I am doing sprint intervals at the moment. 5 x 5 or 10 o 15 second efforts with recovery. The first rep’s have been stella (by my standards) but the drop off in both peak power and average power has been really steep. rep 5 is about 1/3 lower for both metrics. I wonder how much of the drop off is psychological? I mean knowing that there is going to a drop off you naturally don’t fight it as hard. What are others’ experiences?
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I think that is a great question. I’m certainly no expert, but I would imagine there is a degree of mental drop off. You are what you believe, I guess!!
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How long are your recovery intervals? It could be that you need more time between sprints so that you can maintain the intensity.
My personal experience is that if I’m doing, as an example, 5 x 10 second sprints, my 2nd will almost always be better than my 1st and I can sometimes produce my best on the last interval. (The best last interval is almost certainly mental…since I know it"s the last one 
)
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My first and second are reasonably close together. The first being highest. After 4 I am trying not to vomit. #5 feels like going through the motions. Recovery period is round about 6 minutes.
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Good idea there, Colin! I don’t think much more recovery time would produce better results, but it might be worth a try! Based on this discussion, I would suggest there is some combination of mental and physical differences that make sprinting individual!
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Agreed. It’s multi dimensional and I don"t know the history of this rider. Im my history of coaching rowers, the more experienced racers will tend to have better consistency in a sprint workout. I used to pull the dirty coaching trick of telling crews that we were on the last interval and if that one ended up beimg the best…i would add one more. 
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Haha!! That’s a cool trick. I’m working with a company doing some AI coaching. Probably could work that into a workout guidance feature 
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I agree that my final one can be the best, I certainly empty the tank knowing it is the last! Sometimes I do see a drop off in power for each sprint, but I presumed that is to be expected with all out efforts?
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Nice one!! Thank you for posting this 
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Thanks everyone. I have sprintervals on the plan again tomorrow, so will see what I can do.
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@pav @Colin … I’m a relative novice to Sprint intervals, just picking them up in the last few years working with pav
When coach @pav started putting them into my training i loathed them … i didn’t like them at all…but as i developed a “technique” (actually it was more of getting comfortable sprinting and losing the fear of breaking the bike/chain/parts and smashing to the ground, than a “technique”)… as a result the efforts have became more fun and profitable for me, Probably from the simple fact that i’m comfortable that i’m not going to break the bike
Fatigue and sprints -
For me it can depend on the type of sprint … if they’re “endurance” sprint intervals, hill-sprint intervals or “max power” ie short intervals
For the purpose of this discussion I will assume we are refering to “max power” intervals, intervals of the 5/10/20/30 second variety
from memory, my better efforts are towards the middle and end of the session. They definitely are not at the beginning! I think it takes a bit of time and a couple of sprints for this old body to get warmed up, settled in and create its max power
psychological or physical limitations to best performance in sprints? for me… I would say its +80% mental to create max power and when fatigue and/or “fuck this” comes into the frame
My body is always more capable of a given volume of work than my mind is… as my mind is the limiting factor…push the mind, push the limits
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Well said buddy!! 
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