Weight lifting blocks look like that too in terms of the idea of progression. It is common in all sports.
I think that’s where people who say “it’s all about time in zones” really need to watch themselves. It should have an astericks next to that statement as there is more to it.
It’s the same with any workout. When it’s hard enough (or long enough), it’s only repeatable every so often.
I guess it depends how you determine having adapted. I’ve done 1x120 or more 4 times, so would assume I’ve ‘adapted’ to 1x90 to some extent. It’s just a big kj number and always leaves a bit of a mark.
Yes agreed, rider B’s block looks much better. Rider A would likely mostly see negative side effects such as fatigue (and also be bored out of their mind).
However, both riders spent significant time (four weeks) and tiz in that block. I guess the question I was wondering about it, how do we know how long is long enough? I think there is a risk on both sides of this, too much “just tiz” (as @hoffman900 said above), but on the other hand I think you can progress too aggressively, blast your way through it, don’t leave enough time for adaption, and kid yourself into having done a good block.
(Sorry for the somewhat hypothetical discussion, I was just thinking about it during my workout before)
First-world (well, big FTP) problems… 
Its a good point though, especially in light of realistic time constraints - you can’t spend too much time building this up, because you only have a limited amount of energy for the week.
Tim Cusick gives an upper SST TTE target of 200% (of FTP TTE). As for a desirable TiZ for a block, I’ve not heard that be discussed much, so it’s a good question to raise. Also does every one of these workouts have to be very stretching?
We know that a period of block periodization/overload can be beneficial, but the considerations re distribution, how much, and how long to extend a block are probably highly individual.
My obvious conclusion, if you’re seeing decent gains keep going!
that’s been his rough description, but there is a portion of one of the recent webinars that addresses “when you move on” and provided some metrics you can be looking at.
For example, when looking at Intensive to VO2 and when its time to move there, the vo2/mftp % is a good one, with the rule of thumb being somewhere near 83-85% and its time to raise Vo2.
There were a few other charts he used to help determine when it was time to potentially move on that would be good looking through.
Rondal, what value did Tim use as that VO2 numerator?
Yes, he’s giving markers when to move on, but he’s not really saying how long you have to stay…
Anyway, thanks for the discussion!
that’s not even remotely accurate. Versions of this slide appear in basically every webinar they do.
Ahs little about this slide in terms of polarized - Tim’s polarized plan is nothing as Seiler’s approach. It contains 3 very hard workout per week, a lot of FRC and FTP/FRC zones. So the “polarized” means you go very hard during hard workouts and add Z2 workouts without tempo parts.
I would strongly advise people watch the webinar’s if they want to understand the slides. There is far more explained than what is shown.
I agree. The details matter and it’s all in the presentation.
Tim’s ideas and thoughts on this are pretty clear. He presents really well.
Just saying what I’ve got from Tim’s actual plan, not webinar. Just to clarify what he understands under the term Polarized. To be not confused with Seiler’s idea in terms of workouts distribution.
FWIW as @jarsson mentions there are differences between the concepts he explains in webinars, and the actual stock off-the-shelf plans you can purchase (I purchased the full season masters iLevels plan).
Today i did again a FTP test. The last one before was on 16-02-2021 (FTP 292w).
Today my goal was 315-320w for 20min, but did 326w for 20min and 322w for 25min! WKO5 say FTP now 311w. Iam 67kg so that is 4.6w/kg. Never did this before!
I will thank everybody in this thread. I got a lot of help from you, and learned so much!
Downside…it will hurt for the weeks to come 
Managed a 5 x 10 minute @ FTP workout today with 3 minute breaks. It was tough, but I got through it despite the apartment being a little warm today.
Looking at the results, I did 40 minutes in my iZone FTP range but the 10 minutes justtt kissed into the sweet spot range. I’m not going to lose sleep over it but would like that to be higher, despite the the interval averages being in the FTP range (at FTP or averaging about 3w under).
I am doing this on a turbo trainer with my P2M crank as a power meter. Picking up a Kickr Core this weekend so looking forward to trying these steady state efforts with some flywheel effect.
Coming off my biggest week all season (568TSS) I took a couple days off before my standing Monday threshold session. Last week was 3x12, 3x15 on tap today—it wasn’t easy.
This concludes a 3 week FTP progressive mini-block. 4x10 > 3x12 > 2x25 > 3x15. 3 week VO2max intensive block up next.
Curious to see how you lay our your V02 block. My plan is the T ans Sat rides to be these FTP blocks, with Thursday being over unders.
Share what you have planned in the other thread?
I only have 4 loading weeks to work with, and then two taper weeks before my first race of the season. SO…week 1 is going to be an experiment is masochism.
M: 4x4
T: 30/15’s
W: 4x4
Th: Rest
F: 30/15’s
S: Long Z2
S: Rest
Then it’s only 1x VO2 workout per week for the next 3 weeks. Which I’ll progress to 5x4 > 4x5 > 6x4 or something like that. We will see.
In my “schedule” - I’m literally playing it week-by-week right now - I’m backing off my overall TSS as I’ve progressively built up training load every month since November. I’ve hit diminishing returns and a bit of a performance plateau likely due to fatigue. So I shortened up my interval structure a little bit last week and cut my long ride to just 1:45, a little over 400 TSS for a working week. Planning to aim for 490 as my work week volume and a 65 CTL now, building it based on key interval workouts first, then z2/LT1 filler after.
Seemed to work decently well last week… last night I put down 98% of my FTP for 45min straight. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow - either some tempo after a 2-min all out test or some over/unders delaying the test to next week. Friday - 2x24 @97-98%, higher or lower depending on how I feel.
Overall, I’m still at a peak mFTP (280W, prior to this year 276 was the highest WKO FTP), and I’ve pushed that TTE out to 46min. Prior to my VO2max block I was 276 @1:00 TTE, then I pushed up to 280 with a 39min TTE, so the work to push the curve up now seems to be working. We’ll see in a couple of weeks.
One thing I’ve noticed is that respiration and HR are generally lower for the same higher power… RPE and muscular fatigue are what’s limiting me right now, so definitely targeting the right things in this intensive FTP block.
