Power Builder
Posted by FLATOUT JIM in Training
My pain cave is ready, my trainer and my spin bike is ready, so all that’s left is the sweat and puke.
My first power builder session was Monday night. I spent the weekend cleaning out the cave and setting up the spinner truing my back wheel, and doing an hour easy spin to help set the tension on the roller, and season my butt.
Monday’s session looked easy on paper. 2 sets of intervals. The first was 5 sets of single leg pedaling (ILT) the second was 5 sets of seated big gear sprints. And there was lots of recovery spinning in between.
Before I tell how it went, let me state the importance of preparation. That means not eating too much supper because it doesn’t taste as good coming up as going down. It also means ensuring you have a working reliable time piece. Every single digital watch in our freaking house was out of commission, including two Dora digital watches from Macdonalds, and my heart rate monitor which appears to have died in the pool after I recently had the battery replaced.
So to complete the session, I used my dress watch with a the tiny face with no numbers. I had to rely on counting my revs, and counting steamboats to stay on pace.
As I stated, the session doesn’t session doesn’t appear tough on paper, but the beauty of spinning is you can go as hard or easy as you want and nobody can tell if you are dogging it, or holding back puke. It is also important to be sure to have the roller tension on the trainer just right to make the session hard enough to be effective.
The single leg pedaling started fine, but after about the third set, and the hip flexors became fatigued, smoothness went down the toilet. It took a lot of concentrating to keep the pedal stroke smooth and round. By the end I was happy it was over.
The seated sprints were also easy starting off. But after the first two, it really took effort to get the pedals going at low cadence, and building up and holding a high cadence for 15 seconds seemed like 15 hours.
The program appears to be fairly progressive. By the mid way point, week 6, this same workout has grown from 5 x 30 second ILT and 5 x 15 second seated sprints to 5 x 60 second ILT, and 6 x 30 second seated sprints, so it definitely gets more challenging.
Wednesday is session 2. 2 x 5 minute form intervals, and 5 sets of 30/30’s. Boy I can’t wait!
