Getting the Most out of Winter Tempo Work

Whether calling it “tempo”, “medio”, “zone 3”, “sub-LT”, “sweet spot” - this kind of upper aerobic work, below the line that occurs around FTP is pretty bread and butter work of most athlete’s winter training program at this point. It certainly is bread and butter work for our athletes. We do a lot of this work because of the physiological benefit it has down the road in building up a robust and reliable aerobic foundation without the stress of bringing on form too fast, or overloading with intensity before a proper base is built up.

I don’t think we’re introducing anything novel here, and my idea isn’t to sell people on doing tempo work. Quite the contrary, I was thinking about the workouts I see all sorts of athletes do this time of year and it is very apparent how prevalent tempo work is. However, what I think goes often overlooked is the benefit of incorporating nuanced technical components into the tempo work. Meaning, a lot of people go out and when they’re doing tempo the idea behind the workout is solely driven by heart rate or power. Meaning achieve the tempo HR or Power by any means necessary. 80% of the time, this means all winter athlete’s ride around training the exact technical aspects that they’re already most comfortable with and strongest with. One example can be cadence, just doing a big volume of tempo consistently through the winter at an athlete’s naturally preferred cadence. Naturally preferred doesn’t mean bad, but it also means not increasing the tools in the tool box. Same can go for terrain, an athlete that really feels more comfortable producing power on climbs more times than not will tend to go and knock out that tempo on climbs and not work on ability to produce the power on flat terrain - same issue, not increasing the tools in the tool box.

When doing a big winter of tempo work, it is an excellent opportunity for an athlete to increase their technical spectrum. We are big proponents of using the tempo work that we have to do, as an opportunity to really drill different technical aspects. An athlete that is great climber needs to work on producing power on the flats so that they’re energetically as efficient as possible in the terrain leading up to the big climb. An athlete that can only climb seated needs to work on moving in and out of the saddle so that they can benefit from changing up muscle groups on a long climb and be able to follow surges in pace. Here are some of our favorite exercises to incorporate to get more out of the tempo work rather than just the aerobic load:

• Flat tempo @ 100+ rpm

• Climb tempo alternating 1.5 min seated / 30 sec standing

• Tempo in the drops

• Tempo on climb @ 50-60 rpm, we’ll usually do these in 3-5 min blocks as repetitions - can also build to have these be “cadence change” efforts alternating 3-4 min @ 50-60 rpm and 2-3 min @ 90+ rpm

• Tempo in the final hour of the ride @ 100+ rpm

Really the list goes on infinitely, and can and should be tailored to athlete’s specific needs. But the idea is, working these technical aspects pays off both in broadening an athletes spectrum of ability, but also physiologically in different muscle recruitments that occur with different cadences and positions on the bike. We hope that incorporating a variety of technique work through the winter is something that keeps it interesting and ultimately pays off come spring. Thanks for reading!