Advantages of using interval training for cycling
The following advantages of using interval training for cycling can be obtained:
1. The muscle changes so it can absorb more oxygen from a given blood stream.
- Your blood transports oxygen among other things from the lungs and within the body.
- Your muscles require oxygen to function and “demand” therefore more oxygen when performing hard work.
- The more oxygen the muscle receives, the harder the muscle can work.
2. More red blood corpuscles are produced in the blood.
- The red blood corpuscles transport oxygen within the body.
- The red blood corpuscles are part of your blood.
- The more red blood corpuscles, the more oxygen you can transport from your lungs and into your muscles.
3. Your heart adapts to pumping more blood per. hourly interval.
- As a result of training intervals your heart is forced to pump faster.
- Following a longer period of interval training (weeks/months/years) the heart grows slowly in diameter. Thereby the heart can fulfill oxygen transportation demands, which you signal by exercising hard with interval training.
- When the heart grows, your volume becomes bigger, and in this way the heart can transport more blood per. heart beat around the body.
- In this way your muscles get the opportunity to receive more oxygen per. heart beat benefiting your muscles’ demand for oxygen during burning of energy.
- At the same time that you get a larger supply of oxygen in your muscles, simultaneously the blood leads other important components with it, which the body partly needs in the burning of energy process, but particularly also in the recovery and rebuilding phase.
4. Your absorption of oxygen increases.
- When you are training interval training your heart pumps faster in order to transport more oxygen from the lungs to the muscle.
- The body therefore requires more oxygen for the muscles and helps further in this process by expanding the lung capacity, so you are able to breath in more oxygen with each breath.
- The body extending the net of lung ”threads” especially increases lung capacity. Your windpipe splits in to two, one part for each lung. After this the windpipe divides itself into an incredibly delicate network of windpipe “threads” where the oxygen is pumped out.
- At the end of each lung thread point, the oxygen is intercepted by the red blood corpuscles in your blood and transported out to your muscles and other parts of the body where it is needed.
- The bigger your network of lung “threads” is, your absorption of oxygen is increased by the same degree, and the more oxygen you are able to transport to your muscles.
5. You learn mentally to grasp pain and train with high pain in your muscles.
- When you have to develop your physical capacity then interval training is inevitable.
- Most people train interval training without planning it. Hill riding and other landscape and weather variations affect the force with which you need to push the pedals. If the force is to be increased for instance due to contrary wind, you will also have to work a little harder and the demand for oxygen on your muscles will therefore become greater.
- Variations in the landscape and weather create a really good base, but ought not to completely replace the intended individual interval training.
- Interval training helps you to be able to move your pain boundary. The body will remember a painful and tough interval and attempt to compensate by making the muscle bigger and stronger. Over time you will not feel the same pain performing a similar tough interval.
- Pain in competition and at training besides interval training will feel easier as your fitness gradually improves.
6. You will become familiar with your own body’s limits.
- Knowledge of your own body’s capabilities via different types of intervals gives you vital knowledge about your body in a certain pressurized situation.
- The more physically demanding situations you put yourself in during the course of a season, then this will increase your knowledge of your physical and mental limitations.
- Both in competition and training contexts it is vital for your disposal that you recognize your body’s signals in any given situation.
- The more knowledge of your own body’s reaction patterns you have, the faster you can react to training and competition in the situations you run into.
7. You increase your burning of energy.
- As a result of the above effects to your body, your body’s requirement for energy increases.
- After the interval training the body has a special need for energy, but the hard training demands increased nourishment over a longer period, even up to several days following interval training.
- Repeated days with interval training further increases the body’s demand for optimal nourishment due to the increased physical activity. Even though you may not train any more in time or kilometers, if anything you boost your burning of energy with repeated interval training days. The increased burning of energy can result in loss of weight, but can also result in the opposite, as you have to supplement your nourishment in order to fulfill your body’s increased needs. It takes knowledge of optimal nourishment to fill the right quantities of energy on a high performance engine like a racing cyclist’s body.