SST to tha PMC

frenchyge said:

Last winter, I hit the L4 pretty hot and heavy and experienced substantial gains in my FTP. However, I remember during that period that a few posters were quietly confident in their Sweet-spot Training (SST) approach, and not surprisingly, they were also people that served as beta testers for the Performance Manager Chart (PMC).

Now that I have access to the PMC and have been thinking about its use, I gotta say that I'm thinking that SST is looking pretty good for this winter. I'd like to hear some thoughts from rmur17, Beerco, or any other posters that used the PMC beta and a primarily SST approach last winter. How'd it go, and what are you doing differently *this* year (figure I may as well save myself the trouble of writing this again next fall 🙂 )? Also, what did you use to make a determination of when to shift the focus from SST to higher intensities or some other focus?

Thanks in advance. 🙂

I was (still?) a beta tester. But came into it later than some. No specific comment about SST but this winter just gone (we are approaching summer here), I have done bugger all L4 and above work (it's just starting now) and mostly L1/2/3. I did some track racing through winter here (say 2 out of every 3 weeks at the local Friday night track series and one local road race ~ 1hr only).

At the end of that phase my FTP reached PB levels and I also set PNorm PBs during championship road and crit races couple of weeks back. My form at the track was the best it's ever been. So I am really positive as the hard stuff is only just starting....

My CTL hit new highs this season and it sure seems easier to attain through L2/3 than with L4 +. But the hard stuff is what will take me to new heights.

As to decisions on what to do when, well I'm leaving that to coach....😉

I think for some the PMC simply validated their approach, while others did make modifications.

frenchyge said:

Last winter, I hit the L4 pretty hot and heavy and experienced substantial gains in my FTP. However, I remember during that period that a few posters were quietly confident in their Sweet-spot Training (SST) approach, and not surprisingly, they were also people that served as beta testers for the Performance Manager Chart (PMC).

Now that I have access to the PMC and have been thinking about its use, I gotta say that I'm thinking that SST is looking pretty good for this winter. I'd like to hear some thoughts from rmur17, Beerco, or any other posters that used the PMC beta and a primarily SST approach last winter. How'd it go, and what are you doing differently *this* year (figure I may as well save myself the trouble of writing this again next fall 🙂 )? Also, what did you use to make a determination of when to shift the focus from SST to higher intensities or some other focus?

Thanks in advance. 🙂

I could write quite a lot about my experiences starting last fall, over the winter and thru 2006. But I'll try to condense it down ...

Summary rating: A (is that enough info? 🙂)

1. I'd gotten a little mentally burned thru winter of 2004-2005 with a very heavy focus on L4. Made good progress there but was strongest in spring and set hardly any PB's over the season. Power was good to very good from say 5-30min but I suffered a steeper than normal drop-off after that.

2. My racing is nearly all TT (1 single-day RR and one 3-stage RR).

3. Given #1 and what "hit me in face" when I retrospectively plugged in my historical data into PMC, I decided that my typical 3x L4 workouts per week (winter) weren't providing sufficient weekly overall training load/stimulus (TSS) to build my CTL to where I felt it should be.

4. Indoor training starts for me in Nov and unfortunately carries on until April. I can often get out once weekly on the m/b except for Jan-Feb but my CT is my main training platform. Kudos to 3D graphics mode and lightly rolling to purpose-built long climbing courses!

5. Starting last November, I went cold turkey on *pure L4 work :eek: for the 1st time since I started training with power. I decided to target the 0.80-0.90 IF range and see what my n=1 experiment yielded.
* I think of pure L4 as 0.95-1.05 (bit higher than std. definition)

6. Not that it's applicable to anyone else here's a rough weekly schedule for me (rough duration, IF's etc from memory and not including short wu & cd):
M: OFF
T: L3 2-2.5 hrs *target 0.9
W: L3 1-1.5 hrs target 0.85
T: L3 2-2.5 hrs target 0.9
F: OFF
S: L3 3+ hrs target 0.80-0.85 (up to five hrs if riding outdoors)
S: UL3-L4 1 hr target 0.90-0.95 (upper L3 to lower L4)
* note that I didn't always achieve target IF and duration due to fatigue, sickness, etc

Average week was ~12hrs, ~850TSS, and ~0.85 avg.IF

7. I followed that base routine until around six weeks before our 1st TT in early May with the usual transition into L4-5 work. Though I had a bit of a medical restriction that limited my L5 work all thru this season.

