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Cycling Intervals and anaerobic TE

Saiph
over 4 years ago

Hi,

I recently got myself an indoor trainer and wanted to start a more structured training. The trainer is paired to my Fenix 6X watch, so I'm able to get power data for my workouts.

I decided to incorporate some high intensity intervals into my training, so my workout consists of 2 blocks of 10 x 30s efforts at 180% of my FTP with a 30s rest between intervals, and 10minutes rest between those two blocks.

After I finished that session my watch gave me an anaerobic TE of 1.7 - stating that this activity had no impact on my anaerobic capacity. Aerobic TE was rated at 3.2.

I don't get it - shouldn't an activity like this be highly anaerobic? Looking at the data, I saw that my HR seemed to lag quite a bit behind - my body's max HR is somewhere around 190bpm but was never higher than 172bpm during the intervals. I suspect that the optical HR sensor is just too slow to catch a quick rise like that.

My question basically is: Is HR taken into account in TE if a power meter is connected? That does not make sense at all, IMO. Or am I missing something and 30s Intervals are somehow not ideal for anaerobic gains?

Thanks for any insight :)

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I have found the same thing and got involved in a discussion recently, here....

    https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-6-series/254214/training-effect-calculation

    I truly don't know what Garmin is playing at. I suspect some blame might lie with their FTP calculations, which are conservative in the extreme. So any workout based from FTP value will low ball your targets.

    For example, my most recently Garmin calculated best FTP was 248, subsequently lowered to 245. Yet I've scored 272 from a ramp test recently and averaged 250 for a full hour simply riding, without trying to maximise my average for FTP testing. So Garmin is not good at establishing FTP accurately. 

    If you want a workout that will trigger anaerobic response try The Wringer or simply knock out some full bore sprints without restraint on max power. Or review your FTP value and, if its been set by Garmin, consider retesting using a purely power based protocol (rather than Garmin's power and HRV protocol). 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to eezytiger

    Thanks! That was an interesting read.

    My Garmin FTP was set manually after I did a 20min FTP test on Zwift - so I guess that's not the issue.

    I read through Firstbeat's anaerobic Whitepaper again and they even state, that HR is not a reliable indicator for measuring short bursts of power - so I guess my lagging HR is also not the problem.

    However, in this whitepaper they have a table with sample excercises and their respective TEs (Table 3) - the topmost example is a 10 x 50m run workout with an expected anaerobic TE of 2.1. This is actually somewhat comparable to my workout - i.e. repeated short but high efforts with recovery in between...and 1.7 seems not too far off from their projected TE of 2.1. Interestingly, their highest anaerobic TEs are projected for VO2Max efforts (i.e. longer intervals) which seems...somewhat odd. Wouldn't this be something for high aerobic TE?

    Guess I'll gonna read some more...

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I did a similar workout this morning. I assume you are using a chest strap. There is no way the wohr can keep up with my hr when i sprint. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Saiph

    Hi Saiph, i am facing similar issues my watch is complaining that i need more anaerobic load but cant figure out exactly what to do to raise this.

    Did you ever figure it out?

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Hi Saiph, i am facing similar issues my watch is complaining that i need more anaerobic load but cant figure out exactly what to do to raise this.

    Did you ever figure it out?

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 5629095

    Wow, that's quite the old thread :P

    I started using Zwift now and there are quite some workouts that produce reliable Anaerobic efforts, like The Wringer, which was also mentioned in the reply above. I'm not sure what exactly changed in the meantime, maybe I didn't set my FTP in my watch's settings properly back then? Not sure.