Rondal,
For your OU’s, what izones are you using for the floor and ceiling of those intervals? How about durations between them as well?
Thanks for the help!
To the rest, I’ve been trialing WK05 and really enjoying it. Starting to use it and TR’s workout creator to help get me where I want.
Didn’t ask me, but I’ve been using a 4:1 ratio under:over as 3:00 at 92% and :45 at 5 min power. I did a session of 3x4 of these a couple of weeks ago, next one is a 3x5.
What do you mean with 3x4 and 3x5 with O/U?
I can’t speak for Kurt but I took it to mean:
3mins under, 45 over (3:45) per over/under segment.
4 of those is 15 minutes, so
3x15minutes O/U, progressing to 3x18:45minutes next.
Yes good point. Historically I’ve done harder workouts on Wednesdays because I am off work but I can do them pre work on a Tuesday. Can then do SS OU on Wednesdays, with Z2 after (more time available).
Any views on rest between sets for circa 100% FTP work intervals?
I still can’t reconcile my plan for 2FTP and 1OU workout a week to tally with the WKO5 webinar suggestion of doing 10-15% total TIZ for intensive aerobic work, but yet they also say to do it 3-5x/week. Perhaps they are speaking to athletes who have 20hrs a week to play with? I don’t know. I came into this style of training because I’m burnt out of TR plans and overestimated FTP with ramp test, I am wary of burning out again. (Without trying to claim I am formally overtrained).
Threshold workouts after o/u are good 
I would not do this all the time but this learn your body to do threshold when fatigued. Stacking hard-hard workouts is another stimulus for the body. Would not do this as a permanent solution but for 3 week as a experiment to see how your body will react. The worst case scenario your threshold workout will be at lower wattage, so what? The threshold zone is pretty broad. Doing every workout as fresh as possible is not always the best solution.
3x hard is pretty doable for the training block. You should not have a problem with this. It is hard but you want to go hard and then recover.
Nailed it.
Do 2x per week to start and then adjust. I don’t believe there’s a magic number, it’s totally dependent on current factors. I took think the TR Build Plans are insanely aggressive, I just took a look at sustained power build. Definitely not sustainable for me.
This is what I’m doing this week to make up for a missed week last week. I did 2 consecutive workouts on Monday and Tuesday, both were high sweet spot. I rested on Wednesday. Today was Z2, and tomorrow will be another threshold session with a long endurance ride on Saturday to cap off the week.
I love stacking two hard days with a day off.
Or why not do 3x hard 1 week, 2x hard next week. That one’s currently going round in my head as I endlessly tinker with my upcoming block! Might mean you can then also delay recovery time compared to 3x hard every week.
My intensive phase is going to be blocked similar to Rondal’s.
T: Threshold
R: OU’s
Sat: Threshold.
Wednesday is an active recovery day, and Sunday is just easy miles. Monday and Friday are completely off.
I got my power curve set, going to sprinkle in some workout over the next few days / weekend. Get my second Covid shot in the middle of next week and then by the time I should feel good after that, going away for the weekend. Will be able to fit a nice 4 week block in after that, then changing apartments (so will likely lose that weekend). I’m happy about the weather change, but Spring is one of those times of the years where everything but cycling is happening.
2min under to 30s over.
90%/110%
There are some good posts about this earlier in the thread from about a month ago, but the key isn’t actually to make the over super high, its to get the lactate response and then settle back into the over and use that to clear. This is where a few of us find the TR methods of O/Us a little backwards, as you spend too much time in the over and not enough time in the under where your body learns to clear lactate.
I dont disagree with this statement but i’ll reiterate my original point; be clear about what the goals are for your block and prioritize those. If the priority is building and holding threshold power, stacking is going to set you back. Yes, its good because it teaches you to be able to do threshold while fatigued, but that wasn’t the goal of the block.
If you want to prioritize hard efforts when fatigued then absolutely blocking is a great approach. This is what many do closer to the season once you have built up the foundation where you want to be and now you want to start to build resiliency around that.
Part of the issue with the self coached athlete is trying to do too many things at the same time. And in the process end up half assing two things rather than just doing one thing well.
Going back to the sweet spot progression…I’m wondering, how much of the improvement is down to the actual progression, and how much to just riding sweetspot a lot for a few weeks?
For two extreme examples, lets say your sweet spot tte is 60 minutes and you want to extend it to 90 minutes. In version A, you just ride 60 min of sweetspot 3x a week for fur weeks. You don’t progress in time or power. In version B, the next week after testing, you fuel up, grit your teeth, and bang out 90 min of sweetspot. Then you decide you’re done with the block and move on.
