Wattbikes are a popular tool for improving various areas of cardiovascular fitness.
There are several different workouts that you can use to target specific energy systems and it’s important to know what you’re trying to achieve in each session.
Here, Built for Athletes lists five Wattbike workouts and their individual purposes.
Aerobic Capacity
In this workout, the objective is to increase VO2 max by sustaining an intense workload for a few minutes at a time.
Try five reps of three minutes at a hard but consistent effort with a two-minute rest.
Don’t burn yourself out on the first rep. The idea is to spend as much time at VO2 max as possible so you need to be able to get up to the same cadence on the last interval as the first.
Long Reps
This workout, which totals 70 minutes but can be adapted if you don’t have that much time, is aimed at increasing threshold power.
After a 20-minute warm-up, do two lots of 15 minutes in heart rate zone four, with a five-minute float recovery at about 5-10 rpm less than rep pace.
Sprint Workout
Extremely short bursts performed as fast as possible can be used to increase sprint speed.
Try 10 x 10 seconds as hard as possible with a 50-second active recovery at an easy pace.
Lactic Workout
In order to improve lactic acid tolerance, try holding a fast pace for an extended period of time.
Go for 6 x 40 seconds with a one-minute rest.
The Clockface
For a grueling session that makes you work at differing intensities, this is a challenging but fun workout.
It’s called the clockface because you start with a rep of 1,200m and decrease the distance by 100m on each interval, right down until you reach zero.
Give yourself a one-minute active recovery between reps.
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