I know @Nate_Pearson has greatly increased his FTP largely via sweet-spot workouts, but I can’t seem to reproduce the same results. My FTP was flat over 3 months at 258 watts of SSB, I used the low-volume plan but added endurance workouts to the mix. I had to cut my SSBILV plan short a couple times so I never got to the SSBII plan.
I ended up doing a couple weeks of SSBLVII before Christmas and, after another week of illness, did a ramp test and was able to hit 263 watt for my FTP. I had a similar situation back in September where my only major FTP bump was after running SSBLVII Having said all that, is it likely that my base fitness has plateaued so my FTP won’t increase until I get into VO2max workouts?
The key question is what FTP increases are seen on average in each phase of training across thousands of users (once volume in each phase is equalized in a like for like comparison). If someone from TR can answer this, then this will be genuinely useful way to compare plans/phases.
What is often talked about on the podcast is that ‘base’ and ‘build’ are complimentary and doing them in isolation doesn’t reap the same gains. Any base phase is building the foundation - you might see small FTP increases - and preparing you for build. I think someone recently referred to it like a pyramid- the wider the base, the taller the peak. I have seen small FTP increases in SSB1 and better increases in SSB2 (because there’s harder VO2 work in there), but ultimately I know this is just the foundation for bigger gains when the threshold type work comes in the build phase. But you can’t just do build repeatedly - at some point you’ve got to go back and add more base.