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[[High Intensity Interval Training]] has been shown to be a highly effective form of exercise, but running at very high intensities is problematic. If you run much faster on level ground, your stride becomes a radically different as you are sprinting more than running, and this is elongation of your stride increases injury risk quite dramatically. It's also very hard to keep your running form under control at such high speed and high intensity. Running uphill alleviates this someone, but it's hard to find a hill long enough and steep enough, and even then, the biomechanics are different enough that you're training somewhat different muscle groups. These differences are one of the reasons for the increase in injury risk. One solution to the injury risk is to train on a stationary bike. If you're out of the saddle, your muscle recruitment is somewhat similar to running, but with much a lower injury risk. This page is a guide to performing HIIT on a stationary bike for runners. Some of this may apply to cyclists, but a cyclist will have somewhat different requirements as they will perform more than just HIIT on the stationary bike.
=The Trainer=
Unlike running, you'll need rather more equipment. I chose initially brought the Wahoo Kickr Snap, a "wheel-on smart trainer" which is cycling a talk that means you put a bike with its rear wheel in place on to the trainer. You can get the Kickr as It's a "direct drive"trainer that I liked was quite affordable, but you need I found the trainer became such a bicycle core part of my training regime that's compatible (I didnupgraded to the Tacx Neo2. This is a top end bike trainer, that is more responsive to changes in resistance, as well as much quieter. However, the biggest thing that attracted me to the Neo2 is that you don't) and have to calibrate it's . Most bike trainers, including the Kickr, have to do a lot more expensive"spin down". As the name suggests you ride the bike until you hit the specified speed, and as runners over frugal lotthen stop pedaling. The app measures how long it takes for the wheel to stop spinning, and uses that time to estimate the braking forces and inertia. I found this tedious, and it was worth it to me to know that the power was accurate every time.These "smart trainertrainers" is are more than just marketing, and it means that the trainer can be controlled wirelessly. There are several wireless control modes, such as simulation where software tells the trainer to mimic going uphill. However, for HIIT the interesting one is and ERG mode, where the trainer requires you to generate a certain fixed amount of power. This ERG mode is a bit weird at first, as it means that the faster you pedal, the less resistance, and if the required power is too much and slower you start slowing up your pedaling, pedal the more resistance. The trainer maintains whatever resistance goes up is required to maintain the same keep your power outputof the target. The Kickr can be controlled using either Bluetooth or Ant+, and transmits your power and speed over both simultaneously. You do have to calibrate the Kickr using the Wahoo app. This is called a "spin down", and as the name suggests you ride the bike until you hit the specified speed, and then stop pedaling. The app measures how long it takes for the wheel to stop spinning, and uses that time to estimate the braking forces and inertia.[[File:Wahoo kickr_snap_ls.jpg|center|thumb|300px|The Wahoo Kickr Snap]]
=The Bike=
I used a mountain bike that's nearly 30 years old, as are things like weight don't really matter. I did put on a tire specifically designed for use on an indoor trainer, as the slightly nobly tires that were on the bike made an outrageous noise. It doesn't matter about brakes, or steering, as it's a stationary bike after all. You do want comfortable handlebars, and I much prefer the straight bars of a mountain bike to the drop handlebars of a road bike. You should be spending a lot of your time out of the saddle, so that's not as important for a runner just doing HIIT as it would be for a cyclist. You certainly don't need to spend loads of money on this gorgeous leather saddle, that's even though its design has been unchanged for over 100 years. If you look at When I got the saddle and feel your self drawn to its beautyI thought it was a gratuitous waste of money, loosely justified as an "objet d'art", but having used it since early 2018, then this is the dark side of cycling pulling you comfort has justified the price. While I don't spend as many hours inthe saddle as a cyclist would, having a comfortable interface doesn't make a difference.[[File:Brooks B17.jpg|center|thumb|300px200px| You really The [https://amzn.to/2WxRRI4 Brooks B17 Saddle].]]I did end up refurbishing the group set, mostly because my old mountain bike was five speed, and my new TACX trainer wasn't compatible, though my bottom bracket bearings were also disintegrating. I ended up going with a Shimano Zee/Deore 1x10 drivetrain, though in practice I don't need a nice saddle like this ;}]]think I've shifted gear once since I got the bike set up. A single speed would have been cheaper with hindsight. If I'm honest, I really only have the frame, forks, and handlebars from the original bike, and I've replaced pretty much everything else.
