I’ve been stuck at 3.8-4 w/kg for the past 3 years and have tried various way to improve but nothing has stuck. I can only train 4 days per week bc of my schedule (work 3 straight days of 12 hr shifts). Previously, I’ve been doing 2 days of intensity (usually VO2 max or threshold workouts) with 2 days of Z2 endurance and average 5-8 hrs/week or 300-350 TSS/week. I’ve been trying to incorporate a Sweet Spot work in to take the place of 1 of these endurance days to boost TSS. But I’m getting smoked after the 3rd day of workouts. Unfortunately, I can’t spread these workouts further apart due to my schedule.
My questions:
Is Sweet Spot considered high intensity?
Is it worth doing a Sweet Spot workout in place of endurance when stacking 4 workouts in a row?
If you consider anything above the first lactate threshold to be intensity yes.
If you say “intensity” is only sessions above the second lactate threshold then no.
However in your case since adding a session of sweet spot seems to be too much I would say definitely yes.
If you could recover from it well maybe, however from what you have written it sounds like it is too much given your current constraints with work and time availability.
Sweetspot is very demanding in terms of carbs, because energy comes about 90% from carbs, and the duration is much longer than VO2 or Threshold.
An approximation of g of carbs needed is the power, per hour. If you do 200w during 1 hour, you need 180grams+ of carbs. It needs to be fueled before, during and after the workout, if you want to do sweetspot quite often.
Edit: changed the “basically 100% from carbs” to “about 90% carbs”
My HR during a Sweet Spot effort is typically 165-170 (max HR is 184) so it’s a pretty heavy effort. I’d probably guess I’m in LT2 as I’m gassed at the end of the workout.
LT1 (~2mmol/L): your body produces more lactate than base level. This sets upper limit for easy endurance training; produced lactate is also consumed as fuel.
LT2 (~4mmol/L): lactate production increases past amount that your body is able to use as fuel i.e. it starts building up in your blood.
Sweetspot range is definitely below LT2, that’s the whole point: it enables longer durations at that intensity → higher volume → more adaptations. Yes, it is supposed to be hard but you recover from it easier compared to real threshold workouts, so you can repeat it more frequently. But as @ChrisDe said, consume carbs as much as possible.
Let me turn this around and propose that you look at workouts in a different way: hard and easy. A 5-hour ride at endurance pace is hard just like a 1-hour VO2max session is hard.
That turns the question into: what do you want your hard days to look like?
If you are stuck in a rut, it can pay off to change things up.
If you have never tried a polarized block, try one.
If you want to replace one Z2 workout with a longer sweet spot workout, do that.
I have been doing the latter this season and so far the results are amazing (I did a 2-hour sweet spot workout where I spent 1:39 hours at high sweet spot, 92–94 %).
I’d check for one thing, though: are you sufficiently recovered for all of your workouts? That’s key.
I’ve tried Polarized training and I got to a point where I’d have to put in 4h Z2 rides and that started getting not so fun. It turned into work.
It’s weird that I tolerate VO2 work better than Sweet Spot. I dread Sweet Spot and have so far haven’t been able to recover from them albeit I went from 2h of Z2 to replacing it with 2h of Sweet Spot. I’ll ratchet the duration down to an hr of Sweet Spot and slowly ramp it up to something that I can tolerate.
Not necessarily high intensity, but I would consider them a hard workout. While I could do (and have) done two hard days, a third day would be a step to far for me (n=1).
What % of FTP are you doing your sweetspot workouts?
How is your FTP measured?
What type of sweetspot workouts are you doing? That is, what’s the workout construct? (e.g., 5x10, 3x30, etc.)
For my money, sweetspot should feel achievable while on the bike and you should feel a sense of accomplishment at conclusion. If you have a big one staring you down on the calendar, a bit of apprehension is normal, but by the time you’re a third to half way through, you should feel very confident in your ability to complete the ride.
Long sweetspot workouts can take a long time to recover from. Ya gotta eat.
If I’m guessing your profession correctly, three 12s in a row can take a lot out of you. Rather than mixing workout types, you may be best served with block-type training:
Day 1: low endurance +/- sprints as “openers”
Day 2: sweetspot
Day 3: recovery ride
Day 4: sweetspot
I’d focus on hitting the workouts hard and allowing adequate recovery in between.
Tough situation here with the schedule because recovery between workouts is really crunched.
Depending on the time of year and what you’re training for, you could try:
VO2 - EASY Endurance 60-90min (55-60%) - Threshold - Tempo (rather than true SST) or LONG endurance.
This clears your two truly key workouts in the week, and if you have gas in the tank, you can take your tempo ride longer to gain more TSS, rather than bringing the intensity even higher on your back to back days. The BEST thing to do would probably be to take that fourth day and do LONG endurance, 4+ hours, 55-60% or so. Push to 5… 6? Keep the intensity down on those long rides, and let the duration be the stimulus. You’ll find you have an easier time getting through it, it’s going to be more aerobically beneficial, and you’ll recover better.
To answer your question, yes, SST is a “high intensity” session assuming you are doing volume that would make a difference.
Yep, I would do block style training for this athlete, for sure… if that’s in the cards. Mixed doesn’t really work very well in dense repeated blocks like this as it’s tough to generate enough stimulus without compromising recovery between workouts. Good idea to capitalize on training density and use that as a stimulus in itself, whether VO2 or threshold or base periods… would work really well IMO.
Also think the long, low endurance ride is a key for this athlete, rather than adding another massive metabolic load on top of two intense workouts in four days already.
IMO, you should no be ‘totally gassed’ at the end of a workout like this. Either you’re going in already very fatigued from your other workouts or you’re doing these at or above what your actual FTP is.