Best Anaerobic Bike Workouts: Intervals to Improve Anaerobic Cycling Power

It’s February. You’ve spent months building your cycling base fitness and strength in the gym – racing is only a month away! All those long trainer rides and ice cold mornings out on the bike are about to pay off.

You’ve improved your endurance, raised your FTP, and set a 5 minute power PR, all before the first race of the season. Things are looking good. Yet, there’s the lingering question: are you truly ready to go ballistic in that criterium or road race?

While aerobic base training should be the mainstay of every road cyclist’s program, there comes a time and place where you just need to put your head down and send it hard with anaerobic bike workouts. I’m sure many of us have shown up to the first race of the season feeling like we were in fine form, only to be shell shocked by the savagery of a sixty rider peloton.

To shine in those early season races, you need to be prepared to handle the hard anaerobic efforts to contend for the win. In the weeks before your first event, a proper tune-up with anaerobic bike workouts will have you sharpened up.

In this blog, we’ll dive into some of our favorite anaerobic bike workouts to help get you ready for your next road race or criterium. For a more in depth review of anaerobic capacity, what it is, and how to improve it, check out our anaerobic capacity blog here.

Demands of a Road Race

As you can see from the power profile above, this looks quite a bit different from an endurance ride or tempo interval! In fact, almost all the time in this race is spent coasting or smashing. Nearly 12% of this race was spent in Zone 6 or higher.

To be able to handle these race demands, you will need to train the ability to “full-send”, recover, and do it again. This is where anaerobic intervals come into play in the weeks leading up to your racing season.

When Do I Start Doing Anaerobic Bike Workouts?

This answer is very individualized and depends on your rider type and your event demands. Those who are naturally more anaerobic probably don’t need to do as much anaerobic training in the winter months and are better off focusing on base miles, torque training and tempo workouts.

If you are training for road races or criteriums and this is more of a limiter, you will probably want to begin working on this in the early base season and do anaerobic bike workouts routinely through the winter months.

How Often Should I Do Anaerobic Intervals?

While these efforts are short, they are very taxing so they are not something to do all the time. Unlike base training, it does not take much anaerobic training to see significant improvements.

If this is a weakness and something you want to improve, 2-3 times per month of high-quality anaerobic intervals should be sufficient. During the season if you are racing frequently, you might scale this down to once per month to maintain since you will be getting a lot of anaerobic work from racing already.

This might not seem like a lot, but anaerobic training is like hot sauce. It gives you a good kick, but it doesn’t take much– and more isn’t always better!

Our Favorite Anaerobic Bike Workouts

So, what are some anaerobic intervals that you can incorporate into your own training? While there are many different variations of anaerobic bike workouts, these are some of our favorites.

1-Minute FRC Efforts

Simple yet effective. These efforts are pretty straightforward: go as hard as possible for one minute, recover and do it again.

To truly increase your anaerobic capabilities, you want to take loooong rest periods to achieve maximal power on each interval. If done properly, you will be on your knees by the end of each effort and probably need a good 10 minutes before you’re prepared to hit it again.

This workout consists of 5x1 minutes of FULL SEND with 10 mins of soft pedaling in between each. Note, you can change the length of these intervals depending on which duration you need to work on. The efforts should range between 30s and 90s, otherwise you end up working more of your phosphocreatine or aerobic energy systems.

30/30 Efforts (5 minutes)

While the long rest periods allow you to increase your raw power for an anaerobic effort, these 30/30 efforts will train your repeatability of efforts. These are great preparation for a criterium or road races, where you may be forced to respond to multiple attacks repeatedly.

Bonus: This workout also doubles as a great VO2max session due to the shorter rest periods. To do this workout, go as hard as you can for 30 seconds, soft pedal for 30 seconds and repeat 5 times for one set. Since these are very taxing efforts, 3 of them should be sufficient stimulus.

High Torque Sprints (30 seconds)

One last session we recommend incorporating is high torque sprints. Why the high torque?

For one, this will help you achieve higher muscle activation than you would from a smaller gear. If we can activate a greater number of muscle fibers and train them to maximally produce power anaerobically, we can potentially see greater improvement in anaerobic capabilities.

Secondly, training your ability to sprint from a bigger gear can also lead to overall power increases in your sprint. The bigger the gear you can sprint from (while sprinting at a preferred cadence) the more power you can produce.

Lastly, in a race scenario, you might be forced to sprint against a high resistance. We can often see this when a breakaway is up the road and the riders begin to play so-called “cat and mouse” by not wanting to lead each other out for the win. These sprints can often start from low speeds.

For these intervals, slow down to almost a standstill. While in a big gear, sprint as hard as possible for 30 seconds. Once again, you will need a long 10-15 minute rest period before hitting it hard again.

The “Cost” of Anaerobic Bike Workouts

While these workouts are great preparation for road racing, they come at a high cost. These can really torch the legs and so they should be used strategically around your events. We would not recommend doing these within 5 days before a race so you can save those fast-twitch fibers for the weekend.

Additionally, too much anaerobic training can actually be detrimental to your aerobic training and cause FTP decreases. With anaerobic intervals, we are training your body’s ability to produce lactate, and over-training this can concomitantly reduce your lactate clearing capabilities and cause FTP decline. We dive more into this topic in this blog if you are curious to learn more.

There is a fine balance between aerobic and anaerobic training. If you have a strong FTP, but struggle with the hard efforts in criteriums and road races, it might be worth dedicating some time to this style of training. Those with strong anaerobic systems who need to raise their FTP probably don’t need more than a few of these workouts ahead of racing season to be ready.

Best Anaerobic Bike Workouts: Intervals to Improve Anaerobic Cycling Power