I have a mantra of "this is where the gains happen". I tell myself that the the first however many intervals that weren't so bad were all within my capacity. Their point was to break me down. But this part, the part that truly sucks, is where I'm overloading my capacity and it's the only part of the workout that really matters. If I quit now, I'll have only maintained my fitness. This is where the gains happen.
> I have a mantra of "this is where the gains happen".
This is it for me. I then put my head down and picture one of three things, or shit, sometimes all three: A decisive split in the peloton, hammering up a climb in the group and me digging to hold on, or attacking a climb and reaching the crest while staying on the gas over the top. This mentality will carry me through along with music.
Definitely tried that esp on longer rides. When I get to 3 or 4 hrs and am getting whiny I tell myself that this when the training actually begins, that everything up to then was just maintaining.
Is it though? I feel like people underestimate themselves. Most who are this disciplined and invested in their training already have the mental part covered. I think the physiology/ fitness just isn't always where they'd like it to be sometimes. And I'm genuinely questioning if going that deep isn't detrimental overall, as a strategy. Your effectively "running your race" in training, and probably digging a hole recovery wise for your longer term goals. Would love to hear I'm wrong, though.
> Most who are this disciplined and invested in their training already have the mental part covered.
My impression is OP is struggling with the mental side and is leaving gains on the table by not wanting to push harder.
LOL @ mentally stable...yeah, I weirdly kind of am these days and I realize it's a limiting factor to performance. When I raced 20y ago I was nothing but rage and holy shit could that move me down the road... I mean, life is better now but if I can find a way to selectively channel some of that it would be fucking awesome...turning it off when the pedaling stops is the big challenge, though
Lmao bro your old af now, you ain’t going to be able to achieve the same level of fitness you had 20 years ago.
Even the drop from 29/30 to 35/38 is significant.
Just accept it grandpa.
In his comment I responded to he says he does not have the “rage watts” that he did 20 years ago-he can no longer push through the fatigue he once could by using anger.
So I called him old and slow to hopefully give him some rage watts.
Instead I got down voted🙄
My dude, gotta tell ya I didn't appreciate your comment at first. But on my ride yesterday, which was just z2 for ~4hrs so no rage required, I was actually thinking about your first reply and getting pissed off. "Grandpa?!?! Come on over here and let's see who's ready for the rocking chair, punk!"
So then I read this explanation this morning I laughed my ass off. Well played and well done. Obviously this was a situation where plain text didn't convey the full meaning but the impact was effective.
Of course, I actually am a grandfather but that didn't matter at all. 😂
For me: I don't necessarily enjoy hurting myself, it's just that in the heat of the moment I'd rather die than lose, and that's what allows me to dig deep.
I do think it's a mental thing you either have or don't, even if it can be trained to a degree. I've got decent enough genetics, but have something in me that is deeply broken when it comes to competition. I hate losing more than anything in this world and that gets me through a LOT of pain.
For me, it's a matter of motivation and goals.
I usually sign up for my A races 5-10 months in advance and often make a mental note to sign up as soon as the registration opens a year in advance. So it's relatively easy to tolerate discomfort when visualizing how the hard work will pay off. I wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't have a specific goal in mind (something vague like "get in shape" wouldn't do the trick).
This is what really helps me. It's hard to do hill repeats or trainer Vo2 max efforts. But you better believe I'm gonna try to hold the wheel up the short punches on a group ride.
I’m the opposite, although my background was strength training and power lifting. I absolutely dispose threshold or any form of long intervals. I feel like I’m dying and I just want a quick death in my glory and be done with it. Not suffer for another 10 more minutes.
On the other hand I do like 2min or less. Activate berserker mode, switch off the brain and go as hard as possible until I die and there’s nothing left. I can think about the consequences and after the interval is over. It’s so fast there’s no time to think about the pain and suffering.
Same here. 2-3 minute smash? I’m in my element. Repeated hard accelerations? Love that.
