Neuromuscular
120 min
High intensity
Build repeatability at hill-climb race intensity: three one-minute efforts at 210% of CP, then six 30-second bursts at 236-262%, with long recoveries. The session behind a season aimed at 700 watts for two minutes.
Ben Millar
Hill-climb champion
Neuromuscular
120 min
High
10 / 10
Advanced
Outdoors
The session
The workout
Written as a share of critical power, so it fits every rider. In Vekta it becomes your watts, with the W′ cost shown before you ride.
Ben Millar
Why this workout
The breakdown
Inside the workout
Ben Millar built a season around one number: 700 watts for two minutes, the length of the National Hill-Climb Championships climb on Bank Road. This was one of the key sessions behind it, and its purpose is repeatability at race intensity, not volume. Fewer than five of these were ridden in the whole build.
Part one is three one-minute efforts at 210% of CP with eight minutes' recovery; part two is six thirty-second bursts at 236–262% of CP with five minutes between. The recoveries are long because the point is the quality of each effort. Ben's W′ reached 50 kJ, roughly double that of many well-trained riders, and this structure is written for a battery that size.
Vekta writes the bursts as multiples of CP rather than fixed watts, so the session scales to a rider whose W′ is 20 kJ, and the W′ preview will say honestly whether six bursts are possible at all. Afterwards the peaks tab shows the best one-minute and thirty-second efforts against the rider's history.
A specificity session for the last weeks before a hill-climb or short-effort target, once a week, fully fresh. Coach Joe Staunton's note is the one to keep: top hill climbers spend surprisingly little time at this intensity.
Neuromuscular
Stimulus
Advanced
Workout level
Outdoors
Best ridden
Hill climb,
DISCIPLINE
WHAT YOU NEED
The stimulus
Neuromuscular, explained
Maximal, explosive efforts that train the nervous system and the top of the curve.
What it is
Very short efforts, five to sixty seconds, at 180% of critical power and above, with full recovery between them. Sprints, standing starts, torque efforts and short hill attacks live here. In Vekta's classification anything above 180% of CP is neuromuscular.
Why it matters
Peak power, Pmax, is one of the three numbers in the performance model, and it is the one most riders never train. It decides who wins the sprint, who makes the split when the road kicks, and it feeds the whole power curve: a higher top end makes every effort below it feel easier.
Quality over quantity. These are the only intervals where you should stop the set as soon as power drops, because the point is the maximum, not the fatigue. They are best placed early in the week or before a hard session, never after a long ride.
Track Pmax and the five-second peak over a block; both should move within weeks. Recovery between efforts is the lever: cut it and the session becomes anaerobic capacity work, which is a different adaptation.
The AI Workout Builder handles the nested structure, and the head unit shows the targets. Afterwards the peaks tab flags the best efforts, and the trophy view shows whether the session produced an all-time or eight-week best.
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