Neuromuscular
89 min
High intensity
Sustain power after an attack and attack again over the top of it: sprint, VO2, threshold, a short breather, then a second sprint and more threshold, three times. Built for criteriums and road races.
Andy Turner
Coach, ATP Performance
Neuromuscular
89 min
High
9 / 10
Advanced
Indoors
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.
Andy Turner
Why this workout
The breakdown
Inside the workout
The key move in a race often escapes over the top of a previous attack. This session trains the capacity to sustain high power after an initial attack, catch a breath, and attack again, and Andy Turner uses it with many of the criterium and road racers he coaches.
Each of the three rounds is a sequence: a thirty-second sprint, ninety seconds at VO2 max, three and a half minutes at threshold, thirty seconds of recovery, a twenty-second sprint, and three and a half minutes at high threshold. Ten minutes of recovery between rounds keeps the sprints honest. It is a very tough session, and it is built to be.
Vekta's interval classification separates the sprints, the VO2 segment and the threshold segments afterwards, and the W′ trace shows whether the second sprint of each round was ridden on an empty battery, which is the race question the session asks.
A race-block session, once a week, fresh. Indoors or out.
Neuromuscular
Stimulus
Advanced
Workout level
Indoors
Best ridden
Road,
DISCIPLINE
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.
Free for coaches. Test with your whole roster during the trial.