Nate said "Sweet Spot Base is not... we shot ourselves in the foot" ...Confused? If the SS Base training isn't SS... What should I do for Base?

Balanced Base would infer that its balanced… which its not haha. Thats the whole issue with the number of intensity rides they are throwing on people.

It builds short term and relatively fragile fitness that gives good results on ramp tests = keeps people onboard as customers.

I understand that most people don’t wanna do Z2 rides on the trainer, but the answer to that isn’t to do threshold instead.


OT: If you’re feeling sluggish and legs are dead, you’re doing too much intensity. It has to be a long term approach, and as you said, life is more than the bike.

I would in your situation jump on the Polarised plans, do the hard sessions and then as much easy riding as possible that you can fit in :slight_smile:

Also, you can split the easy rides. Got 45min in the morning and 45min once the kids go to bed? No problem, just do double days with easy rides etc.

You get adaptations from easy riding as well, thats the key here.

The easy rides also keeps you fresh in the head and body for being a dad :slight_smile:

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I personally wouldn’t say it builds fragile fitness… for me it built real measurable fitness that has a focus on sustaining threshold efforts.

My issue with the plan was ssb2 was almost build in difficulty so the build and specialty plans would then fry me since i was already very close to peak fitness. Illnesses were also common for me during those winter doing ssb, but the fitness gained from the threshold and vo2 work was legit. Now the plan is more of a hodge podge of workouts chosen by AT.

I have found that the torque demands of off-road riding can be trained through off-road riding. Even rutted up gravel roads still can’t prepare you for that rock step up 3/4 of the way up a 20% incline. That is ime where a cramping issue comes in to play.

I think the naming issue largely stems from having the same name for plans of differing volumes. Since to a certain extent they’re trading intensity for volume. I.e. the high volume plan really is all Sweetspot other than the endurance workouts, the low and mid volume plans are predominantly Sweetspot in Base 1 but with a bit of Threshold added, and then in Base 2 they’re a mix of SS, Threshold and VO2. So Sweetspot base is a great name for the high volume plan, just not so much the mid and low volume plans, particularly the second phase of those plans where Sweetspot isn’t even the predominant workout type.

Not sure what a better name would be! As in reality there are so many different ways and reasons you would pick those plans. I.e. you might pick LV because you really do only have 3-4 hours a week to train in which “time-crunched” would be a pretty good name. But you might also pick it because you’re a Masters athlete with 10+ hours to train so you’re not time crunched but can only handle 2-3 sessions of higher intensity riding and then you pad it out with Z2 and recovery in which case . Or maybe you pick it as a MTB rider, get those workouts done indoors during the week and then leave your weekends free for trail riding. “Foundation Base”? Gives you all the important stuff but then leaves you time to other things whether on or off the bike.

It’s fragile fitness if you put it into perspective of the sport of cycling itself.

Of course everything is relative, but I have a lot of friends that do TR, ride hard got great sustained power etc.

And then we have myself and a few more that do a lot of Z2. And sure, during a single ride <3 hours we are all pretty even, but past 3-4 hours, they really suffer with hard efforts, day 2-3-4 of training trips they literally fall apart.

Programs like TrainerRoad just don’t build that base fitness that harder efforts can “lean on”, if that makes sense.

But again, whatever is important for you personally. For me doing 25-30 hour weeks with 1300 TSS when abroad, doing 4x10min at LT2 after 4 hours of riding etc, are things that I like to be able to do.

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Yeah, they’ve been discussing quite a bit lately that what they originally named the plans maybe wasn’t the most appropriate now that all the plans have fully been developed, since there is just as many rides in other zones as there are in sweet spot.

Sweetspot base 2 really is the odd one out, with 2 threshold workouts but only 1 optional sweetspot workout

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Agreed, the name is fine but all that threshold should be replaced by actual sweet spot IMO.

Totally agree with @Dubadai

Sweet Spot Base is not “base”. That doesn’t mean that riders won’t get a benefit from it as many riders, especially new ones, do. But to call it Base is a misnomer.

