Originally Posted by
genejockey
Gotta disagree with you about the warmup, especially before a big effort, based on my own experience. YMMV, but I'll trust my own experience for my own training.
And, no, of course EVERY workout shouldn't leave you weak in the knees, but if you don't get that from at least SOME of your workouts, you're not going to get any faster.
It's both personal and specific to what you're warming up for. But I think we agree on some things. Yeah, you do need some "breakthrough" workouts.
I cross race and time trial. The warmup is different for a cross race, for a 10mi TT, and for a 40k TT. By definition a 40k TT is your ftp. So you have to be careful warming up not to eat into what you need for the event. Sure, you'll do something to tickle the legs in a harder zone. But we're not pros doing an 8min long time trial prologue warming up pretty much at threshold. They can repeat those efforts multiple times a day for days on end during races. We cannot.
I guess what I was getting at is I see folks at events absolutely drenched in sweat on the trainer. I did a duathlon and saw a guy running warming up, he ran so hard in the warmup he went and threw up in the trees. Like, WTF. Just no on that "hard" of a warmup.
For a hard threshold workout or a TT longer than 20min, I pretty much do this:
-ramp from 140w to lower Z3 power over the course of about 8 to 10min
-alternate 30s on/off at lower Z2 and lower Z3 power with a "low" and a "high" cadence, for a couple minutes
-couple minutes back in lower z2
For a cross race or 10mi TT, I'll swap out the 30s on/off at low Z2 and low Z3 for low Z2 and upper Z4.
That's not a "hard" warmup. It's just enough to get me going. I'll start to get a little sweat, but it doesn't hurt nor do I soak myself in sweat.
I would say each microcycle of training you should have one "breakthrough" workout if you're in an ftp building or vo2 building mesocycle. So, basically one of your interval workouts per week. You should hit your targets without too much fuss on 'most' of them. But struggle to on one of them. Folks just have a really really bad habit of dream-casting about their ftp they use for training and what %'s they use of that for different workouts. They either use an ftp they "want" after the mesocycle to do workouts, OR they choose the upper % listed for the range for a workout.
Like, if a vo2 workout says 110-120%.......choosing 120% right off. That week do one or two at a % you hit, then make your breakthrough workout of the cycle the one you try to bust a gut on.