No, generally FTP work depending on what you need post VO2. Endurance and Sweet spot are best before the block to build the base, IME.
Dean Golich had people do VO2s early season as a part of their early base, just to boost endurance pace up right off the bat, but that was not the same as these focused dense blocks of it.
If you’re doing enough volume, you don’t need to “block” endurance or sweet spot afterwards to gain the cellular benefits. There’s nothing special about sweet spot, it’s essentially threshold training you can do longer.
Get back to your normal volume after recovery, train the performance and let the physiology handle itself.
Well I tested my FTP today and I got a 10W bump from doing the vo2max block with 8 vo2max workouts in seven days. Very pleased with that! This was done indoors so outdoors it’s probably closer to 15W based on earlier experience. I hope to confirm this soon with some TTE work.
The test I did was 4x10min with the first 10min done at the old FTP and then increasing around 10W each step (5-10min rest in between). After the second step (380W) I already roughly knew it was my FTP based on RPE (370W felt easier than FTP, 380W just about right) but it was nice to go slightly over in the subsequent reps to confirm that my FTP indeed had not risen to 390 or 400, hehe. Based on earlier experience I estimate my tte to be pretty low still, 30-40min, but I’ve previously been able to grow that out very rapidly when I’ve applied some effort to it.
Fwiw, your upper body exercises aren’t crazy as far as systemic fatigue goes. Also, reading between the lines here, but given that you listed the lbs used, it seems you’re not trying to progressive overload? So the weight is more comfortable and you have more reps in reserve? That’s going to be less stimulus, but also less fatigue.
I think starting out it makes sense to really focus on your VO2 training stimulus and learn what optimal stimulus feels like subjectively. Whether you can concurrently lift during VO2 can depend on a lot of factors.
You could drop BOR and OHP down to 2x sets for maintenance. BOR is better at a bit higher rep range 8-15 for a more controlled motion, fwiw.
Something interesting happened in my adapted training schedule. It’s kind of setting up a VO2 Max block of seven weeks straight (with one recovery week in between):
I haven’t seen anything like this on TR in over a year and a half of using it, and it reminded me of the discussions you guys are having here, so I thought it might be interesting to share.
In the custom plan builder, the “Getting Faster for Group Rides” also has this structure (1x Anaerobic and two times Vo2 Max) for the speciality phase. The “Improving Climbing” plan replaces the Anaerobic with Threshold, but also has two times Vo2 Max in the speciality phase.
