Variables like your cycling experience level, schedule and type of event you’re training for determine the approach you should take to base training. Take a look at these three rider-type scenarios to help you decide which approach works best for you.
Triathlete
Experience: Moderate
Availability: Minimal time to train (6 hours/week on the bike)
Recommended base plan: Low-Volume Full Distance Triathlon Base plan
Rider A has a family and full-time job. Every hour this athlete has available to train s/he has to make the most of it. While travel time for swimming can lift weekly training time, a full-distance “finisher” — someone who’s not necessarily looking to set PR’s or reach the podium — can do so on as little as 12 hours/week, with 5-6 hours dedicated to the bike.
If you see yourself as Rider A, a moderately experienced triathlete who’s time crunched with less than 8 hours/week to train on the bike, TrainerRoad’s Low-Volume Full Distance Triathlon Base plan is likely your best option. These plans favor building a higher FTP instead of only logging long hours of low-end endurance. Follow your Base plan with TrainerRoad’s Low-Volume Build and Full-Distance Specialty plans and you’ll be on the right path to a successful race-day performance.
Enthusiast
Experience: Beginner
Availability: A lot of free time to train (13 hours/week)
Recommended base plan: Sweet Spot Base
Rider B has no real limits on the amount of time s/he can dedicate to training. While this situation is ideal, it often leads athletes into the “more is more” training philosophy. In turn, the chances of injury, illness and/or exhaustion increase.
Many new and less-experienced cyclists fail to recognize that the body responds most favorably to gradual, progressive amounts of stress. Sudden heaps of high-level intensity, lots of time in the saddle, or a combination of the two can over challenge these newcomers. At the same time, the challenge to their current ability has to be substantial enough to make an impact on their performance capabilities.
If you see yourself as Rider B, a beginner cyclist with upwards of 13 hours/week to train, consider starting on one of TrainerRoad’s Sweet Spot Base plans. With three to six interval workouts of week, these plans strike an important balance between doing too much and not doing enough. You’ll be pushed just hard enough to realize recognizable, safely acquired increases in fitness and technique. For a new cyclist, an additional increase in workload beyond what Sweet Spot Base plans outline is often unnecessary, counterproductive and can derail long-term improvement.
Road Racer
Experience: Seasoned rider
Availability: Moderate amount of time to train (8-10 hours/week)
Recommended base plan: Traditional Base or Sweet Spot Base. But across the board, Sweet Spot Base is recommended more often.
Rider C is a reasonably experienced athlete with around 8-10 hours/week to train. This type of rider can benefit from doing either the Traditional Base or Sweet Spot Base. To decide, it’s mostly a question of duration over intensity. Consider the pros and cons of each approach:
Traditional Base applies high doses of low intensity to help Grand Tour athletes or those recovering from an injury who want to avoid high-intensity intervals. This approach can be useful to these types of serious riders — but only if you have a lot of time.
Traditional Base requires the sort of rider who can tolerate long, mind-numbing hours of steadily turning the pedals in pursuit of slowly earned, incremental aerobic fitness gains. It’s no surprise a mindset that accepts monotonous workouts and training doldrums well is required.
The type of gains you can achieve through Traditional Base are useful to a limited number of athletes, such as Grand Tour riders and RAAM participants. These types of riders know that with this approach to training gains come slowly — if they come at all — since they depend on devoting a lot of time to riding easily.
Many long, slow and steady training adaptations use a blend of mildly and substantially higher intensity. Enter Sweet Spot Base and its mix of strength-endurance and max-aerobic training.
In contrast to Traditional Base, Sweet Spot Base is more all-inclusive and can get you more evenly fit for events in relatively less time. The workouts are substantially more varied, interesting, challenging in numerous ways and are comparatively entertaining. Just two or three of these workouts each week can bring measurable, inspiring fitness gains for all types of riders with varied training time limitations. Higher-volume riders who are able to train more frequently (4-6 times per week), can add in just enough of the long, slow, traditional riding to further their gains a little, or to simply spend more time riding for weight loss or maintenance.
Opposite of Traditional Base workouts, Sweet Spot Base workouts require focus, concentration and often enough, a willingness to endure more intense — but shorter — durations of riding discomfort.
If you commit to Sweet Spot or Traditional Base, you will have desirable training outcomes. However, we recommend Sweet Spot Base for 99% of cyclists.
Key Takeaway
Traditional Base assumes you have almost unlimited time to ride at a slow pace. Whereas Sweet Spot Base assumes you have a limited schedule like most non-professional cyclists, which allows you to compensate for the lack of duration with an increase in intensity. That being said, time is not the only factor when deciding on your base training plan. You must also consider your experience, the type of rider you are and the cycling event you’re preparing for.
