In this episode of The Knowledge Podcast by Wahoo, hosts Neal Henderson and Jeff Hoobler discuss the importance of sprint training for endurance athletes. They highlight the benefits of sprinting, including improved efficiency and muscle recruitment, managing rapid accelerations, and enhancing overall cycling performance. Jeff and Neal delve into the specific components of sprint training, such as cadence and force, and emphasize the need for coordination and speed development. They provide practical tips on incorporating sprint training into workout plans to maximize performance gains.
Join Neal Henderson and Jeff Hoobler in this episode of The Knowledge Podcast by Wahoo as they dive into the world of sprint training for endurance athletes. Understand the significance of incorporating sprinting into an athlete's regimen to optimize performance and improve rankings. Learn why sprint training is essential for all endurance athletes, regardless of their focus or event type. Discover the science behind muscle recruitment, efficiency, and neural connections that sprinting develops. Gain insights into managing rapid accelerations and short efforts for various terrains and cycling disciplines. Neal and Jeff provide valuable advice on developing coordination, speed, and torque to unleash peak power and enhance overall cycling ability. Whether you're a seasoned athlete or new to sprint training, this episode offers actionable tips and practical strategies to elevate your performance to new heights.
Neal Henderson 0:05
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Knowledge Podcast by Wahoo. I'm Neal Henderson.
Jeff Hoobler 0:11
And I am Jeff Hoobler. And today we're going to talk about why every endurance athlete needs to include sprint training to optimize our performance. Even if you don't think you're a sprinter.
Neal Henderson 0:23
What about if you don't do events that like our sprinter? Like if you do like an ultra distance bike ride?
Jeff Hoobler 0:29
Just do it! It's good for you.
Neal Henderson 0:30
Do the ultra distance bike ride?
Jeff Hoobler 0:32
No, do the sprints..
Neal Henderson 0:33
Sprint's alright, I, I'm not going to argue with you. But what about an Ironman?
Jeff Hoobler 0:39
Heck yeah, do you betcha everyone can benefit. Okay, even if, especially if you don't consider yourself a sprinter, or you don't spread a lot. I mean, that's the those are the folks that can make the biggest gains. So there's so many more reasons why sprint training can be helpful, you know, it might not be the primary focus for your endurance event, or even mountain biking. But there are a lot of ways that this can help you. So we're gonna get into it here.
Neal Henderson 1:06
Big picture. Sprinting is for everyone in some amount for the following reasons. Number one, you have actually improved efficiency or economy at even lower intensities, part of this is about really the muscle recruitment side of things that coordination. So sprinting allows us to fire the right muscles at the right times. And that's what those neural pathways are about developing there with sprint work. Long Endurance sessions don't do that low intensity work does not improve those neural connections nearly as much as sprint work does.
Jeff Hoobler 1:41
That carries over into a lot of our other training. But this specificity and the said principle specific adaptations to impose demands means you got to do it, it's can't just say it and just expect it to be there.
Neal Henderson 1:53
Next, we have that ability to manage rapid or frequent accelerations or repeated short efforts, like any kind of a ride that you might do with others. Or if you're on terrain, that is variable. Or if you're on a mountain bike, or a gravel bike, and you have short little steep climbs, or thick, deep mud sections, or very loose rock or sand, you have to have a rapid high power output for a short period of time. You can call it a sprint if you want. But that is necessary for you to be able to continue to ride your bike successfully. Otherwise, you have to get off your bike and then you're not riding your bike or pushing your bike and pushing your bike not as fast or fun as riding a bike, in my opinion.
Jeff Hoobler 2:32
Well, I'd have to agree with you there. Anytime the resistance gets harder changes, you're calling on those fast twitch fibers to work that coordination to work out efficiency.
Neal Henderson 2:44
That is part of that value of sprinting, why everyone should be doing it. So it's going to help your overall cycling ability and performance to be an effective bike rider. Regardless of what your focus may or may not be
Jeff Hoobler 2:58
100%.
Neal Henderson 2:59
Exactly the best sprinters in bike races are not necessarily the folks with just the highest peak power. There's a lot of other elements at play in. But well let's move into this next part about the specifics of truly how to sprint. If we think about it, effectively, there's kind of two primary components that we think about being related to our sprint performance, its cadence and force, or speed, and torque. Power output is a product of those two things. So torque times cadence equals power output.
Jeff Hoobler 3:35
And the big takeaway, right? You got to have both.
Neal Henderson 3:37
Correct. If we're looking to develop our ability to sprint, we want to first work on that coordination and speed side of things. So cadence work is really important here. Lots of different sessions, we have actually focused on this in the system library. If you look at anything that says, cadence builds up as cadence builds in it, that is a primary focus. There's cadence builds, cadence builds and holds, drills, drill bits, all of those are different workouts that are really about improving your ability to pedal at a very high cadence.