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And then we have myself and a few more that do a lot of Z2.
For me doing 25-30 hour weeks with 1300 TSS

You are doing double the time of the biggest volume weeks of any TR plan, so your base fitness here and the time you can commit to biking is beyond who TR is targeting with the plans. Traditional base high volume phase 3 from TR peaks with a 6 day 13 hour week.

I think it would be fascinating to see the stats from TR on their userbase and average hours per week, but my guess is a large majority is in the 5-10 hours a week bracket that lines up with mostly sticking to a mid-volume plan with some skipped workouts and a few longer rides on weekends. 20+ hours a week of Z2 builds incredible fitness, while 6 hours a week won’t get you anywhere.

I would definitely agree that to get the right durability and fitness for a 4+ hour race you’ll need to do longer efforts at some point in the training block. I’ve found that the commonly given advice of mid-volume plan + extending with Z2 as time permits during the week and subbing longer weekend rides on the weekend works really well. Even being DINK the wheels fall off in life somewhere trying to keep more than 2 hours open for everything involved with a ride multiple times a week.

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I never said that was a normal week, it was just an example week that I do when I am abroad.

I average 11 hours per week, 5 sessions = One LT1, One LT2, and then just Z2 for the rest.

You can scale down the program I ride to just one LT1 (like tempo), one LT2 (threshold) and just one Z2 ride, that works fine as well.

6 hours will of course get you somewhere, you just have to add some intensity to the week as well.

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This. TR was always about the “time crunched cyclist”.

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Yeah, I read the comment as being abroad in the opposite context being used to traveling for business and disrupting regular training.

That 11 hours a week sounds like the same ballpark as the TR High Volume SS plans though. Just doing 5 longer workouts rather than 6 each week, with one threshold rather than two ss workouts. Or you could look at it as adding an LT2 session to their traditional base.

I think a few years into training most of us will discover tweaks from standard plans (whether that is TR or another coach) that work best for us. I definitely use a lot of alternates and do my own thing when I’m able to knock out 10-hour weeks. I’ve never looked at the High Volume plans and thought that’s what I wanted to follow. However, when I had knee surgery and dutifully followed the low-volume base for 10 weeks while I wasn’t able to ride outside I was seriously impressed with the fitness I was able to gain in 3 hours a week.

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I think its also important for TR to “decouple” itself somewhat from the thinking the TR is only a training plan. The software has evolved into so much more with tons of useful features like AI FTP detection but also the massive workout library. I think there are still a lot of folks out there that incorrectly assume TR is a platform to just do Sweet Spot workouts since that was so heavily marketed in the early days.

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Awhile back when they changed the plans, most of them went to the same formula, one day of VO2, one day of threshold and one sweet spot. I have since wondered aside from difficult levels and time, how do the plans really differ? (flame away)

Specific details matter. For any comparison, you’d just need to load two plans of interest on the web and do a side-by-side. Without that, all we can do is guess. VO2 comes in many flavors like short/shorts to longer stuff into the several minute range. Add in changes to target intensity and you can have a long list of options.

Just using VO2 and 1 hour as filters, gives 315 workout results. That covers a range of PL’s of course, but within that are the variations I mentioned and maybe more. Threshold is similar since there are many ways these can be done while still falling under the Thresh banner.

Point being that even if the template is simplified to VO2 + Thresh + SS, there can be nearly endless combos of that. Those combos should be driven by the focus of the individual plan. There are likely very large differences in stuff with a short power focus vs ones with longer range even if they follow the template above.

  • Moderator side note, but can we refrain from this stuff? I know it has a genesis with many forums and similar places over time, that are known for confrontational and divisive discussion. But we try hard here to keep TR as a respectful and productive place for all.

  • If people see any comments that they feel stray from the TR forum guidelines, please use the Flag function and TR will handle it. That’s how we keep the place pointed in a positive direction without the garbage we’ve seen in other forums.