Action Item
First, look at your winter schedule and decide on a realistic number of training hours you can commit to each week. Next, evaluate your most important events for the year and ask whether or not you’d like to get fit quicker for your lower-priority events. Finally, take into account your training history/experience, tolerance for patience and overall interest in working out. Once you’ve considered all these things, you’ll be positioned to make a decision on the direction to take with your base training.
This is one section of my Winter Training Guide. Read the full guide here to discover 11 coaching tips to help you become a faster cyclist right now.
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Great article. I’m already through the base phase, but I’ll choose sweet spot base next year.
Sounds like a solid plan, Lee. Please let us know how one compares to the other. I’m always interested in hearing just how effective my training plans are. 😉
I am in part 3 of then mid-volume traditional base, having completed the first 2 parts. It seems very worthwhile to me. I am planning on repeating part 3 before moving on to the build and specialty phases.
I hope that your “99%” recommendation of the sweet spot program does not mean I made a mistake in choosing this program.
Not at all, David, especially with the mid-volume version.
Due to the uber-steady-state nature of riding on a trainer, you get a benefit similar to that of climbing a steady grade in that it’s unrelenting and potentially highly productive; there’s just no rest. What’s more, the third phase of Trad Base is more in line with what you’ll find in a Sweet Spot Base plan, so with the first 2 phases already in the bag (or more accurately, in your legs), you’re in a good place to start chasing some FTP increases even prior to your build training.
The key is that the workouts have pushed you outside of your comfort zone, then the necessary training stimulus has been achieved to some extent, maybe to a great extent.
So keep up the hard work and best of luck during your Build!
I am doing my second ironman, and want to place in my age group. What would be a more beneficial biking base plan for me? The bike specific high volume sweet spot base one & two. Or the new full distance high volume training plan? Thanks and love the program.
Hey Adam,
Even if you already have your run & swim structure nailed down and don’t plan to use that aspect of the plans, I still think the more specific nature of the tri plan bike workouts are the way to go.
The Sweet Spot Base plans are aimed at accommodating as many rider types as possible, but with the tri plans, I’ve built all of the workouts based on the specific needs of not only triathlon but also each specific triathlon distance and its differing demands.
And thanks for saying so! Glad to have you aboard, Adam.
Chad
I used the standard high volume base last year, starting in Nov 2014, followed with build, and had a very high level of fitness going into my target races in late April / early May. Unlike most years, I timed my peak very well, which I attribute to closely following the prescribed plans. This year, I’ve re-enlisted trainerroad and realize the base plans have been totally revamped, with an enourmous emphasis on the Sweet Spot base. Some of the language used in the blog posts, for example: “..we recommend Sweet Spot Base for 99% of cyclists.”, gives the impression that there is little value and that plan is for 1% of cyclists. Not that standard base needs to be defended, but I think 1% is a little harsh.
I’ve asked, and recieved, great advice on specific questions from you in the past, but I don’t think SS base should be pushed so hard. That much intensity, that early, is not good for me personally. At the least, 4-6 weeks of standard base before I start busting my ass at threshold!
All that being said, I’m not a coach, but have been burned to a crisp by early intensity in the past
Respectfully,
Adam
Honestly, Adam, I think 1% is in fact too harsh; probably more like 90% considering that the far majority of our subscribers are either very time-constrained or simply trying to limit their amount of time spent riding indoors.
There are plenty of very valid use cases for the traditional approach, which is why I devised those plans in the first place, but we wanted to steer those riders having only a handful of weekly hours toward are more results-oriented tack. I’m sure you’ll agree that if you only have 3-5 hours to train each week, rolling along at 65-75% of FTP isn’t going to get you nearly as far as doing 2-3 Sweet Spot workouts and a bit of VO2max work.
But for those riders with long seasons, with enough time to accumulate enough volume to make the longer, slower work effective (i.e. a true training stimulus), and with the patience to endure the less varied workout formats, Traditional Base is both effective and recommended.
And with a really long season, a pre-base season like the one you’ve described can be great way to get things rolling and even distance yourself from the harsh rigors & muscle damage inflicted by the prior race season.
Hi there, im looking at your training plans but im unsure as to which way to go.
Ive started back road cycling after a long term injury and basically skipped the base build this year, too keen to get back in. Im Cat 3/4 and do weekly rides of TSS 150 – +200, usually around 8-12 hours training, but despite this I still feel id have benefitted from an initial base build before launching back into it.
My question is, Is it worthwhile me doing a base building plan at this stage over winter, my fear is that by doing so i’ll likely lose any strength or endurance ive already built up if I drop too sharply (I average around 600 tss per week, mix of endurance and strength riding, hill climbs, sprints etc)
What would you recommend?
