Cyclists love to suffer. It is practically a prerequisite for endurance sports. Over the years, I’ve noticed we often fall into a psychological trap: thinking that if a workout doesn’t completely bury us, or if we aren't gasping for air between efforts, the session simply wasn’t effective.
As a coach and a fellow athlete, I see it constantly. Riders rush their rest periods, assuming that getting back to the next interval as quickly as possible will provide a superior training stimulus. The prevailing logic is that more pain equals more gain. But sometimes, intentionally holding back and taking a longer pause is exactly what propels you forward.
I want to share a principle I recently revisited in the Norwegian Method applied book by Marius Bakken. It’s a fantastic read that challenges a lot of conventional endurance wisdom. In it, he brings up a highly effective, slightly counterintuitive idea that I believe you should try applying to your own interval sessions: taking a significantly longer rest period between your intervals than most traditional workout plans prescribe.
To understand why this works, let’s look at a standard, bread-and-butter training session: a 4x10 minute sweet spot workout.
Sweet spot training sits right in that Goldilocks zone between tempo and threshold. It is an intensity that forces you to focus and makes you feel like you are doing real work, but it shouldn't completely knock you out or leave you completely drained. You should be able to execute four 10-minute blocks of this intensity relatively comfortably.
Because the intervals aren't incredibly long or fiercely intense, traditional coaching wisdom usually dictates a very short recovery window. Typically, you would only take about 2 to 3 minutes of rest between those efforts. The logic is simple: the work isn't that hard, so you don't need that much rest.
But what if, instead of 2 or 3 minutes, you took 5 minutes?
I know exactly what many of you are thinking. “But if I keep my rest short, I’m right back into the next interval quicker. Doesn't cutting those two minutes out provide a better aerobic training stimulus?”
The short answer is: maybe. It entirely depends on the specific physiological goal of your day. If you are strictly trying to force an elongated, steady stimulus response where you never fully clear the fatigue, then yes, the 2 to 3-minute window makes sense.
However, taking that full 5 minutes unlocks a completely different kind of benefit.
Here is what Bakken highlights: the fitter you are as an athlete, the more efficiently your internal system resets during those recovery periods. When you expand that rest from 3 minutes to 5 minutes, three crucial physiological shifts have time to occur:
Essentially, adding those extra two minutes allows your internal systems to stabilize.
In my coaching practice, I am a massive proponent of what I call "protecting the integrity of the intervals".
If your workout is a 4x10 sweet spot, the primary goal isn't just to survive 40 minutes of work; the goal is to execute the absolute highest quality 10-minute intervals possible. Deferring to that 5-minute rest gives you the space to grab some water, mentally reset, and bring all your metrics down so you can attack the next block with focus. You get slightly more quality out of the next interval because you aren't starting it in a compromised state.
You could absolutely complete a 4x10 session on just 3 minutes of rest and still hit your target power numbers. You could probably still hit your target heart rate zones, too. But what is happening beneath the surface—the internal strain on your body that isn't always captured by a head unit—is different. The longer recovery means those intervals are straining your system a little bit less internally than they normally would.
Ultimately, long-term athletic development comes down to one absolute truth: consistency is key.
By taking a little more rest, a challenging workout takes a little less out of you. This allows you to prolong the amount of time you can sustain quality training, and it opens the door to successfully completing two or even three of these sessions in a single week—a volume that sounds overwhelming to a lot of folks if they are constantly under-resting.
In the end, this approach yields a much better, more sustainable overall training stimulus. When you shorten your rest to the absolute minimum, you run the risk of accumulating hidden fatigue. Over a training block, this creates a snowball effect of fatigue down the road that can derail your progress entirely.
Of course, none of this matters if you aren't honoring your actual recovery days between these hard sessions. But when you are doing the work, don't let your ego dictate your rest. Take the extra time, execute with absolute quality, and watch your performance grow.
