My main training goal at the moment is hypertrophy, but I’m trying to keep up with the cardio recommendations as well. My question is in connection with the latter.
For the past several months, most weeks I’ve been doing two bike rides and one run, each about an hour long. Typically I warm up at moderate intensity for about 15 minutes, then do 35-40 minutes at what I’m pretty sure qualifies as vigorous intensity, and finishing by cooling down for 5-10 minutes. So that’s something like 60-75 minutes of medium intensity and 105-120 minutes of vigorous intensity, which I think is in line with the guidelines.
The thing is, I used to cycle competitively, and though that was years ago it’s still in my blood, so on the bike rides (but not the runs) I tend to push harder and harder and end up riding not just vigorously but pretty much all out for about 10 minutes, as if I were doing a time trial. It feels great, just like the old days, but I have to ask:
Are very hard 10-minute efforts like the ones I do on the bike likely to have a negative impact on my hypertrophy outcomes?
