Which is a lot harder than it sounds. I didn’t know ANYTHING back in 2014 except that super time-crunched benefits from HIIT. And until a year ago I didn’t start comparing the spin class era to the following two eras (club+CTS/Xert and TR). And now I’ve got a 4th era of training, and a good set of analysis tools.
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Admittedly it is a long journey, one I had correct at the start but didn’t realize until i tried different things to be sure.
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Interesting, I have read someone else’s comment on this but no one says “how” should then a fast twitch be doing his /her base… Z2 instead of SS?
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My interpretation of her comment around Sweet Spot is that most amateurs are doing too much of it and aren’t really touching the Z5 or Z6 power enough to see benefit from it. This was me for about 3 years. Lots of Sweet Spot and Threshold, little VO2max and little Anaerobic work. Definitely no dedicated blocks to it.
So, I don’t think she’s wrong. I also don’t think she’s blanketing the entire population of cyclists over 40 with her comment, chances are it just came out wrong. Clearly she has anecdotal evidence to support her point of view.
Sweet Spot was en vogue for a while, now it’s Polarized. Not for no reason, though. To me, her point is that a lot of Sweet Spot is really hard to recover from, and that many older athletes could find a lot of benefit in doing long-steady-distance coupled with one or two really hard interval workouts. I guess I agree–it’s worked well for me.
I still do 8-12 weeks of Sweet Spot work in the winter though.
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I’m a fast twitcher - my understanding is that a more polarized approach might work - Lots of Z1/2 + Vo2 intervals. Of course that is a generalization.
It kind of comes down to what you want to train for. I mean are you a fast twitch athlete trying to do long course triathlon? You’ll probably need to work long and hard to convert those fast twitch fibers to work for endurance.
I think this is where metabolic testing might help one dial in training zones and intensities.
As a fast twitcher, I did a ton of Z2 this winter. I had nothing to train for with covid but wanted to keep aerobically fit. My FTP stayed static. In the spring I did a 3 week block of sweet spot (not a lot) and saw good gains (15 point bump in FTP). I took a break and now I’m working on VO2 workouts and have seen another 15 point bump over the last month and a half. These workouts are few and far between though and the base of all my riding is endurance. I often hold myself back on attacking hills with my anaerobic abilities on endurance rides.
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I’m always interested in the slow-vs-fast twitch discussion so I looked for evidence one day awhile ago… At the moment WKO thinks I’m a rider with:
- 80% fast-twitch fibers / 20% slow-twitch type 1 fibers (huh?)
- 97% aerobic contribution to 20-min power (all that z2 I guess)
- low anaerobic capacity (my 1-min power sucks)
- decent 5-sec kick (come on, keep fighting for 60 seconds!)
in other words, a hot mess 
Going back to the longitudinal data, it seems clear that WKO thinks my muscle fibers are like the bad Terminator in the 2nd movie… amorphous and shape shifting! For your Friday afternoon entertainment here is WKO modeled % slow-twitch since buying a power-meter:
That 76% slow-twitch was just before the double century, dropping to an all-time low of 14% a month ago before dead-cat bouncing to 20% last week.
hmm, since you lose fast twitch with age, this is clearly confirmation that avoiding sweet spot and doing more explosive efforts will reverse the effects of aging!
Forum news flash: “old dude bbarrera confirms that avoiding Sweet Spot is the Fountain of Youth!”
Looking at that chart I can hear Jonathan and the podcast crew saying you can be anything you train at 
Yes, there are good stretches of max effort data in there. No, I’m not getting a muscle biopsy 
to verify the chart data. And yes, I’m down with the Ponce De Leon Fountain of Youth angle on all future “should I do sweet spot?” discussions
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Interesting chart in Wko. I’ll have to look for that one. It looks kind of useless!
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Useless? NO! Proof that avoiding sweet spot is the fountain of youth!
I turned 38 this year.
I hardly do any sweetspot.
Does this mean I’ll be turning 37 next year?
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Short Power Build LV on repeat and drop all sweet spot!
At 80% fast twitch, doesn’t that instead mean that you can “afford” sweet spot? 
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Last year at age 60 I did a block of short power build lv in the spring. It did feel like it made a big difference to how responsive I was in ability to produce greater power. Anecdotal but it has me tempted to do another block this year.
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My fractional utilization (FTP as %VO2max) is 89% which is way above normal, so no, I’m not interested in doing more sweet spot. I need to do more VO2max work, would be much happier with fractional utilization below 86%.
But per my request, coach put a 45 minute freestyle tempo workout into the rotation and tonight I pushed it out to an hour:
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I think a lot of this “over 40 so you are losing muscle” stuff is largely overblown. How are you losing muscles that you are working on a daily basis? Doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t care if you are over 40, tilting your training heavily toward threshold/Vo2 work is only going to get you so far. You absolutely need a comprehensive approach…AeT, tempo, SST, threshold AND Vo2 max. After 14 weeks doing 10 minute suprathreshold intervals 2x/wk I topped out and the only place now left to go is lower and longer. I always get a chuckle with absolutist type thinking.
This advice might make a modicum of sense for time-crunched older cyclists but it won’t make said cyclist a world-beater. Once you top out on Vo2 max then where do you go? Because it will happen after 12 - 16 weeks. If you are time-crunched your FTP ceiling is going to be limited ultimately.
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Yep, giving SS to a sprinter is a sure fire way to blunt their sprint. More polarised would be a safer choice.
