Sweet Spot Progression

Training
2676

Much of what you are discussing is the difference between “ideal” and “possible”. Meaning it’s all great and fine to do the long ride work with long events in mind, but that’s not possible for everyone. I also believe the long stuff is not “necessary” in every case, but that depends largely on your goals for that event.

If you are aiming for the best of best performances that you want from yourself, the long work may well be appropriate and needed. But lacking that time, it’s entirely possible to get the bulk of the training needed in the abbreviated means discussed above. Even if all you do is 2 hour max workouts, it’s not as though your legs fall off at the 121 minute mark. People can and do stretch past that “limit” all the time.

What happens after that timeframe will vary on many factors, but it’s totally possible to push well beyond that to ranges of double or more. It’s just that you have to plan for how that affects you in ways that may differ a bit compared to actually hitting longer training sessions. Much comes down to pacing, fit & comfort, as well as fueling at those longer times. Get those right and you can have a very good result and experience stepping well past your “training time limit”.

Plenty of us have done it with great success. I don’t think people should limit their chosen event purely from training time. You do have to make the best of the time you have, and then plan your event and set your expectations appropriately, but it’s quite possible and attainable.

For those working within time restrictions, but wanting to do those longer events, you train the best you can in those limits and then adjust on the big day.

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2677

Beside what Chad said, you can also improve your TTE by progressing SS workouts as single interval. I.e. initially build up your endurance with shorter intervals but once feel strong enough, do 1x40min+

See More Sweet Spot!, and search by keyword ‘1x’

2678

You’re absolutely not alone in wanting to capitalize on this phase of indoor time. This is a great example of when TrainerRoad athletes should utilize Workout Alternates for staying adherent to the systems/work prescribed, and stay within the overarching goal of your plan progressions. You’ll be able to choose a workout that checks the same boxes in that regard, but at a longer duration (90 min, 120, or more!) if you feel up for it that week.

SURE! Since you’re not a TR athlete you wont have visibility to things like Progression Levels/plan adaptations that respond to it, though. That said, be very cognizant of your fatigue and training load in respects to your originally assigned volume, It will take a very critical check-in pretty often to ensure it’s sustainable.
Which makes what @mcneese.chad says really resonate in that regard: the difference between “ideal” and “possible”. Might help prepare you better to do longer SS workouts, but not sustainable for your individual training/life/work/nutrition/recovery balance.

You’re getting all the right info from these athletes for sure. :+1:

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2679

Thanks again,

Yes, I can indeed leverage TR as I’ve been registered for a few years now just with a different username :wink:

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2680

The name of this game is usually muscular endurance, threshold power, and % of threshold power you can hold for an hour. Assuming you want to do these at tempo, say 75-90% of ftp. Or you could simply do them as endurance climbs and ride off the back.

I’m going to ignore the indoor vs outdoor, it likely doesn’t matter unless you can’t do long enough, say 90-120 minute rides indoors.

Timing is everything, along with what works best for you. You never mentioned when you are doing the events. You haven’t mentioned strengths/weaknesses. Structured training burnout is real for some people. Some people struggle to hold high % of ftp, and need to work on it more. What I’ve learned about myself - less sweet spot is more, and I can progress very quickly, so I don’t bother doing a lot of longer sweet spot until a month before its needed on events.

A generic prescription is going to be different than one built around what you need and what works for you. If you don’t know what you need or what works for you, go with a generic prescription and adapt as needed.

Coach Tim Cusick’s generic prescription on sweet spot progression is to quickly go long, this is from the 2nd post on the thread:

But Coach Cusick is assuming that you are doing a lot of endurance work and then some tempo, in order to establish a stronger aerobic foundation.

The concept is pretty simple. Its really about the details.

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2681

Yay glad to hear it!!!

2682

I would progress duration out until you feel a change in your threshold, then start again. While you might not progress your duration out to match your goal event, the value in doing 60+ minute sweet spot extensively is that you train your body to handle a high workload for longer and longer times.

Say you have an FTP of 250W, but you can only really hold that for 40 minutes. By progressing at 90% of that out to 80-90 minutes, you’re going to see your ability to sustain your FTP wattage get longer as well. Normally, people who aren’t bumping up against their VO2max ceiling will see an FTP increase during or after progressions like that which stress their TTE. If that happens, you can test to validate your new FTP, and get an idea of what your TTE is at that FTP (hint: it’s probably pretty short, 35 min or so), and then start a new progression from there.

If you don’t see an FTP increase during that extensive training, there’s a good chance you’d benefit from a VO2max block to try to pull your threshold up. About six weeks after a block like that, followed with some intensive threshold work, you can see a difference and your FTP may well be ready to move up, and again, you pursue extending your time at tempo/SST from there.

To me, the prescription of “just extend it out as long as possible” is kind of lazy. Extend it out as long as reasonable, and if you’re not seeing gains (either in power or TTE), do something different.

