Bang on threshold sets. Extend duration just below threshold. Then in build do your work above it.
Iāve seen good results from starting in low 90s the bottom of threshold, and ratcheting up every 5 minutes or so. And then hang just a little below threshold like you said. Undulations in the road, and wind, will naturally generate small surges above.
And the significantly over unders are pure gold for me. Out on the road it is really easy to adjust the over power, depending on how I feel. Big bang for the buck.
2 Likes
Went pretty good. Did the overs at about 400w which is 125% for me.
Definitely not as easy as I thought, shortened the last interval to 9min.
But way more fun than steady threshold.
Should you reach threshold hr doing these? I barely reached 90% hr.
For progression just add more over-unders?
1 Like
How do you do the over-unders? Iam now working on 2,5min 82% and 45sec 115%. Or do i need to go higher in the lower part for pushing up treshold?
Depends on the goal of doing them but the O/Us I was describing above I do at 5-minute power (over) and 85% under, and Iām just trying to accrue a lot of time at that 5 min power. I found those to be race/breakaway specific for me.
I messed around with some āhard startā over under that were more like 110% for a few minutes, then 110/85 in similar form to what you described. Those were hard. I didnāt do them long enough or frequently enough to tell if they were any better.
That said, plenty of coaches like @brendanhousler and his coach from the UK talk about training above threshold to push better racing fitness. Whether thatās FTP changes, dunno. Tom Bell uses 105/95 over-unders for FTP development, so you can see there are all kinds of opinions out there, and I think some of it depends on what youāre training for and what adaptation youāre looking for. (And I would not hesitate to say Tom Bell knows more about this stuff than I do!)
My best FTP gains, personally and specifically, came from extensive SST/threshold work followed by VO2max followed by threshold intervals and higher power over-unders for race prep. So after my VO2max block, I was hitting a 2x20+ threshold set (at 95-98%) once and a ~125/85 over under set once each week, along with volume. If I was racing that weekend, I dropped the over/under setā¦ I did that for about five weeks before moving to anaerobic training when my racing hit a peak.
As always, YMMV. As mentioned, some really strong and smart athletes have done a bunch of work like 5x5 at 108% and seen big gains and won Olympic medals doing thatā¦ soā¦
5 Likes
An oldie but a goodie for those that havenāt read it.
3 Likes
thank you for resurrecting!
1 Like
Great! So letās start another year where 3x10 min at threshold is an impossible workout! 
4 Likes
2x8 for you!
He uses also a lot of 85% with bursts between 30s to 1min (at least in his workout library in TP). Good, fun workouts
1 Like
2x8? No chances. AI has given me a FTP number and I will stick with it no matter what! And no fans for me;)
4 Likes
WindWarrior loves these
and sees better performance improvements versus hammering out threshold intervals.
Another variation
where you do 2 minutes RPE vo2 and the last minute is all-out. On the road I usually push the tempo at 85-90%.
All kinds of interesting over/under variations that are not the same as Tom Bells. Those above are from my coach, Iāve got several Cusick plans (two older, a new BaseCamp Road Build to Peak) and donāt recall seeing anything like those in his plans.
1 Like
Yes hard starts are nice. As I remember I have seen them in Tim Cusicks library. They are great as race specific workout to give a boost to steady threshold. I have used version with 2min@120% and the 8min@100%. Those are hard!
1 Like
Last winter, I did the following threshold progression after a sweetspot block and VO2 block:
Week 1: 3x10 at 96%, 3x9 OU 2 min at 95%, 1 min at 105%
Week 2: 4x10 at 96%, 3x12 OU 2 min at 90%, 1 min at 110%
Week 3: 5x10 at 96% 4x12 OU 2 min at 95%, 1 min at 105%
Week 4: 6x15 at 88-90-92-94-92-90%
Honestly, I didnāt feel like I got a whole lot of benefit out of this and carried a lot of fatigue. I am bad at threshold riding (cue the āyour FTP is too high!ā comments). I can do sweetspot for hours and have decent VO2 powers. Iāll probably stick with sweetspot progressions and VO2 blocks instead of threshold. Threshold is, however, great for improving my intestinal fortitude.
Interesting. For me SST is good for overall endurance but I see a lot of real improvement when doing threshold. Usually I start with 4x10 as a first workout and then move to 15-20 min intervals:
3x15, 4x15, 3x20 and 5x15. When I am able to do 4x20 I know itās time to check FTP and TTE.
With 6h on the bike I was able to do 3 of those in a week but have seen better overall results with 2x week with more z2 volume. Then with highest volume I have been doing 1 threshold and 1 sst (steady or o/u). So basically for me is threshold all year long as aerobic booster. Not to mentions it works also for short power (my highest 5min power was after doing only threshold + 2 vo2 max blocks (12 vo2 max workouts in total for a whole year).
4 Likes
Threshold riding gave me good gains in my first years but not anymore.
If I do steady efforts I like to do them at 95% and extend the interval to about 60 minutes and pair them with an over-under workout.
1 Like
I feel like Iām almost done with a tempo/sweetspot progression of about 8 weeks going from 2Ć20 @80% to 1Ć80 @90% (and planning for 2Ć50 next week).
After that Iām looking to change it up a bit. A rest week followed by some neuromuscular/anaerobic 1min intervals and a short (2wk) VO2max block (10Ć2 7Ć3 5Ć4 4Ć5, hard-start kinda stuff).
Then looking to move in to a very similar FTP block as you mentioned. Would you recommend 2 workouts on a 8-10hr week?
Isnāt that what he said?
The post has been edited twice and nobody else has picked that up so I imagine it was corrected after my post.