Short intense period before starting base? Chad's short FTP boost plan

There isn’t a plan for this, but it’s a pretty easy thing to slap together if you comb the workout catalog’s VO2max offerings. Personally, I like starting short (30-second repeats) and growing the durations over a block as short as a single week to as long as 3 weeks depending on when my progress and/or motivation starts to stall.

It never fails to surprise me how much more manageable 3-minute VO2max repeats are if I start short and work my way up to these longer jobbers, even if I do it over the course of 5 workouts in a single week. Kinda amazing, certainly motivating, both in terms of the quick progress but also the psychological lift I get prior to embarking on another training season.

An example would be something like this: Gendarme or Taylor -2, Stanislaus -4, Freel +1, Bashful, Baird +2, Mills or Gawler, Dade +1, then finally something awful like Spencer.

It’s also worth mentioning that “peak & fade” intervals like those in Mills or Agassiz are another route to take when the sustained efforts really beat you up. They ramp up your resources really quickly and then drop watts without dropping the O2 demand or hampering the training stimulus. And of course there’s something about knowing that the watts are falling that’s pretty encouraging when I’m all but ready to quit.

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