Hello all. I train on a stationary bike as well as a road bike, but have been doing more stationary lately. I’ve read a lot of conflicting opinions on heart rate training zones and wanted to get some input. I’m still somewhat new to bike exercising.
How often do you interval train, and how long is your workout?
Right now I do a zone 4 session about once a week, and do 5 minute intervals with 5 minute “rest” periods, so my total ends up being around 15 minutes in zone 4 and 15 minutes in zone 2.
Just wondering how other people are doing their workouts.
Any feedback, opinions, or input appreciated!
According to the current popular “polarized” model (very generalized) advice is to have no more than 2 hard workouts per week. So maybe two days of the 5x5, then (if you have time) would try to do 1 or 1.5 hrs in zone 2 the other days (ideally 3-4 per week). Do this for 3-4 weeks, then back off a bit for a week. If you have a training goal in mind, share it. Ideally you would periodize your training throughout the year too, so not always the same pattern
i.e. just the zone 2 rides through the winter, with maybe 1 5x5 every 10 days or so. Then as spring approaches, build endurance with making the hard efforts more zone 3, but building to something like 2 x 20, 2 x30, 2 x 45. Then as event/race season comes, do the zone 4 5x5’s. This is a traditional model. You can adapt to your goals, but if you do the same thing year round you’ll burn out and/or stagnate
Thanks for the insight! That’s some good information for me to consider. My current goal is weight loss and cardio improvement, I would like to do a triathlon sometime next year as well
For triathlon, those longer threshold (rather than Supra threshold) intervals will be more event-specific