Long easy rides Vs short hard rides?

[Manc33]

These days all I keep seeing is stuff about doing short and difficult rides saves time and gets you just as fit, if not fitter than doing longer easier rides. How is that true though when the longer rides burn more calories and you are exercising for longer? I just can't buy into it sorry.

I did a 15 mile ride that was reasonably easy to New Mills and back, I burned 590 calories and was in the saddle for 1hr 17m.

Compare that to riding up Winnats Pass (from Speedwell Cavern to the T junction at the top) that is a distance of only 0.85 miles, taking 11m 58s to do it and burning a paltry 132 calories... and it nearly killed me doing it.

Now maybe I am wrong and the clue is in the fact that it "nearly killed me doing it" but surely if I only exercised for 12 minutes (compared to 1h 17m on the New Mills ride) and looking at the calories burned, there's no way doing those short bursts are more beneficial than riding longer in the saddle at an easier pace?

My average Watts on the 15 mile ride was 107 W. On the Winnats Pass ride it was 165 W. This is a massive difference in effort, but for a much shorter time.

GCN did a video about it today: "Improve Your Cycling Endurance Without Riding More" but I can't see how all this "HIIT" stuff isn't just some gimmick. This GCN video didn't provide any scientific (or even non-scientific) backing for the claim that you can improve your cycling endurance without riding more. They just said a fellow GCN presenter "Olly" didn't spend hours in the saddle before doing 1,000 Km in 3 days and he did well. Don't get me wrong I like Olly, I think he has talent.

I truly believe you must ride longer to generally improve in all areas. If that has little bursts of HIIT also mixed in then of course, yes. If we all lived in Holland we'd never have any HIIT unless you start faffing around on the flat in 53x11 and what fun is that? Hill climbing is extremely important to all of this and thank god in the UK in most places, there's a hill that can make you suffer not far away from where you live.

The arguments I have in my mind is whether doing hard short rides helps you when you do longer easier rides or doing longer easier rides it helps you more on hard short rides. Doing one benefits the other more than the other benefits the other I guess but which way around is it really?

Regardless, I am going to keep mixing it up and doing both, sometimes on the same day.

It's definitely the case though that in recent years (and going back longer) they have been raving about HIIT training - but I am just looking at the actual calories burned and length of the workout. Longer has to mean better?

[pwa]

You must be right about burning calories. But burning calories is only a part of getting fitter. Putting yourself under shorter, more intense pressure will take your body to a state where envelopes are pushed and your body adapts accordingly. Improving your lung capacity and making your heart do some real work. Your could cycle gently for hours and not reach that point, if you chose flat terrain. Of course if you do a long ride that includes some real stinkers of hills, you might get the best of both.

[gbnz]

These days all I keep seeing is stuff about doing short and difficult rides saves time and gets you just as fit, i

Needs to be put into perspective. 've found my short, difficult, 29.55 mile, 1749' climb spin is useful for fitness, though a leisurely 100+ mile day on the bike no doubt has benefits. But pushing the pace on both, has notable cardio & muscle building benefits, particularly with protein

[rareposter]

It's definitely the case though that in recent years (and going back longer) they have been raving about HIIT training - but I am just looking at the actual calories burned and length of the workout. Longer has to mean better?

Not really. It depends a lot on what you mean by "longer" and also what you're hoping to achieve other than the rather generic "getting fitter". A lot will depend on how much time you have, your current fitness/ability level and so on - it's no good following a training plan which specifies 15hrs a week if you only have 8hrs free time...

There's a vast amount of fitness info of varying degrees of accuracy out there on the internet and lucrative industries built around it but the basic notion is that you have to do a mix of easier "recovery" rides and harder "training" rides. Most people find this quite difficult - they want to smash up every hill - but you can't maintain that on every hill so they end up doing their hard rides too easy and their easy rides too hard, it leads to basically just riding around at the same average speed for years and never progressing.

Years ago, a mate did RideLondon (100 mile closed road Sportive) based entirely off commutes and 2 or 3 evening circuit races a week. He'd done no rides longer than about 35 miles, nothing more than about 75 minutes. Busy guy, family etc so no time for long weekend rides. But his fitness from circuit racing - which is an hour of very high intensity riding - got him through RideLondon in sub 4hrs. Average of just over 25mph.