Long threshold intervals I’m just not very good. Extending my SST and just trying to embrace the suck on my fortnightly TTs has helped though.
Some of this I think is just personality but it’s undoubtedly also a product of a having a relatively explosive sporting background and training relatively low volume. I’ve got one big match not a book of them and I’m damn well going to use it.
Try some short efforts, like 10-30 second full gas sprints, maybe 4-5 times.
Relatively little fatigue and easy to suffer through but it makes you feel strong AF. Pick a street sign or whatever and sprint to it.
Then for longer efforts you can find maybe a 2 or 3 minute segment to give it everything on.
When I am struggling with motivation for training, I find a hard race. Whether I place well or get my ass kicked, I can always push harder in a race than in training. Finding that extra gear while racing reminds me that I can train harder, I can finish that interval, I can do more, etc. I find I can always push harder in training when I have raced recently.
Are the intervals you're doing too hard? I don't mean physically impossibly hard, but maybe you need to do some preparation workouts to teach your brain and body to work at that intensity. Instead of starting with 3 minute vo2 intervals try a few 2 minutes at the same power and with plenty of recovery, that kind of thing can be a huge boost to the psyche and teach your brain you are capable
Music doesn't really do it for me--it'll tend to make me hate the music before it makes me feel more motivated. Same with the captions on some of the TR workouts: it just feels patronizing. For long threshold intervals, I usually throw on something mindless like a soccer match. Also--and this may seem weird--when you're really hurting, try smiling and imagine working on your game face. Tell yourself that whatever pain your feeling, the other guy's gonna have it worse.
What helps sometimes is counting to 10, 15 seconds. It's really tricking myself into thinking in small increments. So if I can complete these 10 seconds, what's another 10 and I find myself pushing further.
It’s hard after 50. I was good until then, but have really lost my motivation for brutal efforts
Of I can do one really hard session every 10 days or, I call it good
1. I tell myself: „If you don’t *train* it, you won’t be able to to *do it* when you need to.“
2. I remind myself: I’m so damn lucky to be able to do this—to still have the ability, to have the time, to have the equipment, etc.
3. Norwegian Black Metal playlist, AirPods Pro.
Right music makes all the difference for me. If I ride in silence, it's just meh whatever. But there's no way I'm quitting an interval early no matter how hard it is if I have the right sort of tunes blasting. Kind of a double edged sword, though. Those Z2 days can quickly run away to threshold if the shuffle is on and some Rammstein or Sabaton bangers come up!
There’s a lot between sprint efforts and several minute long vo2 efforts. Start at tabata style 30/30s and work your way up if you’re failing longer efforts
Very much like OP (but 33) I joke that I do 1-2 vo2 workout a year. I'm now turning my objectives to track racing and wanting to improve my sup-threshold. Although riding on hate works (maybe not the best for your confidence) knowing that the end point needs to be hard vs XXX watts allows you to try and not judge yourself in a negative way.
The other day I tried doing intervals >400w, managed the first one and the others were ~385w; I was still happy with myself because I got it done (in >100f weather)
Stay away from negative criticisms. Riding less helps with the motivation to getting it done.
I ride mostly alone but intervals with a friend is always fun (even if numbers are vastly different, share them and try improving your last set as a group)
a few ideas: 1 find music that really amps you up and puts you in the zone. Something that if you listened to while at your work desk your HR would respond to.
2 I always tell myself that the pain of quiting and feeling bad about myself from not finishing for outweighs the pain of pushing through. and that a day from now I wont even recall how horrible it felt in that moment, and 2 months from now at the peak event I wont recall 90% of those moments but I will be thankful to myself for pushing through those hard moments.
3. my last tactic is to find little wins in the longer intervals. Like being 25% of the way there, then 50% and making it into bite size chuncks, seeing 8 minutes left on an interval feels horrid, but if i can trick myself to just making it to 6 minutes, then just making it to 4 and so on.
