No I mean, it seems like people are scared of doing 45 min time in zone or feel like it could potentially be too hard for them. People hand wave and say they just don’t do well at sweet spot intensity but I feel like in many cases there’s more to it and that doing 45-60 of tiz shouldn’t be overly difficult
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I agree it shouldn’t be that hard but after following TR plans for the last 2.5 years. The most TIZ per session was maybe 75 minutes. This is why I’m now doing my own thing with training. I want to push that TIZ, so it may not be difficult but it’s not easy for people like me who haven’t done much more than 60 before.
I can do 45-55 mins TIZ @ ftp currently, so I don’t think my ftp is too high but more of me not being used to it. Which is the point of training. I did end last months block with 75 mins TIZ sweet spot and so this next block fully focused on SS will hopefully push it out further 
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Not snarky at all. Plenty of other factors in my case: lots of body fat, short/inconsistent training history, 30 years on couch, need more/better sleep, and lots of life stress. But my key point is that it took me LOTS of time and failures to learn that my sustainable ramp rate for now is much lower than for most athletes.
I post about this partly to give you guys some comic relief and some perspective about how well you’re doing, partly to show how things are at the slow parts of the bell curve, and partly because discussing this is how I’ve learned the most. And because we can all agree on the importance of finding, respecting, then gradually pushing your own limits.
3x15 @90% should be no sweat for anyone with any training history. I do think it’s VERY challenging for the complete newbie who is just starting structured training. It’s not reasonable to assume that all people just starting cycling can do 3x15. But they can start at 4x8, or 6x5, or whatever they can do today, then work their way up.
The real question is not where to start… that should simply be “wherever you can right now”. No, the real question is how quickly you can progress, and what other changes you can make to your life that’ll allow you to progress faster.
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Ah sorry, I misinterpreted what you wrote. I think there are several options:
- Training FTP set too high
- Inexperience - haven’t not done sweetspot work before
- Out of practice - haven’t done intensity in a while
- Progressing FTP instead of TiZ - bump up FTP every few weeks and staying at 30-40 min of TiZ instead of pushing out duration
- Have not adequately practiced in the past - sometimes a result of (4) where previous progressions haven’t stretched interval duration or TiZ, so starting at 3x15 or 3x20 seems daunting because you haven’t done it before
Just knocked out my 3x20. HR high secondary to morning workout and not having done this in a bit, but effort reasonable.
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I agree with the above. My worry as a neutral observer is that so many TR users are being put off by these sub 60 time in zone workouts that they can’t even begin to imagine themselves doing 90-120mins of sweet spot work.
Interesting approach. Thanks
I’ve talked my significant other into a sweet spot progression, and his biggest hang up (he has never used TR) has been the thought of spending that much time on the trainer in total (I count it as torture after 90 minutes; he thinks anything over an hour is intolerable). Of course there are places to do these things outside, but you add riding to and from those stop-light-free locations and the time commitment becomes too much.
In other words, it may not be that people are put off by the idea of long SS intervals, specifically, but the idea of having the required time to do long sessions mid workweek in general.
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I would agree with this but inherently difficult to sell a training platform with that on the program 
this might sound antithetical so your intolerance of riding the trainer, but one thought i had if you’re trying to do sweet spot progression inside is to break up the intervals with a lot of super easy riding in between. Reason for this thought is if you’re doing 60mins with 3x15 sweet spot, you might feel like you’re always on since rest between intervals is short. so if you can increase the easy time to sub 50% and sit up, send texts and chill, maybe that might increase inside tolerance?
SS on trainer might be actually more bearable than lower intensity because of additional support from pressing pedals. Also, More Sweet Spot! group has pretty time-efficient workouts, for example SS90/60 1x60 with PL 8.0
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His strategy has been lots of short blocks (last was 7x8?) to break it up more, whereas I’m doing only 2 or 3 long blocks to get it over faster. Weirdly, I’m the short-punchy rider who hates having to put out long consistent power and he’s the TT beast. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
First time trying this for both of us, so hopefully the results will be the encouragement we need to stomach the trainer more.