You don't get that fitness from longer easier rides, you need the full on intensity stuff as well. And if you're a bit strapped for time, concentrate on the intensity. But it needs to be HARD - not just "ooh this feels a bit difficult", it needs to be "hanging on for grim death". I used to do velodrome sessions like that, behind a motor pacing bike. Your world would shrink to the back wheel of the moto, the sound of the little 2-stroke and the g-forces as you went round the banking at 60kph. You didn't have the time to consider anything else!

And a +1 for what pwa and gbnz said ^^

[cyclop]

Why don,t marathon runners just do intervals then?No,they put 100+ miles a week in,Tour riders ? more like 500 mls.There,s no substitute for volume I,m afraid.You,re trying to build a system that is efficient in using stored energy and ingested energy, over a long period which is something that can,t be replicated with intervals.Shorter ,harder stuff must still be done but not to the exclusion of essential long efforts.

[Tigerbiten]

On my long European tours I could track the increase in my fitness.
1st thousand miles took 35 days, 2nd =30 days, 3rd = 25 days, 4th onwards = 20 days.
Never got faster due to bad knees limiting how far I could cycle in a day.
But I was happy doing long days at a steady pace along rivers/canals, so not a lot of hill climbing.
Then came the hills when crossing between watersheds and I suffered because I was not fit for hill climbing.
The extra effort needed put to much strain on my knees so I didn't have the core leg strength to do them easily.

Luck ......

[rareposter]

Why don,t marathon runners just do intervals then?No,they put 100+ miles a week in,Tour riders ? more like 500 mls.

And this is the problem with fitness threads - they immediately dive off into "what the pros do" which is utterly irrelevant. Other than "they both involve bikes", there is no comparison at all.

Pros (in every sport) live and breathe this, it is their entire life and they have an army of staff to coach them, feed them, fix the bikes, arrange everything for them, run training camps for them plus they're at that level from years of hard work (and genetics/luck etc) before they ever get to the pro ranks. They're following tailored training and nutrition plans specific to whatever races they're doing (Classics / one-day races vs Grand Tours etc).

We go for little rides around the lanes and stop for coffee and cake while also doing normal day-to-day things like work and shopping and cooking and family....
Yes, people can always get fitter, many folk enjoy pushing themselves a bit, seeing the improvements, setting themselves challenges and that's great. You can always take inspiration from pros around healthy eating and living, trying to be your best etc but as soon as you start looking at "what the pros do" in terms of cycling, you may as well be trying to compare your drive to the shops with an F1 race.

Edit: this GCN video (only 5 mins) gives good info on the importance of a structured training plan rather than just "dead miles" where you're just riding along looking at calories burned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vADEFt7uiMc

[ed.lazda]

It's all about training different aspects of your energy systems to do work. If you're mostly interested in losing weight, then the more calories you can burn off, the better. Apart from that, it depends on what you're trying to achieve.

Training at higher intensity improves the high energy systems (anaerobic, maximum aerobic, heart and lungs) and has a knock on effect on low intensity systems (aerobic endurance, fat burning, etc). Training at low intensity mainly improves aerobic endurance but will also give you a better "base" to tolerate higher intensity efforts. Many coaches (including Pogacar's) are very keen on a lot of time at low intensity to build this base fitness.

The higher the intensity you ride at, the shorter time you can keep it up. Doing 100 miles in 4 hours, is well beyond me and I suspect most of us. But to the person doing it, they'll be riding at (for them) a fairly low intensity. An anaerobic effort can be kept up for only a few minutes, and that's as true for a Tour de France professional as it is for us.

If you want more details of the physiology involved, HighNorth Performance has a load of interesting articles.

[cyclop]

Why don,t marathon runners just do intervals then?No,they put 100+ miles a week in,Tour riders ? more like 500 mls.

And this is the problem with fitness threads - they immediately dive off into "what the pros do" which is utterly irrelevant. Other than "they both involve bikes", there is no comparison at all.

Pros (in every sport) live and breathe this, it is their entire life and they have an army of staff to coach them, feed them, fix the bikes, arrange everything for them, run training camps for them plus they're at that level from years of hard work (and genetics/luck etc) before they ever get to the pro ranks. They're following tailored training and nutrition plans specific to whatever races they're doing (Classics / one-day races vs Grand Tours etc).

We go for little rides around the lanes and stop for coffee and cake while also doing normal day-to-day things like work and shopping and cooking and family....
Yes, people can always get fitter, many folk enjoy pushing themselves a bit, seeing the improvements, setting themselves challenges and that's great. You can always take inspiration from pros around healthy eating and living, trying to be your best etc but as soon as you start looking at "what the pros do" in terms of cycling, you may as well be trying to compare your drive to the shops with an F1 race.

