Great Airdyne workout today. Used the big fan bikes at BU. These are clearly the hardest of the three versions of Airdyne.
4×1 mi with my good friend Ken
2:41 work 1:00 Rest back to 110 BPM ( hearrate at the end of interval 1 was about 160)
2:41 work, 2 min rest
2:42 work, 2:20 rest
2:43 work
Give this one a try. For the new small fan Airdyne think around 2:30 per mile.
A recent Vern Gambetta blog criticized heart rate based training and the use of heartrate monitoring systems. If you read Vern’s blog, and I do not unless directed to a particular post by a reader or a friend, you already know that at least half of the posts are critical of someone or something. However in this case I want to state clearly that I think Vern is wrong. Heart rate based training is a huge improvement over timed based interval work as it gives us an actual physiological measurement to work from. Is it perfect? Obviously not but, it is a quantum leap forward. To read more about the difference between time based and heart rate based interval, click here.
I’ll take this a step further and say that heart rate recovery ( how quickly your hear rate drops after an interval) may be the best indicator of fitness for a field or court sport.
Vern states;
“in 95% of the sports and situations I work with it or have worked with, it ( heartrate monitoring) would not enhance my ability to more effectively monitor the training and coach the athletes. Pass up the heart rate sideshow and go watch the lion tamers.”
I can only speak for ice hockey but I know it helps our training significantly and I have only scratched the surface of what our Polar Team System can do.
Vern goes on to say that many of those who are pro heart rate training are on company payrolls. I will be clear. I get no money from Polar and we paid for our system. I like it and I use it. Take it for what it’s worth.
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There has been lots of talk about metabolic conditioning for both fitness and fat loss. In the past I have posted these workouts under the heading Real Life Intervals. It’s funny because certain groups think they have cornered the market on hard work. In my mind, the best work device in the world is the Schwinn Airdyne. Between Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning and Boston University Hockey we own about 28 Airdynes. I know, they need a little maintenance but they are worth it. This is a workout done on what we refer to as “the big fan” Airdyne with the large front fan.
FYI, the work intervals are prescribed by distance, this way no one can dog it. If you use time you need to watch people. If you use distance, they either ride harder or longer. In this case the work interval was 1/2 mi.
Rest is based on heartrate. This means that we wait for the heartrate to drop to about 60%. There is no magic to 60% but it works. For my BU athletes we use 65% as that seems to be their recovery heartrate on the bench. In either case the entire workout stays in the theoretical aerobic range.
We now have our Polar Team System on a big screen TV so there is no hiding.
Time Heartrate Rest
Interval 1 .5 mi 1:25 150 :60
Interval 2 . 5 mi 1:20 160 1:20
Interval 3 . 5 mi 1:20 166 1:25
Interval 4 .5 mi 1:20 168 2:00
Interval 5 .5 mi 1:20 170 2:00
Interval 6 .5 mi 1:20 177
I think the key measure of fitness is recovery. How fast does your heartrate go down. We train for a combination of work consistency and recovery. Try it.
I like to keep posting these AirDyne interval workouts. Today I did my interval work with two of my former players, Mike Grier, from the Buffalo Sabres and Dan Spang one of our former BU defensemen. We did:
3x 1 mi 2:28/ 2:28/ 2:27 with 1:30 rest
1x.5 1:12
This was done on the new small fan AirDynes. I didn’t have a heartrate monitor available but I am pretty good at “doing it by feel”. I would clearly not recommend this method but all the intervals were under a 1-1 rest to work ratio. I did one mile every 4 minutes so the workout took about 13:30.
My hockey group ran 3x 300 shuttle and 1 x150 shuttle at 25 yds. Even if this is not the best way to lose fat there is no doubt in my mind it is the best way to get in shape for sports. These were done basically in one minute on, 2 minutes off so their conditioning workout took about 10 minutes.
Did 8 x .5 mi. again Give it a try.
1:26/ 1:20/ 1:20/ 1:19/ 1:20/ 1:20/ 1:24/ 1:22
Rest was 1 min after interval one and capped at 2 min. Recoveries 1-5 was to 110 BPM, after 6 and 7 it was only about 1:17 but we had capped the rest at 2 min.
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