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.
This 100%. I love SweetSpot. I feel so much stronger later in races or those multi hour events. It may not bump my FTP up much but I can ride at higher wattages for long durations and keep my snap for the finish sprint.
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.