Edit: this GCN video (only 5 mins) gives good info on the importance of a structured training plan rather than just "dead miles" where you're just riding along looking at calories burned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vADEFt7uiMc

The principal,s the same though surely?Whether you,re dealing with an elite athlete or a weekend rider,just a matter of degree.An also ran can still follow strict regimes,change jobs etc in the pursuit of a goal .

[TrevA]

To become a balanced athlete, you need to do both - Long, steady distance (LSD) and short fast rides. If you only ever do long, slow rides, that’s what you are training your body to do and it will then struggle if asked to make more of an effort. Equally, just doing short fast rides is like building a house without foundations, sooner or later it will fall over. Long slow rides train your aerobic system and also prepare your muscles, joints and ligaments for the efforts required by cycling, which will then enable them to cope better when the time comes to do more intense efforts. When I was racing, we would always spend 2-3 months doing steady rides before undertaking any speed work. There is a phenomenon called “Easter knees”, where you are asking your body to make hard efforts before it is ready, and you end up getting tendinitis because your joints, muscles and ligaments aren’t ready for what is being asked of them.

So, to repeat, you need to do both easy and hard efforts. Most rides should be easy, but 1-2 rides a week should be shorter with greater intensity, once the initial base building phase is complete.

[re_cycler]

It's all about training different aspects of your energy systems to do work. If you're mostly interested in losing weight, then the more calories you can burn off, the better. Apart from that, it depends on what you're trying to achieve.

Training at higher intensity improves the high energy systems (anaerobic, maximum aerobic, heart and lungs) and has a knock on effect on low intensity systems (aerobic endurance, fat burning, etc). Training at low intensity mainly improves aerobic endurance but will also give you a better "base" to tolerate higher intensity efforts. Many coaches (including Pogacar's) are very keen on a lot of time at low intensity to build this base fitness.

The higher the intensity you ride at, the shorter time you can keep it up. Doing 100 miles in 4 hours, is well beyond me and I suspect most of us. But to the person doing it, they'll be riding at (for them) a fairly low intensity. An anaerobic effort can be kept up for only a few minutes, and that's as true for a Tour de France professional as it is for us.

If you want more details of the physiology involved, HighNorth Performance has a load of interesting articles.

Nice summary and link, what is required is enough effort to trigger the body to improve / adapt. I tend to think of it more as what is the minimum effort I can do to get the body to adapt to the overload. If the intention is for performance it may also be worth looking at strength training to complement the riding.

[853]

GCN did a video about it today: "Improve Your Cycling Endurance Without Riding More" but I can't see how all this "HIIT" stuff isn't just some gimmick.

HIIT is tried and tested, and has been used in athletics for over 100 years, (even though it wasn't called that back then). When I was swimming competitively for a club, almost 50 years ago, it was pretty much the only training we did. I still use it, as it works if done to a vomit-inducing intensity.

If we all lived in Holland we'd never have any HIIT unless you start faffing around on the flat in 53x11 and what fun is that?

It's not very hilly where I live, and the quietest, safest roads are very flat. I do HIIT from a rolling start on 49x19 changing to 49x17 and then 49x15. On a smooth flat road in calm conditions I'm reaching a max speed of nearly 31mph (and I don't have any aero kit).

The fun comes on a Sunday when I ride with younger guys, on really expensive bikes, who do much higher mileages. I can drop them on the hills, I can drop them on the flat, and if the group splits I can 'jump' across the gap when they can't.

[Pinhead]

Sorry TOO much for me to read so I will comment on the original first few lines of the 1st post.

Calories, fitness, watts, exercize, what you "have to do"

What about "mental health" again see my signature.

I have just done 2.5 miles, not 20 today which I am happy to do, E bike, but, just a short "mental health" got to get out ride, fresh air, short but it makes a difference, other days I am happy to do 20+, not about fitness, but well being, MENTAL HEALTH

Oh and I was losing weight over the past year, down from 16 to 13.7 now, and yes cycling is helping but I do NOT do it for physical health that comes as a by the way to the great getting out, I am also happy in the cold, the wet, the pouring rain and as I have said so many times THANKS TO THE AMAZING PEOPLE HERE who have helped me I now have a lifestyle I LOVE.

[yostumpy]

Best bet is to combine both, a Long ride with 'Fartlek' interval training, randomly.

[gbnz]

What about "mental health" again see my signature.
.

+ 1. True of all forms of physical activity, but a bike ride always beats them all