How hard should sweet spot be?

I started the 18 week SS plan today. Instead of a 20 min FTP test I did 4x10 SS intervals. I did an FTP test a couple weeks ago. Anyway, I don’t know how hard these efforts ought to be. My HR was quite a bit lower than the projected SS range, and my W were upper middle. I saw somewhere in here SS should be “medium hard” but it just felt medium-ish. Should I just push it a little harder and go to the top of the range or a little beyond? I felt really good about my FTP effort 2 weeks ago.
I have never done SS intervals before, particularly with a modern smart trainer set up. Just dated myself a bit there.

Why did you not just take the test as instructed in the plan, it’s the first part of FtFPing?

But in my opinion, SS feels pretty “medium-ish” on week one of a three week block, but gets tougher and tougher week after week as fatigue creeps in until your rest week.

I promise you, when Sweetspotting in the last couple of hours of your last Sunday ride before a rest week you will be praying for it to be “medium-ish” again :joy:

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I asked the coaches. Frank suggested it was probably too soon to repeat the FTP test for useful changes to have happened. Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

Heya @ben.johnson - thanks for getting on our 18 weeks of sweet plan! I have hunch that you may want to test again (#FtFP) to get an accurate threshold heart rate determination along with your wattage FTP.

Because heart rate and watts should correlate nicely. Sweet Spot is 84-97% of your wattage based FTP. Its hard but not like race pace hard. Honest work.

See our training tip and Coach @Jake’s video tutorial:

Sorry BJ didn’t realise!!! :kissing_heart:

Great plan, and I love getting such quick feedback and answers. Will repeat FTP test. No problem Neil - Cheers!

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