8. Results:
(a) FT increased about 25W before I started typical 0.95-1.05IF L4 work
(b) CTL up where I wanted it (roughly 120 and I built somewhat higher)
(c) I set PB's this year for durations of 30-sec to 5-hrs and they were quite evenly distributed throughout the year. That was a big departure from the last 2-3 seasons where my last PB's would be in May and then a big gap until Sept/Oct. where I'd occasionally pull off a nice 1-5min PB.
(d) No 'dread' of training sessions throughout the winter as I'd typically get when pounding at the higher intensities. I doubt I missed more than a couple of sessions all off-season.
(e) No perceived or demonstrable fade in performance over the season. I know the word 'base' means a lot of things to a lot of people but I felt I had a great one.

9. Thanks to Andy et al of course. My only contribution was to have the confidence to drop the heavy work and substitute extra volume at roughly 10% lower intensity.

10. Modifications for the upcoming off-season: TBD 🙂

rmur

Great food for thought Rick and Alex. Thanks. 🙂

I'm especially attracted to the idea of building CTL (and hopefully FTP), through the winter while saving the heavy lifting for later in the Spring. If I could get my FTP back to peak '06 levels through lower-stress SST before really trying to build, I think that'd be a major coup.

Andy, if you can think of anyone else that used this approach last year, please invite them to post their comments here.

frenchyge said:

Last winter, I hit the L4 pretty hot and heavy and experienced substantial gains in my FTP. However, I remember during that period that a few posters were quietly confident in their Sweet-spot Training (SST) approach, and not surprisingly, they were also people that served as beta testers for the Performance Manager Chart (PMC).

Now that I have access to the PMC and have been thinking about its use, I gotta say that I'm thinking that SST is looking pretty good for this winter. I'd like to hear some thoughts from rmur17, Beerco, or any other posters that used the PMC beta and a primarily SST approach last winter. How'd it go, and what are you doing differently *this* year (figure I may as well save myself the trouble of writing this again next fall 🙂 )? Also, what did you use to make a determination of when to shift the focus from SST to higher intensities or some other focus?

Thanks in advance. 🙂

When I first described sweet spot training I was also using TSTWKT (aka PMC) as a beta testor. At the time it was clear that one of the most effective ways to generate TSS day after day and consequently raise CTL was to go out a sweet spot.

I would have liked to explain why but at the time of the world wide release of the SST article we were not ready to llet the cat outta the bag with TSTWKT -- so it was sorta like the egg before the chicken.

Nevertheless -- you hit the nail on the head, SST is great way to raise your CTL. Hence the title of the article "Summer Sweet Spot building for a second peak" -- we noticed you would run outta base (CTL) after the frist half of the season which helped make the decision to build up CTL again with an eye on the races later on the summer.

Pay attention to your ATL too, as SST will generate a great deal of fatigue. You can use the model to help figure out when you'll be too tired and when rest is warranted.

With regards to progressing to higher intensities -- just take some rest, give up some CTL, BUT watch your TSB go +'ve and then you'll feel good enough to knock the higher level intervals out of the park.

fascat said:

Nevertheless -- you hit the nail on the head, SST is great way to raise your CTL. Hence the title of the article "Summer Sweet Spot building for a second peak" -- we noticed you would run outta base (CTL) after the frist half of the season which helped make the decision to build up CTL again with an eye on the races later on the summer.

Pay attention to your ATL too, as SST will generate a great deal of fatigue. You can use the model to help figure out when you'll be too tired and when rest is warranted.

With regards to progressing to higher intensities -- just take some rest, give up some CTL, BUT watch your TSB go +'ve and then you feel good enough to knock the higher level intervals out of the park.

Frank? Cool. Interesting comments, thanks. 🙂

Your comments about fatigue and ATL have got me wondering about ATL levels for different training intensities. You allude to a kind of small 'taper' in preparation for the higher intensity training. Is there a general feeling that one should be below certain ATL (fatigue) levels in order to train at certain intensities? Is that what helps produce the sweet spot (ie, there's no ATL limitation which precludes SST, so you can keep piling on more and more CTL)?

Even though SST looks like a cake way to raise CTL into the 75+ range over the next couple months, I still have a minor concern that SST might produce a lower FTP plateau than upper-L4 training. Any thoughts there?

frenchyge said:

Frank? Cool. Interesting comments, thanks. 🙂

Your comments about fatigue and ATL have got me wondering about ATL levels for different training intensities. You allude to a kind of small 'taper' in preparation for the higher intensity training. Is there a general feeling that one should be below certain ATL (fatigue) levels in order to train at certain intensities? Is that what helps produce the sweet spot (ie, there's no ATL limitation which precludes SST, so you can keep piling on more and more CTL)?

Even though SST looks like a cake way to raise CTL into the 75+ range over the next couple months, I still have a minor concern that SST might produce a lower FTP plateau than upper-L4 training. Any thoughts there?

