Sweet Spot Interval Length

My mod of SSBHV2 is almost all on the interval duration side of things, not total time in zone.

Sweet Spot’s defined goal is not primarily rising FTP. According to TR, it’s about:

increasing your ability to drive the pedals harder and longer, via improved muscle endurance and higher fatigue resistance

SSBLV and MV have more non-SS workouts than SS-specific workouts…which begs the question as to why they are even called ‘Sweet Spot Base’ plans in the first place. In SSBMV, only 28% of the workouts are actual SS…huh?! Lot’s of other zone work like Threshold and VO2max to help raise FTP.

HV is all about the definition above. But, if you are always doing the same thing…there is no “longer”, there is no “fatigue resistance”. There is just plateau.

SSBHV1 increased your TiZ 36min–>90min, and SSBHV2 increases TiZ 60min–>90min.

  1. you’ll never do more than 90min* TiZ…even if it’s your nth time doing the plan.
  2. you’ll never do more than a 20-"30"min interval…even if it’s your nth time doing the plan.

As for my suggestions leading to lower compliance, I doubt it. Since SS is “a very narrow, specific range of power output” which, as others have said, you can do a lot of. It’s always going to feel like Sweet Spot no matter your FTP.

I understand these plans are designed for “time crunched” people, but, as stated prior, you can definitely arrange 60-90 minutes of interval time differently than 4x10, 6x15, etc. Great for those seeking general fitness but very limiting for anyone going after substantial “muscle endurance and higher fatigue resistance”.

:v:

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Forgive me, but I think many folks are missing the broader picture here.

Base is one phase of many within the context of a season and you don’t have to work on everything at the same time, nor should you.

Driving TiZ up, percentage of FTP, and also increasing interval duration all within the context of a 6 week block is…ambitious, if not foolhardy.

Especially when there are specific build and specialty blocks targeted towards racing styles.

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Just wondering about the SSBHV intensities. I find the difficulty of the intervals substantially different at 88% of FTP versus 94% of FTP.

If you are trying to build fatigue resistance would you be better off doing multiples of 20+ min intervals at 88% FTP versus multiples of 10 min at 94% FTP with a 4 min RI. I’ve seen many references to Sweet Spot being 90% of FTP, above that and the intervals are getting into Threshold range. My personal opinion is that 94% of FTP is too intense for a base plan.

Thoughts?

If I’m not mistaken, 84-97% is the broadest range usually referred to as Sweetspot.

I personally wouldn’t get hung up on hitting a precise percentage, but focus on the zone in general and RPE.

I get that we’re talking indoor training and staring at a screen, but it’s a great zone to ride by feel and you’re getting work done however you choose to do it. If you’re outside, SS hills, tempo on the flat, or whatever combination suits you, then cruise the rest of your ride home in Z2 when you’re properly wiped out in Z3.

If you’re indoors and want to work on the upper end of the zone, SS O/U work is a great way to do it. 5min intervals alternating at 85%/95% or shorter if you’re trying to build up your fatigue resistance.

The whole point of SS is being able to pile on loads of good stress without doing the damage and requiring less recovery than Threshold and higher zone work. And you can do it in less time and while having more “fun” than rolling around (or in place indoors) in Z2 for hours and hours.

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Would you mind sharing some of the workout swaps you’re making to give a few examples? Or are you writing custom workouts? Just curious of how you’re working out your progressions.

Sounds exactly like "SS"BMV2:

Over the course of this 6-week training plan, you’ll have the opportunity to face and conquer everything from long aerobic Endurance rides to high-intensity VO2max intervals and everything in between.

Like my workouts Sweet Spot Over-Under, Sweet 88s, and Brutus Maximus.
Plus the TR SS O/U workouts. :wink:

In the Sustained Power Build I added a few extra rides here and there but I’m doing all custom work for this Sweet Spot Base phase. Took me a couple week to really get specific and nail down what I was really after: i) working on a weakness – lactate clearing – with over-unders, ii) developing TT power in position. iii) muscle endurance via longer intervals. I wanted to start these things in a lower power zone like SS so it wouldn’t be such a shock/hammering trying to do them at Threshold during next block. It’s all race specific.

There’s 3 linked above, and a few others:
Fresh 40 + Tired 20
Sweet Spot Segments
5885
Attempted Murder

They are all similar-ish to TR SS workouts that already exist.

Yeah, most resemble either Carilion or Carson workouts +some with tweaked rest intervals. Not sure how I’d fair over 2+ hours though :wink:

At least they ‘seem’ to make sense. My custom workouts are a butchers counter compared to those!

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Surprise surprise but TR do not own sweetspot or the definition of it.
Three other sources state

  1. Fascat - who devised the term sweetspot

Sweet spot training is a balanced amount of intensity and volume that increases an athlete’s functional threshold power (FTP). … Between these ranges athletes will generate large Training Stress Scores (TSS), increase their Chronic Training Load (CTL) and simultaneously increase power at threshold

  1. British Cycling

Training* with power allows you to accurately sit in this relatively narrow zone. It’s known as the Sweet Spot because it strikes a desirable balance between the training effects you’ll get from the workouts, most significantly a rise in FTP, with a physiological strain that does not require extended recovery.

  1. Road Cycling UK magazine

The idea of sweetspot training is to get the most training value for your time on the bike. Sweetspot training therefore balances the exercise intensity and volume of training – hence the term ’ sweetspot '. The training effect you get from a session is a combination of how hard and how long you exercise for.

Driving the pedals harder is a side effect of doing sweetspot not the purpose for sweetspot

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Surprise surprise but the definition I quoted is directly from TR’s very own website – so it’s what they believe is the purpose of Sweet Spot, or at least what they are telling us is the purpose.

