GRASPOR’s benefits
why use GRASPOR?
How can I use GRASPOR in my training? What areas can it help me improve on? And how do I get started with adaptive training?
GRASPOR
the performance tracker that measures your muscle performance.
GRASPOR and its ability to measure your muscle performance empowers cyclist to optimize their time and maximize training efforts to help increase performance gains. This is a game changer for all athletes who wants to learn more about their performance to train smarter.
Adaptive training
Measure your muscle performance live
Ride based on your daily fatigue level.
Train at your optimal intensity
Performance test
Assess your current fitness level
Get personalized training zones
Identify your anarobic weakness
Warm-up
Find the right warm-up for you
Adapt your warm-up to the specific ride
Improve your performance by up to 10%
Adaptive training, as we call it, is all about listening to your body, and not to your power meter.
If you’re tired from yesterday’s training, it may have an effect on today’s training. By measuring your muscle oxygen, GRASPOR helps you identify this effect and adapt to it, so you get the most out of your training, without guesswork.
You can’t rely on your testing data after 6 weeks, then it becomes outdated, as your fitness have improved. This means that you should test yourself every 4-6 weeks to ensure that you will keep improving at the same rate.
With GRASPOR you can test yourself as often as you want, and make sure that you’re always training to your maximum potential! More testing means better training output.
Warming up ensures that your body is ready for high intensity efforts, without overstressing it at the beginning of your workout. Going out doing efforts without proper warm-up will give you a less than ideal training output at the end of the day.
GRASPOR can also help you choose the right warm-up for you, and adapt it to your feeling on the day!
Your new weapon
Adaptive training
What is it?
It might sound fancy and difficult, but in reality it’s simple.
Adaptive training is all about listening to your body, and adapting your training intensity to your body’s capability, on any given day.
Listening to your body can be hard, especially finding out how to act based on your fatigue – this is where GRASPOR comes into the picture.
By measuring your muscle oxygen levels GRAPOR can tell you exactly how hard your body is working to produce an effort, and with that, tell you if you should lower or increase your output.
What does it mean in practice?
Basically, training based on GRASPOR instead of power or pace, you can make sure that you’re pushing yourself to the limit. Not over, or under it.
If you are going for a ride, but had a hard day with efforts the day before, the fatigue you gained yesterday will likely impact your performance today.
In that case, you would likely have the feeling that the watts were harder on you today, but not be able to act on it – without GRASPOR that is. With GRASPOR you would be able to tell exaclty how fatigued you are, and act based on it to make sure you get the right training.
But, the opposite is also true. You can train too easy, and limit your performance gain. In the example on the right the rider set out to do 5x 310 watts for 3 minuts. But if you look at the average muscle oxygen over the 5 efforts, its increasing. This means the rider actually ends up riding too easy in the end. In this case the rider should have increased the power to make the average muscle oxygen reach around 51% each time.
What does it mean in practice?
Basically, training based on GRASPOR instead of power or pace, you can make sure that you’re not pushing yourself too hard.
If you are going for a ride, but had a hard day with efforts the day before, the fatigue you gained yesterday will likely impact your performance today.
In that case, you would likely have the feeling that the watts were harder on you today, but not be able to act on it – without GRASPOR that is. With GRASPOR you would be able to tell exactly how fatigued you are, and act based on it to make sure you get the right training.
But, the opposite is also true. You can train too easy, and limit your performance gain. In the example above the rider set out to do 5x 310 watts for 3 minutes. But if you look at the average muscle oxygen over the 5 efforts, its increasing. This means the rider actually ends up riding too easy in the end. In this case the rider should have increased the power to make the average muscle oxygen reach around 51% each time.
How do I get started?
Adaptive training begins with a performance test to map your adaptive training zones. After that, its just as you might know from training based on power output – instead of riding between two power numbers eg., 200-250, you ride based on muscle oxygen, eg., 54-50%.
Developed for space - optimized for Earth
The technology behind GRASPOR was originally developed for astronauts (at ESA). Today it is known that 2 hours of training is optimal to counteract the effects of being in a near-zero gravity environment for prolonged periods of time.
But with the technology behind GRASPOR, the astronauts and their support personnel can easily track how well the astronauts cope with and counteract these consequences.
This technology can now benefit you as an athlete to understand whether you should ride more, or harder, or go home and recover.
GRASPOR dispels the myth of training based on the motto:
No pain, No gain.
keep improving
Threshold test
The threshold test
With GRASPOR you can test your performance in many more ways than you’re used to. But let’s focus on the threshold test for now.
