:30/:30 intervals beneficial?

[Gammmmo]

Article in cycling weekly ..(uk). 're endurance athletes benefiting from short intervals... loads of em.

I think us 'ergers have a lot to learn from other sports... but there seems to be a mind set amongst many that if it ent wolverine or Pete plan it is to be dismissed

bob01 78 February 7th, 2018, 3:59 pm

Coming from a cycling background I can tell you there is nothing magic about microintervals other than the fact they enable many people to accrue a fair bit of HIT often because they enjoy doing the workouts. I would strongly suspect a block of "classic" vo2max style 4-6min intervals with similar or slightly less rest intervals would give more bang for buck. The microintervals may ice the cake once the vo2 work is done...as always an individual has to experiment.

[hjs]

You do know rowers are the strongest aerobic atletes from all. There is a reason for that.

Hmmmm...what about cross country skiers? While you often hear of pro cyclist or cross country skier Vo2maxes you seldom hear about that number for rowers. Maybe I just don't read the right articles....??

Strongest, not fittest G. Pound for pound skiergs beat everybody. Rowers are simple the biggest, even a lightweight rower is not tiny, like some runners/cyclist.

Av olympic skier is close to 80kg, rowers more 95? Numbers from memory.

[flatbread]

In terms of absolute VO2, yes rowers, because it's an absolute VO2 sport. Bring less than 85kg or 90kg to the party and you'd better have a relative VO2 max above 80, which would make you quite the genetic marvel indeed.

Relative VO2? Whole different matter, as we well know.

As for micro-intervals, yes, you could do 30/15 or 40/20 or 1:00/:15 or whatever at effort levels that were not stressing the glycolytic system, but that would perhaps only be a way of taking someone who lacks fitness and gradually building them up to continuous efforts of 30min or longer. Now, swimmers do short intervals on short rest, but that's also a matter of technique. A 100m or 50m specialist is going to start changing stroke technique on long 500m or 1000m repeats, and although that would yield some useful adaptations (I saw a top-10 world-ranked 50m swimmer train daily when I was in college, and even he would do endurance work at the start of the season), too much of it is going to encourage some stroke habits that you don't want if you're a short-distance specialist. So, shorter intervals, short rests, strike a balance between getting the meters in and not developing middle or distance swimmer stroke patterns. But, that's kind of an outlier. For the most part, micro-intervals are best for intensities over 4mmol.

As has been noted, there is no shortcut to glycolytic fitness -- those 3-8 minute intervals hurt. 3-8 minute events hurt. So you do the hurt. Where I'd argue micro-intervals come into the picture is when the demands of the event require repeated short efforts over 4mmol. 30/30, 30/15, 40/20 or at the longer end 60/30, 120/30 replicate the demands of a kermis, cyclo-cross, points race or madison in cycling, the team sprint in nordic skiiing, or perhaps the game demands for a soccer/footballer or hockey player. Probably not the best means of preparing for the 1500m on the track, or a 2000m on the water.

So if you're going to do those kinds of races, mico-interval away. If it's just for fitness, and you're past 50, I would ask why you are bludgeoning yourself like that, unless you just want to.

[flatbread]

If you are preparing for a 3-8 minute event, what Kolie Moore lays out in this podcast about the main central adaptations of 3-8min, "VO2"/transport intervals might be of interest. He's not the only voice on this, but there is not as yet a general consensus. He's on the side that the main adaptation that increases oxygen consumption is increased diastolic filling volume*. Cadence/rate and time above 90% of HR peak are more important than power output ( I'll dig around and find the Australian study on hard-start intervals...bottom line was time @VO2max increased although power decreased during the set...but a lot of time above 90% HR Peak).

Mico-intervals do have a positive effect on VO2 max, but their main boost is in anaerobic capacity. For a continuous "steady" effort like 2000m row or a 4000m pursuit (yes, there are going to be injections of pace, but it's not going to be as stochastic as a team sprint or a football match), the 3-8 minute grit it out and eat the pain interval is going to be better, as it replicates the demands of the event.

https://www.empiricalcycling.com/podcas ... -intervals


* and this is precisely the possible danger bit for the 40 or 50+ athlete. Middle-aged sinus nodes that have been doing endurance sports for a long time can get finicky when subjected to short bouts of high intensity, just as they can get finicky when subjected to bouts of long, long, steady low intensity.

[NavigationHazard]

For a contrary, evidence-based view, noting the efficacy of short sprintervals in running and citing a study of them in rowing, see https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... l_training

Note that there are sprintervals and then there are sprintervals. Results depend on number of reps; aggregate distance or time; in rowing, rating, in cycling cadence and gearing; work:rest ratio; active vs. fully passive rest vs. rolling stops/starts; constant vs. variable work load; work load in relation to physiological markers, in particular so-called lactate threshold; etc. etc. All of these parameters overdetermined by where the sprinterval workout comes in relation to a longer training cycle that progresses from endurance to speed.

IMO it's perfectly possible to use 30/30 intervals to build aerobic fitness in rowing, provided you do enough of them at the proper sub-max pace. A good place to start is to use 5k or 6k pace as your target [it'll be a rough proxy for the velocity that will get you to your threshold]. And I would follow Billat in recommending active recoveries at around 50% of target pace. If you hold workload constant, which in rowing will mean pace/distance and rating, you'll discover that your HR during the rests will tend to converge slowly with your HR during the work intervals. If you negative-split the intervals, i.e. increase the workload as the session continues, you get faster convergence.





You can even end up with effectively no difference in cardiovascular terms between the nominal 'work' and 'rest' portions of the session:



The bottom line is that you end up being able to spend considerably more time at or around threshold level intensity than you would if you were to attempt longer and/or more intense intervals. HR as a proxy for physiological load illustrates this. And I would add that there's a reason that 30/30 intervals are programmed into the PM as a preset workout choice....