Quick Profile The Ultimate HIIT—Teaching with Perceived Exertion Quick Profile created by: Jennifer Sage Length: 60 minutes Profile objective: High-Intensity Intervals, Education about Perceived Exertion This high-intensity interval profile is a very effective training session as well as the perfect opportunity to educate riders about perceived exertion and about the value of sufficient recovery. You will do five sets of efforts for different durations, each at slightly different intensities. There is ample recovery planned in between each effort. If you were to decrease the amount of recovery, riders might not be able to reach and maintain the desired intensity during the work intervals. The sets are as follows: ● Two 3-minute very hard efforts. This is called your TEST EFFORT. ● One 5-minute effort. On bikes with power meters, it would be about 20% lower than the initial 3-minute intervals and what would be close to a “threshold level” if you were measuring power or wearing a heart rate monitor. You coach this as a more sustainable but still challenging effort. ● Two 50-second very challenging efforts. ● Seven reps of 30 seconds very hard/60 seconds easy. The first four intervals are at 76 rpm; the second three are at 86 rpm. ● Two 10-second explosive power sprints, way above the test effort. ​ ​ Heart rate is not a good guide for high-intensity efforts of 3 minutes or less. Heart rate is very useful, however, for tracking recovery. If riders have heart rate monitors and zones to follow (zones from threshold testing, not the inaccurate maximum heart rate charts), the 5-minute effort would be right around lactate threshold. Everything else is too short. There is a lot of explanation needed in the warm-up and recoveries. See the full profile for in-depth cues, explanations, and modifications. Note that the italicized cueing is directed at the riders. ​ ​ I strongly recommend riding this profile on your own or with your peers so you know what each effort feels like and you know the music inside and out. To shorten this profile: You can replace the second 9-minute song with a 3- to 4-minute song of the ​ same energy and bpm, and instead of two 3-minute efforts, just do one. You can also take out either the first song of the 30-second efforts or the second one. I recommend keeping the higher-cadence one to give riders a comparison with the slower-cadence efforts. You can shorten the cool-down song since the sprinting song “Galvanize” is longer than necessary. If you have MixMeister skills, you may choose to shorten “Galvanize” to end just after the second sprint—that will shave off almost 2 minutes. I don’t recommend taking out the 5-minute effort as it is an important benchmark against which to compare their higher-intensity efforts. Also, do not shorten the recoveries—you will need them! Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Sage and Indoor Cycling Association. All Rights Reserved. www.indoorcyclingassociation.com Quick Profile The Ultimate HIIT—Teaching with Perceived Exertion RPE Chart At ICA, we use the RPE chart below. You should be aware that not every RPE chart is the same. If your studio has one that is a little different, by all means, use the chart that your riders are familiar with. You can easily modify the profile to use the numbers and descriptions that your riders are used to. Personally, I rarely use the RPE numbers except occasionally to use them as a benchmark for a specific outcome. For example, stating that the 5-minute effort in this profile is a 7 out of 10 or that the sprint is a 10 out of 10. For most of my coaching, however, I use the verbal descriptions of perceived exertion (as opposed to the RATE of perceived exertion.) I believe it is far more understandable for most riders to use descriptions rather than numbers, especially if those numbers can vary from one facility or instructor to another. Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Sage and Indoor Cycling Association. All Rights Reserved. www.indoorcyclingassociation.com Quick Profile The Ultimate HIIT—Teaching with Perceived Exertion 1. Warm-up RPE 2–3 83 rpm Into the Sun, Lord Huron 6:27 83 bpm Gradually raise intensity from very easy to easy; include a few 30-second leg surges. Explain the objective and how the first set will be done. In today’s ride, you are going to learn what you are made of. We are going to explore the difference between a 3-minute, a 5-minute, a 1-minute, a 30-second, and a 10-second effort. You will notice the shorter the duration, the harder you can push yourself—but I’m also going to teach you about pacing. My intention is for you to reconcile how hard each effort is with the duration. Obviously, you can’t sprint at the beginning of a 5-minute hard effort—you have to dole out your work over 5 minutes and learn to pace yourself. But...it’s still going to be hard. Are you ready to explore the difference? Following our warm-up, you will do two very hard efforts for just over 3 minutes with a recovery in between. On the second one, you will try to reach the same sensation of effort as the first one, but get there sooner. 2. Two 3-Minute Very Hard Intervals RPE 8 71 rpm Palladio (Symphony Mix), Silent Nick 9:44 142 bpm This is a long song, allowing you to do two efforts just over 3 minutes with a 3-minute break and some room for error. Start the first interval at 0:27. Push them to almost breathless for 3 minutes—they can stand or sit as needed. Then recover for 3 minutes. The second one starts at about the 6:30 mark. I want you to arrive at the end of the 3 minutes and feel like you could NOT have gone any longer. If you could, you didn’t go hard enough. But if you feel that way at 1 or 2 minutes, then you went too hard. Pay attention to where your resistance knob/gear is on these two efforts, because for the next set, you will want to be a little below this since you’ll hold it for a bit longer. 3. Recovery RPE 1–2 80–85 rpm Sustain, Scrape Communion 3:02 85 bpm Ride easy at an effort that feels like you are cruising slowly along a bike path with your young child on a bike next to you. Recoveries should feel overly easy, otherwise you cannot put out the effort required during the intervals. During the recovery, explain the next segment. Next, we are going to ride for 5 minutes at an effort that, after those 3-minute ones, feels slightly easier. On its ​ ​ own, it should still feel hard. Theoretically, it should be something you could push yourself to do for 10, even 20 minutes if you had to, but you’d have to overcome the desire to back off. 4. 5-Minute Effort RPE 7 70 rpm Swamp Thing, Juno Reactor 5:12 140 bpm Grab the beat and dial in a resistance just a little below what they used for the previous two intervals. During this track, your goal is to have them notice how it feels in relation to the harder 3-minute effort. Stand as needed, but remain seated for the majority of the song. Yes, this is a little bit easier than what you just did, but it is by no means “easy.” This is what we refer to as a “hard but sustainable” effort, with the emphasis on SUSTAINABLE. On the RPE scale, it’s a 7 out of 10. You should not be breathless, though you are breathing deeply and noticeably, and if you had to talk, you could only say about four or five words. Your legs are talking to you, but they aren’t screaming at you. This is only 5 minutes...but imagine holding this for 10 minutes, even 20 minutes. Doable? Yes, but hard. Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Sage and Indoor Cycling Association. All Rights Reserved. www.indoorcyclingassociation.com Quick Profile The Ultimate HIIT—Teaching with Perceived Exertion 6. Recovery RPE 1–2 80–86 rpm Orchestral Hip Hop, Jorge Quintero 2:54 86 bpm ​ ​ Ride easy, remind riders to drink. How did that feel in relation to the 3-minute effort? Aside from our very important recoveries such as this one, that was the “easiest” you’ll be riding. That’s an effort level you should become very familiar with because it has extremely worthwhile training benefits. It’s high-end aerobic and burns a lot of calories, and by doing more and more of those longer intervals at that intensity, you can teach your body to prefer fat as a fuel source. That being said...it’s now time to go harder than those first two efforts we started off with. Next, we are going to do about a minute as hard as you can go. Twice. 7. Two 50-Second Very Hard Intervals RPE 9 65 rpm Stampede, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike vs DVBBS & Borgeous 4:17 129 bpm The music will dictate the start and end of the interval, about 50 seconds each. The first interval is at 1:15 right after he says, “Stampede.” The second one begins at 2:54, again after the lyric “Stampede.” For each interval, start out of the saddle and allow riders to stand or sit as desired.