Jeff Hoobler 4:11
And I mentioned this minute ago, the coordination involved at those higher cadence, it must be trained, it's not just going to be there if you don't do it. And the neuromuscular aspect can fatigue the nervous system actually really fatigues quickly if you don't train it. So you need to incorporate these cadence drills in your workouts on a regular basis
Neal Henderson 4:32
And to have some decent rest between those efforts. So you'll notice you don't do 30 second cadence build and have 30 seconds rest and do another one, you have several minutes of time to reset so that each one you do can be done well. You want to have full rest when we're really driving that neural coordination aspect of training.
Jeff Hoobler 4:53
Anytime you're driving that neural aspect of training, you have to have full recovery to get because you need to max it out.
Neal Henderson 5:00
Yep. And it depends, you know, how long or hard those efforts are the recovery literally shortest time might be three or four minutes, in most cases, often closer to six to eight minutes to be fully recovered. If you're doing truly kind of maximum neural work, even just cadence that isn't extremely high powered, high speed.
Jeff Hoobler 5:20
As a corollary here, you know, one of the things that we're talking about with the nervous system and neuromuscular, you know, when you're lifting, it's the same thing like, say, for instance, you're doing a set of plyometrics, you're not just going to do it to exhaust it, you're going to do it until you can't get the same amplitude, and you're going to stop, which might be three reps, five reps, and then you go sit down, and you rest
Neal Henderson 5:42
And with weights, that's really the rate of force development, that speed of the contraction is kind of the key to that. So speed is going to help develop that coordination. Cadence is the thing on the bike that's going to be most associated, so got to do that first. Second, we move into then your torque or force production, torque is the force applied on the crank arm. And so we can be developing the capacity to generate force off the bike. So there's absolutely value of strength training that you can do with weights without weights that can benefit and improve that. And then there's things we can do on the bike we have seated starts standing starts, where we're actually getting that highest peak torque for a few pedal strokes to elicit that highest kind of force production.
Jeff Hoobler 6:30
And the same thing applies whenever you're maximizing that that nervous system and that neuromuscular connection, you need full recovery between those. So you can really get a POW when you go for it.
Speaker 1 6:42
Exactly that force is maximal recruitment. If you're trying to recruit your muscles, you can you can achieve maximal recruitment, either via absolute maximum speed, or absolute maximum force. Having training that you do that emphasizes both ends of that spectrum is very important. So your cadence work is about that maximum speed. So even doing 100 RPM work, or 120 rpm in many cases, isn't actually valuable. If I have a P cadence of over 200 RPM, which I do, Jeff, that's impressive, doing some work at 120 RPM is not actually really valuable, I need to do those cadence builds where I may only be over 150, or 160 RPM for five, eight, maybe 10 seconds maximum, over the course of a 32nd cadence build, but it is those last 58678 seconds at that maximum near maximal cadence that drive the benefit, don't worry about trying to hold an extremely high cadence for the speed work. Just like the torque, we don't need to do a lot of repetitions we might do for standing start efforts over the course of you know, 30 minutes, because we have six, eight minutes between each effort. And we literally only have maybe six 810 pedal strokes we are where we're actually delivering that maximum torque or force into the pedal stroke. But every single one of those is important and it has to be done at that upper maximum for
Jeff Hoobler 8:18
Yeah, 100% The quality is absolutely imperative here, if your maximum cadence is over 200, which is quite impressive, how close to that you need to get?
Neal Henderson 8:27
Over 90% of your maximum to really be stressing that that neuromuscular at that upper limit 180 and above is where the magic begins. If you got to 200 RPM Max, if you can only do 150 RPM today, then you still need to get over 135 to be kind of tapping on your limit, right. And your goal is always to be able to just build up that cadence and it is quite possible. I've seen individuals over 300 RPM, it's not common. 300 is absolutely extreme. It's like a hummingbird or her but I've seen World Tour professionals, even time travelers like grow and do 230 240 rpm and a cadence build the day before the start of a grand tour. Just getting everything firing. I've watched a an actual you know world champion in sprint events, jump on a bike, a stationary bike at a warm up in sneakers. So not in cycling shoes not clipped in, spin out 250 RPM just to show the sprinters listen, if you're not going over 240 RPM, I'm not I don't believe that you are tapping out what you should be developing to be really effective.
Jeff Hoobler 9:33
And on that if you if you so if this is new to you. Let's get out there and find out what your cadence ranges are, what your limitations are so that you can bump up to 90% of that because if you don't know, and you just think you're going fast, you're probably not going fast enough.
