I’m quoting the podcast. 
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The other thing to keep in mind if you really want to build up your engine, is that you eventually want to build up your SS capacity to the point where you can do much longer work intervals.
When I had my best fitness a couple of years ago, I built up my SS engine to the point where I was able to do 3x30min. at 92% of FTP, with 5min. rest between. It took approx 8 weeks of shorter intervals to get there, but your body will adjust.
Does the podcast say that?
Can’t agree, the breaks are more for a mental break not physiological. You should be able to do 60-90 minutes SST when you build to it no breaks so if 2x 20M or 5x 10M is pushing HR or your RPE really high aren’t SST. SST isn’t hard so to speak, more of a grind which I suppose you could define as ‘hard.’
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I did SS LV last year and failed on every over under and VO2 workout. Switched to polarized training last spring, and have been able to do the VO2 work. I think those who are just getting started benefit from pure endurance work to start before jumping into SS and VO2 work.
Yeah, that is very common as Levels above threshold are very individual and don’t really work off MLSS or FTP, hence the creation of iLevels.
Yes, the common statement about Sweet Spot workouts is that “They should be hard, but doable.”
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They should be a workout where you know you are working, likely takes some focus (not able to lollygag like and Endurance level), and you generally welcome the completion of each interval with a feeling of relief.
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After completing the workout you should feel like you have done something, but you’re not totally spent like you would be for a Threshold or VO2 Max type workout.
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This is subjective to the workout length and interval length. Looking at the Intensity Factor (IF), interval length and total workout duration can be done with to get some estimate of how “hard” this should be.
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But if you are completing most SS workouts and either gasping for air or feeling totally thrashed, you may have your FTP too high, be under-fueled, under-recovered, or fatigued in one way or another.
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I’m a long time cyclist, but I’m pretty new to doing SS work for base training. Here is my take so far: For me, SS doesn’t feel that much easier than threshold work mentally, but my legs/lungs never reach their limits. It’s certainly very different from traditional endurance/tempo base I’ve done in the past where the rides don’t really require a big mental battle.
I’ll try not to offend anyone by speculating on how many failed workouts are a result of mental vs. physical limitations, but the mental side is clearly a huge component. The ability to mentally push through hard workouts day after day needs to be trained just as much (or more) than the physical aspect.
If you set your FTP as the power you can do for an hour (which doesn’t always line up with the physiological definition), there is no physical reason to fail a SS workout when reasonably fresh. If you believe your FTP is right, use this as part of the head games when you want to quit during SS intervals. Tell yourself you won’t quit until your legs actually fail and there is no physical reason for failure doing “only” <95% for 20-30 minutes at a time. I’ve got a bunch of head games I play with myself when suffering on the bike, it’s just too easy to quit if to don’t have a way to hide that choice.
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So I hope they answer a question I posed in a different thread and via email on the podcast at some point. The question related to why the HV and MV have completely different strategies to training with a small difference in time. Meaning that in MV you’re doing LT over unders and VO2 and in HV you’re doing exclusively SS.
This is one of the things I haven’t seen in my experience; i.e. the HV and MV plans follow the “if you have less time you must ride harder” philosophy. I believe in the base phase most people will respond better to lower intensity training and just because you ride one less day per week doesn’t mean you should be increasing your training intensity by an entire power zone.
An example of what I mean is below. A 20 hour schedule vs a 10 hour schedule. Just because the 10 hour athlete is putting in less hours doesn’t mean the training zones are different. They just don’t have as much time to put in before and after the intervals. As the 20 hour person progresses they will most likely be able to handle more intervals than the 10 hour. I would not have the 10 hour person hitting LT and VO2 just because they have less hours in the week to train.
If a rider that puts in 19-20 hours a week does training like the below.
M 1 hour Recovery
T 3.0 hours w/ 2x20 Low SST (i.e. around 88%)
W 3.0 hours w/ 1x30 Low cadence tempo effort
T 2.5 hours Endurance
F 2.5 hours Endurance w/ 6x10s high cadence sprints
S 4 hours Endurance with 1x45m Tempo to SST climb (or just Endurance depending on how far in to base they are)
S 4 hours Endurance
If a rider could ride 10 hours per week it might look like this.
M OFF
T 1.5 hours w/ 2x20 Low SST (i.e. around 88%)
W 1.5 hours w/ 1x30 Low cadence tempo effort
T 1 hours Endurance
F 1 hours Endurance w/ 6x10s high cadence sprints
S 2 hours Endurance with 1x45m Tempo to SST climb (or just Endurance depending on how far in to base they are)
S 3 hours Endurance
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Exactly, you’ve put ‘hard’ into context in language, but still generally ‘hard’ means very different things to different people it is fluffy and not well defined.
In the context of this discussion most of us are talking about SST from a physiological point of view and not using arbitrary terms such as easy, moderate or hard. If I was going to I would use the term Moderate to describe SST.
Yes, it is mentally very hard to push through the last intervals. So far I’ve managed to complete the workouts, but then I start questioning if this is the way I’m supposed to feel after this workout. I don’t think I should to be at the limit during most of the SS sessions.
When I’m about to do over unders I know that there will be a lot of suffering and even possibility of failing, but I dont expect that during SS.
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I mean, the title of the post literally has the word “hard” in it, and the whole discussion started around the fact that SS intervals were hard for the OP and the OP wondering how hard should they be/whether they were too hard because his FTP was too high. Sure, “hard” is subjective (I don’t think it’s “arbitrary” though), but OP asked about SS workouts being “too hard”, so it’s not wrong to circle back to the original point. If the individual designing the workouts (Coach Chad) has said that SS workouts should be “hard but doable”, then that seems to be a valid point to mention in addressing the OP’s question.
