…..utterly.

Recently I was advised by Craig that there was an alternative answer to my hurting indoors problem – Sufferfest. I’d grown a bit weary of my training DVD. After all, I’d been using it at least once a week for about 3 years and even a stubborn, belligerent, pig headed train-at-all-costs merchant like me can get bored. The answer, he suggested, lay in the Sufferfest back catalogue, a gruelling suite of  downloads that integrates race footage with carefully co-ordinated and targeted sessions. He was not wrong. I downloaded ‘The downward spiral’. According to the blurb:

Whilst I was wary of the captions, they were strangely……motivating.

• How long: 60 minutes
• What it’s about: Maximum intensity intervals that gradually decrease in duration
• Best for: Increasing ability to make repeated, maximum intensity efforts

This is the only cycling workout that asks you to stay with Tom Boonen during his solo breakaway in Paris-Roubaix or out-sprint the pack at the top of the Mur de Huy at the end of the Fleche Wallone.  This officially licensed footage from the ASO is all packaged around a 60 minute structured interval workout with 16+ flat-out power intervals.

As far as ‘maximum intensity efforts’ are concerned, they were not wrong. The first time I tried it, I collapsed off the turbo trainer looking like I’ve been for a swim. With an alligator. In the Antarctic. Naked. I knew I’d had a work out.

If like me, you find time a little tight but still want to train, then videos such as a those provided by Sufferfest offer an excellent opportunity to keep fitness levels high when all else is against you. Particularly handy for winter training.

The Sufferfest range of videos are available as downloads only for $12.99 direct.

Indoors brings its own set of challenges, non more so than half my players arrive at the indoor arena and think they are going to a soccer party! The noise and the atmosphere is totally different to being outside so I come armed with a few exercises to get the players using up all that untapped energy.

Use this colour react exercise to channel players’ energy:

Get brains and muscles into gear

• Two groups of players on each side of a row of four different coloured cones fives yards away.
• The players must react to your call and move to the appropriate cones.
• The players must touch the cones in the order you call out, and then sprint out of the nearest end.
• Players then join the opposite queue.
• An example would be “White and Black” as shown in the diagram. Make sure you keep advancing the warm-up with combinations of colours so your players are thinking about what they are doing.
• Mix the colours around so they do not become familiar with the position of the colours.

Indoor soccer drills