Specificity as always, especially as you get towards target events of course since CTL doesn't distinguish how (in terms of the type of workout) you achieved the ramp. But like I said - I'm only starting the hard stuff and I'm already setting FTP PBs.

Alex Simmons said:

Specificity as always, especially as you get towards target events of course since CTL doesn't distinguish how (in terms of the type of workout) you achieved the ramp. But like I said - I'm only starting the hard stuff and I'm already setting FTP PBs.

How has your training been the last couple years? Have you been training FTP a lot in recent years? I pounded FTP pretty good last season and pushed it up about 12% to 325w by mid-season. If I could be setting PBs by about March before starting the hard stuff, I'd be feeling really good. But of course, we never really know how far up we can go, do we? 🙂

frenchyge said:

How has your training been the last couple years? Have you been training FTP a lot in recent years? I pounded FTP pretty good last season and pushed it up about 12% to 325w by mid-season. If I could be setting PBs by about March before starting the hard stuff, I'd be feeling really good. But of course, we never really know how far up we can go, do we? 🙂

It's really hard for me to compare seasons as each year our Championships keep changing time of year.

So given that limitation I would say that in the last couple of seasons I hit L4 work too early* and I was probably plateuing early.

* in the sense that in retrospect, I realised later that many of my shorter "tempo" efforts were actually L4 in disguise, so I was short changing myself on SST. When I started my L4s, they were not at the same volumes I read about some people doing and I didn't lift FTP much further anyway. And I hadn't settled on testing protocols.

Before that, well training was never consistent enough and I was in pre-PM days (which I call the "Dark Ages"😉.

The retrospective analysis using the PMC was like an epiphany for me, showing up the glaring errors in my own approach. I coined a phrase in an email to Andy C and called it the "retrospect-a-scope".

It was scary. Simple fact is, I never accumulated enough CTL or in the same way as I have so far this season. Many lessons learned - as a retrospective analysis tool, it is second to none.

Not to hijack the thread, but Frenchy, where is your CTL normally, in-season? You mentioned raising it to ~75. Mine has been hovering around the upper 70's most of the summer and I assumed most serious riders were way above that.

I wasn't using PMC during the season last year, but in post-season analysis it hung between 65-85 between Nov and about the middle of June.

This year, I was hoping to raise CTL to ~75 fairly effortlessly using SST, *before* laying on the heavier stuff. You're right that I'd like to see it go much higher than that before my peak. As far as serious riders go, I'm a 36 yr-old Cat 4 with family, so I'm somewhat time limited. There are certainly lots of riders who train more than I'm able to.

Great thread.

I have almost done the oposite of what FG is planning - last season I got plenty of sweetspot and then added L4/L5 as season approached - CTL hung around 70 and peaked at around 88 - I had some great races and plenty of peak powers.

This year due to time and business constarints, I have had far fewer hours to train (6 Vs 11-12) and have done L4 almost exclusively as it seemed to be the best use of my limited time.

CTL is now at 62 but this has been boosted with the addition of a hard 4 days in a row (training camp)

FTP and fitness are nowhere near last year and my performance, whilst reasonable at L4, has been poor in races.

FTP is now 270 Vs 290 last year.

So I guess that I have really missed the volume and the SST and despite 40+ % at L4/5/6 I have not performed.

peterwright said:

Great thread.

I have almost done the oposite of what FG is planning - last season I got plenty of sweetspot and then added L4/L5 as season approached - CTL hung around 70 and peaked at around 88 - I had some great races and plenty of peak powers.

This year due to time and business constarints, I have had far fewer hours to train (6 Vs 11-12) and have done L4 almost exclusively as it seemed to be the best use of my limited time.

CTL is now at 62 but this has been boosted with the addition of a hard 4 days in a row (training camp)

FTP and fitness are nowhere near last year and my performance, whilst reasonable at L4, has been poor in races.

FTP is now 270 Vs 290 last year.

So I guess that I have really missed the volume and the SST and despite 40+ % at L4/5/6 I have not performed.

Now you know why it's called "the sweet spot". 🙂 That is, although to a large degree you can simply trade volume for intensity or intensity for volume when doing what is really just plain-jane endurance training (i.e., levels 2-4), there does seem to be a combination at which the benefits are maximized. Still, look at it this way: thanks to your dedicated approach (vs. just mucking around as many do), you're w/in 10% of your numbers from last year despite only training half as much.

acoggan said:

Now you know why it's called "the sweet spot". 🙂 That is, although to a large degree you can simply trade volume for intensity or intensity for volume when doing what is really just plain-jane endurance training (i.e., levels 2-4), there does seem to be a combination at which the benefits are maximized. Still, look at it this way: thanks to your dedicated approach (vs. just mucking around as many do), you're w/in 10% of your numbers from last year despite only training half as much.

