Best workouts to raise FTP?

What’s the best workouts to raise your FTP. Don’t have any races or anything really planned just every now and again. Main goal is to get a higher FTP.
Sweet spot? Threshold? Vo2 Max?
Can you just repeat phases?

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Sweet Spot plans :ok_hand: since they lay down the foundation of all your training. You can repeat them since most of your time riding and racing (when you do) is spent here. Include a build phase for good all-round training, and of course, long term consistency! I did read on another post somewhere, or on TR podcast? I’ll have to find it… Anyway others have repeated SS plans have had great results.

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2 VO2max + 2 Threshold workouts/week (or 3:1/week).
If all you are after is higher power in the shortest amount of time/least amount of work.

If you want actual fitness to support that power, as above, SS work.

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N=1 etc but I’ve being doing exclusively SS workouts for 3 months (I’ll do one more month base as coming back from injury). Increased my FTP from my winter base line 230 to 270 so far.

I found for me it’s by far the most effective way to build fitness

Get to the back of the line…

Seriously not quite sure of the post; the whole point of TR is their is a thought process behind a plan
You cant just cherry pick a workout in isolation

Coming here and saying you want to raise your FTP is like going to one of these talks by a ‘finance guru’ and shouting “I want to be richer”. So does everyone else
And if the dude told you one answer, in isolation, without any understanding of you or your personal circumstances then you should be forewarned.

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vo2max intervals

If all you care about is FTP being higher than Sweet Spot Base → Sustained Power Build → Century Specialization. If you don’t have an event to do just cycle between SSB and Sustained Power.

I heard @chad mention this on the podcast. If you have no events then can not do specialism if you aren’t fussed and just do SSB and build then repeat.

In this case would you repeat both phases of SSB each time, or just SSB2???

Cheers
Rob

Do both phases. You want the hard drop in intensity and volume so you don’t cook yourself.

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But not the High Vol plans, they are much too similar and adaptations will quickly face diminishing returns. The Low/Mid Vol plans are much more of a mixed bag to keep the body growing under different stimulus.

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The high volume base plans are assuming you have a history of fitness and you’re just coming off an off season. If you’re body already knows how to do top end work, high volume is ‘pretty good’ at priming your aerobic engine to do work again.

There are probably valid arguments that it could should go through some progression of ‘really long’ tempo work and try to progress the sweet spot intervals to a longer duration. Maybe add in some threshold work in the last 3-4 weeks.

It isn’t perfect, but it isn’t worthless or wrong.

Medium or high volume? How long have you been training before starting this protocol??

Thanks

I don’t follow TR plans I find them too intense, I stick to SST or even tempo during winter on the trainer…I would say I do about 8p/w.

Once I can get out side then I can do more Z2 and z5 workouts

Training background is a valid point, I’m 48 and raced on and off since my late teens…my training is highly influenced by my own experience where I find consistency and repeatability the most important factors

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I started using TrainerRoad last week and I am also leaning towards that conclusion.

I think that there is no silver bullet here but the best workouts to improve FTP would be the ones which present your body with an aerobic stimulation that is as new as possible to your body because those are the ones who are more prone to elicit the deepest adaptations.

An example: if you have been doing 500 TSS a week for quite long mostly built on VO2Max, SS and Z4 work, I am sure that if you do 3 weeks aiming for the same TSS but building it on just Z1/Z2 volume, you will see a decent gain.

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Personally if I had to pick one and only one workout for ftp it would have to be Galena - 3x20min Sweetspot. Can’t beat a classic

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