Apparently it’s not got much carry over to cycling. I know this because I was moaning to the gym owner afterwards how I thought it’d be easy because I cycle a lot and he told me.
Just from doing it though I see what he means - you need to be using your upper body to its full advantage. A few times I was struggling and took my arms off for a second and my power halved at least. The other thing that was tough for me at least is the position is different to on the bike and whereas on the bike I’m pedalling at like 90rpm, on the assault bike it’s more like 40-50rpm. Finally, most of the efforts I do for cycling are like 15+ mins which is a big flaw in my training that I’ve just realised.
Ultimately though I don’t think any of the above matters because my heart just couldn’t push any harder - I simply aren’t fit enough right now. You beat me with the rowing I wouldn’t be surprised if you got me here too. I’m looking forward to seeing how you do and preparing for the pain to my ego.
A 7 minute challenge is a lot less inviting than a 90 second challenge, that’s a long time to suffer.
I’ll give it a try once an assault bike is added to my gym collection.
Thank you. I’m sure everyone will blow my time out of the water.
For anyone else that wants to try it I’ve just been doing some reading and it seems there’s a few popular makes of air bike and they’re not all equal. There’s a Swinn? Airdyne, an Assault Fitness Airbike (what I used) then a Rogue Echo and they apparently go from easiest to hardest in that order. I’ve read from different places that for the same effort on both, the Assault Fitness bike gives 1.1-1.25x the calories of the Echo and apparently the really good guys are doing sub 4 mins on the Echo.
Finally got that 100 mile ride done and ticked off a big milestone. 56 miles were solo and 44 were with a group. This was my goal to do in September so I’m going to have to come up with something else now. Pretty happy with myself especially on the back of a week off ill.
Lots to catch up on here. I had planned to deload this week but still didn’t feel 100% until basically today so I decided to do it last week instead. I had not been to the gym anyway and it would have been hard to fit my usual cycling volume into the end of the week as I felt better.
Yesterday I did an easy club ride although the pace got pushed a bit more than I’d planned at the end hence the Z4 and Z5 time. While I was out one guy mentioned he was doing a 100 mile ride today which sounded good so I jumped onto that at the last minute. It was pretty slow but one of the guys is nearly 80 and still pulling off that distance so he can go however slow he wants. It was pretty nice to go on the front and block the wind for him a bit to help out too. There were a few big hills where we split up and pushed the pace individually though. This was fun since there aren’t many big ones near where I live and was a good chance to test myself. Anyway, turns out since the hardest part of my last 100 mile ride wasn’t the pace and fitness side but the discomfort from being on the bike so long, today was a similar difficultly despite being slower because I was on the bike longer. Luckily I made a few adjustments based on the last ride which helped with the discomfort and balanced out the extra time.
Plan going forward is to finish the last week of my 5/3/1 cycle this week then do another cycle after. Basically I now have four weeks instead of three. I’ll have a bit less free time for cycling so plan to do less endurance and more higher intensity work.
Strength was down a little today, especially with deadlifts, so I went a bit off plan. I was super sweaty and even with chalk I was struggling to hold the bar, I really should have brought my straps.
This was pretty tough and consisted of three Z4 blocks with a one minute Z5 effort at halfway and at the end of each one then about 20 minutes of Z2 to finish. I’m definitely feeling the effects of the last few days’ workouts. Tomorrow will probably be a rest day.
Not a bad session - went off plan again and tested some heavier weights ahead of the next cycle. I’m starting to look forward to focussing on the gym later in the year and gaining some weight.
This was my second time doing the third hardest difficult ride out of the four they do every week. I’m super sore from the gym on Friday and thought I’d pulled something at the beginning of this ride because of how stiff I was. I stuck it out but the one time I pushed hard I felt it pull again. I’m really hoping that goes away soon.
This was the first time attempting to hold this pace for 20 mins and it was pretty tough by the second interval. I also didn’t eat enough which punished me pretty badly at the end and I did what ever the cycling equivalent of limping home is for the last few miles. Still, these sessions are important and getting through them should lead to big improvements.
I’ve decided not to follow 5/3/1 for the remaining weeks of summer where I’m focussing on cycling. I’ll keep a similar structure but go a lot more by feel to keep it fresh.
My goal in the gym is just to maintain where I am and get comfortable with the barbell lifts again and I need to remember that. A few times recently I’ve been annoyed I’m not stronger but then remember the progress I’ve made cycling. Plus, I have actually gotten stronger and made physique improvements over the last few months anyway so double win - I am just being greedy.
This is the first time I’ve done this sort of interval session with a focus on higher intensity and shorter duration but it’s an important skill to practice. I basically spent the last few weeks in an accumulation sort of block/stage with lots of low intensity volume and now it’s like an intensification block with less volume but higher intensity. Next week I’ll aim for 10 sprints instead.
The time in each zone like I normally post doesn’t really do a workout like this justice on paper but you can clearly see each sprint on the heart rate graph. And for the observant ones who noticed there’s seven peaks, I had to go up one extra hill to get to the hill I wanted to sprint up and went kind of hard but not max effort like the others. I liked how this workout was pretty short and I felt fresh still afterwards.
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