This. I dropped the premium version of Strava and gladly send some of the savings to David every quarter. Glad to see he’s doing it full time and hope he’s able to make a go of it.
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Could someone else who’s a member of the “More Sweet Spot!” Team please take a look at this Workout Library link , and describe what they see?
It should show an ordered list of the Workouts within that Team, but I’m seeing nothing (or rather, something seems to flash up momentarily then disappear). Similar situation for the other Teams I’m a member of…
Looks like a bug’s crept in, but wondered whether it’s just me or whether it’s universal?
TIA.
Yep, same.
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Thanks svens. I’ve reported the problem.
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Quick question to anyone who knows, when you import or build a workout with workout creator, does TR assign a PL to it?
Yes. Some have said it (at times) does not align with the difficulty of similar PLs in the library though. Mine have been pretty close for what its worth.
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Thanks, yes, the workouts are still there, it just seems to be a presentation bug within the Teams section itself (& it applies to all Teams).
TR have now acknowledged the bug so presumably a fix will be along at some point. Cheers.
I’m looking for advice coming back from a few months off. Injuries, work and life have been rough the past 5 months. My ftp is down 60+ watts since when I was training earlier this year.
I’m planning on doing 12 weeks of progressing TIZ with sweet spot. Beginning of the year I was having good success planning my own progression. So I feel confident in understanding all of that.
I’m wondering, as time goes on and my FTP rises
( hoping it will ) , should I continue following my “planned” workouts for the 12 weeks? Or should I start from scratch after each time I get a decent ftp bump?
I feel like the second option isn’t the answer, then I’ll be doing sweet spot forever.
Other thoughts; if everything goes well during this time and I hit the target TIZ I’m looking for (1x90).
I’ll either shift to an 8 week threshold block or a mix of threshold and 1 vo2. No events I’m looking to do at the moment but want to get some fitness back.
You might be a good candidate for adding 5w per workout, starting conservatively. That’ll keep the RPE similar, and also provide a progression. If you have good feel for sweet spot/threshold you’ll know when that’s run out of juice and can switch to progressing TIZ.
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I wouldn’t start the progression from scratch if your FTP rises during the progression.
You aren’t just improving your FTP with these workouts, you are pushing out your TTE and improving many other aspects of your fitness too. That means starting from scratch would likely make the first few workouts “too easy” really.
Depending on the size of the FTP increase, you might consider going back 1 or 2 steps in the progression. Or you might consider riding the last workout you did again - at the new FTP - and then continuing the progression
Or you could manually increase the workout intensity by 1% each week, or manually increase your FTP by 1% each week between AI detections.
And variations on the above that you feel suit your progress best.
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This makes sense, thanks. I appreciate any advice on how to get some fitness back. I feel that there’s always something to learn from other people and their experiences.
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It might be more effective to not try building your SS TTE until you get closer to your old power. Regain your fitness and then build up your endurance.
I’m currently in the process of rebuilding as well. I lost about 50 W after taking some time off after abdominal surgery over in the spring. My process has been to start slow, first building back up to spending 7ish hours a week on the bike then adding some intensity to regain FTP.
I followed the workout pattern in the Masters (I hate that word) Base plan, with each week consisting of a 90 min Sweet Spot workout, a 90 min Threshold wo, and 3-5 hours of Endurance spread out however I could manage.
I started around SS PL 5.0 and Threshold PL 4.0 and then chose workouts to increase the PLs in those zones week over week. I let AI FTP detection run, but only accepted results when they matched how I felt. (I seem to build FTP slower than TR thinks I should.)
After regaining half of my losses, I switched over to a “Build”, swapping out the SS for VO2. I’m about to start the second 4 weeks of that block and it feels pretty productive. I’ll probably keep going with VO2 and Threshold as long as I’m seeing gains then do some big Tempo/SS stuff over the winter.
This is all very personal, of course, but I feel that if I had tried to build SS TTE back in July when I was at my lowest power, that would have been kind of meaningless.
Do your SST progression, you’ll start to know when RPE feels quite a bit easier on the workouts, and then you can do a field test of some kind to validate FTP increase, adjust your power target, and take a couple steps back in the TTE progression. I strongly discourage the “add 5W” progression because I would rather you add TIZ at “too low” of a power than arbitrarily add power. So if you test a 20W increase in FTP, and you’re working a 3x20, maybe dial up power to 90% of the new FTP, step back to 3x15 and see how that goes. If it goes well, go right back up to 3x20, or do something like 3x18 → 3x20 and you’re back where you were within a week or so. You can be quite a bit more aggressive when you’re working at 90% of threshold than when you’re working right at FTP (assuming you have good training history and are generally covering “known territory”). You want to be a bit more cautious once you get into the heavy, heavy loads like 80-120 min of SST in a single workout IMO.
Post SST progression, unless you are still below historical FTP values for yourself, I’d go VO2max. So if you’re historically a 300W FTP, and your threshold is 270 when you get to your 1x90, then yeah, do some threshold work. If you’re in the ballpark of 300W, go VO2max IMO.
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Having done this and coached quite a few athletes through this, I disagree with this.
First, establish consistency on the bike, and get back up to the low end of your normal hours.
Next, progress TTE at your current threshold, allowing for advancement during that time. It’s not uncommon for people coming off of training breaks to regain most of their prior fitness simply by doing a SST progression, in my experience.
As mentioned in the post above, you just have to allow for that gain to happen, test it (or if you’re really experienced with RPE, just adjust FTP as it happens), and then take a step or two back in the TTE progression and continue on.
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Thank you! I was actually hoping you’d respond and almost sent you a personal message. Your advice has helped me a lot in the past.
I wasn’t sure if someone else was in the same position and would benefit from the advice also. So I posted a message on this thread.
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I have a few threads I watch here that are in my coaching “wheelhouse” here, and this is one of them. 
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If you’re in this kind of situation, it’s often a great investment to reach out to a pro like Kurt for a one-time consult. That way you can really drill deep into this situation and your specific needs, and get tailored advice that helps you far more and helps you progress more quickly.
That kind of consult is also a way for you to vet the advice from different coaches, and test chemistry with them, and see how much you value and benefit from the coaching itself.
Though I’m purely a recreational athlete, I found enough value from those consults that I ended up sticking with a long-term coaching relationship, specifically with Kurt, and have found it priceless for my training to be as good as possible, and as fun as possible, within the context of a busy professional life.
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Trainer season kicked off for me with my own sweet spot progression block (now completed), which I’m following up with some TR General Base blocks (just begun).
With my Sweet Spot PL up high as a result of the progression block, but my Threshold PL down low (ie. unrealistically low) having not touched it for months, what would be a sensible ballpark PL level to pitch my first Threshold workout at? NB I’d rather be conservative vs punchy while I feel my way into it…
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Depending how you get your ftp, the long range test is also a guide to what your threshold tte is.
So if you ride at X amount of watts for 35+ minutes, whatever the length you held, thats the time in zone for starting threshold workouts.
For PLs in TrainerRoad, I never liked going below 4.
They don’t have simple progression threshold workouts. Or at there’s no 2x25 or 2x30 or 1x 45 at ftp.
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