MAP weakness SHOULD make Revolver easy, this is to be expected. if it still feels counterintuitive why a workout that’s supposed to train your “weakness” feels easy, remember that the corollary way of stating “MAP weakness” in the Suff world is “FTP strength,” because strengths and weaknesses in the system are all relative to your other parameters, not to other people.
MAP and FTP are not physiological characteristics of you, they are performance measurements that are intended to proxy close enough to certain physiological characteristics, for use within the SUF’s simplified model. This isn’t a knock on SUF, all models are simplified, otherwise they wouldn’t be useful.
So then think, what physiological adaptations support a high FTP? here’s a couple i can think of, definitely folks please weigh in if you can think of others:
- high availability of the transporters that escort energy-rich but chemically complex fat chains across the cell membrane into the muscle cell so that it can be used
- high availability of the transporters that shuttle lactate back into the muscle cell to be burned for additional energy
- high mitochondrial density and function to chomp up those fats and lactate and turn it into ATP
- high capillary density to make sure all that good stuff (oxygen, fat, more lactate) gets to all the working muscles
Upshot is, this person is getting more power out of their most efficient motor units and getting more energy for less glycogen (bc more comes from fat and lactate). For a person with a MAP weakness, I’d think of this as they have FTP that is relatively high percentage of their VO2max and they have a tremdnous amount of the above-listed adaptations.
Imagine person 2, who has high MAP relative to FTP. the same adaptations listed above for high-FTP also support five minute power, but this second person, in our example, must have other characteristics too that make their MAP outpace the FTP, relatively. Like for example, maybe they have stronger, better trained large motor units and decent relative endurance of those motor units to support high short power, and central adaptations that let them churn more oxygenated blood through the system faster.
person 1 doing revolver: compared to person 2, for the power target, they are getting more power for each interval from fat and then from the recycled lactate. Means that between intervals, their recovery is easier (less used = less to replete), and by the end of the workout they have used less glycogen meaning they are less fatigued. They could finish this workout nose-breathing.
So yes, for MAP weakness person, i’d either increase the power targets or use different MAP-targeting workouts that are more sustained.