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REPLY ALL - THANK YOU FROM THE ORIGINAL POST!

NO NEED TO CONTINUE - MY QUESTION HAS BEEN ANSWERED… THANK YOU.

I believe my question was answered. When listening to Jon/Nate discuss training plan selection, they implied that their programs named “Sweet Spot Base” were incorrectly named… that does not mean that they do not rely in the principles of choosing an early/pre-season training regime that is considered to be less total hours prescribed than the “traditional” long and low/slow distance training regime that has long been a standard within cycling.

Thanks.

*I will be asking a few more questions in a separate post specific to the demands of XCO racing that I believe are unique to the training principles and race tactics within that discipline.
ie. racing with a power meter can be a huge disadvantage if you don’t understand that normalized power could be restricting you based on the course…

I’ve done this as well. XCO just needs time outdoors. I don’t know what the best action is for time crunched riders is for base training, but I don’t subscribe to the TR plans. Rather than beat that drum, I just want to mention that you’re not alone from feeling “flat” after a season on the trainer. Us mountain bikers just need that specificity that is, mountain biking.

If I was trying to build a base, I’d do LV traditional base and be sure to plug in trail riding as often as I could. Eventually sprinkle in the occasional VO2 Max workout as well.

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I’ll beat the drum a little.

Saw this the other day, perhaps a good explanation of why SSB did not properly prepare me for build:

:man_shrugging: Found myself crashing and burning. Pre-AT.

Three years ago, almost to the day, I decided that some people have a big engine and a lot of capacity, and that SSB 1 and 2 works well for them. But I had neither a big engine or a lot of capacity.

And to paraphrase a recent tweet by Alan Couzens, revving a small engine to max capacity is not a good way to go. Thats why I’ve spent the last two years building a bigger engine. Slow process but its working despite my age.

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I wonder if you removed all their forum posting, how time crunched some truly would be?

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What does that even mean?

A focus on intensity rather than endurance means your power tower tends to have a narrower base, but is higher. E. g. if you rarely ride over 3 hours, then this matters much less than you make it out to be, especially for people who fall somewhere in the fat part of the Bell curve.

A few? I think lots of TR athletes pad their plans with Z2 workouts. The “secret” is to choose the right number of hard days. (Hard means days that take you more than a day to recover from, so this could also be a long Z2 ride.)

I am all for more diversity in training plans and more options when creating them. But lots of people just don’t have the time to ride more than 3 or 4 hours at a time, life places hard limits on them. For those, TR’s plans work well, provided you pick the right number of hard days.

Most people don’t have the time to ride that much. Yes, it’d be nice if I had the time to do these kinds of workouts. However, I love my wife and kids, and I’d like to stay married. And keep my job.

So 3 hard days (assuming one Z2 ride is quite long) then. That sounds pretty standard and easily fits within TR. Just pick a LV plan, replace the weekend workout with a long Z2 ride (i. e. a hard ride in the sense above) and pad the rest with easy Z2 rides. This isn’t rocket science.

Seconded.
I think this is an important point, and one that IMHO is more related to riding on the trainer (no matter what training plan you use) and riding outdoors. On the trainer my self-selected cadence is higher than outdoors, triply so when I ride offroad.

You gotta learn to deal with going way above threshold for short periods and recover quickly, work at very low cadences and keep a clear head (needed for line choice).

This.
TR’s training plans have always been meant to be customizable. Last season, I was mostly on MV, but dropped to LV to reduce the number of hard days by 1. I padded the plan with rides to keep the schedule and number of hours on the bike roughly the same. For those “self-scheduled” rides, I still use features of AT like workout levels.

I acknowledge there is an argument that TR has to steer people towards plans that are suitable for them, and that looking at the number of hours is misleading for most plans. But that is different from “I want to train 10–12 hours per week, so I picked SSB HV and I burnt out.” Self-coached athletes are more likely to have a problem biting off more than they can chew.

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