The statement is just wrong. All three are byproducts. Of the three, heat is fatiguing.
“Aerobic metabolism has essentially no fatiguing byproducts (water, heat and CO2)”
I’d be staring right at Wednesday and swapping it with Thursday if you know on Tuesday evening that you’re pushing your luck with a 3-in-a-row. Problem is knowing on Tuesday. Another idea is putting a light switch on Wednesday. Go/no-go with an easy option like Pettit, leaving everything else in place. Mix your options depending on what week. As you’re spiraling up through a block, three-in-a-row seems more doable psychologically., IMHO.
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my bride wouldn’t even bat an eye, roll them maybe
Thanks. I may also consider switching Sunday and Monday. Feels it but better balanced
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It’s only fatiguing if it becomes fatiguing.
Much of this heat is dissipated via the evaporation of sweat and other heat loss mechanisms.
Metabolic heat generated at Z2 wouldn’t be a lot. I guess if you’re doing a long ride in a closed environment w/o cooling or in very high external heat (not produced by metabolism), it could lead to fatigue.
We all know heat is a maj issue w/ SS progressions. Get a fan or two.
(please excuse the detour)
Sorry about the detour…but…
Actually, lets stop guessing. Say you ride at 150W for an hour, thats 150W×3600s = 540kJ. Assuming that because of the body’s efficiency, 1 kcal = 1kJ, thats 540kcal you need to eat. The currently discussed upper limit seem to be somewhere around 100g carbs / hour. 1g carbs has about 4kcal, so thats 400kcal/hour that you can eat. Leaving you with a deficit of 140kcal, just from 1h of riding in z2.
…ok, lets go back to talking about sweetspot…
But you aren’t burning 100% carbs. You don’t need to replace the fats. At Z2, you would be around 50% from fat at least. So you could actually overeat what you are burning.
Two riders having a similar w/kg, it’s actually the heavier rider that will have a harder time replacing calories because they are riding at a higher raw power and burning more calories.
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How does this look for a basic sweet spot progression? I kept Wednesdays as easier sweet spot workouts, making the other days where I progress in length. Many of these workouts are an 88-94% range, so I figured as the weeks progress I would bump the intensity up a percent or two. I made week 4 sort of a recovery week to nail the Saturday 75 minutes straight, but not sure if I really need to do that.
I only have 60-75 minutes on weekdays and 90 on Saturday for right now. Sometimes I free ride or do a short Zwift race on Sundays, or sometimes I just take the day off; so I didn’t schedule anything there in case I don’t end up doing it.
What’s everyone’s thoughts? Thanks!
ETA: I didn’t realize the image cut at the bottom (trying to fit it all in). That’s tallac +1 and phoenix +2 for Tues and Sat.
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It is a little bit strange, because you have quite hard Cumberland +1 in the beginning after eclipse. Eclipse is pretty easy workout and Cumberland is quite demanding if you did not have done this type of efforts. As you are constrained with time I would add some higher intensity like Galena or something closer to threshold with shorter workouts - you can go longer (but time constraints) or more intensive.
I do not understand why you need something like tallac-2? The normal Tallac would be better. These brakes are completely not needed with short 15 min SS.
I would go:
Geiger +1 → Kaweah -2 → Eclipse → Pioneer +2
Buffalo +1 (variety from boring SS ) → Monitor +2 → Tallac +1 → Cumberland +1 (or +2)
Grampians +1 → Wrangell -1 → Tallac +1 → Phoenix +1 (or +2)
It is a rough sketch but it is a little bit more progressive in terms of time and intensity (your constrains are quite big if you have +15 time during the week the availability of workouts is a lot bigger).
The other thing is that you can skip brakes in some of these workours or create custom versions in workout creator if you are doing them exclusively in ERG mode.
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Looking at your first week I’m seeing the following: Geiger +1 (4x12, 36 min) / Carson (6x5-7, 36 min) / Kaweah -2 (3x10, 30 min) / Eclipse (3x20, 60 min)
What stands out are that you’re starting the week off with 4x12 (36 min of Sweet Spot Time in Zone), then following that up with Carson. This isn’t wrong, per se, but you could drop the intensity, but extend the work intervals by doing something like Spruce Knob (2x20 @ 85%). To me this would be a better workout to follow up with. It will also get you accustomed to riding at longer durations and prep you for Eclipse later in the week. I’m also questioning why you would do Kaweah -2. You’ve done 4x12 already in the week, 3x10 is going to be really easy. You could further challenge your self with some Over/Unders. I think those are great workouts that fit in nicely with a Sweet Spot block. I love them.
I personally like to build my Sweet Spot workouts around 15, 20, 25, and 30 minute intervals. If I haven’t done Sweet Spot for a while I’ll start with 4x10 or 3x15 and push out from there. A sample block might look like this:
Week 1
Workout 1: 3x15 @ 90-92%
Workout 2: 2x30 @ 85-88%
Workout 3: Z2/Endurance (60-120min)
Rest
Workout 4: 3x20 @ 90-92%
Workout 5: Z2/Endurance (120+ min)
TiZ Sweet Spot: 108min
Week 2
Workout 1: 3x20 @ 90-92%
Workout 2: 2x40 @ 85-88%
Workout 3: Z2/Endurance (60-120min)
Rest
Workout 4: 4x15 @ 90-92%
Workout 5: Z2/Endurance (120+ min)
TiZ Sweet Spot: 120min
Week 3
Workout 1: 2x30 @ 90-92%
Workout 2: 2x45 @ 85-88%
Workout 3: Z2/Endurance (60-120min)
Rest
Workout 4: 4x20 @ 90-92%
Workout 5: Z2/Endurance (120+ min)
TiZ Sweet Spot: 140min
Feel free to adjust the interval lengths to match your current level. Hope this helps. Experimentation is your friend. Eat a lot. Rest.
