Enjoy.

http://fascatcoaching.com/tips/three-ways-to-improve-functional-threshold-power/


http://fascatcoaching.com/tips/how-to-build-power-on-the-bike/


http://fascatcoaching.com/tips/sweetspottraining/

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Carson Christen
Sport Scientist / Coach
Torden Multisport

What's the reason behind the broader definition of Sweet Spot, 83 to 97%, rather than Coggan & Allen's range of 88-93%?

Just a larger range. Upper Tempo to low LT is still aerobic, More Bang For Your Buck Training. Just shows that some workouts you may do at 96%, others at 85%, but it'll still do the job!

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Carson Christen
Sport Scientist / Coach
Torden Multisport

computrainer pig program. boosted my ftp immensley

There are two schools of thought. While both believe in increasing time-in-zone at the expense of intensity they disagree over where the trade-off should be.

1. Pull FTP up from above by doing supra-threshold work. 4x8 with two minutes rest at 90% of VO2max. Studies show the highest gains in FTP and VO2max versus traditional threshold training and longer/shorter intervals when this is done as part of a polarized program with 20% of sessions above the anaerobic threshold (beyond FTP) and 80% below the aerobic threshold (Friel Zones 1 and 2).

2. Push it up from below.
2a. Get close, but don't go over so you stay fresher. 2x20 with 5 minutes rest at 95% of FTP is a classic threshold work-out.
2b. Go slower to maximize time in zone with sweet spot riding straddling where Friel's zones 3 and 4 meet. 88 to 92%. As intervals or rides.


Mondays I moved on from 3x10 to 4x10 with 5 minutes rest starting at 110% of FTP.

Riding the entire rest of the week at an endurance pace would be boring; so Thursdays I ride 1:15 - 1:30 at 92-95%.



I think that on group rides the odds are nearly zero for you riding hard enough to benefit, but not so hard you can't maintain that intensity.

Just an FYI, that's Hunter's range, reflecting his use of the training levels prescriptively.

Me, I consider what eventually was termed "sweetspot" by Frank Overton to be anything between approximately the level 2/3 boundary to FTP.

(IOW, it's a concept more than anything else.)

What studies are those?

As a start

Polarized vs. traditional approaches:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24550842
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23264537

4x4 vs 4x8 vs 4x16
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21812820

To summarize VO2max, time to exhaustion in supra-threshold efforts, and lactate threshold/40K time trial performance all improve more.

Impact on longer efforts like what happens to CP240 goes unmeasured. I'd be especially interested in how that works at moderate (~15 hours a week) total training volumes, as opposed to low-volume high-intensity where a lot of sweet spot is the path to high CTL.

Is this correct 2 minutes rest at 90%of VO2max?

If you're still aerobic, you can generally build up to be taking very little rest.

A great 70.3 workout I do and prescribe to my athletes is 10 x 10min ON 2min OFF Sweet Spot / Half Ironman Watts. It hurts, but in a race, you won't have 5min rest between effort level. So by taking only 2min, you can still get a great workout in, keep your watts up, but use little watts.

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Carson Christen
Sport Scientist / Coach
Torden Multisport

Since when is it "traditional" for endurance athletes to do no high-intensity intervals at all?

To be fair here, has anyone ever advocated doing nothing but threshold training?

Shouldn't the study compare Polorized against mostly threshold with some high intensity?