I’ve been wanting to design a sweet spot with VO2 Max intervals plan for awhile now. After listening to everyone’s feedback and response to sweet spot parts 1 - 2 & 3 + the 18 weeks of sweet spot, I have designed Sweet Spot Part 4: Polarized!
This six week training plan will take you thru a 3 week Vo2 Max interval training progression on Wednesdays. On the Saturdays you’ll enjoy long sweet spot rides with TSS prescribed and instructions on how to apply this long rides to your individual preferences. Want to go for a Strava KOM or Segment Challenge – go for it. On Sundays will slow the training down as part of our fatigue dependent training plan design model with Zone 2 training. By riding easier you’ll recover well for your hard interval workouts downstream.
After the 3 week VO2 progression the plan has you do a rest week followed by a 20 minutes field test to measure how much you have improved!
This plan is perfect for the cyclists how have plenty of time to ride long on the weekends but limited training time during the work week and want to work on their high end mid-weekend and build their aerobic engine by riding sweet spot watts long on the weekend.
Just looked through this plan, looks excellent for lifting that FTP from above whilst giving it a shove from below at the weekends. I feel it could be a proper game changer. I won’t be on it until end of August but will let you know how it goes
Thanks Frank, this looks like a great option for me right now. I’m starting a new training block this week, and I’ve been trying to choose between the road racing interval plan, or repeating either SS2 or SS3 plan. I like the SS plans but it’s often difficult to fit in some of the 2hr weekday workouts in these plans.
One comment from looking at the plan preview. The Sunday and Tuesday workouts are missing estimated TSS numbers. I like to track how my CTL will change with the TP performance management chart.
Thanks.
yesterday I noticed the same, and keeping in mind Frank’s “fresh is faster” comments I put 0.6 IF into TP strictly for planning purposes (to see CTL over 6 weeks).
Did the first Tuesday ride, still acclimating to the heat so I dialed it way back and ended up with 0.55 IF. That took some discipline but it was hot so a bit easier. HR was pretty darn low at 120bpm (middle of z2 is about 135bpm for me).
Good timing on this release! Just wrapped up SST2.
Thanks to SS2, I held down 236 watts for a full :60 on a recent ride which is a PR. But noticed on Training Peaks my numbers on 1 & 5 min are way behind last year, so be fun to switch it up a bit and blast some shorter, intense stuff.
"Many Zwifters maintain their workout schedule through TrainingPeaks, but unfortunately last week’s Zwift update seems to have broken the automatic downloading of today’s TrainingPeaks workout into your Zwift workouts list.
I’m sure ZwiftHQ is working on a fix, since TrainingPeaks is a very popular platform among Zwifters. But until that fix arrives, here’s how you can manually get your day’s workout in TrainingPeaks to show up in Zwift:
The idea is simple enough: it’s easy to download your TrainingPeaks workout in ZWO format, which is the format Zwift uses for its workouts. Then you just need to move that file into your Workouts folder on your PC or Mac, which is located at Documents\Zwift\Workouts<>
When you boot up Zwift, your workout will now be visible under “Custom Workouts”.
Additionally, Zwift will copy that custom workout to its cloud, so if you start up Zwift on another device like iOS, Apple TV, or Android, you will see the custom workout there.
Yep, I hit this immediately last week and reported the bug. They have no fix yet, it’s been a while. It’s pretty annoying, to say the least, as I always forget to do it until I load up and then have to quit and do the export.
In the workouts folder, there should be another folder with your zwift id. It goes in there.
I started in January with the Resistance Training + SS1 plan and then moved to the Gravel plan as I had a B race scheduled in June.
I ended up simulating the race and felt amazing… the gravel plan was so fun to follow and perfectly matched my day to day schedule and riding preferences.
I have another simulated race in 13 weeks from now (100 miler) and struggling to choose the right plan combo.
SS4 + Gravel would probably make sense and be super fun… but not sure if I should do SS 3 + SS4 instead.
I do really enjoy ~200 TSS rides on Saturdays and would like to keep improving my FTP during the week.
I think Sweet Spot 4 Polarized followed by either the Gravel Plan again or hill climbing intervals if your gravel race has a lot of climbing (as many tend to have)
Can’t wait to hear how your numbers improve for the shorter efforts after following SSP4.