I’m about to get a bunch of Spinervals videos. I don’t think I want all nine, so does anyone have any recommendations for which one(s) is/are unnecessary? Any must-haves?
Thanks!
PS: FWIW, I do sprints, Oly’s, and TTs.
Mental toughness is the best spinervals DVD I have. It’s a difficult 1 1/2 hour workout, but the time goes fast - lots of tempo efforts, but nothing too intense until 10 minutes to go in the video when you do a series of build sets.
Another really great DVD, but not a Spinervals is Endurance Films Rides: The Rockies - it has cool music and is an entertaining, but tough 1 hour workout.
Suffer-O-Rama is really good also - its about 50 minutes long - high intensity with relatively long rests between intervals.
All of them are great. I think that most will tell you that the Zoot Challenge is the easieist. The Mental Toughness will absolutely kill you, and The UpHill Grind is always a favorite as well. I recommend that you get a selection of both short and long tapes. That way you can pick from a selection that best fits the time that you have. Careful not to do these more than twice a week, 3x at an absolute max with plenty of rest.
eric
I second the Uphill Grind. Climbing is definately my weakest part of the bike so this helped me to become more of a mountain goat.
Uphill Grind and Mental Toughness for good hard workouts. Zoot is actually a good one for intervals especially for starting speed workouts. I found that useful prior to the snow finally melting this year.
I’ve got Aerobic Base Builder V (#25) which is pretty good for building a good early base when the weathr is not so great outside. It’s 2 hours long.
I’ve also got Tough Love (#13) which is 3 hours. Which was a B-Day present. I haven’t removed the plastic on this one yet. Probably never will. 
Better unwrap Tough Love: Troy has a new 5+ hour Spinervals workout in the works (filmed last week), to be released in early March…
Every time a Spinervals thread appears, that one gets the most rave reviews.
But, hey, if you don’t want it, it’s HIGH up on my list for Santa. I’ll buy it from you! No lie!
What’s the point of a 5 hr spinervals workout? Makes no sense to me. Neither does any such workout over an hour.
the whole point is a high intensity workout which shouldn’t be over an hour. Anything more is just a tempo or endurance ride which you don’t need “intervals” for. For the longer less intense stuff watching a movie or a good sporting event provides much better entertainment than watching a bunch of people ride stationary bikes.
I reccomend sticking to the Spinerval tapes less than an hour in length. They are short and very intense which is just what you want.
I’ll second most of the rec’s here. Mental Toughness is probably the best one to get, if you’re only gonna get one.
I’ll also recommend Big Gear Strength and Bending Crank Arms. Both are good lower cadence, strength-building workouts. I’ve been doing these two back-to-back this winter, and I am sincerely hoping that I see some gain from it - cause it hurts lika a mother!!
I also double-up with Zoot Challenge, followed by Uphill Grind - this gives me a nice 90 minute sesssion.
I have the Aero Base I (16.0) amoung others. I’ve been using it a lot in the last month, when I can’t get out to ride. If I keep my HR down (Zone 1) and cut it to an hour, it makes a nice recovery session. If I keep it Zone 2 and add one-legged drills at the end (before the cool-down) it makes a nice endurance ride. I’ve already found about a 10-15% improvement in my gearing for the same HR. It could be a placebo effect, but that’s OK, too.
I use Recovery and Technique for a really short high cadence work out, sometimes.
I have Tough Love. I’ll try that in a month or so.
I do my hill stuff in the local hills or the local mountains.
The scenes in rides are actual video. The riders ride the Boulder Peak course and the camera follows and there is good music and funny pop-ups. Nobody I know has ever tried it, but I think its the best training video.