Can it be achieved? How about 90% of Max? If you are able to attain that percentage, can it be sustained for say, 20 minutes?
I just bought a spin bike NXT Star Trac-used) and am finding it almost impossible to get to 85% Max and hold it for any length of time w/o my quads exploding, especially at low RPM's and high tension.
Yes, you are just weak. You'll get there. But - Why would you use low RPM - that's not even remotely close to running specific training.
A couple of days ago, I went for 30:00 at 110 RPM & low tension, and only hit 65% of Max in the last few minutes. Not too worried at this point about running specific anything since I'll not be running for a while due to a cranky calf muscle. Just want to maintain whatever cardio fitness I can while out.
I found the same. A lot of athletic contitioning is specific to the muscles used in the activity used to get the conditioning (increased mitochondira, capillarisation etc). Put simply your quads are too weak to give your CV system a good workout at the moment.
Switch up the resistance and cadence. I found putting the resistance low but cadence high helped me work up a good sweat. You might find the opposite is true, depending on your makeup.
The erg is a guaranteed cardio bomb and should be gentle enough on your calf. If you know how or want to learn, boxing will get your HR sky-high and is an excellent interval workout. No need to do anything fancy. Just whack at the bag until your heart threatens to explode, which is will surprisingly quickly.
only a trained cyclist can reach max hr effectively while spinning. runners lack the leg mass and power development to tax the cardiovascular system appropriately.
There's a nice discussion about bike vs run Hr here:
http://www.runworks.com/2014/02/running-vs-cycling-heart-rate/
I should have done some research on this before I dropped $850 on the bike. Doesn't seem like I'll be able to work on VO2 MAX anytime soon-if at all, with this spinner. Live and learn! At least the wife is enjoying it, so there's that!
Quite unexpectedly I was able get-within an hour spin session, 25:00 consecutive minutes with HR at or above 85%. Everything was at 90-95 RPM while slowly jacking up tension. So HR's at this level can be achieved while spinning, and for a prolonged period of time. Felt fairly easy today and am not sure why. Have never been able to generate this high a HR for such a period of time before on this machine. Like others have suggested, maybe my biking
muscles/tendons just need to strengthen and adjust to the routine and maybe that's happening.
fly wheel wrote:
Quite unexpectedly I was able get-within an hour spin session, 25:00 consecutive minutes with HR at or above 85%. Everything was at 90-95 RPM while slowly jacking up tension. So HR's at this level can be achieved while spinning, and for a prolonged period of time. Felt fairly easy today and am not sure why. Have never been able to generate this high a HR for such a period of time before on this machine. Like others have suggested, maybe my biking
muscles/tendons just need to strengthen and adjust to the routine and maybe that's happening.
Yes, pretty much the last part of what you said. If you come to cycling with a high cardiovascular fitness generally you won't be strong enough muscularly to handle the wattage needed to get your HR up. You might be aerobically capable of 4-5w/kg for an hour, but your musculature won't be capable of that before fatiguing.
Generally the two things recommended are long, strong rides like you are doing and then shorter intense intervals and sprints.