Sufferfest substitutions
I used these a lot last winter, but not as part of a plan. Just a trial member now, but probably going to give a shot at the OS, adjusting for some weight/core training as I go. Does anyone here substitute them? Or do you have to do what's on the plan? My longest time ever on the trainer is 2:15 and the few times I've done that I didn't want to see it for days--that was a spinerval DVD. Trainerroad and with those rocks once you adjust the FTP a bit.
0
Comments
I'd say you'd be OK with substituting some Sufferfest training sessions for your scheduled bike workouts if you need the videos to keep your intensity/interest up. Whatever keeps your head in the game. That being said, the prescribed workouts are usually pretty good. Mix it up however you want. I'm planning to add some Spinervals or Sufferfest or P90X if the workouts get boring or I want a change of pace. There are a lot of folks who use Trainerroad here as well!
Hope that helps!
Andy
One thing I'm not sure of is whether you can drop the sufferfest video into a different graph workout in TR. If you can, then you maybe in business once Stark works his magic with the TR people. You can have your sufferfest video playing on the screen with your EN workout in the graph. It won't exactly match, but you'd have to decide if this would drive you crazy or not. It would be like watching a movie in a different language than the words that the actors were speaking, so their lips wouldn't match what was being said.
That's kind of what I was thinking. So the idea is to match the time in zone to the workout. This makes sense--I want to follow a structured plan, but don't want to have to be a complete slave to it (this is a hobby after all).
Right on...
I have a few of them and I substitute them or some of the other videos from my collection (ErgVideos) into my workout rotation over the winter to combat boredom or just based off of my mood really.
There are pretty much 2 main takeaways I have on this topic. The first is to remember that the point of the EN OS is to work, and this is one of the main differentiation from a conventional "base building" outseason. We aren't here to waste hours of your time spinning at low intensities, we are here to get real, serious work in (i.e. intensity) rather than tons of volume. The Sufferfest is definitely spiritually aligned with that philosophy.
The second aspect is understanding what it is, physiologically speaking, we are attempting to get out of each workout. This should be pretty easily identified in your OS workout plan, the plan will tell you whether you are in an FTP building phase or a vO2 max phase, and it should be fairly obvious which type of workouts are targeting which. So conversely, different Sufferfest (or other videos) will be more suitable substitutions for some workouts than others. If you understand the 'flavor' of the video, i.e. does it have a lot of short but very intense efforts (vo2) or does it have longer threshold efforts (ftp), then you can substitute them for plan workouts a lot more effectively.
Puts on coach hat:
The OS has about a 6yr history of people saying:
Yeah, no, there's not.
The net is that RnP spend a lot of time around December picking up the broken pieces of athletes who insist on doing it their way.
Ok, my notes above are probably not exactly what you're talking about. But since many people are reading this I want to speak to everyone. The short answer is: