Did it work? I‘m asking explicitly because that‘s in „overtraining territory“.
I was inspired by this post: What would happen if you rode 10 hours per week at 90-99% intensity? - Training - Intervals.icu Forum
When sst became hot quite a crowd tried this. Those with low ftps did good, kept it for a while. Like <250w. Those aroung 300 tried but gave up after some time. Above that crash and burn was quick. Never seen it above 350 level but for those normal hard rides are already aroung 250w.
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I did it all the time when I sucked and only had 300w ftp
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Did it help? Or was a different approach better in hindsight?
When you first start riding you should do what makes you happy, so much of the progression that is locked behind structured training is less fun than just riding a lot however you like to with your friends.
Ultimately this probably means up to 3 years of just riding around and doing whatever you want to do, during this time you discover your likes and dislikes, the areas you are good at and the things you want to try to work on.
Then eventually you enter structured training with periodization of TSS and start to increase the number of hours per week. What this almost always means is that you then decrease the intensity away from doing sweet spot because your goal will shift from wanting to ride fast to wanting to accumulate hours riding steady, this is the basis of most modern training plans with a lot of work done below sweetspot allowing you to do much more TSS per week and much more sustainably.
For example a ride for 3.5h with 3x45m sweetspot may knock you on your ass a little bit so what many people do is ride 4.5h with 3x45m z2 and the rest in z1 (equivalent to noodling around with a friend) the end result is that you come out of the ride feeling much better and it’s not a shock to the system so you can go out the next day and repeat it and do much much more TSS this way and eventually accumulate a lot of gains to your metabolism.
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I’ve done the old Sweet Spot Base High Volume plans in the past….by the end, I was pretty mentally beat down. I was OK physically, but having to do 5+ days of SS work was a grind.
It can be OK for a period of time, but absolutely not something I would recommend for a long-term training regime.
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Greenbike, I don’t think anyone is going to make 10 hours per week of sweetspot. 
If you have ten hours per week, you can easily do two sessions of intervals with easy endurance riding the rest of the time and get plenty fit.
That said, you can use sweetspot to increase training load and build durability.
I used the principles of coach Steve Neal and hit my best numbers in recent years. And honestly my FTP only went up maybe 30 watts during my build cycle but I felt very strong on the bike (stronger than ever).
Coach Neal’s methods seem to count on increasing training load and building out TTE (time to exhaustion). In my case I was doing two sessions per week and built out my sweet spot to 4x20 minutes. (Nothing crazy as you hear about people doing more.)
For me 4x20 was plenty as this took about 2 hours on the trainer with a warm up and cool down and was the limit of my butt’s ability to stay on a trainer.
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Van Der Poel has done this (no the other one).
Example week would be:
4x30 at 400
5x20 at 405
6x15 at 408
4x20 at 405
9x10 at 406
His whole training diary is worth a read.
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Some weeks he only did three or four days and then took a full 3 or 4 days off until the next week.
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There is a whole other training plan for athletes with high vo2max van der poel is on another level above that but for most amateurs they probably don’t have generational talent vo2 and shouldn’t expect to mimic the greats.
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Yeah this is pretty much how it went for me, though I did get myself above a 350W FTP (at 73 kg at the time), mostly from SS and threshold workouts, and VO2 stimulus from Zwift races. About 6 weeks after my biggest numbers (during a 70min Zwift race where I’m still struggling 1.5 years later to wrap my head around what I produced that day), I cracked and needed about 3 weeks of very easy riding before it felt like I could start any intensity again.
Here’s my weekly summary in that time (y-axis in hours, and purple line being weekly training load), My body called it quits in that second last week, in a way that’s hard to describe. Physically, everything just felt wrong, all the time.
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Is there a way you can share that intevals.icu chart setup?
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TLDR version - I used to do a ton of SS during base and it was effective, but exhausting. With increased volume, I do less sweet spot during base, but still use it effectively. I rarely train in SS outside of based period.
Long form -
When I started getting more serious about my training ~6 years ago, the old high volume sweet spot base plan was at the core. I think it was 3-4 SS sessions per week plus a hard group ride replacing the other, can’t remember for sure. And I saw a good increase in FTP and very good improvements in TTE/durability. Total game changer compared to where I was coming from on low volume and less structure. I remember those SS sessions becoming really taxing (particularly the mental side).
Fast forward to the last 2-3 years and I’ve ramped up volume further but still use a bit of sweet spot in my base period (more like 2x per week). For me, base is about building the biggest and most durable aerobic engine possible in preparation for build. My approach is to push as many Kj’s through the legs as possible while keeping reasonably fresh mentally and physically. I enjoy sweet spot work and find it easy to absorb, so it’s simply a fun way to push more Kj’s in a given number of hours without digging a hole. I’m not going to limit myself to Z2 only during base and I’m just not going to start intense intervals that early in the year. When build starts, I’m super motivated to start the hard work.
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Try this:
Daily load is the small pink-ish one at the bottom at bottom of chart (but top of settings as shown); weekly total purple-ish near top of chart (but bottom of settings).
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Load is the one I couldn’t figure out, thank’s so much. I was able to replicate. Appreciate it!
The old sweet spot plans were kind of like this. The end result was usually being burned out after 2mo or so to the point of struggling to walk up a flight of stairs, and making no overall progress beyond some small improvement in TTE. At least that was me.
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I did the same thing. In 2018 when I started TR - I did nothing but high volume BASE for 2 years. Mostly SS work. I went from 242 FTP to 335. It worked for me. I have since followed structure and my FTP has fallen with age / crash with car. So hard to know if this really worked in isolation. I live in very hilly area UK - so the 10-20 mins SS was ideal to replicate the efforts I needed.
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What were your TTE at those values?
TTE - Time To Exhaustion ? Depends on the effort / duration. I have a big floor and low ceiling. So I could hold 90% FTP better than most - but going over say 110% was a short painful exercise. I guess that was a drawback of doing loads SS. But I didnt want a huge punch. I want to maintain high level for long effort. The TTE as % of FTP didn’t change. I got fitter and could hold more watts
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You’ve already given the effort your FTP values, so how long could you hold them at the time, what durations?