Tell me if this sounds familiar: you can ride along comfortably at a speedy clip for a long time on a flat or undulating road, but as soon as the road’s incline approaches anything that would be considered a climb, you quickly run out of juice.

If you can relate, these interval drills are for you. Adding one of these interval workouts into your training once or twice a week will have a significant positive impact on your climbing speed and endurance. If you do most of your longer rides on the weekend, I’d recommend doing these workouts in the middle of the week.

Since interval sessions are typically shorter than outdoor rides, assuming you do them on a trainer, they can be easier to fit in during the week when schedules might be more limited.

Performing these drills indoors also solves the dilemma of not having any near-by climbs. But if you’re lucky enough to have some great climbs in your backyard, get out there and do these on the road!

Climbing Drills Using Heart Rate Zones

For these workouts, we’re using heart rate zones as the way to measure intensity which are based on your max heart rate (MHR). It’s essential to train with a heart rate monitor when doing these drills because it’s always the most accurate way to measure how hard you’re working. And objective training feedback is invaluable if you want to improve your metrics, because as the adage goes, “What gets measured, gets improved.”

A general way to calculate your max heart rate is to subtract your age from 220, for example, a 40 year old’s max heart rate would be in the neighborhood of 180. But keep in mind this is a generalized formula for healthy adults, and max heart can vary slightly from person to person of the same age. A high-quality heart rate monitor will dial in your specific max heart rate over time, as it tracks your unique heart rate as you use it.

Below is a rundown of the different heart rate zones:

Zone 1

• Easy/Recovery
• 60-64 percent of MHR

Zone 2

• Endurance/Base
• 65-74 percent of MHR

Zone 3

• Tempo
• 75-84 percent of MHR

Zone 4

• Threshold
• 85-95 percent of MHR

Zone 5

• Above Threshold
• 95-100 percent of MHR

Interval Drills for Better Climbing

How to do it: Warm up before any of these workouts by spinning easy in Zone 1 for 5-10 minutes. Bonus points if you perform some mobility moves before you even get on the bike. Add one of these drills to your weekly training 1-2 times per week, and you can mix and match the workouts. In fact, mixing it up is ideal. The sweet spot would be doing two different workouts once per week.

Power-building Ladder Drill

This drill is designed to raise the ceiling of your max threshold, essentially, how to find the power to dig deep to keep up with an acceleration when you’re already close to or at your limit.

• Climb at or just under Zone 3 for 3 minutes
• Increase your intensity to Zone 4 for 2 minutes
• Increase your intensity to Zone 5 for 1 minute
• Recover in Zone 1 for 5 minutes
• Repeat 2-3 times

Trainer tip: You can work up to staying in these heart rate zones for the prescribed amount of time, and increase over time as you gain fitness. Think of it as another way to measure progress!

Strength-Building Surges

This drill is all about increasing power on climbs, and is especially great for riders newer to climbing.

• Shift into a very hard gear that feels close the the hardest you can turn over
• Increase your cadence until you reach Zone 5. Don’t downshift.
• Maintain Zone 5 intensity for 10-15 seconds
• Recover for 60 seconds without downshifting, lowering your heart rate as much as possible.
• Repeat 5 times.

Trainer tip: Since the strength-building surges are pretty intense, I’d recommend only performing this complete drill once per training session.

Threshold/Recovery Drill

This drill trains your body at both ends of the spectrum, Zone 1 and Zone 5. One of the main benefits is teaching your physiology how to recover quickly between hard efforts, a crucial ability for strong climbing.

• Climb in Zone 5 for 30 seconds
• Spin easy in Zone 1 for 4 mins
• Increase intensity to Zone 5 for 20 seconds
• Spin easy in Zone 1 for 3.5 minutes
• Increase intensity to Zone 5 for 10 seconds.
• Spin easy in Zone 1 for 5 minutes.
• Repeat for 3 rounds.

Trainer tip: It’s important to warm up before each of thee drills as mentioned above, but it’s especially important for this one. You do not want to go from zero to Zone 5 without giving your body a chance to warm up.

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