno or whatever on your ipod, put Alpe d’Huez from 2001 on the dvd player and do 3 x 10 mins close to 100% of your field test power @ 70-80 rpm with 5 mins recovery at the bottom of end your endurance zone. (50% of FT power) If you get out of the saddle, allow your HR to rise a few beats as you’ll be using more muscles. That’s a hard 60 min workout inc warm up and cool down and it does help with the hills. (I can now climb steadily and catch other riders that might have started out too quickly)It’s rare that I get dropped as I used to do. Do this twice a week for 2 or 3 weeks and you will notice an improvement. Lose a few lbs, do some power intervals as your 3rd interval session in the week and you’ll begin to follow in the wheel of the better climbers. That’s the best feeling ever for a very average cyclist like me ;-). Of course they then think you are challenging them and they’ll go a bit faster…………….but at least you made them work for a change!

Turbo Trainer intervals are so intense, that there is no chance of boredom or needing computer software to spice it up. I’d recommend you guys carry out some sort of Field Test or Ramp Test rather than just noting anecdotal power outputs that you see during workouts. In this way, you can really focus on what you are doing and spend more time with the missus or whatever?! 60-90 mins on the Turbo is all you need to make some big gains, say 3 days per week.

Carmicheal Field Test
You warm up for 15-20 mins do some high cadence in an easy gear towards the end to get your HR high but without stressing your legs/lungs too much, then recover for a few minutes. It’s then 2 x 8 min time trial efforts with 10 mins recovery in between. Take a couple of minutes to build to maximum effort just as you would in a real time trial and aim for a cadence of around 85-95 rpm. Use your gearing to find your own optimum cadence within this window. You take the highest average power and/or your highest average HR. This test approximates your LT or maybe its your Vo2 max, I’m not too sure which, it doesnt really matter (to me) Establishing the benchmark is important and individual, its free and its repeatable. I repeat this every 6-8 weeks except in the off season.

Or do a simple Ramp Test. Warm up as above and then (dont use the ergo function for either test, it wont produce the desired result) start at say 160 watts and hold for 3 mins. Cadence 85-95 rpm. Increase by 20 watts every three minutes. So 160,180,200,220 etc. Maintain Cadence between 85-95 rpm using your gears. Keep ramping up until you fail. The final three minutes completed in full is your Ramp Test Power output. If you fail halfway through at say 320 watts, then 300 watts is your result. You’ll be doing about 20-30 minutes in total. (Unless you’re Bradley Wiggins) Again this is repeatable and a good indication of how you are progressing. Obviuosly you cant constantly improve, but you might hang on to some of the gains during the winter months and start from a higher base for next year. You can repeat this test about every 6-8 weeks. Leave it alone in the recovery weeks, its too intense an effort.

Hi Tony,
I have posted a few of the interval sessions I do elsewhere pn this site, I’m sure you’ve seen them. I too have tried some of the session from the Tacx site, but as you say they involve gear and slope changes rather than having anything based on power output. They also seem overly complicated with lots of changes to the slope, gearing and rpm all at the same time which I don’t like as there doesn’t seem to be much of structure to them and I can never seem to get into a nice flow with them.

I haven’t tried one of their interval sessions yet, just their hill climb and aerobic endurance sessions, but when I look at my heart rate trace after them there doesn’t appear to be much of a pattern.

I did some gym tests on a bike for a friend doing a PhD in Sports and Exercise Science last year and got some good figures from him such as my Gas Exchange Threshold, VO2 Max and Critical Power Output. He also gave me a few sample interval sessions. The calibration between my Tacx Flow and the machine at the lab wasn’t spot on so the power figures weren’t directly transferable, but with a bit of experimentation I was able to work out a good level to work at for these interval sessions.

The basic one that I do is a 10-15 minute warm up. I usually use the Wattage setting on the Tacx Flow and have it at 140 in an easy gear for the first 5 minutes, then up it to 180 for the next 5 minutes and around 200 for the next 5 minutes, by which time I’ve gone up a few gears too. I’ll then do 1 minute at 140 Watts to prepare for the intervals. The intervals are 1 minute each in which the hard effort is at around 90-95% of your Max HR (162-172 for me). This works out at about 350 Watts for me at the moment. The rest period is then 1 minute at 100 Watts. I’ll do seven of these, followed by a 10 minute cool down.

Apparently once you can do 7 of them the idea is to increase the wattage rather than increase the number of repetitions. The intervals should feel really hard and you may not be able to do all of them the first few times. I’ve now done them at 350 Watts a few times and I’m thinking of trying to up the wattage to 360 Watts next time. Although I did try that a few weeks back and had no chance of completing them!

It may be hard work but I like it as it is a nice structured set, the heart rate trace (see here) I get looks really ‘neat’ and it doesn’t take too long to do. I am planning to do some others soon too such as 1 minute really hard and 4 minutes rest or 3 minutes hard, 2 minutes rest. I also do some pyramid sessions now and then.

It seems from the comments as though people quite like reading the sessions I do so I’ll start posting some of the more structured ones here as and when I do them.

Thanks for reading!
Al.
Oh…. And I’m going to buy one of these: A 16″ oscillating fan from Amazon for £11.00. Cheap and cheerful and hopefully ideal as spring approaches. Feel free to buy it from the above link as I’ll get a little bit of commission then! 🙂

I’d be interested in any links / info you might be able to share on interval programs on the TACX – My usual workouts are primitive 1 – 1:20 hour bashes with 10 mins warm up (on -4), 40-60 mins @ around 140bpm (around 80% my max HR)& 10 mins cool down (-4) – all at 90-95 rpm. It keeps me fit but not probably isn’t the most effective training. I know I need to get into intervals & have been looking around for any simple regimes (Tacx have some on their site but they appear to involve gear & resistance changes) – it was searching for interval examples which got me to your excellent site
Cheers

Hi Tony, glad to hear its been working well for a few years. It sounds as though you have a good set up there. I’ve got mine in the ‘beach room’ with its new en suite shower room with views out over the Welsh Hills. I usually listen to podcasts whilst I’m on the turbo trainer and catch up with things. I need a new (larger) fan though as the one I’ve got at the moment just isn’t powerful enough. It’s certainly a useful piece of kit whilst snowed in like we are at the moment and there’s little chance of getting out on a bike in the real world!

Al.

Thanks Ruud,
The ‘computer’ doesn’t have any preset programmes and it isn’t possible to program it yourself either. Unfortunately you have to change either the slope or resistance yourself. This is however easy to do and although it can be a bit of a pain it also gives you something to do and something to concentrate on which can help reduce the monotony of being on a turbo trainer to a certain extent.
It would be nice to pre-program things though.

Al.

I had planned a turbo trainer session for later that evening, but after chilli and a bottle of wine I decided not to bother!

I don’t think I mentioned force though and realise that the power output is kept the same so I can therefore pedal at a higher cadence with less force to produce the same amount of power.

I do know what my cadence during the tests were so I should be OK there. Although, knowing the physics doesn’t make it any easier when it comes to actually doing the workouts!

Thanks,
Al.