As Coach Troy Jacobson points out in the beginning of Spinervals Competition 8.0: Recovery & Technique, an essential but sometimes neglected part of any cyclist's training program is recovery. Workouts like Suffer-O-Rama, Time Trial Special, The Zoot Challenge, and The Uphill Grind are extremely intense, intended to tax your muscles and cardiovascular system to the maximum. After workouts like this, an "active recovery" workout allows the body to rest and regenerate while providing the perfect opportunity to work on technical skills. Recovery & Technique is an ideal workout to do several times each week during your training program.

Recovery & Technique is one of the most distinctive Spinervals workouts. With an intensity rating of 7.5 on a 10-point scale, compared to the 9.5 of many of the other Competition series workouts, this is intended to be an easier recovery workout, not an exhausting intervals session. During the workout, Coach Troy offers frequent reminders to keep your pace moderate and not to overdo it, which is very helpful.

The emphasis of Recovery & Technique is on two different exercises: one-leg drills and super spins. The one-leg drills are exactly that: you unclip one foot from the pedal and use the other to do the entire pedal stroke. It's a great technique exercise, as it really highlights any faults in your pedaling style, and forces you to develop a smooth pedal stroke in which you both pull up and push down. The super spins are an exercise that Spinervals viewers will be very familiar with from other programs in the series, but here there's a bit of a twist: instead of very short, super-high-cadence super spins, here Coach Troy asks you to keep a high (but not excessive) cadence for longer periods of time. Again, this is a great technique workout, and if you are the kind of rider who tends to grind away on the road in a high gear, this exercise will certainly help you learn how to spin.

The 45-minute program is as follows:

As always, Coach Troy does a great job of providing encouragement and of keeping the program nicely paced.

The DVD

Video

Spinervals Competition 8.0 is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and considering that it's an exercise video, looks fine. The image tends to be fairly blurry, but the picture is bright and clear, with natural-looking colors. Recovery & Technique is filmed "on location" in what looks like a hotel ballroom, which is a welcome change after the bland studio setting of the previous two installments; it's visually more interesting.

Audio

Spinervals Competition 8.0 gets a lower mark for audio quality than most of the other Spinervals DVDs, simply because the volume of the music is too high compared to Coach Troy's voice, making it difficult to always hear his instructions clearly. The soundtrack is satisfactory in other counts, with no background noise or distortion.

Extras

The menu screen allows viewers to start the program from the beginning or jump to a specific portion of the workout; it's easy to navigate, though the menu is sluggish to respond to making a selection. One positive change is that there's no longer a cheesy promotional segment about the Spinervals series before the actual program starts; we jump right into the real workout. There are no special features.

Final thoughts

Spinervals Competition 8.0: Recovery & Technique is quite different from the other programs in the Competition series, with its focus on low-intensity recovery work and technique training. For more recreational riders who exercise for general fitness, it's useful but not as necessary to earmark specific "recovery" days, but for serious athletes who push their bodies hard to improve their speed and strength, it's essential to schedule easier workouts to allow the body to recover. Recovery & Technique is a perfect workout for that purpose; it's highly recommended.