Miracle Intervals on the Indoor Trainer

By Gale Bernhardt
For Active.com

In December 2006, a road cyclist I've worked with for over 10 years collided with a dog. The dog had charged the cyclist's group ride and ended up under his bike when he had been going full speed ahead. My guy launched into the air and, of course, eventually met with the earth. The dog simply took off running after a few body rolls.

When the dust settled and an evaluation was made, my cyclist ended up with a broken clavicle—or what is commonly called the collarbone.

A broken collarbone eliminates many training options for a cyclist: no leg presses, squats or outdoor riding, and only the absolute minimal pressure on the hands, arms and upper body. That does not leave many options for staying in form and demanded some coaching creativity.

Before the crash, he was just beginning Zone 3 intervals and starting to work on lactate-threshold power. After the crash, lactate-threshold intervals were out of the question—they caused too much pain. He couldn't do outdoor rides for about six weeks. Long rides were done indoors for two hours on a CompuTrainer. The accumulated time above aerobic training zones was very minimal.

He continued to do strength-training exercises that did not cause him pain, though there were few. Strength training occurred two or three times per week, as was typical for him at this time of year.

To help him keep some leg strength and power, I decided to have him do short, powerful intervals with plenty of rest. The intervals were ridden on the CompuTrainer and his goal was to produce as much wattage as possible for each interval. I didn't care if power faded through the workout, just go for it each time. These once-a-week interval sessions were the key workouts for six weeks.

The Workouts

Below are three examples of his key power workouts:

Workout #1

• Warm up for 20 minutes at an aerobic effort
• 3 x 20 seconds all-out power production, 4:40 easy Zone 1 spinning
• 3 x 10 seconds all-out power production, 4:50 easy Zone 1 spinning
• Cool down with easy spinning

Workout #2

• Warm up for 20 minutes at an aerobic effort
• 3 x 30 seconds all-out power production, 4:30 easy Zone 1 spinning
• 3 x 20 seconds all-out power production, 4:40 easy Zone 1 spinning
• 3 x 10 seconds all-out power production, 4:50 easy Zone 1 spinning
• Cool down with easy spinning

Workout #3

• Warm up for 20 minutes at an aerobic effort
• 3 x through:
  30 seconds all-out power production, 4:30 easy Zone 1 spinning
  20 seconds all-out power production, 4:40 easy Zone 1 spinning
  10 seconds all-out power production, 4:50 easy Zone 1 spinning
• Cool down with easy spinning

I designed about a dozen variations on the basic theme outlined in these three workouts. The basic theme was all-out power intervals lasting 45 seconds or less with the work-to-rest ratio between 1.0-to-5.7 and 1.0-to-29. Yes, huge rest intervals because I wanted huge power output. 

He was able to deliver outstanding quality to these workouts because the rest intervals were very generous and he wasn't thrashing himself in other rides (such as a fast weekend group ride).

Results

Ten weeks after his collision, my cyclist did an event he has done for several years. The event is long, taking him between four and four-and-a-half hours to complete. I told him to just do the ride for fun and use it as training, since the majority of his quality work had been the short interval workouts.

We were both pleasantly surprised with the results. Even though he had only three lactate-threshold workouts in the 10 weeks prior to the event and his long rides were between 1.5 and 2.25 hours long, his average power production for several time samples and average speed increased in 2007 compared to 2006.

Below is the list of event time samples (average power produced over each time period) and the percentage improvement in 2007 compared to 2006:

12 seconds: Decreased 1.7 percent (I expected this to be the one to improve most, but it didn't.)
One minute: Improved by 20.5 percent
Six minutes: Improved by 4.5 percent
12 minutes: Improved by 5.7 percent
30 minutes: Improved by 10.4 percent
60 minutes: Improved by 8.0 percent
90 minutes: Improved by 7.9 percent
180 minutes: Improved by 7.1 percent