SPRING INTO ACTION 6 KEY SESSIONS TO FIRE UP YOUR FITNESS

With spring sunshine just around the corner, Steve Shrubsall asks a selection of pros and coaches for their favourite sessions for the final weeks of winter

- Steve Shrubsall

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s called spring. After negotiating the gloom of one of the most tumultuous winters on record, it’s time to wake up those fast-twitch muscle fibres and ready your body, mind and soul for another season of cycling. With the colder months often dedicated to endurance noodling or bouts of random recklessness on Zwift, it’s prudent now to introduce some key sessions to elicit physiological adaptations across a broader range of intensities.

Whether you plan to ride competitively or purely as a pastime during 2024, being faster, fitter and more resistant to fatigue will help you see the season through with a greater feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. With this broad spectrum of aims in mind, we’ve spoken to coaches and riders to collate six go-to sessions – to be completed once a week or however suits your schedule – as well as one of our own, to help tee up a top-drawer year a-wheel.

5x5 at Critical Power 

BEST FOR: ROAD RACERS AND TIME TRIALLISTS

Doctoral researcher in performance physiology, Alex Welburn introduces intensity with this first workout. “As we approach the early racing season, this is where we start to interject more time above FTP,” he says.

DURATION 60 minutes

HOW TO DO IT After a sufficient warm up, complete five five-minute efforts at your Critical Power (see box) with 60 seconds of recovery between each effort, followed by a 10-20-minute cool down.