The threshold test is the basis for your adaptive training efforts – and its possible you know how to do it.
Our test protocol is a standard 4-minute step test. Simply put, you get on your bike, ride for 4 minutes, increase the intensity, ride for 4 minutes and so on. You do this until you can’t keep pedaling.
Trust your data – indoors and outdoors!
Normally it can be difficult to compare the result from a lactate test from a turbo trainer to useful training zones on the road, due to the difference in position and difference in heat dissipation. This effect is also why you can experience a difference in power output on the road and indoor trainer.
If you test yourself with GRASPOR, you can trust that the adaptive training zones you get, will be the same indoors and outdoors.
The oxygenation in your blood will not change based on external factors in the same way that your power output will.
Trust your data – indoors and outdoors!
Normally it can be difficult to compare the result from a lactate test from a turbo trainer to useful training zones on the road, due to the difference in position and difference in heat dissipation. This effect is also why you can experience a difference in power output on the road and indoor trainer.
If you test yourself with GRASPOR, you can trust that the adaptive training zones you get, will be the same indoors and outdoors.
The oxygenation in your blood will not change based on external factors in the same way that your power output will.
What comes next?
Once you have completed your test, you will get a graph that looks like the one on the left. By looking at the graph you will be able to identify your adaptive training zones.
If you have recorded your test on your Garmin you will still find the workout in our app.
Wingate test
The wingate test is a 90- second all-out test.
The purpose of the test is to find your anaerobic weakness, i.e., are you able to transport enough oxygen to your muscles, and use it? The eingate test can tell you if you need to work on either of those areas.
If you have recorded your test on your Garmin you will still find the workout in our app.
Wingate test
The wingate test is a 90- second all-out test.
The purpose of the test is to find your anaerobic weakness, i.e., are you able to transport enough oxygen to your muscles, and use it? The wingate test can tell you if you need to work on either of those areas.
If you have recorded your test on your Garmin you will still find the workout in our app.
prepare your workout
Warm-up
Why should I warm up?
In short, because warming up can increase your performance by up to 10%.
But there’s more to it than that…
Chances are that you know the feeling of heavy legs, and if you do efforts, the first few are usually the hardest.
This is because your body needs to get ready for the training. It’s like if you dont get your morning coffe, you’re not ready for the day ahead. If your body dosent get warmed up. its not ready for the efforts.
Why your current warm-up is not enough
Riding at an easy pace out of town to your favourite rute is not enough if you’re preparing for efforts or hill sprints with your buddies. You need some more intensity to prepare your body.
The easy pace is an important part in “waking up” your body, and telling your heart and lungs that they need to go to work to supply oxygen to your muscles.
But it’s equally important to have some high intensity to get the message to your muscles, and prepare your legs for the upcoming intensity.
Why your current warm-up is not enough
Riding at an easy pace out of town to your favourite rute is not enough if you’re preparing for efforts or hill sprints with your buddies. You need some more intensity to prepare your body.
The easy pace is an important part in “waking up” your body, and telling your heart and lungs that they need to go to work to supply oxygen to your muscles.
But it’s equally important to have some high intensity to get the message to your muscles, and prepare your legs for the upcoming intensity. It’s much better to have hurting legs for a 3 minute warm-up interval than for your 40 minute tempo interval.
Our basic warm-up
Warming up is very individual, some need longer time, some need more efforts, and others only need a few.
We recommend at least somewhere between 20-30 minutes of warm-up time before a hard ride, divided into shorter efforts like this:
8-10 minutes of easy riding – spin the legs to get started.
Transition into 2x 3- minute progressive efforts. These efforts should start at an easy level and finish at FTP intensity. Between each effort you should ride easily for a minute or 2.
Take 3-5 minutes at recovery pace after the last progressive effort.
Then do 2-3 sprints between 10-12 seconds. These should be very intense, but not max sprints. Take 1 minute recovery between each sprint.
Finish off with 3-5 minutes at recovery pace to get your heartrate down, and your muscle oxygen up.
This is just our recommendation, but with GRASPOR you can tailor your warm-up to your fatigue levels – sometimes you might need that extra sprint, other days you won’t
How to get started:
- Get your own GRASPOR
- Download the GRASPOR app (or Garmin data field)
- Complete a test to identify your adaptive training zones.
- Train according to the identified zones for ensuring optimal intensity and right number of repetitions.
Feel the difference between training hard, and training smart.