Creakyknees

As we mosey into the autumn, thoughts of next year creep in.

There are lots of threads and ideas out there, how about a summary of current "best practices" to raise power at threshold?

tabatas?
2x20's?
sst?

Days/week? Time/distance? Three weeks on / 1 off?

YMCA

all of the above, then double that

hammy56

Is this the 'practice' youre going to do in your off season, or when your season starts. Im wondering, and interested because Ive been wondering the same, sort of. My 'season' wont start for months, but I dont want to lose too much fitness JRA, because I'll still be doing fast group rides and such...so Im thinking of doing one interval day a week (alternating V02, Threshold), one sst day and group rides on the weekend...sorry, not trying to hijack your thread, just hoping some responses might answer my questions as well.

waterrockets 

What worked for me this year was:
-Big endurance base. Not recovery miles, but not too much into the tempo range. This was during a weight loss phase, but I was surprised at how well it prepared me for a solid build phase. I did this for about 6 weeks.
-SST: started off with 5 or 6 per week. Mostly steady SST, hard tempo. Some paceline rotation or terrain driven SST thrown in there.
-Friel Pace intervals (Same Time Until Can't Improve - STUCI): after 6 weeks of pure SST, I started throwing these in. I did these for about 6 weeks with the SST.

So, coming out of the endurance work, I felt like I should be weak, but I was really riding strong. My body responed rapidly to the SST and FTP shot up from 330 to 345 quickly. Then the STUCI put the finishing touch on and I was at 360W FTP.

SpongeDad

Can you explain STUCI in a bit more detail?

Apus^2

https://www2.trainingbible.com/joesbl...cing-post.html

asgelle

Specificity, progression, overload.

Dubbayoo

2x20's for me, but that's all I did this year.

DrWJODonnell

Ride Lots?

Creakyknees

Guess I'm going to have to find a forum where people are serious about racing....

Doggus

Head on over to Cycling Forums - Power Training subforum. It's the serious. You find more stuff like what WR posted.

asgelle

If you're serious about racing, you'll understand there's no point in collecting lists of workouts that may or may not work for you. What's important is learning how to identify your limiters, what training is likely to improve those, how to measure your progress, and then modify your training appropriately. For everyone saying 2x20's are the answer there's someone saying you should be riding up hills in a 53x13 to build strength.

Creakyknees

thanks Doggus, should've just emailed you.

aperez8264

-10,000 and blasphemy

Seriously though, what works for WR doesn't work for everyone else. You're better off experimenting and finding what works best for you.

waterrockets 

Yep, I hit the threshold workout buffet cafeteria a few times and sampled various threshold workouts. SST and STUCIs (my acronym, not Friel's) just work better for me than 3x10s, 2x20s, or 1x60s.

To be fair, CreakyKnees was looking for a list of workouts. That sounds like hitting the buffet to me. It was a thread like this where I learned about the STUCI workouts, gave them a try, and I'm rolling.

gsteinb

1 day of 3x20s, 1 day of 10 minute hill repeats, 1 day of moto pacing

kensuf

OK.

Sub-threshold work in the off-season. Lots of it. When you stop seeing gains dump in some vo2max work to raise the ceiling. Wash, rinse, repeat until you can't improve anymore.

ccrnnr9

One I do for TT's that works pretty well is based more on time than wattage (although you could modify it pretty easily to accomodate wattage...for me basing it on time helps my pacing too though). I'll do this workout once weekly when rested. I use a 50-60minute interval and break it up into blocks of 10min. First week I do 1 min right at or just above FTP followed by 9min right below FTP (say 95%). I do this for 5-6 10minute intervals. The next week I do 2min "on" and 8 min "off". This helps me dial in the legs for getting used to riding at a steady tempo for a set time interval while also boosting my ceiling.

Another workout you could try would be to find a hill of 5-8%grade that takes 3-5min to climb and climb just over FTP. When you get to the last ~500meters of the climb get into your big ring and get the pace higher. By the time you have ~250meters left get out of the saddle and sprint to the end. I usually do 2 sets of 3-4 of those with 10minute spinning recovery between sets. That is more of a workout I do in season to add the final edge but it really helps to make me feel stronger.

Hope those help!
~Nick

bostongarden

I appreciate this thread...I'm pretty new at this, but workouts inolving 20', 40' and 80' have been most useful to me...my plan is to chill until December or January and just ride miles and follow my nose, let my body and mind take it relatively easy...then, in Dec or Jan, slowly introduce some intensity, probably fartlek, for 2-4 weeks, then get a little more structured (for 2-4 weeks?) with 10-20' intervals, then add sprint workouts to the mix, and then get into some longer SST...and then into a pattern of work hard/build, recover/chill, enjoy benefits of hard work, work hard/build, recover/chill, enjoy benefits of hard work, etc...

MDcatV

there's gotta be over 1,000 posts on this topic

YMCA

so by "over 1000", you mean 1,000,000,000?

Creakyknees

exactly... which is why I thought it'd be handy to have a summary.

guess I didn't phrase the question well.

I was looking for the "best way" to raise power at threshold.

NomadVW 

The best way is the way that YOU can train at/near/above threshold for the longest intervals possible while leaving yourself at a fatigue that allows you to repeat the workout at appropriate intervals with sufficient recovery between and not burning you out from repetitiveness.

3x20's work, 2x20's work, 1x45's, 1x60s, 1x90s, 3-5x10's wth minimal recovery in between, STUCI workouts with correct recovery.

There is no secret to training threshold except to train threshold and recover, wash, rinse, repeat.

asgelle

Don't forget specificity

SpongeDad

Adding to the laundry list - here's a link from Friel's blog. Basically 5 minutes at threshold, 1 minute off for half a dozen.

https://www.trainingbible.com/joesblo...nd-40k-tt.html