High there, I am a huge sports fanatic and I have a major in Human movement studies from WITS and am in the process of completing my psych major for my degree as well as coaching many provincial national and inernational level athletes. This of course does not make me the know all of the world of cycling, but the sport of rowing where I am involved, the conditioning of the aerobic lactate and anaerobic systems is a key feature to being race ready. You have to be careful with doing to much interval training especially if your aerobic base/foundation has not been adequately prepared. The thing is with the interval training you are expending full out effort and putting the body under alot of stress. As you said you are under a pretty hectic work schedule so damaging yourself three times a week, might sound like a good idea but all the gains in training are made through adequate recovery of the body. You are also going to play around with your hormones, and hard training causes an increase in testosterone, but inadequate recovery halts this. I would suggest maybe doing something like this: No one program is going to work for every athlete. Even a program that works well for an athlete today may lose its' effectiveness in a week, a month or a year. It all depends on the individual and what level he or she is at in training. In this article I will look at some of the adaptations that take place when you perform short interval sessions. Numerous studies have been done regarding sprint training that lasts from 10-60 seconds, however for this article, I will discuss what happens when we train in the < 10 sec range. Metabolic Adaptations The first adaptations to consider are metabolic adaptations. These are basically the muscle increasing its capacity to produce more energy. The muscle tissue does this by increasing the rate at which enzymes are working to produce energy by increasing the storage capacity of the muscle tissue for energy substrates and by increasing the muscle tissues' capability to resist fatigue (Leveritt & Ross, 2001). Aerobic Contributions To Energy Production Short duration sprint exercises (< 10 sec) rely almost exclusively on anaerobic processes to produce energy. In longer duration sprints, such as those lasting 20-30 seconds, the aerobic system contributes more to the generation of energy (it should be noted that no type of training is ever purely anaerobic in nature). Increasing Energy & Decreasing Fatigue. There are a number of components in the energy equation. Learn what they are... In sprints less than 10 seconds, the aerobic system contributes approximately 13%, while in longer sprints; it contributes to 27% of energy produced (Leveritt & Ross, 2001). Therefore, the metabolic adaptations for the two types of sprints will differ. Phosphate Metabolism One adaptation is phosphate metabolism. Phosphate creatine stores are major substrates the body uses to generate energy and a sprinter can deplete his PCr levels by over 60% during a 60m sprint. Therefore, Myokinase, the enzyme responsible for resynthesizing energy from PCr, has been shown to increase up to 20% with sprint training. Glycolysis The second adaptation is that concerned with glycolysis. This is the primary form of metabolism used during a 10 second all out sprint and contributes between 55 and 75% towards energy production (Leveritt & Ross, 2001). Phosphofructokinase (PFK), an enzyme that catalyses the phosphorylation of the glycolytic intermediate fructose 6-phosphate) has also been shown to increase, along with the enzymes of lactate dehydrogenase and glycogen phosphorylase (other enzymes responsible for the glycolysis system). This higher rate of enzyme production is one of the factors related to increased performance among sprint athletes compared with other athletes. Other studies however have shown an increase among these enzymes with no direct increase in performance, so this remains a controversial factor related to sprint training adaptations (Leveritt & Ross, 2001). If an athlete is training using short sprints but performs many intervals in a short time period (therefore minimizes rest periods), the aerobic system will come in to play much more, so there will be an increase in aerobic enzymes as well (succinate dehydrogenase). Resting Metabolites The second aspect of metabolism adaptations to consider is that of resting metabolites. It would commonly be thought that the more stored ATP and PCr stores the athlete has in the muscles, the longer or harder they will be able work. While this is partially true, this is not an adaptation of sprint training. What happens with sprint training is the rate of turnover for these metabolites increases, so the muscle actually decreases their stores of them. It's interesting to note however that with this decreased reduction of ATP stores, there is no decrease in power output. The reason for this is that it's not so much the stores of ATP that are important in sprinting but the rate of turnover of ATP. So, since this is in fact increasing, the athlete will be better off. ATP: Energy's Currency! If one has ever wondered just how we are able to summons the energy to perform a number of activities under a variety of conditions, the answer, in large part, is ATP. Without ATP, ones body would simply fail to function. Intramuscular Buffering Capacity The final factor to consider is intramuscular buffering capacity. During glycolysis, the process that is initiated shortly after intense exercise has begun, a product called lactic acid begins to accumulate. This byproduct results in a feeling of fatigue throughout the muscle tissue and is what often forces athletes to stop. By using the chemical buffers of bicarbonate, phosphate and proteins from red blood cells, the body is able to counteract the change in pH created. When an athlete undergoes sprint training, their body becomes more accustomed to buffering this lactic acid and gets more efficient at maintaining a proper pH balance. I have found myself in your situation before so I used to use workouts such as 6x100m, flatout, with 1min recovery between. I made sure I operated above my highest intensity I had ever got to whether it be wattage, haeart rate or speed. I then had a twenty min break and did 4x250m, but took the break down to 30s, so I was operating at a high level and having to force the body to execute the session under more fatigue with the shorter rest period. Hope it helps!!Love the pain