Neal Henderson 9:51
Exactly. And again, you don't have to hold it or sustain it. One thing that's really important here when we work on these maximal speed or cadence In maximal force things, we are not achieving maximal power in either realm at the highest speed and at the highest force, the power output is actually kind of moderate. At best, it's not hot. So when we think about the actual desire to produce maximum power, what true sprinting is, we then need some sub maximal cadence and sub maximal force together to hit that peak power. For most folks, the cadence where we're able to achieve peak power is between 90 and 130 RPM, if you train properly, it's probably closer to 110 121 30 RPM, where you will hit your actual maximum possible peak power with training. But if you have never done any cadence work, and you're kind of new to cycling, I wouldn't be shocked if you said, Oh, I hit my highest power at 85 RPM, I would say, Okay, you have a speed limitation, we need to work on your cadence. Now, with the same amount of force being applied, if you get that cadence 20% Higher, the product of those two things, the power will be 20% Higher. So if you hit 800 Watts, you could for the same force production, at that higher cadence now, so 20% higher than 85, doing that quick math at 17 RPM, so we're up to 102 RPM would mean Oh 20% higher than 800 Watts, 960 Watts, you'd be you'd be tapping on nearly 1000 Watts, by increasing your capacity to produce the same force at that higher cadence.
Jeff Hoobler 11:41
So in practical terms, when you're doing these these Sprint's if you're if you're accustomed to him, or you're going for the town sign, you know, just shifting into a bigger gear and trying to push harder is not going to get you there, it's a much slower rev up, right, and you're not going to hit the peak. So this is this is I think what you're trying to say is most people are missing that coordination, and that that speed component of the the equation exactly. So
Neal Henderson 12:07
Remember, like, if you start a spring effort, you should be starting at close to 90 RPM, as you start to accelerate and push and don't shift yet that cadence up into that 110 120, maybe even 130. And see, you can look back at your file and see where your peak power was, you know, if you have second by second power data, you can look at the power, the cadence and the speed, and see where that maximum power is occurring, and what's the associated cadence and be able to make, again, some notes in what you've done. And work on developing, you know, having the right gear as you start those efforts to be able to develop more power, it's not one or the other. It's the product of those two things. And just remember, if you need a little bit more of a primer on neuromuscular training, which is that combination, there's the speed element, the torque element, and the peak power, go back to the knowledge episode 61.
Jeff Hoobler 13:00
So we've been talking about the components of sprint training, Cadence, or speed, and the why and the how, why and the how and the torque, but how are we going to put this into a plan or put it into our workouts? For most of us out there? If you don't, if you're not on a plan? Or if you don't have a coach probably haven't been doing sprint training, because that's just not what people do. But you should. So where do we start? We're gonna start with one session a week first, probably only twice a week max. But you know, and as we get started with this, we want to, we want to hone in on both of those components. So how would you frame it?
Neal Henderson 13:41
Yep. So effectively, one one day a week, where you work on sprinting is adequate for most everyone. And so we would start off if you're just adding in sprint training, Cadence work first work on developing that coordination and that speed. And you might want to even give yourself a few weeks where you do that once a week, build that cadence, that capacity to coordinate your movement, get that speed a little bit higher first. So you might do a block where you just work on cadence once, maybe even twice a week with cadence work.
Jeff Hoobler 14:11
Specifically, when we're talking about that cadence fork, and we're starting to get to this maximal cadences, you'll notice when you lose control, because you're still bouncing up and down, and it will get really janky. But over time, it's going to get better and better and better. It's actually gonna get smoother and you'll be able to do it for longer pushing that envelope a little
Neal Henderson 14:30
bit. Yeah, and I would recommend starting with short, like 15 second kind of builds building up eventually to 2025 and 32nd. Usually we don't go much beyond that unless you're really an extreme, you know, athlete track sprinter, etc. Where that's super critical. So, I'd rather have somebody do for good 22nd cadence builds and really be at that Max for the last five, six seconds of each one of those then try to do three or 4/32 efforts, but run and run not even get to There's no maximum right and get fatigued and tired and not able to not able to hit that, Max
Jeff Hoobler 15:07
To be clear on that, you know, we're doing canes drills, and obviously your power is gonna go up a little bit. But that is not the primary focus. Yeah, a lot of focus is the cadence.