Driving the pedals harder and longer is the side effect of improved muscle endurance and higher fatigue resistance. That’s why in SSBHV there is only SS work and in SSBLV/MV there is hardly any SS work and mostly Threshold and VO2 work – different plans, different focus.

And of course FTP will rise. FTP will rise even if I do only Z2 workouts or just do a couple of VO2max workouts a week instead of 5 SS workouts…everything drives FTP!

:v:

SSSBMV2 has:

  • A VO2 max progression focusing only interval duration while holding Tiz and Intensity Steady
  • A threshold progression in the 36-40 min Tiz range focused on intensity and holding interval duration steady
  • A sweetspot/OU progression that increases Tiz and interval duration to a degree but keeping intensity in check

Maybe you and I have different definitions of what driving all things simultaneously means but SSBMV2 is easily one of the best designed 6 week blocks in the TR catalog.

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This is only true of the second part of SSB. The first part of SSB is mostly (60-66%) Sweet Spot intervals.

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Sweetspot base 1 is more sweetspot. It does have a O/U on the weekend.

If you listen to the podcast they have actually said that base 2 (low and mid) could be renamed as there really isn’t that much sweetspot work in them. I think they came up with something like “pre-build”.

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Exactly.

To illustrate what @stevemz is saying, here is an exaggerated power curve showing how SSB2-MV drives improvements to your fitness:

Thought it might help some think about intensity/duration progressions in terms of how it will change your power curve.

Again, that is an exaggeration to help illustrate the concept. Its actually comparing my 2019 (before) and All Time (after).

Hope that helps the graphical thinkers.

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To readdress the OP – doing progressively longer SS intervals will lead to more Time in Zone and more SS adaptations.

Using the TR plans you’ll never do more than a 30 minute interval or 90 minutes total. Doesn’t matter if you are just starting to ride a bike, a seasoned pro, your 1st time through the plans, or your 10th. But only you can decide if that SS ceiling is high enough for you.

Good luck! :+1:

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Simply put, sweet spot is where many see biggest jump in ftp as Coach Chad mentioned here:

and Nate’s big jump in ftp was a result of spending a very long time doing sweet spot work (more than 6 months, less than a year?).

My biggest gains prior to TR were a result of increasing sweet spot efforts out to 50 minutes, like stated in first post. And I believe @Captain_Doughnutman is doing similar long sweet spot efforts during his “2nd base after build” (rebuild).

Apologies if this was all covered earlier in the thread.

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Hi,
I was interested in viewing your custom sweet spot workouts that you posted above as I want to train myself to go for longer at this kinda intensity.
However the links don’t seem to be working…is there any way I would be able to view them?

I believe I need to start a Team account or something in order to share custom workouts. That’s probably not going to happen, I’m super lazy now! :laughing:

However, you can definitely use Workout Creator to design exactly the type of intervals you want to do. Another suggestion is to use the regular TR SS workouts and keep riding through the rest intervals.

Good luck, it’s worth the work! :+1:

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I typically like doing White+3 this is a continuous 60mins SST interval , but I do this sparingly
To really fry the legs try doing it in your small ring front, less intertia on your smart trainer on erg mode to lock in the power, enjoy

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Apologies for this being an old thread (I did not bring it back to life!)

Question for you about your comments around “even if it’s your nth time doing the plan, TiZ doesn’t get any longer.” Paraphrasing.

At some point, even your longer custom interval lengths (30, 45, 60 min, etc.) are capped right? It’s not like every year you’re progressing through your custom plan and constantly upping the TTE and TiZ, or in a few years in you’d be doing like 3 hour SS intervals.

If the above is true, every “nth time”, you’ll be doing the same TiZ in your plan, over and over (just like TrainerRoad’s but theirs has shorter intervals). But like with TrainerRoad’s plan, the “nth time” change is your FTP setting and doing progressively more kJ, not a never-ending lengthening of intervals.

I mean, that’s how all training plans work. It’s not like once you master 3-min VO2 intervals, you continue working to 4, 5, 6, 10-min intervals. No. At some point it becomes impossible, and at some point you hopefully increase your FTP setting and start over with the progression. Right?

So really, it’s more to fair to say that you’d like to see TrainerRoad have longer SS interval progressions, out to say 60min.

Am I wrong?

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Yes, I would. The thing with popular online training platforms is that they are geared toward the “time crunched” population. This means the time component of training is under-represented and the intensity component is over-represented. The TR plans are predicated on going harder, not going longer.

Yes, hopefully your FTP will be improved every time you start a SSB plan, however, the Sweet Spot zone remains constant. That’s to say, SS will always be your SS, regardless if your FTP is 100w or 400w. You could also say that the cemented interval durations will have a diminishing return the higher your FTP goes – a 12min SS interval could have a much more profound effect on boosting a 100w FTP than it would a 400w FTP. That “progressively more kJ”, relative to your FTP, will not change all that drastically.

Why not? In fact there are some popular coaching platforms which do include daily “3 hour SS intervals”:

Sure, those TiZ amounts are for Conti/WT pros, but as you can see from the chart, TiZ is progressive, not only through the ranks but also through the season. Let’s say you are 15 years old and just starting to ride a bike competitively, with the dream of becoming a pro racer in 6 years (age 21). The range for your SS TiZ stretches from 15 minutes to 5 hours(!) – per day! If you spent those same 6 years following TR plans, you’d never ever extend your daily SS TiZ past a maximum of 90 minutes. Ever. But then again, TR’s core user base isn’t trying to become pro racers, so maybe the limited intervals are what works. :+1:

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