How To Get Faster Together with Group Workouts
TrainerRoad’s Group Workouts feature can help you take your training to the next level. By joining with friends and like-minded cyclists, you’ll be ready to reach your goals and get faster together. Here are some ways that you can use Group Workouts to add volume, intensity, and entertainment to your training.
Add an Extra Workout
Group Workouts has already taken my training to another level. In just a short time of using the new feature, I have done more, gone harder, and set new power PRs. Group Workouts are an excellent way for you to add in extra training.
Adding extra volume to your training is easy with Group Workouts. Low-intensity, indoor workouts were always a point of difficulty for me. Now, riding those with friends makes the time fly by. My friends and I have a standing Pettit group workout every weekday. Since the workout code is good forever, we just reuse the same code every time. You can do the same thing or go with something a bit shorter, like Carter or Volunteer. Just be sure not to add too much, too quickly.
Increase Your Intensity
Generally, as a short-power cyclist, I like the hard short stuff and shy away from long sweet spot intervals. Over two days, I completed a 3×20, 3×30 sweet spot workout, and set 70 power PRs. That would have never happened without the encouragement and support from the two other athletes in the workout with me. Training with your friends will give you that extra motivation to push yourself just that little bit more.
There are plenty of ways to add a little bit of intensity. The simplest way is to increase your workout intensity. In a Group Workout, you can adjust the intensity individually. For example, you can up your intensity during an endurance workout and get in some tempo work. Another way to increase the intensity is to change a workout to a +1 version. Let’s say that you have Baird (0.83 IF) on your calendar. You could find a group that is doing Baird +1 (0.89 IF). You will be amazed at how the group effect can help you dig deeper.
Bring Your Own Entertainment
There are plenty of options if you’d like to keep your usual entertainment during a group workout. You can catch up with friends, listen to music, or even watch a movie together.
One of the best things about Group Workouts is that I have been able to connect with friends that I rarely get to ride with now. One of my training partners moved across the country not too long ago. It has been fun getting to catch up and even make fun of each other while riding.
Although it’s nice to connect with friends or make new ones, talking is difficult at best during those VO2 Max intervals. That is when you might want to turn on your training playlist. The great news is that you can open up your favorite music service, let it run in the background, and listen through your headphones.
Both the music and the audio from the workout can be heard at the same time. During the warmup and rest intervals, you can turn the volume down to hear everyone talking. Just before the hard interval starts, you can turn the volume back up.
You can even take your entertainment to another level and watch a movie or TV show. Using Netflix Party, everyone in the group can binge Tiger King together. Netflix Party is a Chrome browser extension that syncs the playback for you and your friends. Each person in the group will need a subscription to Netflix.
Find a Group Workout
If your friends are unavailable to workout with you, don’t worry! There are plenty of like-minded cyclists in the TrainerRoad forum constantly planning Group Workouts. The Group Workout Room Sharing thread is a good place to find a group to ride with.
Group Workouts are a fantastic way to get faster. You can get the support and encouragement needed to train more, push yourself, and get faster together. Leave a comment below with your ideas about how you are going to use Group Workouts to get faster together.