I would wager a lot of money that a very large number of you have got to that stage in the season where any gains in performance have stopped and no matter how hard you try you just don't increase that FTP or speed any further than it was back in June/July. Frustrated, you keep riding more a more miles, doing more and more of the same rides and training until the inevitable late season fatigue and burn out occurs. Sounds familiar?

The great news is that for the vast majority of you this lid on performance is just a glass ceiling and glass, as you know, can be smashed. The thing is your body has become totally adapted to the riding you have been doing all season so to reach new heights you have to introduce a new and challenging stimulus.

So how do we smash the glass celling on performance to reach new performance highs in time for the closing events of the season?

Introduce a 4week block of high intensity VO2Max training. Sounds painful? Well I am not going to lie to you VO2Max training is painful and uncomfortable. You need these workouts to be challenging if you want to make gains on top of the foundation of threshold work you have already built. This discomfort is one of the key ingredients to breaking free of your training stagnation as it means you are stressing your body’s physiological systems, and because of this you’re pushing hard against the performance glass ceiling.

You should aim to train at VO2Max twice per week either as specific workouts or by introducing hard 3-5 minute intervals to your road riding. For those of you with power meters you should be aiming to work at between 115-120% of FTP. If you have never worked at such intensity before start with 3 minute intervals and build up to 5 minutes over the 4 weeks. For those without power, working in the VO2max Zone 5 means that you should be breathing as hard as you can, you wont be able to talk and your legs will be screaming at you to stop. These workouts should only be undertaken by fit athletes who have a solid season of training behind them.

I have a series of workouts that will help you break through the performance glass ceiling. As I said you can do these on the road but be careful and choose a very quiet road. I ended up in a hedge after completing one of these sessions a few years ago as I was seeing stars! Turbo or wattbike is ideal if you can bear it while the sun is shining.

Key - WU: = Warm up. Drills: = Effort intervals. RI:= Rest intervals. CD: = Cool down

Week 1

Workout 1

WU:10min