That is a very posiitve way of viewing it 🙂

I am now grabbing at any SST I can to boost CTL to 80 again and save my season - will increase hours to at least 10 an hope for the best.

Cheers

Here's a related question, since we're finally able to talk objectively about training 'macrostructure.' 🙂

Last fall I was excited to hit the trainer with my new PM, and I hit it hard with 8+ hrs/wk of L3-L4 right from the start. As a result, my PMC has a huge ATL bump in Oct-Nov, while my CTL slowly crept up to join it in Dec-Jan. Looking back, it seems that much of that excess fatigue/energy may have been wasted compared to a different approach which sought to keep ATL at a constant ~20-30 pts above CTL and bring them both up together. It looks like I could have gotten CTL to the same level, at the same point in time, but with a lot less ATL (at least initially) using the ramping approach.

This question harkens back to the addage that "the more you train, the more you can train," but is there a perceived benefit in ramping ATL (volume) up with CTL, or IOW, letting fitness increase before increasing the training load further? Andy or others, is this something you do either intentionally or intuitively?

So, if I am reading this right, is the general consensus that doing SST to build your CTL up over the winter is the way to go, avoiding L4 work for the most part? I was planning on working on 2x20s two to three days a week at around 90-95% FTP. But, maybe it would be better to do longer L3 sessions more regularly?

gimpy_calfee said:

So, if I am reading this right, is the general consensus that doing SST to build your CTL up over the winter is the way to go, avoiding L4 work for the most part? I was planning on working on 2x20s two to three days a week at around 90-95% FTP. But, maybe it would be better to do longer L3 sessions more regularly?

If your goal is to maximize your functional threshold power, why not do both? That's what I had my wife do over the winter of 2001-2002, and come spring she was hanging with P/1/2 men on 5+ h 'hammerhead' training rides and even beating many of them in local TTs. (Of course, she also made time to train up to 24 h/wk, and broke down twice under such a heavy training load. :eek: )

peterwright said:

That is a very posiitve way of viewing it 🙂

And some people say that I couldn't be a good coach... 😉

peterwright said:

I am now grabbing at any SST I can to boost CTL to 80 again and save my season - will increase hours to at least 10 an hope for the best.

While aiming to get in those 10 h, you might also aim to train on the bike at least 5 d/wk. IOW, I think that speading the training load over more days is better than being an extreme 'weekend warrior' and doing only a couple of rides in between (even though the latter approach is often more convenient in winter, due to daylight/temperature issues).

acoggan said:

If your goal is to maximize your functional threshold power, why not do both? That's what I had my wife do over the winter of 2001-2002, and come spring she was hanging with P/1/2 men on 5+ h 'hammerhead' training rides and even beating many of them in local TTs. (Of course, she also made time to train up to 24 h/wk, and broke down twice under such a heavy training load. :eek: )

well having done three winters of the heavy L4 focus and one of heavy L3 focus, there's no way I could do both. I've found my personal limit to be 10-12 hrs indoor's - spread over five training days that's close to 2.5hrs on the indoor trainer and I think most folks would find that enough 🙂

However, were I smart enough to live in warmer climes I'd probably up that somewhat but ... still isn't available daylight a key restriction for most working folks?

Short of winning the lottery, I'm not 100% sure what I can improve from last winter's approach. As long as the overall ride powers slowly increase over the weeks, I'm quite happy. As a "mature" trainee, I expect only say 5% gains over a long training block.

rmur

rmur17 said:

well having done three winters of the heavy L4 focus and one of heavy L3 focus, there's no way I could do both. I've found my personal limit to be 10-12 hrs indoor's - spread over five training days that's close to 2.5hrs on the indoor trainer and I think most folks would find that enough 🙂

Rick, did you make an effort to ramp up the training volume over time, as mentioned in my post below (ok... blatantly waved around in "look at me" fashion :o )?

frenchyge said:

Here's a related question, since we're finally able to talk objectively about training 'macrostructure.' 🙂

Last fall I was excited to hit the trainer with my new PM, and I hit it hard with 8+ hrs/wk of L3-L4 right from the start. As a result, my PMC has a huge ATL bump in Oct-Nov, while my CTL slowly crept up to join it in Dec-Jan. Looking back, it seems that much of that excess fatigue/energy may have been wasted compared to a different approach which sought to keep ATL at a constant ~20-30 pts above CTL and bring them both up together. It looks like I could have gotten CTL to the same level, at the same point in time, but with a lot less ATL (at least initially) using the ramping approach.

This question harkens back to the addage that "the more you train, the more you can train," but is there a perceived benefit in ramping ATL (volume) up with CTL, or IOW, letting fitness increase before increasing the training load further? Andy or others, is this something you do either intentionally or intuitively?