=Software=
To get the best use out of the trainer, you'll need some software to control it. There are lots of options, but if you don't want to pay a monthly subscription, things get a little trickier. I'm assuming that as a runner, you'll only want to use the trainer for regular, short HIIT sessions.
==Ant+ or Bluetooth?==
Software that runs on iOS uses Bluetooth, and of course only one device can receive data from a Bluetooth sensor. This means that if you have a Bluetooth heart rate monitor, it can only be paired with iOS or a sports watch, not both at the same time. The same is true of the Bluetooth communication from the Kickr.
==Slope by Time==
most of the training software available will allow you to create a structured work out. This allows you to define the workout as something like two minutes at 100w, followed by repeats of 30s at 200w with 30s recovery at 100w. As noted above, if you say 100w, the trainer will vary resistance to keep power output constant. The software and trainer can also do a fixed resistance, so the faster you pedal the more power output, typically configured as a percentage slope. The big problem I've found is that you can do power output by time, or slope by distance, but there are few options for doing slope by time. The only software I found that will do slope by time is the Tacx, though I heavily modified Golden Cheetah to support this for my personal use. If you know of other software that does structured workouts using slope by time, please let me know.
==Zwift==
You can use Zwift for free, but you're limited to 25 km per calendar month. That's really not very much, and probably not enough to support more than 2, maybe 3 HIIT sessions per month. Zwift works out your based on your power output, so cranking out lots of watts will get you through your free kilometers even faster. The good news is that Zwift has a nice visual workout editor that allows you to put together your HIIT session fairly easily. Zwift provides a virtual riding environment that's gorgeous, and each interval transition is shown by a translucent virtual barrier, so you can see the transitions coming up. I found this was a great for preparing for an upcoming interval, or holding on for an upcoming rest period. Because of Zwift scales your speed to your power output, you get a nice sense of achievement when you're pushing hard. If you do much indoor cycling, then I think it's worth considering a subscription to Zwift. The software is available as an app for an iOS or android device, and I found it worked nicely on an iPad. There is a PC version, but I never got that to work properly (I didn't try terribly hard.)
Golden Cheetah stores the workouts in ERG files, which encodes the interval duration as fractional minutes to two decimal places. This means that durations of 20 seconds get converted to "0.33" which will get turned back to 19 seconds, which is rather frustrating. To avoid this, you'll need to use durations that are divisible by three seconds, so instead of 20 seconds, you'll need to set 18 or 21 seconds.
If you see spikes in the power curve when using Golden Cheetah with a Kickr, it may be because you have the Kickr connected as multiple devices. You should connect the Kickr as just FE-C (Fitness Equipment Control) and leave both the speed and power sources as blank.
==Tacx ==
The Tacx software is available for Windows, Mac, iOS, and android, but only supports Tacx trainers. It has a monthly subscription to get simulated rides that use real video footage rather than 3-D rendering, but a lot of the functionality is available without a subscription. The killer feature of the Tacx software for me is the ability to do slope by time.
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File:Tacx 2.JPG
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==Wahoo App==
I really expected the Wahoo app to provide all the basic functionality you'd need. Sadly, this is not the case. You can do some manual control of resistance, but there's no way of using it to run a predefined HIIT session. You do need to use the Wahoo app to calibrate the trainer (see above), plus there are a couple of options you can set only thought the app. You can configure the trainer to simulate a speed that is proportional to the power you're applying in ERG mode. By default, it will just report the actual speed of the wheel, and in ERG mode you can be moving very slowly with huge resistance. This setting is overridden by Zwift, which uses its own speed calculation based on power and the virtual slope you're virtually riding on.
