Personally, I don’t really plan by TSS that much most of the time. Early base? Yes, I try to ramp up reasonably well, but TSS isn’t always an apples to apples comparison. Every season I’ve ever done, I ramp up in base, and then TSS levels off in build, drops slightly before races. 550 TSS of SST is one thing, 550 TSS of polarized VO2max training is different. Wouldn’t worry about pushing your CTL much higher, particularly if time is limited.
I love the idea, I just don’t know how practical it is for my personal schedule, especially since I typically only ride on Saturdays on the weekend. I’d lose one of those workdays… but this is something I should look more into. After normal/pyramidal training blocks, I’m usually ready to go after five days of recovery and easy riding.
Looking at your list and to be fair, you aren’t forced to use erg. Above FTP Coach Chad appears to be a big fan of repeatability and doing 9x3-min instead of starting with an individualized 4x3-min and progressing. Mentioned this before, I have off-the-shelf masters plans from Cusick and Overton and they favor individualized vo2max over repeatability. So it seems like a coaching thing, or the lack of a masters plan from TR. And not sure I understand your comment on intervals being too short to be productive, go look at my Strava and you would probably laugh but I showed you my numbers yesterday and doing short intervals between SST and VO2max resulted in an almost immediate across the board performance increase versus TR plans. One interpretation: for some #freshIsFaster and #lessIsMore and #minimumEffectiveDoseMightBeALotLessThanYouThink
I did this because I want recovery more often but still us those extra available hour to train at the weekend.
The days don’t matter it is the day pattern / concept I like.
Note: there is AR Active Recovery and then EN after the weekend which was a heavy couple of days (Sunday double session Bike & medium/long run) so the SS is pushed to Wednesday to recovery from the weekend load.
Traditionally I would put SS on Tuesday, then SS or tempo Wednesday then EN aka Fastcat a Fatigue resistance training plan. This ^ is still fatigue resistance training, although at first glance it might not look like it.
WRT shorter intervals: I see little practical use in a 4x6 SST workout, and the SSB plans are replete with 6 and 8 min interval lengths at SST. And I don’t think calling a 90s or 2-min interval a VO2max workout is a bit of a misnomer, especially since at the prescribed 115% (or whatever) of FTP, you’re not likely to elicit a VO2max response. Just because an interval happens in a power zone semi-arbitrarily named VO2max doesn’t make something a VO2max workout.
FWIW a 4x6-min at 90% is likely where someone like my sister needs to start a progression. I remember blowing up at 10-minutes when getting started.
And I’d also rather see “Z5” instead of VO2max. My coach does this, for example “4x3.5 Z5” instead of calling it a full-gas VO2max workout. But if you just want to be spoon fed workouts (like my sister), it’s six of one, half dozen the other.
Yes thank you…when i look at my history data and CTL iam always between 70-80 when iam good in crit races. So 70-80 is good with 10-12 hours training a week. I also dont plan my TSS weekly. I look at the data and try to do my volume and intensity.
If you are doing sweet spot, 96% is too high, and 8min is too short.
Rather than 4x8 @ 96% look at doing minimum 10min intervals at 90%. So to get your 32min of SST do 3x10, or may it a 3x12 to start off. Grow that out to longer intervals 20, 30, 45min, and doing less sets overall to maximize TiZ for the workout.
96% is not Sweet spot but the bottom end of Threshold.
A Threshold session at the low end, 96%, you should in my opinion looking at a minimum interval length of 10 minutes but in reality 12 minutes, and 3 - 4+ intervals
Just a heads up that Tim Cusick’s 3rd webinar on annual planning is out on youtube. (I know that is completely off topic, but think there are people active in this thread who’d be interested).
I found the series really good, a lot of principles that resonate with me and seem to make annual planning more intuitive, especially for someone who’s self coached I think. Stuff like not having time-bound training phases (8 weeks base, 4 weeks build etc), but moving between them depending on physiological and performance markers. Or being flexible about your zonal distribution, using what seems right for the phase (pyramidial, polar etc).
This part has been educational in terms of “what’s under the hood.” It kind of makes me smile at all the people crowing for polarized training plans when I see Tim saying “sometimes I do pyramidal, sometimes even, sometimes polarized… it depends!” And Seiler himself is the same.
It also seems to fall naturally for me - when focussing on building threshold, your distribution will be more threshold-heavy. When just riding, your distribution will automatically be pyramidial. When you do intensive high-end work, it will likely be polar, because you just can’t do more time at the high end, and need to fill the rest of the time with low-end stuff.
For SST, primary goal is overall maximization of TiZ in a workout, with a caveat that secondary would be building longer intervals so that you are generating the right kind of adaptions for this type of work.
Doing 5s intervals with breaks 1000 times might get you the same 90min of SST in the workout, but the adaption is going to be very different than doing 1x90.
Because the goal is to grow that aerobic capacity, balancing overall TiZ in the least amount of long intervals should be the goal.
Personally i cant do an interval longer than 40min without just mentally wanting to throw in the towel. So i try and keep my intervals max’d at 30min and do any many as needed to get my overall TiZ target.
As has been mentioned many times in this thread, push yourself to go longer, there is benefit in it, and part of it is building that mental strength.
It takes time for your metabolism to get into the ‘steady state’ of sweet spot. The longer intervals allow you to spend more time there and force your body to maintain that state for longer.
There’s also the mental benefit of knowing I can sustain 90% for 90 straight minutes, I can endure high percentages of FTP for longer and longer times. That matters in breakaways and TTs.
Started about 3 weeks ago with 3x15’ at 94%, every 5’ a 10" acceleration to 365W or better. Got hard in the last block but doable.
1.5 weeks later the same session but felt a lot harder (outdoor temp went up from 0 degrees C to 20 degrees C, combined with 2 previous training weeks of 18.5-19h).
Yesterday did 3x20’ at 94% with again a 10" acceleration to over 365W every 5’. Legs were screaming the last 10min though. Last block my HR was getting close to threshold HR (3-5 beats below), first two were mid to high tempo zone.
Those 10" accelerations really do make it a lot harder on the legs.
This to me is the primary benefit of doing these progressive sweet spot blocks. None of my cycling buddies train this system in this way. They just ride and their efforts are always determined by the terrain.
For those of us who race gravel, being able to hold the throttle at 85-95% of FTP for minutes, actually hours, on end is a massive tool in the arsenal. The confidence gained by going into a race or event when you know you can sustain high percentages of your FTP for long durations is a huge mental edge.
I never hear anyone talk about sweet spot work from a physiological point of view, other than maybe muscular-endurance or it’s ability to lift FTP. But it’s never a deep dive, not like the way VO2 max work is studied and talked about. I’d be curious to know more about the benefits of pushing TTE or sweet spot duration from a physiologic point of view.
