Intense turbo sessions

Three short, sharp turbo sessions to hone fitness levels and get the heart pumping.

What?s in it for me?

We are targeting these sessions at youth riders, but they will be equally effective no matter what age you are.

These are tough workouts for ambitious teenagers: younger riders can work on the same principles but should reduce the workload ? skip the two-minute efforts on the first session, for example.

Young riders who are training seriously have a tendency to train too much, but not intensely enough. They will go out and do a three-hour ride once a week, but won?t do a couple of turbo sessions: that is not mimicking what is going to happen in a race situation.

The average youth cyclo-cross or circuit race will be about half an hour, so there is no need to go out for three hours on the road. If anything, they are training themselves to be slow.

These three turbo-training sessions will cover all bases: one really intense ? training the anaerobic system; one hard but slightly less intense ? more like a TT effort; and a threshold-type session.

The tough one

10 min warm-up

1 min effort

15 sec recovery

1 min effort

30 sec recovery

2 min effort

30 sec recovery

2 min effort

1 min recovery

2 min effort

30 sec recovery

1 min effort

30 sec recovery

1 min effort

15 sec recovery

30 sec effort

10 min warm-down

That should come to 34 minutes. All the efforts are flat-out: they are meant to be short, sharp blasts. If you are having trouble remembering the order, tape a list of the timings to your stem. And don?t skimp on the warm-down ? you?re going to need it!

The medium one

This one covers the middle ground between the other two sessions, with fairly lengthy intervals.

10 min warm-up

2 min effort

1 min recovery

Repeat 5 times, with a 10-minute warm-down. That gives you a 35-minute session.

Threshold session

The third one is dead easy. 10 minutes warm-up, 5 minutes at 10-mile time trial pace, five-minute rest, five minutes time trial pace, and then 10 minutes recovery. About 35 minutes all in.

For older youth riders, I would put in two of these per week, and for the younger riders, one per week rotating them so that all three sessions are covered. You need to be pretty fresh, so do not attempt them after a hard race and, as previously mentioned, younger riders should reduce the number of efforts.

Coach Scott Budgen is the SE region Go-Ride coach. Working with young riders, he is also an off-road and track rider