Just completed my first 4 week block. Nailed every sweet spot interval, and upped the intensity on one of them. Good nutrition, and sleep. Rated all but one session moderate or easy, with the exception of my 3 x 30 sweet spot as hard. FTP predictor rated my potential increase between 8-10% the entire month. Today I do the first and only VO2 workout, and it was an epic fail due to intensity. (Mills +5) Couldn’t get through half of it. Now the FTP predictor says a 3 watt bump, which in my view is nothing for 4 weeks work. Is this the AI admitting sweet spot doesn’t work?
For reference, I used to race 10 years ago as a Masters Cat 2, with a 4.4 w/kg ftp. Took 5 years off racing, and working with a 3.37 w/kg ftp. I’ve gained about 15 lbs since then, but a bump from 245 to 248 is meaningless after a month of training. Can someone help me see something I’m missing?
I think the expectation of an 8-10% wattage increase is way too high and unrealistic. I think a gain of 3 watts is steady, albeit on the lower side. I think 3-10 watts for a month is solid. Not 8-10%.
Raising your FTP and increasing VO2… probably minimal at most. For increasing “durability” and being able to hold a higher wattage for a longer duration? Absolutely.
It depends :). SST can work to raise your ftp but won’t always raise your ftp. At some point you will need to do more intense work to raise the ceiling.
I told the AI my goal was to raise FTP. Why would it be giving me a bunch of sweet spot if that training doesn’t increase FTP? There was 1 over under session, and today’s VO2. Other than that, all sweet spot and endurance work.
Same thing happened to me. Fail one Vo2 and now the AI prediction is lowering my current FTP by 6 watts. To me that says TR wasted an entire training block. Ive stopped caring. The real disappointment is the inability to track my progress.
I’m hoping to gain insight as to why the predictor would be so far off the entire month up until the day before. Either that or it was drastically overestimating my current ftp. Or, and I’m suspicious this is the case, the 6 week power curve takes into account power performed outside, and the wattage capability is reduced indoors.
The model assumed you could complete mills. You couldn’t so it’s nit going to increase the intensity that you train at as much. What was the threshold workout and how’d you do on it?
I usually rate my SST workouts “hard”, so I’m surprised at an “easy” rating. Could be we have different kinds of fitness, or different perception of exertion, or the workouts were too easy.
The “TR AI FTP” is a number at which Threshold Workout Level 3 workouts are either “moderate” or “hard”, I forget which. It could be that your VO2max failure caused the system to nudge down your high-end workout levels. It could be that you still gained fitness, but that TR doesn’t want you training at higher WLs right away.
This isn’t what you wanted if you instructed it to increase your FTP. Maybe the system was behaving well and your body just responded in an unexpected way. Maybe the model is not modeling you well. Maybe the system doesn’t handle uncertainty well– maybe they should have given you an FTP prediction +/- 10%. Maybe they should have squeezed in an unproductive Threshold workout that would cost you 0.1% FTP but would reduce uncertainty in the prediction by 20%?
It’d be great if they could have someone go through their model (and the rest of the system that follows from model outputs like 30 day workout scheduling!) with a critical eye and surface the wins and problem areas.
I hate to bang on again about how “everyone is different” but everyone is different!
As hinted at above, sweet spot could very well increase your ‘effective’ FTP in a sense. Sweet Spot work makes me far more durable over long intervals and gets me used to enduring pain for extended periods of time and managing to clear lactate under load. This all translates to being better able to hold hard efforts without having to bail out which obviously helps something like an over-under. Your FTP isn’t just one thing, it is power, it is durability, it is muscular endurance, it is mental fortitude. You might have the raw power in your legs but not in your head. I’m might have the raw power in your legs AND your head but not have the muscular endurance dialed in. It’s not as simple as Threshold workouts = FTP increase.
I have my overall training approach set to Balanced with Sweet Spot and Endurance zones bumped up to Demanding so my plan is very Sweet Spot and Endurance+ focused. Wattages that were Threshold efforts back when the beta launched are just Sweet Spot for me now and the Threshold workouts I’m doing now were unimaginable back then. So, for me, a Sweet Spot heavy training approach HAS helped my FTP.
