How To Read Your Athletica Workouts

Hey, and welcome to the Athletica Team!

As an athlete, you may be used to reading your workout in an other format. Here's a quick comparison of how to read your Athletica workouts, and how to read the workouts. 

Athletica vs. TrainingPeaks workout description 

Let's look at one of the Bread&Butter Athletica Workouts "Short HIIT 30/30" interval rides.

VS.

It is essentially the same workout, it just looks a little different. Let's expand a little. 

The Structured workout part below the Description in Athletica is what gets pushed into your Garmin Watch. Let me help you read it: 

• Warm-up (WU) for 11 mins at steady effort (typically increasing effort Level 1-2. Click on the lightning symbol to see the target power, and the heart symbol to see your target heart rate. 
• *2 x 7 x 1' reads: 2 sets of 7 repetitions of 1 mins as 
  • 30 seconds (focus on quality) click on the lighting to see your target power. A hot tip from The Prof: always leave the upper target open - don't limit yourself - and allow improvements in the power to happen naturally). Heart rate is not important here. Focus on output.
  • 30 seconds easy (just turning over legs). Easy here means super easy... like you are barely moving your legs. No need to spin at a high cadence. Allow your legs to recover a little.

Since this workout calls for 2 sets, we pedal 5 minutes between sets at easy Level 1-2 effort. After 5 minutes, repeat 7x1mins as 30 sec hard  30 sec easy. 

• after the second set of 7 x 1 mins then another 5 mins easy before cool down.
• Cool Down (CD) 8 minutes Steady (typically decreasing effort from Level 2 to 1. 

Hope this helps you read the workouts in Athletica! You can also check out this article that describes Common Session Terms.

To learn more about why we do Short HIIT 30/30, head on over to www.hiitscience.com or watch this video where our Ph.D. student extraordinaire Filip Kolodziej  shows Why Short Intervals are so effective in increasing your VO2max. v02