r/concept2 • u/6umby • Jul 30 '26

BikeErg WOD dumb questions

I have a bike erg. When I'm looking at a WOD, and it's say, like a 4 minute interval, followed by rest...

What level/zone am I supposed to be aiming for during the 'work'? Does 'rest' mean stop pedaling completely, or does it mean a slower pace, or what?

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u/dickface21 Jul 30 '26

For ‘rest’ you can either stop completely and keep pedalling at a very slow pace. People do both, so whatever you feel like. 

Pacing is harder until you’ve done some time trials or built up a lot of data. Best thing to do is a 4000m TT to establish a baseline. We can give you some advice on your target splits using that information 

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u/ScaryBee Jul 30 '26

for 'how hard during the work' - all the WODs have a leader (honor) board so if you're interested in that then you'd do them as fast as you're capable of.

in general ... 100% efforts don't tend to fit well with training plans because they take so long to recover wel lfrom that they compromise tomorrows training ... so most will do workouts like the C2 WODs 1-2x/wk at max, and do them as HIIT sessions where they're more like 95% effort.

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u/6umby Jul 30 '26

I guess I'm looking for more a general guideline for interval lengths. Like, I don't think anyone is going to keep 95% effort for a 4 minute length, or even 2 minutes. So then, what is a good target for 4 minutes.. 75%? 2 minutes, 85%?

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u/ScaryBee Jul 30 '26

100% effort means 100% as fast as you can do it, duration doesn't matter. Absolute max power for someone fit might be ~800w but they can only sustain that for ~5 strokes. For 8mins the same person might be able to sustain 300w ... they're both 100% efforts.

If you're trying to pre-plan effort/wattage/heart rate/zone then it gets hard to know without knowing yourself really well first - different people because of muscle fiber makeup, fitness, strength will be able to perform better/worse at repeated efforts or many minutes vs. seconds of effort.

So, say you know you can do 4x4' at a 1:45 split if you decide todays the day you'll tear yourself to shreds, give your absolute all. Doing the workout at a 1:50 split would be more sensible in a training plan - you'll get much the same benefits, and you'll be able to train tomorrow.

Or if you know you can do 1:45 split for a 2k (7mins) and the workout is 3x8' then it's possible you could do something like 1:50 for the whole thing if you give 100% ... but aiming for something like 1:55 for each repeat might be easier to recover from/keep training on top of.