Neal Henderson 15:16
Yeah, if you're doing this inside, on a train, or even outside on the bike, I'm usually small chain ring, somewhere middle or upper end of my cassette. And what I do to make this easier is actually I shift into an easier gear every few seconds, every four or five seconds, I go to an easier gear, so that I'm reducing the force that I have to produce and can just get that speed, that cadence, it's all about the cadence in cadence, work and speed work like that. So don't worry about the power or the force of the speed. It's just that cadence as the key thing. So a block first to work on cadence. Next, we'll work on force. And so ideally, again, you've done hopefully, some maybe strength work, whether that's bodyweight type strength activity, whether that's loaded strength with weights, some sort of strength activity, before doing the on bike strength, work will be better. But if you haven't done it, you can start on the bike seat, it starts where you're in a relatively big gear, that you might only be at 20, or 30 RPM, as you begin, and you just push very hard into the pedals as hard as you can, for 10 or 15 seconds. So that you just get that acceleration, that recruitment, we often think it's in both the speed and the torque, it's good to engage your core as you begin those efforts. So the work that you do goes into the pedal,
Jeff Hoobler 16:36
Quick note on that, if you if you are doing these work, you know, this big gear work or these, you know, starts and you feel yourself moving around in the saddling, that that's an indication that you know, a little core work is and you know, you can, you can do it on the bike, it's probably a little more effective to do both in the on the bike and in the gym.
Neal Henderson 16:59
And then you can go beyond the seated start to a standing start. And when that happens, you're actually engaging your upper body, transferring that power through your torso and core into then legs into the pedals, ultimately, so there's a little bit more coordination there, you can do those, and again, a relatively big gear. So normally, it would be like big chain ring on a road bike, and somewhere middle or even towards the lower end of the cassette for pro athletes, like I will have them do seated and standing starts in like a 5311 You have to be very strong to be able to accelerate that hard. But if you race on the track, or do some of those kinds of things, you know, you need that high force and torque, torque development.
Jeff Hoobler 17:41
Absolutely. And then as you as you keep going, you know, you're gonna build up and you're gonna start to combine those, those workouts.
Neal Henderson 17:48
It's, it's fun, it's fun work. The next part, you know, again, the product of those two things, then is that peak power, short sprint, so when we when we're considering Sprint's here, we're talking five or 10 seconds in training, yes, in a race situation, you might be doing a 15 or 22nd, long sprint, but those are just absolutely fatiguing. And so we try to keep them shorter, so that you can do a few efforts repeats, and focus each one on being better not just sub par, like, I don't do a lot of submaximal sprinting work I don't do actually any submaximal sprinting, you either are sprinting or you're not. And so, six eight seconds or five to 10 seconds is kind of the range for these and we go for long recoveries, initially several minutes, at least three to five minutes more likely five to 10 minutes, so that each effort can be at its absolute best you can then advance things by changing the recovery a little bit or changing the effort prior to a sprint there's lots of ways that you can continue to vary then your sprint once you've developed the foundation of speed, torque and peak power then you can start to play Jeff What are your favorite kinds of Sprint sessions you're you're an advanced cyclist I'd say what do you like
Jeff Hoobler 19:08
I like the ones where I when
Neal Henderson 19:10
ahhhhhh you are externally motivated
Jeff Hoobler 19:13
You know actually the most fun and I've quite find these the most helpful too because of the sprinting after fatigue is like you know during a fast ride having a you know a city limit sprint time or you know stop ahead sign depending on where you are don't go for the stop time that's Yeah, but those types of Sprint's are on my favorite and but they don't come without doing the other work right? That's just
Neal Henderson 19:40
foundation then right? The town sprints and things like that are a way to then practice deploying it effective. Yeah. Which is pretty cool for judging. You know, how far away are you how long will it take based on the wind or the conditions and all that kind
Jeff Hoobler 19:55
of thing, and I've gotten it wrong a lot times
Neal Henderson 19:58
more wrong than that.
Jeff Hoobler 20:00
What's your favorite type?
Neal Henderson 20:01
For me at racing on the track like doing weeknight races on the track is probably the best because there's just so many different track cycling events where we have short, Sprint's, if you don't have access to a track my second favorite then is actually going in and looking at short Strava sprint, kale wins and starting them. So that when I turn on my Wahoo, bike computer, my room or boat, I'm gonna see what the best time is or what my best time is for that section. And I'm gonna go try and beat my best first now, I will, you know, I do have a few actual overall Kayo NS and some sprint efforts in my neighborhood. And I will load up again a little route where I will go and do two or three of them and I might repeat them a couple times if I feel like I was in the wrong gear at the start or whatever into your and they finish. You come to my hood, Jeff, you load them up. And the Strava lag live seconds on the Wahoo computer. I'm getting that feedback right away, like Did I beat it? Did I need it? Am I a second or two behind and I will try again. A second time with plenty of recovery a lot of times five or 10 minutes, I'll just noodle around. Give it another rip. And once I've done those, you know, four or five, six total efforts, shut her down.
Jeff Hoobler 21:15
Well, that's it for another episode. Hope you're up and we'll take away some useful information about why everyone should do sprint training and how it will make you a better endurance athlete, maybe even help you win the next town sprint.
That's impressive.