I just signed up for TR the other day and did a ramp test to kick things off with which was recommended in my planner. I got an FTP of 224.
On my 2nd workout it was a Baxter sweet spot 90min session however looking at the analysis I never made it into the ‘sweet spot’ power zone …15mins in Active Recovery, 1h5m in Endurance and 10m in Tempo. (Bear in mind that I matched all the power of the workout and didn’t drop below 85-90rpm the entire 90mins).
Am I right in saying that by doing the ramp test and accepting the new FTP that it will change my future sessions on the fly? I started off with an FTP of 150 when it imported all my Strava data but the ramp test gave me 224.
Am I just too new to TR to understand this training process properly? Does Sweet spot not actually mean the sweet spot power range? Or, does the ramp test not update the future workouts and I need to do something differently?
Baxter is an endurance/tempo ride, not a Sweetspot session. When you accept the FTP from your ramp test, all future workouts will use that as your baseline (until it changes again). The workouts use % of FTP to set the intervals so they’ll change absolute values as your FTP changes.
Baxter is much more of an endurance zone ride in terms of power than it is a tempo ride. If it was on your calendar as part of your plan, I wouldn’t be too concerned about how much time you spent in what zone. Consistency in completing workouts is far more important if you’re newer to training.
Looking closer at the training plan (which is very bog standard as I didn’t enter anything for events or the like) it seems that I’ve got 6 weeks of sweet spot 1 which doesn’t touch my ftp except for 3 workouts.
This is just to get me read for more intense training in the future which, after I do another ramp test in 6 weeks, will just up my FTP therefore pushing the future tests to be harder and harder on a 6 week rolling basis?
I assume this is a very common question for new people starting so my apologies in asking in the first place.
Not every workout in the SSB plan will be tackling Sweetspot for you. SSB1 definitely keeps it on the lower end and scales you into doing more and more intensity over time. When you finish your next ramp test and accept the result, all workouts after that test will use that number for your FTP, so yes it will get harder week to week, but you will also be progressing week to week. The ramp test is just to check in on your fitness at the beginning of each block to make sure the intensity is appropriate to your abilities.
