I don’t think over unders have ever been specifically studied in a scientific manner. The notion that they are something useful to do is based off some reading of physiology, hand-waving, and coaching/athlete experiences.
I think this is what you were trying to get at?
Not sure if still accessible for everyone (since Teams function seem to be abandoned for newer users) but there is Team over-unders with workouts to pick.
As some said I’d also prefer something like 2 or 3 x 20min @90/115% 2min/30sec OU.
But iirc the proclaimed special lactate clearance purpose of O/U has been busted. (Maybe @empiricalcycling or @The_Cog might jump on that one.)
For me, they feel psychologically more manageable than flat power slightly suprathreshold intervals, and I feel they slightly better replicate a summer evening semi-competitive paceline. Whether 3x12 @ 90/110% offers any physiological benefit over 3x12 at (say) 102% I have no idea, and at my level, I doubt it would make any statistically significant difference anyway,
A lot of talk of lactate clearance here that I don’t think is a thing. @empiricalcycling has a podcast on over unders I believe where he talks about this sort of thing
Oh no not that one again. That was where they tried to draw broad conclusions about an intervention (type of a workout) from a paper that didn’t study that intervention at all. There’s a whole thread on this already 
I don’t think that over unders really have that much bearing on how well your FTP is set. Something like a sierra or sonora will give you a much better idea what your FTP is.
Palpana wouldn’t be terrible if the recoveries were at 40-50%, but those recoveries at 70% make Palpana BRUTAL!
Wasn’t to bad, I was half way through it when you posted.
Personally I prefer the recovery about 60 - 65%, I cool down too much at 40%
Is that true?
If confirmed, it’d suggest Teams was to eventually be deprecated, and all the good stuff contained therein (SS90 workout library!) would be lost unless migrated to the official w/o library… 
I can confirm. We got it via a TR rep in the last week or two.
People with it now maintain access, but it’s not given to new users.
Thanks.
I’ll try to remember to email support requesting that Teams workouts be migrated to the workout library, or otherwise retained, before access to them is lost if/when Teams is eventually deprecated, as must be the eventual destination (whether planned or accidentally via some future website update that overlooks the legacy stuff…).
One obvious problem with migration would be the w/o naming conventions that apply to the official library. My interest is in the More Sweet Spot! Team workouts, which are named usefully to convey the w/o structure, information which’d be lost even if they were migrated over to the TR library… 
The points were in the podcast so if anyone didn’t listen and pay close attention, and just looked at the papers referenced, it’s easy to miss. Since one can’t prove a negative, there’s no paper showing that “lactate clearance training” has any unique adaptation associated with it, because there is none that I’ve ever found evidence for.
The points made, broadly and from memory, were that 1. for our purposes lactate doesn’t seem to have much effect in skeletal muscle other than as a fuel source so it’s silly to think about its presence yielding any special adaptation to clear it, as that’s wasted energy, 2. monocarboxylate transporters everyone seems to love now (particularly mct1) seem to be expressed as a general aerobic adaptation program that gets switched on by signals that are not the presence of lactate and are in fact classic things like pgc1a, hif, etc., 3. these transporters have a broader range of function than people think they do, since my reading of the literature says they’re bidirectional and based on concentration gradient, and the two people care about mostly vary in their vmax and lactate Km, 4. mct1 expression is highly linked to mitochondrial density which is not necessarily fiber type specific so the whole lactate shuttle thing is really up in the air anyway, and 5. expression of the things that clears lactate (how much mitochondria you have and how much oxygen you can provide to your muscle) are basically equivalent to how well endurance trained you are, and over/under training falls under the very broad category of “muscular endurance training”. Therefore lactate clearance training has a normal effect similar to threshold training with more motor units involved, but not a unique effect, which was the main thesis. Sorry if that’s a jumbled mess. Thanks for listening if you did.
I find O-Us to be an interesting idea. Psychology matters when training, and if they help break up monotony on the trainer or give you what you need mentally to do what you need to do, do them. The last thing you want, especially during winter, is to get tired of pedaling going nowhere. Thankfully, between Dave Mustaine, Rob Halford, R.J. Dio, and Blackie Lawless I can manage on the trainer. Okay, T. Swift and Courtney Love help on occasion too. 
That said, I think this kind of training incorporates broad language that is misleading. Are you training mitochondria to clear lactate? I doubt it. Clearance is simply a matter of how much lactate is being produced vs. being consumed and happens on its own accord when production falls below consumption. I think it would be better to focus on training mitochondria to consume lactate rather than to simply have them exist in a physiological state where they don’t need to consume it (and can’t because it isn’t there).
