Neuromuscular
169 min
High intensity
Shorten intermittent VO2 intervals until they target maximum power and anaerobic capacity: six sets of four 20/10s at 160-250% of CP, ridden by feel, with fifteen minutes of zone 2 between sets.
Team AMANI
Team
Neuromuscular
169 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.
Team AMANI
Why this workout
The breakdown
Inside the workout
Intermittent VO2 intervals shortened until they target maximum power and anaerobic capacity instead. Team AMANI's session is about W′, the reserve above critical power, and about the ability to dig very deep six times in one ride.
Four fifteen-second sprints after the warm-up prepare the body. The main work is six sets of four efforts of twenty seconds on and ten seconds off at 160–250% of CP, with fifteen minutes of zone 2 between sets. The instruction is to ride the on segments almost maximally and by feel, keeping just enough in reserve to finish the set; power is expected to fall from the first rep to the fourth.
Vekta writes the efforts as a range of CP and the W′ preview shows each set draining the battery to near empty, which is the design. The fifteen minutes of zone 2 between sets are long enough for W′ to recover, and the trace afterwards shows whether it did.
A race-block session, once a week, fresh, outdoors or on a trainer that can take repeated near-maximal efforts. Judge it by RPE first, as the team do.
Neuromuscular
Stimulus
Advanced
Workout level
Outdoors
Best ridden
Road,
Gravel,
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.
Common questions
How long should recovery be between sprints?
Should sprints be seated or standing?
Do neuromuscular sessions build endurance?
Go deeper
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