I’m pretty sure that version A would actually lead to improvements, even though you never even went past your tte. Version B wouldn’t lead to anything, apart from fatigue and maybe a bit of a mental bonus, desite meeting your tte goal. Obviously, a mix is the best approach, but I think the repeat sweet spot session are important too. But then, how many session do we think we need? Even if the tte goals could be had sooner?
I did a 4 x 10min @ FTP today. Managed a 1 x 35min @ FTP on Tuesday. It actually wasn’t terrible.
I programmed in 5 minute breaks between the 4 x 10min intervals. I’ll try again at 3 minutes next Tuesday (outdoor rides this weekend) as that’s about where my HR bottomed out anyway. From there I’ll look to start doing less intervals and longer sets and build from there.
Will probably lay low at the end of next week and am going to miss out on riding (assuming the 2nd Covid shot wrecks me for a day plus a weekend of camping and hiking). After that I should have a few weeks with minimal distraction to get some good training blocks in.
I’m starting with the intensive block as I had just completed a TR SSBLV plan (plus weekend rides) before investing into the WK05 / Tim Cusick system. Surviving my TR ramp FTP to my TTE left me feeling confident that I should be able to handle it.
Progressive overload is 100% the key here IMO. It would also be like asking someone to double TiZ every week, they might be fine the first week going from say 45 min to 90 min, but there’s no way in heck they could follow it up the next week.
In your example, I would question if that 3rd sweet spot ride (at the same intensity and duration as the previous two) would have any measurable physiological benefit. Possibly in the first week, but if you never progressed duration or intensity I would think that at some point you’d be in a sort of sweet spot homostasis and would no longer be putting hay in the barn or so to speak. Tim Cusick has said that after completion of two identical or very similar workouts it’s time to do something different.
Certainly, big blocks of sweet spot seem to pay off regardless, but it’s how you structure those blocks that really matter. IMO that is the essence of this thread. A bunch of bike-dorks who have ran into the wall of diminishing returns with TR’s SS Base plans and are looking for ways to increase TiZ, that otherwise wouldn’t happen if one stuck to a TR plan.
I like how Rondal layed it out personally. It also jives with what Tim says verbally (one really needs to listen to his webinars as opposed to just looking at slides)
Maybe the other way to as this question is, does the total volume of sweetspot over the block matter, or just the progression? That is, if you added time very aggressively every session, would that lead to exactly the same adaption as a slower, longer build, which would obviously lead to a larger total volume? I somehow think the volume is important, but don’t really know. Or maybe just the length of time it takes? Adaption surely isn’t instant either.
Adaption takes 2-4wks to see results.
Regarding total volume question its a bit of column A and column B which i refer to as the micro and macro progression
There is the progressive overload that comes from the workouts themselves, that is doing longer or harder intervals within the workout itself, and increasing overall TiZ for the workout. (Micro)
Then there is the progressive overload that comes through a block of training, that is doing more work week to week as you increase the overall load through the block. (Macro)
You combine both of those pieces and you get the micro adaption and macro adaption occurring as you progress through a block.
IMO volume and duration are both important, but you can’t do super well at both at the same time (beyond a certain point). You might get comfortable with 90 mins TiZ, but hitting 90 mins+ is draining, and it’s hard to repeat that many times in a week
Mm, I get the cumulative fatigue point, an that there’s an upper limit of volume per week, but…if going over a certain duration is still draining, have you actually adapted to the load?
I think the progression should be the focus. Dumb example:
Week 1
Rider A does 4 Sweet Spot workouts per week and all of them are 3x15 for 180 min TiZ
Rider B does 2 Sweet Spot workouts per week. The first is 3x15 and the second is 2x25 for 95 min TiZ.
Week 2
Rider A does the same 4 workouts per week the following week for 180min TiZ (Total 360 min TiZ)
Rider B does 2x30 and 1x45 for 105 min TiZ (Total 200 min TiZ)
Week 3
Rider A does the same 4 workouts per week the following week for 180min TiZ (Total 540 min TiZ)
Rider B does 1x60 and 2x40 for 140 min TiZ (Total 340 min TiZ)
Week 4
Rider A does the same 4 workouts per week the following week for 180min TiZ (Total 720 min TiZ)
Rider B does 3x30 and 1x75 for 165 min TiZ (Total 505 min TiZ)
After 4 weeks rider A has accumulated 720 min TiZ which is 215 min more than rider B, but hasn’t ridden an interval longer than 15 minutes or a workout with more than 45 min TiZ.
I would rather be rider B in this example–who focused on progression–despite doing less overall TiZ.