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Which is why the conversion evolved.
You don’t want to be pedaling squares or gasping for your last breath, but those intervals do get hard in my experience. I find that my heart rate on the last couple intervals gets into threshold territory, particularly if it’s after multiple days in a row without rest. Your heart rate looks a little high compared to your max, but not crazy. I think the real question is how well you are recovering. If you are physically unable or totally unmotivated to do additional workouts the day after, you probably need to back down your FTP a bit. Again, I wouldn’t underplay the mental side of this. The right answer to the mental side is not always “HTFU” as some would have you believe. That’s a recipe for burnout if you are suffering that bad on every workout. Back off and build back up as you can.
Right, but circling back to the original point to add additional information that frames things in the same way that the OP did originally can still add to the discussion. Discussion of the physiology behind different training zones is obviously informative and worthwhile, but ultimately, most of us are training outside of a laboratory setting, so feel will come into play to a certain extent in understanding whether our tested estimates of power output at given physiological states are accurate and therefore allowing workout intensities to be prescribed accurately, so discussing how these workouts should feel can be helpful and shouldn’t be dismissed.
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Same. Would be good to get an update, one that includes some old and new info about traditional base. Lets start with the new:
“What this looks like is you will embark on Traditional Base first, and upon its completion, you will jump into the Sweet Spot Base Plan. If you have eight weeks to “spend”, then simply do the first two phases of Traditional Base before jumping into the full 12. If you have the full 12 Weeks, then you can do all three phases. If you have 8-12 Weeks, then you can trim out Week 3 from each phase to reduce the total duration.”
Source: https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025556952-Too-Much-Time-
And some Coach Chad comments from the past:
"Honestly, Adam, I think 1% is in fact too harsh; probably more like 90% considering that the far majority of our subscribers are either very time-constrained or simply trying to limit their amount of time spent riding indoors.
There are plenty of very valid use cases for the traditional approach, which is why I devised those plans in the first place, but we wanted to steer those riders having only a handful of weekly hours toward are more results-oriented tack. I’m sure you’ll agree that if you only have 3-5 hours to train each week, rolling along at 65-75% of FTP isn’t going to get you nearly as far as doing 2-3 Sweet Spot workouts and a bit of VO2max work.
But for those riders with long seasons, with enough time to accumulate enough volume to make the longer, slower work effective (i.e. a true training stimulus), and with the patience to endure the less varied workout formats, Traditional Base is both effective and recommended."
Source: Base Training: How to Decide Your Best Approach
and
“I don’t included any of the base mileage in my plans for two reasons: 1 – It’s possible to build a good aerobic base (not a terribly deep one, but one that’s sufficient especially in terms of sub-3hr events) with intensity alone, and 2 – It’s often understood that aerobic mileage is worked on during non-intensity days (Mon/Wed/Fri/Sun) based on each rider’s goals and training time availability, or put simply, it’s very subjective.”
Source: https://blog.trainerroad.com/ask-chad-volume-in-training-plans/
Those are some of the reasons I’ve started my 2020 season with Traditional Base and then following with Sweet Spot Base.
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I agree, but the OP has HR data you don’t need lab testing to see the SST level it is way out. The HR data totally contradicts (the very poor IMO option) FTP estimate from the Ramp test. Okay there might be other factors that have been discussed, fatigue etc still the estimate being correct is possible but unlikely given the data provided.
Edit:- In words my take…
SST - moderate, prolonged discomfort, I rather not do this but I can.
Threshold - Hard can’t do this for long
VO2Max - Very hard, what the hell, can do this, but you sometimes can just.
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- Some quick Excel work:
- 18+ hours more in phase 1 of High Vol.
- 24+ hours more in phase 2 of High Vol.
- For a total of nearly 43 more hours in High Vol compared to Mid Vol.
- That is anything but a “small difference” in my eyes.
Importantly, that large difference in time is what leads to the “time crunched” approach with more intensity for the Mid Vol plan, compared to the greater time at the nearly complete SS effort in the High Vol plan.
They are using more intensity with less time to get the adaptations in Mid Vol.
They are using more time at a lower intensity to get the adaptations in High Vol.
Those concepts are similar to what we see in the range of time and intensity applied in areas outside of TR.
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Sure, language and association with other points of interest are
“fuzzy”. I am not getting into the minutia of that and related semantics.
You asked a specific question, to which I answered.
Then, I proceeded to add some potential context to the “hard” comment in question and what TR seems to mean by using it. I can’t explain their precise reason for choosing their wording.
@Bikeguy0 you totally sound like one of my acquaintances that is 100% polarized and thinks that is the best thing to have happened since sliced bread. If it works for you then awesome. For me on the other hand I sincerely enjoy all the workouts on TR and I love to challenge myself and my body with different types of stress. For example I’ve been strength training along side my cycling for a year and now that my strength isn’t a limiter I’ve started playing ice hockey for two hours before my workout on Sundays. And I’m on SSBMV II having already completed SSBMV I and I’ll continue to do this and ride outdoors all winter long.
Not a problem for me with the intensity and fatigue. I recover exceptionally fast it seems and I would never have figured that out if I hadn’t pushed myself. But Trainerroad and the plans allow me to fully explore my fitness and I’m grateful to have done TR all summer because I really feel the effects of it being able to push and recover for so many times that I even lost count myself.
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