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OK, my usual workout is 10 minute warm up, 2 mins threshold and 8 minutes recovery repeated 4 times, with a view to increasing the threshold period by a minute every month, ish.
My happy cadence is about 75rpm but I'm sure I've read blurb which says I should be spinning faster, but when I'm out riding it's the hills that hurt (obviously) and when I'm on those my cadence is waaaay lower.
So, should I lower the cadence on my 2-minute grunt and increase the resistance or should I intruduce a 30 second killer big-resistance session into my programme, should I continue or should I sack it and watch telly??
You need to mix it up IMO
On a typical turbo session, I'll have reps of anything from 60 to 120
One of the routines I use has me holding 110 for 9 mins
I think for your 2 min grunt you should be spinning as fast as you can with as much resistance as possible, if for example you could be spinning 20% faster with 10% less resistance do that. That'll give you more power, which is what you're after to get you up the hill.
That said, for MTBing, especially for day rides rather than races (though I'm guessing you're looking at racing) it's worth having some torque to keep things going if you find yourself in too high a gear or just need a quick one hard pedal stroke to get over an obstacle, so mixing it up a bit (i.e. massive resistance and lower RPM) may help, although weights would be better for building strength.
p.s. I'm an engineer, not a coach, so my advice may be rubbish...
Keep the cadence fairly high
You might want to lower the recovery period quite a bit as well
your recovery period sounds very long, but maybe you are starting from a poor fitness level. if not aim for 4/5 minutes at threshold with 1 minute recovery and repeat 2/3 times. then take a long break 'til full recovery and do it again.
Mix and match sounds the way forward, only racing I do is DH, my usual riding is long stuff in the Dales and Lakes, MikeWWW you may well be right, think I might surf for some more routines
Surfed, it's a mine field! will keep looking, I do have a cadence sensor that I can fit to my bike that I use indoors, might be a good incentive.
You might want to try a video off here
Just bought Fight Club (£6.50 I think)
Its an hour long work out which puts you in a race with nice mixed up interval work. Takes away and boredom but does increase the pain