Sprint improvement

Training
1

What have you done to improve your sprint (15 sec max power) and how much has it improved? Did you regress in some other area in the process?

I’ve never really focused on it. My best end of a hard race 15 sec power is only around 650. Rested I can maybe do 850 to 900. My peak 5 sec is 1100. I’m 77kg. How much could I realistically improve this through training is what I’m trying to glean. I would hope to get to 900-1000w for 15 sec at end of race. Reasonable goal?

2

What you are talking about is fatigue resistance, and there are a few ways to go about this:

  • As your FTP rises, fatigue resistance should improve for a specific wattage (i.e. you can hold X for longer)
  • As your aerobic power rises as a function of FTP, fatigue resistance improves on an time basis (i.e. you should be able to put out more power for X duration)
  • As your absolute sprint power rides, your fatigued sprint should also improve on an absolute basis
  • As you do more training in a fatigued state, your fatigued sprint should improve on a relative basis

So if you want to improve your fatigued sprint, a good workout might look like:

Ride at an sustainable aerobic pace for 1500kj (or whatever your usual race looks like from an energy cost) and then do a sprint workout in that state.

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3

During my training, as I get closer to race season, I start throwing 1-5 ramp sprints at the tail end of my Sweet Spot or lower intensity workouts to help improve this. For these, before the cool down I will ramp up to a high Z4-5 then get my sprint kick in and get it up to 1200+.

I mostly do these outdoors and try to do them on similar terrain to the finish line of a goal or next race and I sprint for a finish line. Sprinting for a fixed position instead of time helps you improve your timing and not going out too soon in a race and the ramp up is just what I typically find I am doing in races and I don’t like going for Z2 to a sprint in an instant. Indoors just hold the sprint as long as you can. I also have an every other week sprint workout that is pretty much one of those intervals every 5ish minutes for an hour or so.

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4

So from a detrained state how much of a bump do you see in sprint power when training it?

5

I think it depends on what type of sprinting you want to improve.

E.g. at the track they run a sprint session in the rest breaks of the enduro session. The sprinters do 5 maybe 6 efforts during 2 hours. The key being that the efforts are truly max effort, so long rests are key.

But a lot of articles for road sprinting workouts are very different, with the focus on repeated sprints or sprinting at the end of a longer race

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6

I’m looking for a better crit racing sprint, so 15-30 sec after hard 60 min race.

I don’t do any sprint specific training currently as I’ve been exclusively working on sustained power and repeatability. But now I’m getting strong enough that I can legitimately contest races and want to have a sprint. So I’m wondering having gone from no training whatsoever can I bring my 15-30 sec power up to 900 watts from 650 watts, can I do it without losing some of my sustained power, and how much work does it take. I have sense that a 250 watt improvement shouldn’t be a stretch goal by wanted to know others experience

7

Hey Nick, you may want to edit to remove your email and phone number. Looks like it came through as a signature with your email reply.