TiMan said:
). At that point you really have no choice but to crank up the intensity, in hopes of eking a small additional gain even though there might not be much of one to be had. So, I also view the choice of training intensity in the context of one's overall plan/progress...
acoggan said:Let me start by saying that the notion of a "sweet spot" is just a subjective impression that I (and many others before me, e.g., Lydiard) have formed. It's therefore difficult to pin things down with exact numbers, and the chart to which you linked is really just my attempt to conceptually relate the idea to the training levels (instead of, say, VO2max). IOW, don't take it too literally (esp. since that's somebody else's modification of my original - rather lame! - "artist's rendering".)
Having said all of the above, I do believe that there tends to be a "sweet spot" with respect to training intensity, which if push came-to-shove I'd say lies between the level 2/level 3 border and functional threshold power (i.e., between 76 and 100% of functional threshold power). Below the lower end of that range, the training stimulus simply isn't as great, whereas above the upper end of that range, either you simply can't do as much total work or the nature of the adaptations themselves begin to change. In between lies a bit of a "sweet spot", in which the combination of volume and intensity appears to be maximized, leading to the greatest adaptation.
So to directly answer your question: no, I don't believe that you should necessarily be training at 85-95% vs. 100% of functional threshold power. However, I do believe that, in general, you're better off not pushing too much above 100%, as that may excessively limit the total amount of training that you can do, and thus the overall benefit obtained.
Final caveat: no matter how much "sweet spot" training you do, at some point you will end up bumping up against your own personal ceiling with respect to how high you can raise your functional threshold power (right, Rick?
very nice post. I have nothing but good things to say about SST ...acoggan said:Let me start by saying that the notion of a "sweet spot" is just a subjective impression that I (and many others before me, e.g., Lydiard) have formed. It's therefore difficult to pin things down with exact numbers, and the chart to which you linked is really just my attempt to conceptually relate the idea to the training levels (instead of, say, VO2max). IOW, don't take it too literally (esp. since that's somebody else's modification of my original - rather lame! - "artist's rendering".)
Having said all of the above, I do believe that there tends to be a "sweet spot" with respect to training intensity, which if push came-to-shove I'd say lies between the level 2/level 3 border and functional threshold power (i.e., between 76 and 100% of functional threshold power). Below the lower end of that range, the training stimulus simply isn't as great, whereas above the upper end of that range, either you simply can't do as much total work or the nature of the adaptations themselves begin to change. In between lies a bit of a "sweet spot", in which the combination of volume and intensity appears to be maximized, leading to the greatest adaptation.
So to directly answer your question: no, I don't believe that you should necessarily be training at 85-95% vs. 100% of functional threshold power. However, I do believe that, in general, you're better off not pushing too much above 100%, as that may excessively limit the total amount of training that you can do, and thus the overall benefit obtained.
Final caveat: no matter how much "sweet spot" training you do, at some point you will end up bumping up against your own personal ceiling with respect to how high you can raise your functional threshold power (right, Rick?
I found this paragraph the most interesting, and I hope you don't mind elaborating on it some. Is there a physiological reason that you would expect to hit a plateau on l3/low l4 yet be able to gain more FTP with high l4 training? Is it related to FTP, e.g., if you've pushed CTL as high as you feasibly can with sst training, then the only way to improve further is to gradually add intensity while trying to keep CTL the same?acoggan said:Final caveat: no matter how much "sweet spot" training you do, at some point you will end up bumping up against your own personal ceiling with respect to how high you can raise your functional threshold power (right, Rick?
whoawhoa said:
Rick, do you mind sharing how the composition of your training changes in the last months before a peak/goal after a long period of SST?rmur17 said:very nice post. I have nothing but good things to say about SST ...
But yes - keep going to the well and eventually she'll be dry - at least until rainy season
What I took that to mean is that after some point the ceiling becomes Vo2Max, i.e. you have trained FT to the point that your limitation is Vo2Max and gains in FT would require higher than L4 intensity to raise Vo2Max or "bump up the ceiling".whoawhoa said:
dome said:
Thank you, I tried that, but to get the power increasing upward on the Y, and time increasing to the right on the X, I have to rotate the page and look at it from the back (mirror image). I then have the same setup as a normal Power Duration Curve, but the curve is still convex instead of concave?acoggan said:
The Max Duration curve combines with the Strain curve to show that only a certain amount of 'stress' (combination of strain and volume) can be withstood by the individual. Are you saying it should be concave (upward) in order to show a multiplication with the Strain curve to produce a fixed stress? I would probably agree with that although that probably makes the diagram *more confusing* for many people.dome said:
I had a nice detailed reply written this morning but got a "server too busy" error when I posted it. Arghh...whoawhoa said:
)
rmur17 said:My key TT's are only 20-25k or ~30MP so I target this duration quite a lot during an L4 focus block as listed above. Specificity is well covered
At first, I thought that the Max Duration curve was nothing other than the well known Power Duration curve.frenchyge said:The Max Duration curve combines with the Strain curve to show that only a certain amount of 'stress' (combination of strain and volume) can be withstood by the individual. Are you saying it should be concave (upward) in order to show a multiplication with the Strain curve to produce a fixed stress? I would probably agree with that although that probably makes the diagram *more confusing* for many people.
I once stated that I thought the Training Effect should be an 'S' curve, low at the low end, rising dramatically through the L2/L3 border, and high (but flattening) at the upper end. If that were the case, then it'd be very easy to see that the sweet spot concept resulted from the combination of the training effect curve and the volume curve.
In the end, it's simply a diagram or sketch and not a mathematical model.
