ABOUT

The Mt. Fuji Hill Climb is a wildly popular Japanese event with a massive global audience—well over 10,000 participants! Zwift is bringing the action to you with the Mt. Fuji Climb Dojo Series. 

We tapped into top Japanese cycling talent to help craft a workout series aimed at building hill climb fitness, taking place across various existing Zwift worlds. The first four weeks focus on building a strong foundation, before reinforcing that with more specialized workouts like hill climb sprint tactics.

Akihiro Takaoka, a fastest hobby racer from cycling team Roppongi Express, will lead the first seven workouts. Other big hitters from the Japanese cycling world—Yuma Koishi from Team UKYO Sagamihara, Olympian Nariyuki Masuda from Blitzen Utsunomiya, and Takato Ikeda from WeZ—will close out the series.

Racing in the final event earns you a custom in-game jersey, designed in partnership with Belgian cycling apparel brand Bioracer.  

We’ll also invite riders to join our Discord server for guidance and networking with like-minded riders.

IS THIS A RACE?

This is a workout series aimed at priming your fitness ahead of the IRL Mt. Fuji Hill Climb, led by pro Japanese cyclists.

Race will be at the end of the workout series. Challenge yourself before the IRL Mt. Fuji Hill Climb Race.

UNLOCK THE KIT

Leave nothing on the table in the final event to unlock the sweet, in-game Mt. Fuji Hill Climb Dojo kit.

WORKOUT INFO

1. TT Fitness
   An early effort in the series aimed at determining your current fitness level, the TT Performance Check is a must when building up to an event.
2. Base Workout: Sanreizan
   We all have our preferred cadence range, but every once in a while, it’s important to throw down outside of your comfort zone. Base Workout #1 shows you how it’s done.
   Sanreizan stands for Japan's 3 Holy Mountains - Mt. Fuji, Mt. Tateyama, and Mt. Hakusan. Climbing to the top of any mountain requires keeping a steady cadence, and we all have our preferred cadence range. In training, it is important to be able to pedal outside of that comfortably. This workout challenges your ability to spin the pedals, and to do so outside of your typical comfort zone.
3. Base Workout: Subaru
   Meant to boost your start-line skills, this workout serves up 40/20’s (40 seconds on, 20 seconds off), followed by 10-minute efforts at Zone 4.
   The Fuji Subaru Line is the road the race takes for the Mt. Fuji Hill Climb. At almost 15 miles (24km) long, 5.2% avg gradient (7.8% max), and topping out at 7500ft (2280m) of elevation, this route is no joke! Being able to start relatively hard and get into a fast group is a key to success for the Hill Climb, since it's not terribly steep in areas, being aero and in a paceline can save a lot of time. This workout focused on your ability to surge hard and recover before settling into a steady sweet spot effort.
4. Base: Kawaguchiko
   A sweet-spot-focused workout with 42 total minutes of total effort at a specific intensity. Why? Getting comfortable with efforts that push your limits is the mark of a good racer. Being able to surge past that when needed is the cherry on top.
   Kawaguchiko is the starting point of the Mt. Fuji Hill Climb, and a beautiful lake that is part of the Mt. Fuji Cultural Heritage site. Today's workout is a sweet spot focused workout with the goal to accumulate 42min in total at sweet spot intensity. Sweet spot training is a great way to improve aerobic capacity and muscle endurance - both key aspects for hill climb success - while not taking much training time to improve. A perfect training approach for time-crunched athletes looking to improve their climbing prowess.
5. Base: Do
   One of the most challenging workouts in this early foundation phase, Base Workout #4 is designed to help you fire on all cylinders come race day by improving your overall pedal skills.
   Rings are awarded to hill climb finishers, with a Do (bronze) ring awarded to those who finish the hill climb in less than 90min. This workout is another sweet spot-focused workout, but with a kicker of varying the cadence throughout the interval. Mt. Fuji is interesting where the climb features flat, steep, and also descents all within the same ride. So, being able to pedal within a wide cadence range, and change up your cadence quickly, are important. This workout focuses on improving exactly that.
6. TT Fitness
   A midway check-in to see if these workouts are helping your fitness progress effectively.
7. Build: Gin
   This VO2 workout takes you through two intense blocks of intervals at over threshold power. These Zone 5 intervals, along with a nice Zone 2 break, makes this a tough-yet-rewarding session.
   Rings are awarded to hill climb finishers, with a Gin (silver) ring awarded to those who finish the hill climb in less than 75min. This workout focused on lifting VO2 Max, or the maximum amount of oxygen the body can use during exercise. Twice through a block of intervals up above threshold power will have you wishing for some extra oxygen, but you'll have to wait until the cool down to get it. Though there is a nice easy break between blocks of VO2 intervals where you can grab a little bit of extra air in your lungs. Don't expect this to be the case on Mt. Fuji though!
8. Build: Kin
   This VO2 workout features two main sets: a block of intervals above threshold, pushing you to work and recover repeatedly, and a sustained sub-threshold effort that asks you to work hard on tired legs.
   Rings are awarded to hill climb finishers, with a Kin (gold) ring awarded to those who finish the hill climb in less than 65min. This VO2max workout is designed to help you make better use of that oh-so-precious resource, oxygen. The workout features two main sets. The first is a block of intervals above threshold, pushing your body to work and recover repeatedly. The second is a sustained sub-threshold effort that asks you to work hard on tired legs. You get to breathe easy - and grab some extra oxygen - during the long warm up and cool down.
9. Build: Hakkin
   A fitting comparison: this workout is all about priming your legs to blast off the start line like a launchpad.
   Rings are awarded to hill climb finishers, with a Hakkin (platinum) ring awarded to those who finish the hill climb in less than 60min. In our last and final VO2max-focused workout of this block, we're progressing to 3min VO2max intervals to continue to push your ability to use oxygen during exercise. Then, we'll finish with another sustained effort around threshold to improve your fatigue resistance. Expect this workout to be one of the most challenging ones so far, like getting to the top of the Fuji Subaru Line!
10. TT Fitness
    This workout is a reflection of your fitness—what you’ve learned and the ways you’ve improved—while training for the Mt. Fuji Hill Climb.
11. Guest Athlete Workout
12. Guest Athlete Workout
13. Guest Athlete Workout
14. Scratch Race
    Start warming up, this is where you put your fitness to the test. Take part to unlock the in-game Mt. Fuji Hill Climb Dojo kit.