Many Thanks in advance!
Hey Adam,
Congrats on getting back to it! Keep in mind that effective training is cyclical in nature, so you’ll always benefit from progressing through the entire Base/Build/Specialty cycle. This also means you’ll need to plan for downturns in your training to allow for the body to adapt throughout the season.
By reverting back to the Base and Build phases (which is your best bet), the fitness you gain will allow you to sustain higher base intensities than you previously would’ve been able to handle, thus elevating your capabilities over last year’s base capabilities. Then this higher base fitness leads to higher build fitness which leads to improved performance outcomes during specialization/racing.
Hope this helps!
Looking at my calendar for next year starting sweet spot base Jan 1 will be the perfect timing. I’m wondering if I get any benefit for the remaining 12 weeks of this year doing the traditional base. Since the weather is still sometimes decent will do some of it with long outdoor rides. Any reason to not stack traditional base with sweet spot? Should I do more training time in a build phase? PS the new plans and structure are great. Just signed up for a full year subscription after previous on/off with monthly subscriptions.
This should absolutely be a productive approach. It’s more than likely a better approach would be to begin with Sweet Spot Base, and after already making strides in improvements to your FTP, work through Traditional Base. This approach would require you to be in the mid to high volume plans.
If you’re time constrained and don’t think you can manage mid to high volume, you should go with starting SSB now, Build, Specialty, Re-Build, then Re-Specialty.
If you’re time allows you to stack the plans, go for something like 12 weeks of SSB + 6 weeks of Traditional Base II or III. Or 6 weeks of SSB II and 12 weeks of Traditional Base I + II or II + III before moving into your Build and Specialty.
Hope this helps!
Hello –
I am new to TrainerRoad and am coming off a 14month ‘break’ after completing a full. I have a half distance in April and am toying with another full in July. I am really having a hard time figuring out if to do the Half Distance Triathlon Base, the Sweet Spot Base, or the Traditional Base… ANY assistance would be greatly appreciated.
I can dedicate three days of riding on average 60-90 min mid week rides – open availability weekend rides.
Thank you in advance.
Hi Sahar,
Welcome to the team! If you plan on using our swim and run workouts, we’d recommend Half-Distance Tri Base plan. If you plan on using separate swim and run instructions, you’d definitely find a lot of benefit in our Sweet Spot Base plan due to your time constraints.
Hope this helps!
Just signed up to TrainerRoad, and am looking to start Sweet Spot Base tomorrow, and then would like to move onto General Build. However, I’m kind of confused… for Sweet Spot Base there is Low Volume 1 and Low Volume 2, then Mid volume 1 and 2, then High Volume 1 and 2- do I just choose either low, mid, or high volume and then do the full 12 weeks (two six week block) worth of workouts?
For example, if I choose Sweet Spot Base Mid Volume, would I do the 6 weeks in Mid Volume 1, then the 6 weeks in Mid Volume 2 and that would be it for Sweet Spot Base? (I can’t imagine you’re supposed to do Low volume 1 and 2, mid volume 1 and 2 and then high volume 1 and 2 all consecutively? Doing so would mean that the Sweet Spot Base plan in 36 weeks long…)
Please give me some guidance! Thanks
Tyson,
You’ll just do the two bricks in whichever volume you choose. So if you choose SSB Mid-Volume, you’ll do part I and II then move into your Build phase. 🙂
Happy Training!
I have an additional question on this topic. I am currently completing the Mid-Volume Sweet Spot I. Considering I may have more time in the New Year. Would it still be beneficial for my fitness if I can only complete the Low-Volume II instead of the Mid-Volume? Thanks
I am sorry, I meant less time after the new year 😉
No worries Vincent!
Feel free to knock the volume down to Low-Volume during part II of Sweet Spot Base to accommodate your time constraints. Even though you won’t be putting in as much time on the bike, it won’t have any negative impacts on your fitness. 🙂
Happy holidays!
Hi great question- I was wondering the same thing and figured it out based on the response. Is there an ideal time period to wait between SSB block 1 and SSB block 2? Assuming you should wait? Thanks!
Hey Anthony,
The ideal wait time is 0 weeks 🙂 The plans are designed to flow into each other, one after another. They have recovery weeks built in to allow your body to absorb the stress and hen jump back into working hard.
Cheers!
I’m wrapping up my first Base plan (Sweet Spot Base Volume II) as it fit my time allowance schedule the best and my conditioning was pretty good since I wrapped up some late CX racing in early Jan. I did swap out the longer weekend ride with a higher TSS outdoor ride just to get outdoors so I was averaging 550+ TSS per week(Other than the first week). Since I started with Base Volume II and have about 10 weeks to my A event should I do another base or move onto Build at this point?
Thanks