Do you have two trainers and can ride together? My partner and I try to do this as much as possible and it’s really effective for motivation and extending duration.
We do, but we don’t live together, so more often it is one of us pretending to ignore the other’s suffering over a movie. Which is its own sort of motivation I suppose. (His lease is up in the summer. I haven’t figured out how to fit two trainers in the living room yet, but it’s in the works!)
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Yeah, huge metabolic load for you, so eat a ton, sleep as much as you can. Your start is reasonable based on your background… just a metric buttload of work coming for you. Good luck!
SST is just “easy” threshold. You’re training the same thing, just with less “cost”.
This would be my guess, first question: @AgingCannon how are you assessing FTP? 3x15 is a starter set for most of my athletes. If they’re totally new to structure, I’ll give 3x12, but if FTP is accurate and TTE is short (say 30-40 min), 3x15 at 90% should be manageable and progression should be kinda quick. What @AgingCannon is describing sounds a lot more like a threshold progression to me.
Why not VO2max?
What’s the goal? FTP is not a number you just increase, though. TrainerRoad and Zwift and these programs that have FTP settings make people believe you just change it by typing in a new number, but physiologically that’s not how it works.
Short answer: if you’re doing 60 min at FTP (or just under FTP, not 90%), and have no need to push TTE to like 80 min, then it is probably time to train something else. VO2max is one suggestion, but periodization matters here, and this can be one problem with doing a bunch of actual FTP work in the winter.
To your other point, I wouldn’t “change” FTP, but you could “assess” FTP and see if indeed you have moved it up. The thing about riding at threshold for well-trained people is that it doesn’t always drive FTP up, so assuming that you can do 60min at FTP means your FTP has gone up isn’t necessarily true. It just means you can do FTP for 60 min.
FTP has little to nothing to do with 60 minutes. That’s a misconception printed by Hunter Allen that Andy Coggan doesn’t agree with. That needs to be said here, too.
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Can you explain more? I might be misunderstanding, but I was under the impression it takes a bit of time post-vo2 to see FTP gains (around 4 weeks?), so it would seem better to err on the side of doing the vo2 block earlier to make sure you have enough time for the gains to materialize. Wrong?
Again depends on periodization and when you want to GO. I’ve seen gains materialize immediately after recovery weeks and I’ve seen them take 6 weeks, the problem is if you do VO2 early and then get gains and train at FTP six months before you need to apply it you risk burnout from hard training.
That said, you could essentially taper into rest and do it all over again. There are people out there who do that (train as if there’s an event when there is not), and then work to force a second “peak” and I can see the benefit of doing it, provided the individual is significantly intrinsically motivated.
But the risk of burnout in this scenario is really high and it has to be managed.
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ok… I will follow your advice and continue training as you suggested.
I usually train 4x a week…
I have such a plan in mind for the next two weeks, followed by 1 week of recovery
During the week
2x Vo2MAX Workout
Weekend
1x Long SS Workout (Over/Under or Just SS 2x 40 or like something like this)
1x Long Z2 / Z3 Ride
Do you suggest something special?
What style of Vo2MAX Workout?
So, basically first push the curve to the right by progressively increasing TiZ as ongoing process after base. When “satisfied”, for lacking of better term, a vo2 block to go up. FTP will follow the changes naturally. It’s more a result of training and a guide to set targets than a goal to be achieved. At least I like to think this way, am I in the right path?
So, I’ve just finished my sst 90% progression to 100min TiZ doing 5x20min. After that I did an Alpe du Zwift tt at 96% for 63min and today finished a 3x20min (alternating 2min at 95%/105%) over under workout.
Would there be any merit to upping the power like 5% and restarting the sst progression? Or is a vo2 block the better way to go?
I’m a long time away from my goal event in the Alps which will require long efforts at high tempo.
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