Intervals training is a great way to improve your anaerobic fitness and ability to recover from high-intensity efforts, but it can be difficult to do intervals while just riding your bicycle outside: changing terrain and weather conditions can make it hard to do consistent, repeated efforts. That's where the Spinervals indoor training videos can be extremely helpful. Spinervals Competition 6.0: The Zoot Challenge is a 40-minute high-intensity, high-quality intervals session that you can do on your stationary trainer or exercise bike any time, in any weather. The name comes from the fact that the participants in this exercise session are racers from Team Zoot.

The Zoot Challenge is the shortest Competition series program so far, but at 9.5/10 on the Spinervals intensity scale, it packs a lot of punch into those 40 minutes. Let's take a look at the workout:

One of the things I liked about this workout is that it's quite varied: we get high-cadence super spins, tempo work, and sprinting, assembled into a coherent workout that's paced to squeeze the maximum effort out of you. Within the individual sets there's also quite a bit of variation: for instance, in addition to seated high-cadence work, Coach Troy Jacobson also asks you to do some standing high-cadence pedaling, which is a lot harder than it looks. The long set mixing tempo, hard effort, and easy spinning is devilishly effective at taxing your strength and stamina, and Coach Troy does a great job as always with keeping you motivated to push yourself.

Coach Troy is right on the money when he advises participants to pay attention to how they're feeling, and ease off if they feel dizzy or sick. The high-intensity intervals of The Zoot Challenge will really push your cardiovascular system to its limits, as I can attest. After the final exercise set, which saw my heart rate shooting up near its maximum on the harder parts, I felt completely wiped... in fact, as I got off the bike I realized that I was about to pass out. (Fortunately, after a few minutes lying down my blood pressure was back up to normal, and I felt fine... in fact, I felt great.) Here's a tip: Coach Troy has the program end with a cool-down period of easy spinning for a reason! Even if you feel like just getting off the bike and collapsing, the soft-pedaling actually helps your muscles and cardiovascular system to recover better than total rest; next time I do The Zoot Challenge I'll make sure to do the full cool-down.

The DVD

Video

Unlike the other Spinervals programs so far, The Zoot Challenge was filmed in a studio, so we get a pale blue background behind the riders instead of an actual location. While this does make it a little easier to see the riders, I admit that I missed the charm of seeing the session take place in a "real" setting, like the restaurant, ballroom, private home, or outdoor location of some of the other programs. As for image quality, it's fine: the image is bright and clear, and the on-screen text for the graphical aids (perceived effort, time remaining in the workout, and suggested gear) is always sharp and easily readable. The Spinervals workout is in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Audio

Coach Troy is easy to understand throughout the workout, which is the most important part of the soundtrack. The track always sounds clear and natural. The music is a slightly different style than in the other Spinervals programs, with a bit lighter feel to it; it's pleasing and varies appropriately according to the type of effort that you're supposed to be doing on the bike.

Extras

Though The Zoot Challenge doesn't have any actual special features, it does have a nicely done menu that allows you to jump to any of the exercise sets.

Final thoughts

Spinervals Competition 6.0: The Zoot Challenge complements the other intervals workouts in the Spinervals program; if you want to include intervals and high-intensity work in your training, you'll definitely want both The Zoot Challenge and Suffer-O-Rama in your collection, with No Slackers Allowed as a third choice for some variety. It's highly recommended.