What qualifies as a "High Intensity" workout?

From all of the reading, it appears that 2 or maybe 3 “high intensity” sessions a week is about all you can/should manage (++caveats/exceptions, etc)

Looking at the General Build MV I , Im seeing the second week as: Vo2, Endurance, Threshold, Anerobic, and SS.

To me that seems like 3 (maybe 4) high intensity days?

Not an answer, but here are some similar topics to review:

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It depends. VO2 and Threshold are definitely intense. If you follow the Polarized discussion then Seiler also considers SweetSpot and Tempo as intense. I don’t think there is consensus in the Pyramidal camp about whether SweetSpot and Tempo “count” as intense.

I think the real thing to consider is how well you can recover from that level of work. I did two cycles of base/build/specialty last season and it was too much for me. I was totally spent by the fall. This winter I did Traditional Base + weight lifting and then followed with Polarized Base. My lack of sleep limits how much work I can recover from so, for me, Polarized was the ideal mix.

Experiment, see how you feel after a four-week block and determine if you need to modify the plan, or just let AT handle it.

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IMO- It’s probably more than you need, but keeping it ‘fun’ is important for keeping people going through plans consistently.

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By its definition sweet spot should feel intense but also something easily recovered from, if a 90 minute sweet spot feels too hard your FTP is likely set too high

Seems a little broad strokes - there’s a lot of different 90 min sweet spot workouts

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I see it from a different point of view. I try and stick to two hard days a week. My view being that if I’m continuously raising stress hormones in my body, it won’t be good for my long term health.

Thus a short high intensity session, anything from around VT2 and above = hard
Anything that is lower intensity but of a long duration. For instance if I go for a 10 hour ride = hard.

Thus if I’ve done a low intensity or medium intensity ride that is hard due to its duration, I’ll only do one hard high intensity session that week.

If you are going to do more than two hard sessions a week, there’s something to be said for doubling them up. In other words two hard sessions on same day.

If you’ve been training a while you’ll know which workouts take it out of you and you need a rest day before and / or recovery day after. I always make notes on my sessions as to how they went. Very useful to determine if you are overdoing the hard stuff or need a recovery week etc.

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