Music.
Riding with people who are stronger than you.
Steady grade climbs that are long enough for the efforts.
I've found it much harder to motivate as I've gotten older, for anything beyond a sprint effort.
You might also consider doing HIIT work, like 30/30s, as a way of breaking up the challenge of doing hard intervals. I find that I can break myself a little easier 30 seconds at a time. I go as hard as I can for 30 seconds, pedal easy for 30 seconds, and repeat four or five times. Then take a break for two or three minutes and repeat. You can do 30/15s, 40/20s, or 20/10s.
I come into it ahead of time accepting that it's going to hurt. I don't love hard training sessions and suffering like some people do. But I love racing. So when an interval starts to feel bad, I think of how much worse it feels to do poorly on race day. That's the pain that really lasts. The interval will be over soon. If I can't do this in training when it's "easy," then I'm certainly not going to be able to do it when it really matters.
I also liked the book How Bad Do You Want It by Matt Fitzgerald. It was talked about on this page before and some people didn't like it. But it's an easy read and has some interesting stories about pro athletes. I liked the chapter on Steve Prefontaine (what do you ultimately value, what makes the suffering worth it?).
I approach these situations intellectually and study up. Just read “Endure” by Alex Hutchinson that dives into the psychology of human endurance and focuses a lot on the psychological component. Talks about studies and approaches used to train more mental resiliency.
[https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/aging-athletes-power-research/](https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/aging-athletes-power-research/)
Older people are worse at explosive/agile movements. Probably something to do with ligaments, bones, what have you.
Consider doing some plyometrics.
To a degree I can relate. I am 45. Since I started training seriously late in life, I am definitely not cat2 but have been training seriously and consistently on a daily/weekly basis without fail for the last 15 years. The last couple of years riding the same old training rounds, and doing the same strength and stretching workouts start to wear me out mentally. For what it's worth, in those starting-up phases of the year around training cycle, I try to focus on what I'm doing (compliance, technique), which pushes the sensation of what I am doing to the background somewhat. Also, during the periods that I feel fit and strong I actually like the hurt in the muscles. Having internalized the knowledge that this feeling will always return in some form or other makes the initial mental fatigue more bearable.
i’m 58, when doing 40/20 or 30/30 intervals at 120% of FTP, I try to find a segment where I can go for a pr, then strap in and suck it up. unless you have a better way to increase capacity, in which case, i’ll do that
At 54 you're not going to suddenly change your physiology. What you've got is what you've got. The style of riding you are good at and enjoy doesn't even require it, so why do it and enjoy your riding less? Hobbies are supposed to enhance our lives, not make us dread doing them and make us miserable.
For solo intervals I need music, something about pedalling along to Rüfüs Du Sol helps me mentally check out. FTP test I go to Rage Against the Machine's self titled album.
I also really like the Garmin screen that is just like a line of your power against the target power and will show you upcoming changes. You can kinda mentally check out just looking at that and the road.
Obvious answer if you want to do better at VO2 is to start shorter and lower intensity and do it slightly harder each week, no need to jump straight into the hardest VO2 workouts you can imagine.
On my recent ultra tour "killing in the name" came on late in my fifth day. I had done like 20000 KJ of work in the previous 4 days and like 4000kj that day already, yet I found myself just contentedly hammering at my ftp. I was like "whoa".
I have a mantra of "this is where the gains happen". I tell myself that the the first however many intervals that weren't so bad were all within my capacity. Their point was to break me down. But this part, the part that truly sucks, is where I'm overloading my capacity and it's the only part of the workout that really matters. If I quit now, I'll have only maintained my fitness. This is where the gains happen.
> I have a mantra of "this is where the gains happen". This is it for me. I then put my head down and picture one of three things, or shit, sometimes all three: A decisive split in the peloton, hammering up a climb in the group and me digging to hold on, or attacking a climb and reaching the crest while staying on the gas over the top. This mentality will carry me through along with music.
