5-7m reps at 90-92% should be very doable, if you are struggling with workouts like this I would think you either have an ftp that is too high or are coming into these workouts very fatigued.
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Agree that typically a 30-40 minute SST workout should not leave one totally gassed by any stretch, but if he is doing this on the fourth day after VO2 and Threshold, it might.
Key point here: 30-40min is not really enough at that level to create a meaningful stimulus. You’d be WAY better off doing a long, low endurance ride, or lowering power into tempo and going quite a bit longer. As it stands right now, you’re just compounding fatigue.
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Sure, extending time with a slightly lower intensity would be ideal, however, he is probably time-constrained. In that case it is probably not so bad compromise right? Considering he is able to complete his key sessions with high quality. Then this sweetspot session can be considered sort of a brick run at the end of the microblock.
He’s saying he’s not able to complete the sweet spot, and frankly, 30-40 minutes of SST to get some more TSS (his reasoning) is just building fatigue. So no, I don’t think it’s great. If he could manage longer on the fourth day and do more SST, maybe. If you’re subbing in SST to replace a longer ride, you really need to be doing pretty big volume of it.
If he’s that time constrained that he can’t do a 2-3hour session with tempo (or longer endurance) then he may just have to live with the fact that 4W/kg is gonna be pretty good for his circumstances.
Block training would work pretty well for him, but even that only to a point. He’s recovery compromised at low-to-mid volume, so there’s always going to be a ceiling for him.
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I don’t want to say “your FTP is too high!!” because this could be an issue with fatigue, but you should aim to start with 4x10 at whatever percentage of FTP you can achieve…start with 85%? And then progress that to 3x15.
Even in a 90 minute workout you can do a quality SST workout, for example, 15 min warm up, 3x20 min with 5 min recovery (last recovery interval is cool down). Possibilities are numerous.
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