As others have mentioned, you don’t need to be simulating your goal event all winter long to be successful at your goal event. You want to be doing training that is relevant, and a tempo/SST progression is absolutely relevant to your goal events. You need sustainable aerobic power, and that’s exactly what an extensive progression like this is targeting.

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2683

Blog posts on sweet spot from a lot of companies (TR, FasCat, etc) have useful information. I’ve always been partial to the balance of info and recommendations in CTS blog posts, like this one: Best Cycling Workouts for Building Aerobic Endurance - Chris Carmichael

@jz91 have you done the TR sweet spot base plans in the past? My first plan was SSB-1 HV way before AT, that static plan went overboard on sweet spot intervals and its been updated to have less. But the basic idea of increasing time-in-zone is in the plan. The other thing to consider, which @kurt.braeckel mentions, is FTP as % of VO2max. Mine is pretty high, and as a result of working with a coach I’ve dialed back on sweet spot work however when I do it they tend to be long intervals (for example a 1x55 last weekend). That CTS article linked touches on stuff that I found works - lower cadence doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for me.

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2684

Thanks guys,

Yes absolutely, I could say I started my cycling training journey with TR’s SS plan a few years back.

I’ve always been on SS HV and complied with the static programs pre AT.

As a new cyclist, I could see the usual newbie gains but now less so of course, so a change in base plan might be due.

Interestingly however, the only issue I had was last year with AT when I burnt out after hitting a 3x30 (aka level 10) indoor with a week to go before recovery week as base gets a 5 week load.

Indeed though following last year’s experience I find 90 mins SS indoor is more than enough during early base and even more so with 2-3 hard SS days during the week (I will dial this down this year).

However, going back to my question on progression when approaching specialty phase, is 90 mins in a single session really enough when I would have at least other 2-3 climbs each lasting 60-90mins in my event?

This is where I now believe those simulation rides in late build and specialty phase might make sense in order to hit the same TiZ.

So I might be doing other work during the week and focus SS simulation in a single session instead of having a TR’s base plan style with 4 days of 60-90 mins of TiZ per session.

As a final point though, I’m noticing now the first workout TR would give me for the upcoming SS base season has approx 54 mins of TiZ. So it starts pretty steep already and retains the classic 3-4 days of SS per week (well I remember it used to be 5 days a few years back).

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2685

:+1: I think it is important to both experiment and learn from experience. It really comes down to knowing yourself, consistently putting in the time, and adjusting the balance between endurance riding and interval riding. Timing is everything.

Kurt and others in this thread have more experience building custom plans with a lot of sweet spot. My first two years were loosely structured and letting my legs be the coach - pushing hard, backing off, not being completely consistent or linear but still achieving excellent results. Then TR for a couple years, and then a coach for a couple years.

First year used a weekly group ride plus an additional solo workout, to build out a progression from 10 minutes to 60 minutes of sweet spot/threshold. That was enough to support buying a road bike and 7 months later finishing a day with 8 hours of climbing (4 HC climbs). Lesson learned - going long works.

Second year I pushed sweet spot riding beyond 2 hours, and threshold to 70 minutes. Lesson learned - going long works.

Third year I found TR and figured that SSB-1 HV had enough science that going long 5 days a week was a good thing. Made it thru the first 6 week block with very good results on a 2.5 hour HC climb but, a) switching from outside to 8+ hours/week riding inside led to trainer burn out, and b) red flags started when attempting SSB-2 HV and I abandoned it. Lesson learned - too much sweet spot is not good, for me.

Happy to see that TR has now dropped SSB HV to 4 days/week of sweet spot, and this article What Is Sweet Spot Training: Everything You Need to Know - TrainerRoad Blog should be reviewed as HV is not generally recommended. And a lot of voices in the coaching world would have you doing more endurance than sweet spot, on the number of hours in a TR HV plan. I’m on the side of science supporting more endurance, up to 60-80% of riding on 8-10 (or 8-12) hours/week of a TR HV plan.

Muscular endurance seems like something I’m naturally inclined to do well at, and that building up to 90 minutes can be done quickly over 4-6 weeks. So from a timing standpoint, better to wait on burning those long progression matches on outside group rides come January and February. But I’m not racing like Kurt and others, and I’m older and need more recovery. Toss in a monthly long threshold and I’m good.

In the context of TR I saw better results in base by using traditional base 1 and 2 MV/HV as a loose template, but taking it outside and adding some intensity otherwise I faced the aging athlete dilemma of use it or lose it. Some low-cadence work during both TB1 and TB2 was particularly helpful to build out some muscular endurance early on, without having to burn mental matches of doing long SS so early in the season. I also liked the cycling portion of TR full distance triathlon base, on paper, but never had a chance of doing it before getting a coach.

Food for thought, hope that helps.

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2686

You could certainly progress to 2hrs in a single session, but in a race where you have 3 60-90 minute climbs, odds are you’re climbing those at tempo, maybe even high-Z2, somewhere in that .75-.85 range, rather than sustaining 90% of FTP.