During an “under” consumption exceeds production, and as lactate “clears” the mitochondria start using an increasing amount of fatty acids and glucose rather than lactate, so really you have to wonder if you’re training mitochondria to not use lactate since they don’t need to do so. Compare that to maintaining a 30 minute intensity where lactate production slightly exceeds consumption - you are force feeding lactate to the mitochondria for a full 30 minutes, no (or I suppose minimal if there are trace amounts) fatty acids or glucose involved. To reference a certain movie:
Mitochondria: “I need a bucket. I can’t eat another bite!”
Lactate: “Just one more - it’s waffer theen!”
If we measure lactate training via consumption, a 30 minute supra-threshold effort starting at FTP and moving up a bit to say 108% and back, means 30 minutes of forced lactate consumption and a training effect based on that physiological state. If we consider a 30 minute O-U session with efforts of 1 minute over and 2 minutes under we are talking about 10 minutes (plus some seconds during the “under” before lactate has fallen to a level where fatty acids and glucose take over) of forced lactate consumption training effect. 30 minutes vs. 10 minutes.
Just seems to me that O-Us are based more on a cool idea and misuse of language (clearing lactate vs. consuming lactate) rather than actual physiology. Of course, if moving back and forth in intensity is what grabs you and keeps you training then definitely do what you need to get those harder rides in. Additionally, you might find you can do two, three, or even four O-U sessions each week whereas only one or two supra-threshold sessions, so finding the right distribution and balance in a weekly plan is important too.
First, mitochondria don’t consume whole glucose so head back to your biochem textbooks. Second, training mitochondria to not use lactate isn’t a thing, even if you go keto it’s a product of relative abundance and relatively tiny glycogen stores. We don’t really get any adaptations we care about as endurance athletes by consuming one fuel or another. If we consider all this, plus lactate not having an effect manifesting as fatigue, why does it matter at all if we’re “consuming” or “clearing” which are actually the same thing?
In my lactate testing of cyclists, know whose lactate values drop the fastest? People who ride the most, even if they’re not doing over/unders. Mitochondrial mass plus ability to move oxygen to the muscles = oxidation of all the things and rapid reestablishment of cellular homeostasis.
I’m using certain phrasing and language as a means of emphasis, does that make sense? Training mitochondria to not use lactate is a way of saying what’s going on isn’t what you think, you are not training mitochondria to clear lactate, lactate is simply cleared because it was not produced in an amount that would cause accumulation in the first place.
What is important is the physiological state of lactate production exceeding its use as a fuel, where increased hydrogen makes the blood more acidic than when lactate production is below consumption, but the muscle fibers continue to do work (pedaling) with lactate being the fuel source. The adaptations that occur in that state can be trained and should be trained if performance is a goal.
But why is specifically O/U with its flapping lactate important?
Say, during base/build (i.e outside specialty), if generic improvement is goal, can’t I simply do 5x5 (or whatever long intervals) at VO2max + 3-4x20min Z4 at 95-98% of FTP (i.e. below LT2) + rest of time filled with Z2?
Sorry to say that the language and emphasis doesn’t make sense because it seems to be based on an incomplete understanding of metabolism. For instance, I can’t tell you the number of times in consults when looking through workouts I see over/unders touted as some magical way to improve FTP because it increases lactate oxidation, and this is just not how it works. The state of FTP is a transition state where substrate utilization is effectively an afterthought due to the way metabolism is compartmentalized, and it’s not that we can’t oxidize lactate (however much is around) but more that aerobic metabolism as a whole is insufficiently meeting demand (upholding energy state). We can generally consider whether lactate gets made in excess as a consequence of the cell’s energy state. And generally speaking whether it gets oxidized is a consequence of the cell’s work rate and lactate’s relative abundance. Lactate is basically an innocent bystander in all of this, and basing an entire philosophy on it sounds fancy but totally misses the forest for the trees. The forest is: you’re improving muscular endurance (ability to aerobically maintain energy state) through some very general signals indicating sustained exercise, or you’re not.
I don’t think O/U with flapping lactate is important, other than from a psychological perspective if alternating intensities keeps you pedaling.
I look at OUs as basically tempo rides with short periods of increased intensity that, if the duration were maintained for the requisite amount of time (and it isn’t), would be akin to supra-threshold or VO2 max interval training. This is where psychology comes in and if that variety keeps you training then do it. I would rather just do specific tempo, sweet spot, supra-threshold, or VO2 max training but some people like to mix things up within rides and that’s fine.
This.
There are subtle changes in muscle mitochondria with training that make them a bit more like those found in the heart, but far and away the most important adaptation is simply an increase in overall respiratory capacity.
IOW, as Kolie indicated, it’s not really about training your mitochondria to do anything, but simply making more (volume) of them.*
*And/or packing more TCA cycle enzymes, respiratory chains, etc., into the same mitochondrial volume.
Can you prescribe me some TCA cycle enzyme intervals? 
More seriously, I do enjoy stumbling into science lessons that you and kolie are frequently postinf
