Sweet Spot Progression

I think the O/U will be more useful for crits than riding constant steady power, but if they both help your FTP then carry on.

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Back onto the a SS/Threshold progression block after taking a few weeks for VO2 max work. Saw some really good benefits in the last one - think I respond well to long SS work - so looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Had entered the previous block in late November testing ~320w for 45min TTE. After 5 weeks of progressive TiZ, managed 70mins @320w at end of November. Actual FTP had probably nudged up to around 330w, as had ridden a good section of the 320w well within myself.

3 weeks of VO2 max work in New Year, mainly longer intervals (5x5min), and a few Zwift races with some hard 10-20min climbs, and did a 10min test @410w, and 45minutes @340w. Throughout the VO2 block was surprised at how much by aerobic capacity had increased despite doing very little work at higher intensities in the 6 weeks before.

Plan is to use the 340w as new baseline FTP and try to stretch out the TTE again through one or two longer SS sessions a week, one threshold session, and zone 2 work scattered around it. Will likely incorporate some ā€˜burst’ over/unders throughout to mix things up. Looking forward to checking back in then: as others have said, this has been a really good productive thread!

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Not who you asked, but I get prescribed similar over unders and I’ll go through the logic as I understand it.

An over/under is a threshold workout. So time in zone is important.

To maximize time in zone make the under closer to the bottom of threshold… aka sweet spot.

With the overs we are trying to ā€˜get behind’ aerobically then catch up in threshold. The fastest way to get behind is to do the maximal aerobic work you are capable of… aka VO2max.

So given the above you end up with intervals doing ~90% unders and ~120% overs. You progress it by doing more overs, longer overs, or shorter unders.

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Give it a try! Those O/U are going to be pretty hard, so if you don’t make a 3x20, don’t beat yourself up. I agree with @4ibanez that this style of over/under have pretty good applicability to crit racing.

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Key here is not doing all of that at once like I tried to! :rofl:

In playing with these, I’ve looked at two things to progress: overall TiZ, and time at the ā€œoverā€. I don’t have it dialed in yet, but that’s why I’m doing this.

Thanks!

I will do it first in ERG mode with 3x20…if iam done in 2x20 i will skip the last block.

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While we’re on O/Us…I always keep this quote in mind:

It’s an absolutely disgusting session and I’m rarely capable of finishing them but unfortunately that’s what seems to work.

— Alex Dowsett on 2x20 2min95%/2min105%

Y’know…the same guy who was once the fastest cyclist in the world. :wink:

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Gotta try that in the next block now!

Thanks for that. So then what is the minimum interval length you would recommend for O/Us? Is 12’ insufficient to trigger the intended physiological response?

EDIT: to clarify this as a starting point for a progression using the interval structure you and @kurt.braeckel suggest. Looking at this from a minimum effective dose perspective.

Shortest one I’ve had given to me was 10 minutes. But there were 6 of them and it was early in the season. They are fancy threshold/sweet spot intervals. Should be ā€˜long’ compared to your TTE (100-150%). You want to do them in as few intervals as is achievable and recoverable.

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I started with 2x20, but agree that getting up to TTE and beyond would be beneficial. I’m not there yet as I play around with my structure.

What is your weekly structure looking like out of curiosity. I ask as I start to develop and plan mine out as i only have a week of SST progression left before moving into a recovery week and then intensive work.

One note regarding over/unders too is the race specificity aspect of it.

Since most road races are won with short attacks (30-40s) to break away - then staying away, or Vo2-like efforts (3-5min big attacks on key areas of a race course), I typically like to progress to MORE overs while keeping them short. The idea here is that you are teaching your body how to recover from multiple efforts Crit racers might want to do shorter, more frequent and ā€œpunchierā€ 'overs in their intensity progression block, and TT racers might want to do longer of both. Like mentioned in this thread above, these are threshold workouts. If you want a supra-threshold workout there are better ways to get it.

I’m a Sprint to Half distance triathlete so definitely more steady state and not much punchy riding for me. Do want to try some crits though when racing returns to switch things up.

This block I’ve done:

M - 40-55min O/U + Z2 to 90min
T - Pettit (w/ max cadence sprints)
W - Long SST intervals at 92-94%; or 15 min MMP test + 45 min ā€œTANā€ tempo ride
R - Off
F - FTP intervals (2x20, 2x25) + Z2 to 90 min
Sa - 4hrs Z2
Su - Off or 2hrs Z2

I’m not really sold on that build. I’m pretty toasted two weeks through, but we’ll see how this week goes. I screwed up my progression on the O/Us last week, for one thing. But that’s gotten me to 500-560 TSS, which is about where I want to be.

I’d really like to do hard workouts back to back on M-T, but ā€œlifeā€ just won’t let it happen right now. Ideally, I’d do:

Hard - Hard - Easy - Off/recovery - Hard - Long Z2 - Off/Recovery ---- repeat week

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Sound like Iowa wind and rock maybe?

This was today’s fun. 3x(5x(3:00 @ 93% + :45 @ 110%)). Powers based on my personal PDC. I held on, but the last three intervals were brutes. The 4:1 over:under ratio is good for me right now, I think. I think it’s a good starting point, too. My first set of these was a 2:00 - :30 pairing in 20 minute blocks. I blew up last week when I tried to stretch the over AND add intervals AND add total TiZ. This one added overall TiZ, slightly reduced the over power (from last week) and increased the ā€œunderā€ interval length by 30s.

The first set of these tonight was pretty manageable, but by the end (almost 57 minutes of total effort) I was hanging on for dear life. Still, when I finished, I don’t feel totally wrecked… so maybe I’m on to something here.

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Can we get a OU group going for workouts?

I’m going to do 1 a week next block for a progression (target will be increasing time in over).

Then the other workouts will be 4x8 vo2max work.

Really want to work on increasing ftp rather than tte at the moment. (Cause my TTE is definitely fine)

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Yes sir!

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How are you using your PDC for these? I cant find which webinar it was in, but one of the cusick WKO webinars discussed that for intensive it was to take your PDC, find TTE, and minus 15-20min from it, then do your intervals at 95% of that amount.
ex TTE = 45min, minus 15-20min gives you 25-30min intervals at 95% of your 25-30min power.

That however seems different than what you are doing here.

Edit:
Actually you’re basically doing that, whether you realize it or not, but just through over/under format. If you average out each of your sets you are at 96.4% rather than 95%. Shifting to a 30s over would bring that more in line, if that’s what you were ultimately shooting for.