So what you’re doing is training aerobic power. 90 minutes to 2hrs of sweet spot is certainly enough in a single session to do that, provided you’re training your overall aerobic endurance enough as well (meaning riding lots in zone 2).

IMO, reading through your posts, that last part might be what’s missing: long steady endurance training rather than long, steady threshold power training. You probably have done too much of that, and not enough Z2 riding. If time limitations are a factor, then that’s different, but there’s no shortcuts. SST training is useful, but only as part of a larger plan that includes adequate endurance training. TR tends to try to substitute long SST session for long Z2 sessions because most people won’t do more than 90-120 minutes on the trainer… but that doesn’t mean that’s optimal training.

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2687

Any thoughts on FTP prediction based off of long SS intervals.

I expect there’s not a lot of sample data to build a sufficient model from. At least from looking at Intervals ICU that’s my thinking.

2688

If you maintain a power duration curve in intervals, WKO, etc., you can probably interpolate decently well.

But the best way I’ve experienced is by feel. When it starts feeling more like tempo and you’re really able to extend the duration, good chance it’s gone up! And then I would want to test or validate it some other way anyway, even if I had it interpolated from PDC data or another method when I was just riding sweet spot.

Here’s the kicker: even if it goes up mid-block, it’s not that big of a deal to correct it. Just extend the duration. Instead of doing 90%, you might be doing 87%, but if you do it longer, you’re still getting the training benefit. I just went through a nearly 12-week cycle where I didn’t update my PDC, and instead just rode threshold (and thus sweet spot) by feel with HR as a backup to power. Went great. Just set some all time short power PRs today, and all indications are about a 10W gain in FTP over my initial base phase before even trying to work FTP…

Anyway, my $0.02.

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2689

Thanks, and that all makes sense and aligns with what I kind of thought.

Yesterday I did 156min at 90%, and I’m at all time high eFTP numbers, but my all time power chart suggests I’ve done better 2hr numbers and had higher Power for lower HR.

Since Covid in May (or June :thinking:), my HR has been higher everywhere and I have a higher max even than pre Covid, but it’s hard to get a full gauge on things.

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2690

I would bet you’ve seen some FTP gains with 90% for two and a half hours. You’re probably riding tempo at that duration.

COVID jacks your HR up. Most people anecdotally have higher HRs for at least a month, but some see it longer than that, so it’s not surprising. I’d keep an eye on it, but as long as you’re feeling OK, HR should start trending back down eventually and your EF numbers should start looking more “normal.”

I think you’re probably due for an FTP test/validation, and I’d always recommend a long-format FTP/TTE test, especially for someone like you who’s been doing that extensive work. Get at least 30-35min of an FTP test (by feel if you can), extend that if you feel like it.

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2691

I just did a 12-week base progression getting volume out to 15 hours/wk and 700 TSS. Progressed threshold from 5x5 to 2x20 then switched to SST for 60 and 75 min workouts, all at FTP of 260W, based on an hour power run and 20, 25 min tests in June and August.

Took a family vacay to Hawaii for a week and didn’t even look at a bike.

Came back, set of openers, then an aerobic threshold ride for 75min. Friday, tested all time highs for 1-min and 4-min durations. Haven’t done a thing over threshold.

Today, put out 284W for 36min, so and threshold felt right around 280, pretty close to where I ended the season before my injury. I never got my last big bump off my VO2max block last year as my season ended about six week too early.

I have a coach myself now. Wanted to spend less time worrying about my own stuff so I could invest more in my education and my athlete’s plans. I think I owe it to them. Obviously went with someone with a similar philosophy, so I am excited to see where I can get being at this point already, with increased volume, and only in early October.

Up next: max strength lifting with lots of Z2 volume and 1x SST progression per week at the higher FTP for the next month, then I think we plan to hit a VO2max block and I’m going to stack the key workouts and see how it goes.

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2692

Back when I was racing marathons I never ran the race distance until race day. I trained with some really fast guys… like 2:10 marathoners (which was fast for the late 90s & early 2000s). They never ran the full distance either. It was just too hard on the body and took too long to recover. The huge volume and consistency got them to the finish line. Maybe cycling is different being there is no impact, but I would guess that doing the full distance would take a lot out of you.

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2693

Cycling is completely different to Running as it is non impact. Swimming is even less so again which is why swimmers can log 1000’s of meters swimming twice a day every day.

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2694

I mean not completely different. I have found the training principles are nearly identical across the disciplines (the idea of polarized training, threshold, VO2 max, strength training, etc.).

So in this specific instance are you saying for a 100 mile race that you need / can do 100… 200…300… mile rides and it won’t impact recovery or need excessive recovery? If so that’s definitely different.

The other difference is perhaps how often you can do intensity but even in that there is a big push for more recovery and zone 2 riding.

2695

When you say 5x5 threshold, was that the type of threshold work described by Coach Connor on the fastalk labs podcast with 1 minute rest?