FREE Turbo Training Sessions to develop your biking this winter

We all love the turbo right!  In the UK the weather has gone cold and the darker nights have closed in, which means that making use of the time we have to train becomes just that little bit harder.

Fear not... we have turbo trainers (or wind trainers), Zwift, Sufferfest, Wahoo Kickrs, Wattbikes and a variety of other indoor machines we can use to keep our cycling legs finely tuned, svelt and muscular.

Of course, you could just jump on the bike and pedal... but at F4L Triathlon Coaching we like athletes to make the most use of their time.  So here are three of my favourite indoor cycling sets, FREE, for you to use at home... and all less than 1 hour long.

I have adapted these session so that anyone can pick them up and use them with nothing more than a stopwatch and using Rate of Perceived Effort (RPE).

These sessions all use a scale of 1-10 for the RPE.  Where the following scale applies:

• 10 - This really hurts - the grimace will say enough
• 9 - Very Hard Effort - one word answers
• 7-8 - Cannot talk more than a few words
• 4-6 - Moderate Activity - Can complete a sentence
• 2-3 - Light Activity - Full on conversational pace
• 1 - Not really activity at all!
• 0 - Asleep

Session 1 [44min]: Stairway to heaven - an absolutely corking session for building strength on the bike as well as developing a little mental toughness.  Really important to make sure you do not start too hard - or you will not make it to heaven!  Also mega important to complete a good cooldown to avoid blood pooling in the legs.

• WARM UP:  10min easy spin, including some 10-20sec seated sprints in the second 5mins
• MAIN SET:  3x 6min of ascending difficulty with 2min recoveries.   Select the big ring but with a moderate sproket. 3min at 7/10 RPE into 2min at 8/10 RPE then 1min 9/10 RPE out of the saddle... before finally... 2min easy spin recovery.
• COOLDOWN: 10min EASY SPIN < 4/10 RPE

Session 2 [51 min]: Another building set but this includes a longer period at a lower intensity and a short break in between each effort.  It is important to make sure you allow the body to work at lower intensities - it is not all about harder, faster and longer.

• WARM UP:  5min warm up into 5x 10sec fast spin / 50sec spin - leave gear where it was in the warm up
• MAIN SET: 3x
  • 5min at good pace = RPE 6 / 1min spin into
  • 3min at better pace = RPE 7 / 1min spin into
  • 1min Max Sustainable Effort = RPE 9 / 1min spin then repeat from the top
• COOLDOWN: 5min cooldown < 4/10 RPE

Session 3 [30 min]:  This is gonna hurt!  Including a grand total of 2 minutes and 30 seconds of high intensity work - this session is as much about teaching the body to recover after high intensity efforts as it is the efforts themselves.  Oh and the cooldown... critical in this session or the DOMS will catch up with you later.

• WARM UP: 5min warm up increasing to 5/10 RPE into 5x 10sec fast spin (120+ rpm) / 50sec easy spin
• MAIN SET: 5x
  • 30sec absolute max efforts - 10/10 RPE
  • 90sec easy recovery spin < 4/10 RPE
• COOLDOWN: 10min easy spin