*I’m not a coach so none of the above should be taken as a hard recommendation based on anything scientific. Just my personal experience training myself.
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I’ve debated doing the workout creator but I hear it’s not too user friendly and sounds like a drag 
Not really sure why I added tallac-2, maybe I was afraid of boredom!
Do you think it’s necessary to add in some easier sweet spot to break up the overall progression? Or do true recovery rides or just keep trucking through it straight? 
I’ve done some Phoenix-es and Pioneers in the past. I like those workouts once I get into the swing of things. I’m hoping to use this sort of sweet spot base to slowly just creep closer to my ftp in comfort or even increase my ftp!
Thanks for your help. I’m definitely going to do some rearranging based on your suggestions!
I wish I had more time on my hands to do longer workouts that look so beautiful in the progression! I refuse to wake up earlier than 5am 
but I think I can adjust your recommendations to squeeze into 75 minutes during the weekday. And I may be able to get up to 2 hours on the weekend, I just have to set the alarm…
So if you have done them than almost all the workouts are too easy 
Honestly if you can do Phoenix the 3x15 would be a waste of your time and energy. @anthonylane has given the progression that is closer to the progression I would do - you will gain a lot more form his suggestion. Honestly 3x15 or 6x10 etc are the workouts for threshold not for SS. If you are more experienced and with your time constrains doing 2x30, 1x45, 1x60, 2x40 etc would give you a lot more. I am in the camp, that thinks SST and Threshold efforts in TR plans and most of the workouts are too easy
If you will spend 5 minutes to understand it quirks it is extremely easy tool. I would like to see new tool from TR (and web based) but it works and I use it all the time with no problems.
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Ah, I gotcha! You all are so smart. I’m glad I got the courage to ask how my plan looked!
What do you think if I progress with the longer sweet spot intervals as @anthonylane has laid out and to jazz it up a bit add some shorter intervals at threshold? Orrrrrr could I squeeze this progression in to a smaller amount of time?!
If you will introduce threshold workouts you can stack the workouts, so one day threshold and next day SS work. But be careful with number of hard days. Usually more than 3 is considered hard to mantain in longer term (with this long SST I would also think about it as hard days).
Squizing the progression in a shorter time frame will be super intensive but potentially super rewarding. But you can also crash and burn there is a lot of factors contributing to this but this is recommended for experienced cyclist. Here is thr article that should help you with this:
Break Through Your Performance Plateau By Increasing Training Density
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Awesome! Thanks for the guidance 
Thanks for the article @jarsson. This was a great read and something that I really enjoyed reading as I am currently wanting to increase my FTP and TTE. I have created some workouts that go along really well with this part of the article you have just posted. Happy to share the workouts around for anyone that is interested in having a crack at them.
Perform the following thought experiment. Is doing one 20min interval once each week, at 95% FTP, enough to increase FTP? My answer is a firm “no.” Doing one day of 2x20min intervals will likely be better, 3x20min even better than that. Doing 60 minutes of FTP training per day is almost definitely better than doing only 20 minutes.
Time is generally the limiter. You could adjust your workouts so you’re doing fewer, but longer intervals. 2x20, 2x30, 1x40, 1x60, etc. Take a 1x60 workout, add a 7.5 min warm up and a 7.5 minute cool down and you have 60 minutes at Sweet Spot in the span of 75 minutes. That’s a lot of bang for buck.
It’s all about adjusting to what life gives you. I’m currently trying to figure out how to maintain a 8-10 hour week while my kids are back in home-school. It’s not looking doable, but it’s late in the season and I can stay sharp on 5-6 hours as long as I have 2 days of intensity and one long (3-4 hour) day per week.
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@jarsson downloaded workout creator. It’s so easy and great to use! Folks have made it sound so cumbersome…I like it! I think it may be easier to use than Zwift’s workout creator even!
Thank you for the advice!
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Based on the guidance from this thread and a few others, I made a full set of custom workouts for sweet-spot progression. I think these are available to everyone; and if they’re not, but they could be, please point me to instructions on how to make them available to everyone. I’m happy to share.
All these workouts have the following traits:
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Rest intervals are at 50% of FTP.
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9-min warm-up: 2m @ 50%, 2m @ 70%, 2m @ workout power, and 3m @ 50%.
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5-min cool-down: starting at 50% and ramping down to 35%.
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Workout names all look like SS90/40 4x10. All start with SS, the “90” means work done at 90% of FTP, the “40” means 40 minutes of Time In Zone, and then 4x10 obviously describes how those 40 minutes get distributed.
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SS90 workouts get rest intervals that are 3 minutes long.
The following SS90 workouts exist right now:
- SS90/40 4x10
- SS90/45 3x15
- SS90/50 2x25
- SS90/60 3x20
- SS90/60 2x30
- SS90/60 1x60
- SS90/70 2x35
- SS90/75 3x25
- SS90/75 1x75
- SS90/80 2x40
- SS90/90 2x45
- SS90/90 1x90
Comments and suggestions welcome. Hope they’re useful to others as they’ve already become for me. In the workout tab, you just have to type “SS9” into the search box to get the list.
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