High power anaerobic sprints: 40-minute indoor cycling workout
Join Hank for this hard-core anaerobic cycling workout. Short sprints of maximum effort, with minimal recovery time. This is a seriously tough workout to simulate racing attacks, give it a try if you dare!
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The GCN team
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If you want to improve your top-end power, sprint efforts are the way to go. This indoor training session, led by Hank, will work on your sprinting, with a mix of short, sharp efforts, ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Each sprint is followed by a gentle recovery spin, so you can recover as best you can to give your all for those high-power efforts.
What is the benefit of sprint training?
Sprint training sessions like this one develop top-end power, but they also train your body to recover fast and keep pushing, even when you're tired.
If your goal is weight loss, sprint training sessions are great, because they burn more fat than low-intensity training sessions, as studies like this one have shown.
The best part about sprint training for weight loss is that it creates 'afterburn', which is when your body keeps burning calories as part of the recovery process. If you exercise regularly, this afterburn will increase your metabolic rate, which is the amount of calories you burn on a typical day.
For this session, you will need an indoor trainer, static bike or spin bike, a water bottle and a towel to collect any sweat. At 40 minutes, this is one of our longer indoor sessions, so make sure you have plenty of water to hand.
Read more: GCN's Ultimate Guide to Indoor Cycling
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Warm up on your indoor trainer for 11 minutes
The sprint efforts for this session will put your body under a lot of stress, so start with a thorough warm-up. Follow Hank's lead as he slowly works up the gears, starting at a gentle 2/10 and rising to 7/10, before knocking it back down to 3/10 in preparation for the main session.
Sprint session: 15 minutes of on-off sprinting
Now for the main session. This session uses just two intensities: 3/10 for recoveries, and 9/10 for sprints. 3/10 should feel nice and easy, but there should be some amount of resistance on the pedals. Meanwhile, 9/10 should be almost as hard as you can go. This session will be more effective if you keep the recoveries relaxed and keep the sprints consistently tough.
The length of each effort varies throughout, so keep an eye on the screen to keep up. Push on right the way to the end — this is a tough session, but stick with it to maximise your results.
Cool down for at least two and half minutes
With the session behind you, stay on your bike for a few more minutes and spin out the legs. After 30 seconds at an easy 3/10, bring up the intensity a touch to 4/10 to give your muscles a chance to flush out any lactic acid. We've suggested two minutes of cool down here, but feel free to keep spinning a bit longer until you feel ready to dismount.
Top Tip
Finish off this session with some stretches and a recovery drink to maximise your gains.
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