Does Coach Chad prescribe 10min sweet spot intervalls because he subscribes to the idea 10min is more than sufficient to benifit from or just to ease tr user into longer ss intervalls?
Could be either or both.
Probably best to ask him to know the answer, because I donât think it has been clearly stated one way or another on the podcast or elsewhere.
I actually love Antelope as a workout because of the short recoveries. Some of the versions have slightly longer recoveries and I will almost always go with the shorter recovery version because I know I donât need the extra rest. I think itâs a fantastic workout to use for adjusting to a new FTP as well.
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Yep, spot on
They drop down to 40% for the rest intervals, so not even Z2. Iâll have to do some tweaking
I believe itâs to cater for a wider range of users who may be new to TR. For me personally I would skip ahead and start with 15-20 minute intervals.
I havenât listened to that episode of the podcast; what kind of adaptations are they talking about (@empiricalcycling)? When they talk about 10 minutes being the minimum at âthresholdâ, do they mean literally 100% FTP, or the traditional 91-105% zone? Like @mcneese.chad said, Antelope (and variants) is in a gazillion of the base plans, so TR is probably using it to target the aerobic-base-y stuff (mitochondria, glycogen storage, yadda yadda). Is 5x10 SS (and by extension the 4x8, 5x7, 7x6, etc. sets that make up most of SSB) too short for that purpose?
Always about the zone. (as far as I know Kolie likes to âlowerâ your FTP 2-3% so you are staying below your FTP but in zone). The idea is that cells attempts to reset themselfes to resting condition, and you do not want this. So according to Kolie - 10 minutes is the minium interval time to see some gains and after the condition of 10 minutes is met, the TiZ is more important than interval lenght. So 7x10 is better than 3x15. Of course there is also a case of TTE - if your TTE is 60 minutes, doing 4x10 minutes of FTP will not challenge your systems, so you want TiZ to be longer than your TTE.
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That being said, I dont really see the point of intervallising (is that a word?) Sst work to small units. 30 or even 60 min chunks are perfectly doable and repeatable if a real world FTP is being used as a point of reference. Going long you get to deal with central fatigue, holding form, and resist the urge to quit beside TIZ.
Just my $0.02, of course.
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Ok thanks, that makes a lot of sense. From this thread and the way the TR plans are set up, it sounds like we can sort of focus sweet spot work in a couple (almost orthogonal?) directions: strength endurance/fatigue resistance (so thatâs this thread, with increasingly longer interval times and TiZ), and base-building (Ericsson, Carson, Monitor, Antelope, etc.). Is that right? If I do a two-hour Z2 ride on the trainer, I get aerobic adaptations even though Iâm nowhere close to exhaustion, so increasing TTE is more about the fatigue-resistance goal?
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Seems logical. I am not sure it was the intention but you can treat this in that way. I was thinking about more experienced people that need more stimulus than 10 min ss intervals but on the other hand these are people that work with coach or use their own workouts.
At least with SS there are some longer sessions. With threshold there is more of a problem because long threshold workouts are usually replaced with suprathreshold and I am not sure if this is a good replacement (as you can see the number of people that struggle with SPB is huge. Changing the suprathreshold with threshold workouts makes all the difference in my personal experience).
as long as youâre increasing duration or watts, youâre heading in the right direction. Thereâs a lot of 88-90% thrown around here, and while Iâm not one to nitpick, by definition thatâs not sweet spot and itâs just tempoâŚbump it up towards 93-94%; doesnât seem like much, but it def makes a difference IMOâŚso those time durations but at 92%; then at 94%; once youâre doing 90minutes of it, hit threshold. If you can do 90 minutes of true Sweet Spot, youâve got solid aerobic fitness; time to pile on the watts.
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That just seems wrong. Every definiation of SST Iâve seen starts in the 80s. SST overlaps with zone 3 and 4.
https://www.hunterallenpowerblog.com/2015/05/power-training-zones-101.html
https://fascatcoaching.com/tips/how-to-sweet-spot/
But I agree training in the higher part of SST has itâs benefits.
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Yup, Coggan classic levels has tempo at 76-90% and threshold at 91-105%. Coach Frank Overton at FasCat uses a wider range for sweet spot putting it at 84-97%.
Coggan classic levels did not recognize sweet spot, and that changed with the introduction of Coggan iLevels:
In Cogganâs words:
âBased on the logic behind the original approach, levels 1-4 remain anchored to FTP, with the addition of a new level 4a (SweetSpot) at 88-94 percent of FTP to satisfy the requests of numerous coaches who have found value in prescribing workouts at this intensity.â
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I was going to reply to @brendanhousler comment stating what you people have but he has a blog post that says sweet spot is 88-97%. Wondering if he means if a rider is only limiting their power to 88-90% then theyâre really only riding in z3 versus using the entire sweet spot range using whoeverâs definition of sweet spot it is you subscribe to. See if Brendan responds.
Thanks for pointing that out. But Iâd never call Sweet Spot 84% even though frank is the creator of it. I worked with his coaches for years and 85% would be called tempo.
My point: go harder.
Brendan John Housler
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Letâs split the difference. 92.5% only! 
Brendan John Housler
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I want to preface and say I love all the stuff you put out Brendan, and immensely respect your take. However, I feel like itâs exactly the opposite. For SS, people generally need to go much easier. What you are describing is threshold, and while it has itâs place, has a high physiological toll. SS is firmly 85 to 90% for the purposes here.
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I like Monitor+5âŚonly a minute between the intervals âŚshort though they areâŚfatigue begins to build quite deceptively at the end!
I didnât read that far back, but to expand a bit on my 10 minute minimum interval lengths⌠weâre looking for mainly peripheral adaptation with FTP type work, so thinking specifically with respect to the aerobic signaling pathways in cells, and knowing that it takes a little while to âwarm upâ the aerobic pathways as well as the fact that duration > intensity with regards to this type of signaling, 10 minutes FTP interval is what I think of as the minimum effective dose. IIRC that was a very early episode and I was hesitant about how much depth to get into, as well as not being as confident as I am now in my level of understanding. I may have just mentioned lactate and figured that would be enough?. I also donât assign FTP intervals >100% of where I think someoneâs is, usually a few watts shy.
I would never prescribe a 10 minute SST interval unless someone just got off the couch. My minimum interval length is 20 minutes, if someone can hold that many watts for over an hour. And if youâre having trouble with 20 minutes there, you have much bigger problems. Looking at further comments, I also will submit that anyone being pedantic about how hard SST is or isnât is trying to justify their own training, or trying to show off. Itâs irrelevant.
As for SST progression, if I were being very, VERY nice to someone Iâd start 2x20, 4x15, 3x20, 2x30, and so on. For a very experienced athlete, about 90 minutes is a minimum dose, and 2h or more is better as we come up on target races. But on the other side of things, some folks do have a really hard time with increasing TiZ, and we always run into some issue or other. So there arenât actually any hard and fast rules about anything, which is why I donât write canned plans. Everything gets individualized, and most of the media I put out there, podcasts, articles, webinars, is geared at helping people individualize their own training.
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