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Having some water handy is also a good idea. You're unlikely to dehydrate much during a short HIIT session, but I find the heavy breathing tends to try my throat out. Chewing on a mint can help a little by getting the saliva flowing, as saliva is far more lubricating than water.
=My Training Setup=
Here's some pictures of my setup, along with the notes.
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File:My Tacx Setup (1).jpg| this overview shows the layout, with a big TV and monitor in front of me, and two laptops to the side. I have some old, cheap gym flooring to catch the sweat. You will notice that the TV monitor are angled upwards, which makes them at right angles to my vision in my natural cycling position. This prevents neck strain while training. Getting sweat on the lower monitor is an issue, but it's a very old monitor, so I'm happy just to wipe it dry after the workout.
File:My Tacx Setup (2).jpg| I have one laptop for entertainment, even though the TV has built in Netflix and Amazon prime. That's mostly so I can watch coursera.org lectures and YouTube videos while I'm training. The other laptop runs my training software, currently a heavily customized version of Golden Cheetah. One note is that I originally had a low powered laptop for the entertainment and a more powerful one for the training software, but I found video playback needed more GPU power and I had to swap them over.
File:My Tacx Setup (3).jpg| Having two displays is really valuable, as it separates entertainment from data visualization.
File:My Tacx Setup (4).jpg| I have a cheap humidifier that blows the moist air onto my face, as I find during intense interval training my throat will dry out and I will end up with a hacking cough. I mounted this in an old water bottle with the top cut open. The one I ordered is https://amzn.to/2J9dG94 though there are a number of similar personal humidifiers.
File:My Tacx Setup (5).jpg| Bike trainers typically come with a small mount for your front wheel, which works well enough, but I had two problems with that approach. The first is that it didn't feel quite stable enough when I was at really high intensities. For instance, during a [[3AOT]] workout the low oxygen saturation can make me a little dizzy. The second problem is that having the front wheel on the bike means of that my lower monitor was too far forward for comfort. I solved this problem by getting a wheel on trainer and using simply to mount the front wheel. I removed the resistance mechanism, which obviously I didn't need. One problem I hit was that the front hub is narrower than the rear hub, but this particular trainer went narrow enough. The train I got is no longer available, but it's still listed on Amazon at [https://amzn.to/3djuNmg https://amzn.to/3djuNmg](I paid about $50, and there are other similar trainers for roughly similar prices.)
File:My Tacx Setup (6).jpg| Normally when I get on the bike, I tend to tilted over slightly to get my leg over more easily, but you can't do that on an indoor trainer. I found that having a small step to the side of the trainer makes it a lot easier to get on and off.
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=What Watts?=
Cyclists have been using the power meters of the years, and have a number of terms that are likely to be unfamiliar to runners.
** Men: Watts/Kg = ([[VO2max|V̇O<sub>2</sub>max]] – 7.0) / 10.791
** Women: Watts/Kg = ([[VO2max|V̇O<sub>2</sub>max]] – 7.0) / 9.820
* Example, for my [[VO2max|V̇O<sub>2</sub>max]] of 5463, is ((5463-7)/10.791), or 45.36 19 Watts/Kg. * Multiplied by my weight in kilograms to get total power. Multiplying 45.36 19 Watts/Kg by 63 Kg gives 274 320 Watts.
This gives a starting point for HIIT. While it's tempting to aim for interval intensities above your power at [[VO2max|V̇O<sub>2</sub>max]], I'd strongly suggest you start somewhat lower and build up. You can build up the intensity either over several sessions, or have increasing intensity intervals during a single workout. You'll also find that as you get use to the cycling, the power you can output will increase quite a bit.
=Estimating Power At V̇O2max From Submaximal Incremental Test=