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I rather listen to/read more nuanced takes on the topic, for example this here:
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Here, then, are the take-home lessons of the studies on VO2max and ageing:
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Maintain training. If you are a veteran athlete who wants to preserve VO2max, it is important for you to maintain the quantity and quality of your training as you get older. If possible, you should also seek ways to gradually and carefully increase the average intensity of your training sessions, since a couple of key studies have shown that master athletes who are able to do this may maintain VO2max completely and even improve performances. If you are a veteran whose training has been rather low on the intensity scale, such an improvement in quality may reward you with some PBs.
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More muscle less fat. To preserve VO2max, maintain or increase your muscularity and avoid getting fat. Muscle tissue has a high demand for oxygen, while fat tissue is dead weight which drags relative VO2max down and hurts performances. Sport-specific strength training is the best way to optimise your muscularity, while a sensible diet which is moderate in fat content, adequate in protein and carbohydrate and not over-rich in total calories will help keep you slim.
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Vary training. To hold on to VO2max, add special modes of training to your overall programme. Grinding away at your chosen sport (cycling, swimming, running, rowing, etc) is a good way to increase the risk of injury in veterans. Therefore, alternate your usual workouts with other kinds of sessions, which can help improve your performance while keeping injury at bay. For example, endurance runners might consider non-impact proprioceptive training to improve balance and running economy; running-specific strength training to upgrade economy and bolster basic foot speed; and high-quality bicycle training to enhance leg muscle power and lactatethreshold. Such supplementary sessions would be very likely to improve running power and endurance capacity and thus hike average oxygen consumption during workouts, stimulating VO2max to stay at stellar levels.
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Work on lactate threshold. To maintain high-level performance, work on other factors besides VO2max in your training. For example, lactate threshold has been found to be much more responsive to training in older athletes than VO2max, perhaps because lactate threshold is more dependent on muscle function than on cardiovascular attributes per se. Thus, veterans who lose some VO2max might be able to preserve – or even improve – performance by making major improvements in their lactate-threshold development.
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Use key workouts. To support VO2max and lift lactate threshold simultaneously, use key workouts such as fartlek sessions. While the thought of fartlek work conjures up images of Finnish skiers gliding through forests and Kenyans running with amazing speed along the highlands of western Kenya, fartlek-type efforts are perfect for veteran athletes. Whether you are biking, swimming, rowing, running, speed-walking or engaging in some other form of endurance activity, a very nice fartlek workout would involve warming up thoroughly and then alternating 2-5-minute bouts of working at 90-100% of max capacity with 1-4-minute intervals of easier (recovery) movement until significant fatigue develops.
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Thanks for the link. Great article, although I was dismayed to see it said nothing about maintaining VO2 max via eating donut holes with a cup of coffee while reading online forums. (my current situation)
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I think it’s also about the negative consequences of high intensity. It’s a double edge sword. We often only think of positive adaptions but there can be negative adaptions and health risks if you do anything of a moderately hard intensity or above too often.
“Training is a stress that does cellular damage, alters brain chemistry, and disturbs hormone levels, increases inflammation, negative consequences.”
So don’t do sweet spot all the time , which apart from being middle of the road in terms of effort, it’s generating all that damage and inflammation which you’re less able to deal with as you age.
Inflammation is good for adaption but only if it doesn’t become chronic due to insufficient recovery between hard sessions.
This is an interesting thread.
I’d class myself firmly in the faster twitch side of things given the 33+ years of high intensity weight lifting and also playing rugby that were my exercises of choice, for most of my life up to 2016 and I’ve historically been pretty poor at ‘endurance’ events or efforts.
I guess this is a product of becoming what you train rather than necessarily a product of innate genetic predisposition; albeit it’s been a lifelong trend since I was a young kid of being comparatively poor at longer effort running etc.
Anyhow - have been doing SSBLV1&2 from the 4th week in January following some “getting back into it” SS workouts from New Years Day, following an extended break from riding, with an extended rest week protocol applied (I’m 48 so have adopted the one recommended on this forum elsewhere, as an experiment for myself).
Surprisingly (to me) this has seen my FTP as tested on the TR ramp test go from 225 to 267 which is interesting given I didn’t expect this and had expected I’d see more gains once I moved into build (which now ironically I’m finding harder ).
The point being SS for this n of 1, more explosive / less endurance slanted ‘older’ (40+) individual has proved pretty beneficial on a modest low volume approach.
NB: #01 My ftp was around 340 last April 2020 so am returning to previous levels post an accident which, following the false dawn of a brief return to riding, then led to some further complications/ partial paralysis that happily is now starting to improve enough to allow a return to outdoor riding, (as opposed to breaking new ground for the first time).
NB: #02 My ‘top end’ hasn’t been trained or tested properly this calendar year yet, but I’m recording peak power numbers within circa 15% of my 2019 PBs at a lower threshold number, suggesting on a relative basis I haven’t lost or given away too much in the process of applying a low volume SS approach so far this year.
NB:#03 I’m doing low interesting (lazy mountain or Dans) sessions on 3 out of the 4 days off, on the LV plan and extending the warmups and cool downs by 10 minutes each, to up my overall weekly miles but with negligible TSS increase overall - still only doing around 100 to 110 miles a week average which is pretty low
Guess an awful lot of training strategies come down to individuals preferences / makeup / genetics / time / focus / goals etc as opposed to a generic ‘x is best’ and ‘y is worst’ approach?
Or am I completely and utterly missing the whole point here? (In which case I’ll happily shut up and get my coat 
) …
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