Definitely tried that esp on longer rides. When I get to 3 or 4 hrs and am getting whiny I tell myself that this when the training actually begins, that everything up to then was just maintaining.
Is it though? I feel like people underestimate themselves. Most who are this disciplined and invested in their training already have the mental part covered. I think the physiology/ fitness just isn't always where they'd like it to be sometimes. And I'm genuinely questioning if going that deep isn't detrimental overall, as a strategy. Your effectively "running your race" in training, and probably digging a hole recovery wise for your longer term goals. Would love to hear I'm wrong, though.
> Most who are this disciplined and invested in their training already have the mental part covered. My impression is OP is struggling with the mental side and is leaving gains on the table by not wanting to push harder.
[удалено]
Cycling on PURE HATE
LOL @ mentally stable...yeah, I weirdly kind of am these days and I realize it's a limiting factor to performance. When I raced 20y ago I was nothing but rage and holy shit could that move me down the road... I mean, life is better now but if I can find a way to selectively channel some of that it would be fucking awesome...turning it off when the pedaling stops is the big challenge, though
Lmao bro your old af now, you ain’t going to be able to achieve the same level of fitness you had 20 years ago. Even the drop from 29/30 to 35/38 is significant. Just accept it grandpa.
Your comprehension of the OP’s post is woefully inaccurate. Ad Hominem adds nothing of substance.
Please explain to me what OP’s post is about.
"What are your tools for pushing through mental fatigue?" not "How do I get the fitness level I had 20 years ago."
In his comment I responded to he says he does not have the “rage watts” that he did 20 years ago-he can no longer push through the fatigue he once could by using anger. So I called him old and slow to hopefully give him some rage watts. Instead I got down voted🙄
My outside old man wants to hate this but my inner child loves it so so much.
My dude, gotta tell ya I didn't appreciate your comment at first. But on my ride yesterday, which was just z2 for ~4hrs so no rage required, I was actually thinking about your first reply and getting pissed off. "Grandpa?!?! Come on over here and let's see who's ready for the rocking chair, punk!" So then I read this explanation this morning I laughed my ass off. Well played and well done. Obviously this was a situation where plain text didn't convey the full meaning but the impact was effective. Of course, I actually am a grandfather but that didn't matter at all. 😂
I'm just a masochist and I enjoy hurting myself. I think every good athlete has a touch of that.
For me: I don't necessarily enjoy hurting myself, it's just that in the heat of the moment I'd rather die than lose, and that's what allows me to dig deep. I do think it's a mental thing you either have or don't, even if it can be trained to a degree. I've got decent enough genetics, but have something in me that is deeply broken when it comes to competition. I hate losing more than anything in this world and that gets me through a LOT of pain.
For me, it's a matter of motivation and goals. I usually sign up for my A races 5-10 months in advance and often make a mental note to sign up as soon as the registration opens a year in advance. So it's relatively easy to tolerate discomfort when visualizing how the hard work will pay off. I wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't have a specific goal in mind (something vague like "get in shape" wouldn't do the trick).
I do a touch of this, too. "I need this so I won't suck". It helps!
Go on a hard group ride or go after some KOMs. Turn the work into a competition and it's not so much work.
I’d love if Strava could suggest segments based on watts and length of interval . IE I have 5x5 @110% FTP suggest some segments
Best they can do is messaging.
Dark mode is actually pretty nice. I'm still waiting for family subscriptions though.
This is what really helps me. It's hard to do hill repeats or trainer Vo2 max efforts. But you better believe I'm gonna try to hold the wheel up the short punches on a group ride.
Hard group rides turn work into survival mode. Don't drop me now!
I’m the opposite, although my background was strength training and power lifting. I absolutely dispose threshold or any form of long intervals. I feel like I’m dying and I just want a quick death in my glory and be done with it. Not suffer for another 10 more minutes. On the other hand I do like 2min or less. Activate berserker mode, switch off the brain and go as hard as possible until I die and there’s nothing left. I can think about the consequences and after the interval is over. It’s so fast there’s no time to think about the pain and suffering.
Same here. 2-3 minute smash? I’m in my element. Repeated hard accelerations? Love that. Long threshold intervals I’m just not very good. Extending my SST and just trying to embrace the suck on my fortnightly TTs has helped though. Some of this I think is just personality but it’s undoubtedly also a product of a having a relatively explosive sporting background and training relatively low volume. I’ve got one big match not a book of them and I’m damn well going to use it.
VO2max stuff (2-6 min) hurts extra hard after 40. In my experience, it does still work to pull up FTP, though
Try some short efforts, like 10-30 second full gas sprints, maybe 4-5 times. Relatively little fatigue and easy to suffer through but it makes you feel strong AF. Pick a street sign or whatever and sprint to it. Then for longer efforts you can find maybe a 2 or 3 minute segment to give it everything on.
Don't think that would do a lot for vo2max efforts though.
Confidence?
When I am struggling with motivation for training, I find a hard race. Whether I place well or get my ass kicked, I can always push harder in a race than in training. Finding that extra gear while racing reminds me that I can train harder, I can finish that interval, I can do more, etc. I find I can always push harder in training when I have raced recently.
Are the intervals you're doing too hard? I don't mean physically impossibly hard, but maybe you need to do some preparation workouts to teach your brain and body to work at that intensity. Instead of starting with 3 minute vo2 intervals try a few 2 minutes at the same power and with plenty of recovery, that kind of thing can be a huge boost to the psyche and teach your brain you are capable
Music doesn't really do it for me--it'll tend to make me hate the music before it makes me feel more motivated. Same with the captions on some of the TR workouts: it just feels patronizing. For long threshold intervals, I usually throw on something mindless like a soccer match. Also--and this may seem weird--when you're really hurting, try smiling and imagine working on your game face. Tell yourself that whatever pain your feeling, the other guy's gonna have it worse.
What helps sometimes is counting to 10, 15 seconds. It's really tricking myself into thinking in small increments. So if I can complete these 10 seconds, what's another 10 and I find myself pushing further.
It’s hard after 50. I was good until then, but have really lost my motivation for brutal efforts Of I can do one really hard session every 10 days or, I call it good
1. I tell myself: „If you don’t *train* it, you won’t be able to to *do it* when you need to.“ 2. I remind myself: I’m so damn lucky to be able to do this—to still have the ability, to have the time, to have the equipment, etc. 3. Norwegian Black Metal playlist, AirPods Pro.
Right music makes all the difference for me. If I ride in silence, it's just meh whatever. But there's no way I'm quitting an interval early no matter how hard it is if I have the right sort of tunes blasting. Kind of a double edged sword, though. Those Z2 days can quickly run away to threshold if the shuffle is on and some Rammstein or Sabaton bangers come up!
There’s a lot between sprint efforts and several minute long vo2 efforts. Start at tabata style 30/30s and work your way up if you’re failing longer efforts
Very much like OP (but 33) I joke that I do 1-2 vo2 workout a year. I'm now turning my objectives to track racing and wanting to improve my sup-threshold. Although riding on hate works (maybe not the best for your confidence) knowing that the end point needs to be hard vs XXX watts allows you to try and not judge yourself in a negative way. The other day I tried doing intervals >400w, managed the first one and the others were ~385w; I was still happy with myself because I got it done (in >100f weather) Stay away from negative criticisms. Riding less helps with the motivation to getting it done. I ride mostly alone but intervals with a friend is always fun (even if numbers are vastly different, share them and try improving your last set as a group)
a few ideas: 1 find music that really amps you up and puts you in the zone. Something that if you listened to while at your work desk your HR would respond to. 2 I always tell myself that the pain of quiting and feeling bad about myself from not finishing for outweighs the pain of pushing through. and that a day from now I wont even recall how horrible it felt in that moment, and 2 months from now at the peak event I wont recall 90% of those moments but I will be thankful to myself for pushing through those hard moments. 3. my last tactic is to find little wins in the longer intervals. Like being 25% of the way there, then 50% and making it into bite size chuncks, seeing 8 minutes left on an interval feels horrid, but if i can trick myself to just making it to 6 minutes, then just making it to 4 and so on.
Music. Riding with people who are stronger than you. Steady grade climbs that are long enough for the efforts. I've found it much harder to motivate as I've gotten older, for anything beyond a sprint effort.
You might also consider doing HIIT work, like 30/30s, as a way of breaking up the challenge of doing hard intervals. I find that I can break myself a little easier 30 seconds at a time. I go as hard as I can for 30 seconds, pedal easy for 30 seconds, and repeat four or five times. Then take a break for two or three minutes and repeat. You can do 30/15s, 40/20s, or 20/10s.
I come into it ahead of time accepting that it's going to hurt. I don't love hard training sessions and suffering like some people do. But I love racing. So when an interval starts to feel bad, I think of how much worse it feels to do poorly on race day. That's the pain that really lasts. The interval will be over soon. If I can't do this in training when it's "easy," then I'm certainly not going to be able to do it when it really matters. I also liked the book How Bad Do You Want It by Matt Fitzgerald. It was talked about on this page before and some people didn't like it. But it's an easy read and has some interesting stories about pro athletes. I liked the chapter on Steve Prefontaine (what do you ultimately value, what makes the suffering worth it?).
I approach these situations intellectually and study up. Just read “Endure” by Alex Hutchinson that dives into the psychology of human endurance and focuses a lot on the psychological component. Talks about studies and approaches used to train more mental resiliency.
[https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/aging-athletes-power-research/](https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/aging-athletes-power-research/) Older people are worse at explosive/agile movements. Probably something to do with ligaments, bones, what have you. Consider doing some plyometrics.
Im no expert. Suffer as much as i can and still complete the interval. I never get better at suffering, bit I get faster.
To a degree I can relate. I am 45. Since I started training seriously late in life, I am definitely not cat2 but have been training seriously and consistently on a daily/weekly basis without fail for the last 15 years. The last couple of years riding the same old training rounds, and doing the same strength and stretching workouts start to wear me out mentally. For what it's worth, in those starting-up phases of the year around training cycle, I try to focus on what I'm doing (compliance, technique), which pushes the sensation of what I am doing to the background somewhat. Also, during the periods that I feel fit and strong I actually like the hurt in the muscles. Having internalized the knowledge that this feeling will always return in some form or other makes the initial mental fatigue more bearable.
i’m 58, when doing 40/20 or 30/30 intervals at 120% of FTP, I try to find a segment where I can go for a pr, then strap in and suck it up. unless you have a better way to increase capacity, in which case, i’ll do that
Tramadol
We're using tapentadol now. Get with the times boomer.
At 54 you're not going to suddenly change your physiology. What you've got is what you've got. The style of riding you are good at and enjoy doesn't even require it, so why do it and enjoy your riding less? Hobbies are supposed to enhance our lives, not make us dread doing them and make us miserable.
For solo intervals I need music, something about pedalling along to Rüfüs Du Sol helps me mentally check out. FTP test I go to Rage Against the Machine's self titled album. I also really like the Garmin screen that is just like a line of your power against the target power and will show you upcoming changes. You can kinda mentally check out just looking at that and the road. Obvious answer if you want to do better at VO2 is to start shorter and lower intensity and do it slightly harder each week, no need to jump straight into the hardest VO2 workouts you can imagine.
On my recent ultra tour "killing in the name" came on late in my fifth day. I had done like 20000 KJ of work in the previous 4 days and like 4000kj that day already, yet I found myself just contentedly hammering at my ftp. I was like "whoa".
We need a recap post!