We’re excited to announce one of our biggest features yet – Plan Builder!
What is Plan Builder?
Plan Builder is an automated training plan creator that gives you a custom training plan built around your schedule and goals. Your custom plan will guide you through the ideal training phases, ultimately making your plan easier to follow and your training even more effective.
Plan Builder takes the guesswork out of choosing the right training plan by creating a custom plan that peaks your fitness for your goal event or discipline. Using your current training volume, when and how long you can train, the events in your training calendar, and the demands of your goal event, Plan Builder builds the ideal training plan for you.
Who is Plan Builder For?
Plan builder is for any athlete who wants to get faster. Examples of athletes that will benefit from Plan Builder include:
- Road cyclists training for Criteriums, Road Races, Time Trials, Gravel Rides, and Gran Fondos
- Off-road cyclists specializing in Cross Country, Cyclocross, Enduro, or Gravity
- Triathletes peaking for any distance Triathlon, whether on- or off-road
- Cyclists riding Stage Races in any discipline
- Recreational riders hoping to improve and get faster on their own or for group rides
If you are planning to race, Plan Builder will use the demands of your goal events to design your training. If you are not a racer or not targeting a specific event, Plan Builder will structure your training towards your favored discipline.
Learn more about how non-racers can use and benefit from Plan Builder.
How to Use Plan Builder
Preparation
If you are in the middle of a training plan, you’ll need to delete your current training plan, but don’t worry, this won’t remove any of your completed workouts in Calendar. If you haven’t deleted a training plan from your Calendar before go ahead and check out this help center article on deleting plans: Delete a TrainerRoad Plan
Launching Plan Builder
Plan Builder is currently available on TrainerRoad.com, as well as on our Mac and PC apps. You can access Plan Builder from the Training Plans section of your TrainerRoad account or within the desktop app itself.
Step 1: Training Load
To help Plan Builder recommend a training volume, choose the amount of time that best reflects your average training load (on the bike), per week, over the past six weeks. This value helps determine which training volume is the best fit for you.

Step 2: Volume
Based off your current training load, Plan Builder will recommended a training volume. While we generally recommend that athletes choose the recommended training volume, if you feel that a different training volume suits your abilities and schedule better, you can adjust your training volume at your own discretion. You can always change your training volume down the road as well though, so no worries if you err on the side of caution when you choose your volume.

Step 3: Experience
After choosing your plan volume, Plan Builder will prompt you to choose the experience level that best reflects your experience with Interval training. This helps determine where Plan Builder should add or subtract training weeks when you have more or less time to complete an entire training progression. Additionally, based on your experience with interval training, Plan Builder can customize the weeks in your training to most effectively peak your fitness for your goal event.

Step 4: Start Date
A regular training progression takes about twenty eight weeks, but with Plan Builder you can start your training plan at any time. Plan Builder will strategically cut out and add in weeks to your training plan so that you will have an ideal progression in your training plan for your goal event.

If you’ve already started training this season, and you’ve just deleted a training plan from your Calendar, make the day you started your current season of training your start date
Step 5: Events
Now it’s time to add any A, B and C events you plan on completing this season. If you already have events planned out on your Calendar, Plan Builder will take these into account and adjust accordingly. If you don’t have any events on your calendar, you can add them now.

While you can add multiple A events to your training plan, these events must be at least eight weeks apart. Anything less than eight weeks between goal events won’t allow you enough time to recover and rebuild sufficiently to reach peak fitness once again.
If you aren’t training for any specific events, that’s okay! If you are just looking to improve your fitness, get faster and take advantage of structured training, Plan Builder will still build you a plan. On the Events page select “I’m Not Training For An Event” and then choose your primary discipline and the date you would like to end your structured training plan. If you don’t want to choose an end date or you aren’t sure when your training plan is going to end, you can skip this step and Plan Builder will create a year long plan. Click here to learn more about Plan Builder for non-racers.
Step 6: Schedule
Now it’s time to decide when and how you want to train! Drag and drop the scheduled days to decide which days you’d like to train. You’ll be able to adjust your schedule as the season goes on so pick the days that fit your schedule most weeks.

During this step you can also opt to make certain rides outside rides. If there are any workouts you plan on completing outside each week, go ahead and mark those workouts as outside rides.
If you want even more control over your schedule, you can adjust it uniquely for each training block. Simply click the switch to “Customize training days for each block” and drag and drop for each part of your training plan.
Step 7: Overview
Finally, take a moment to review your training plan and make any additional adjustments. You will be able to adjust your training plan down the road, but this offers a quick and easy way to make any big picture adjustments you’d like to add now.

Adjusting Your Plan
Volume
When you choose your training volume, Plan Builder will set all of your future training blocks to this volume. That being said, as you progress from one training block to the next, you can adjust your volume at any time to accommodate changes in your schedule or desired training load.
If you’d like to change your training volume for a certain block you can do this in the Overview tab before you add your training plan to your Calendar, or you can make this adjustment in your Calendar. Simply click on a training block annotation in your Calendar to adjust your training volume.
Inside vs. Outside
Every TrainerRoad workout has an outside-specific version that you can do outdoors on your head unit. This means your training weeks can be further customized by choosing which workouts you’d like to complete outdoors.
To do a workout outside, click the “outside” toggle on a specific workout and it will be automatically sent to your head unit next time it syncs.
Events
If you aren’t sure you will be completing an event, or you plan on adding events down the road, no worries! Events can be adjusted and added at any time. When adding events to your training plan add as many C events and B events as you’d like.
Rest will be added before B events, and the B event will replace the workout scheduled on the day of the race. The C events will have no rest integrated, and will simply replace the workout in your training plan. The A events can be added to your plan at any time but must be spaced at least 8 weeks apart to account for the necessary time to recover and rebuild toward peak fitness.
You can add additional events to your training plan at any time and Plan Builder will recalculate your plan to accommodate these events. Feel free to add new events, or delete events you don’t plan on completing to keep your training plan accurate.
Time Off / Sickness
When you need to take time off, or unexpected obstacles take you off track you can edit your training plan, delete workouts, or drag and drop workouts to accommodate any changes. For more information on editing your training plan check out this help center article: Editing Your Calendar
FAQ
We’ve built up a full list of frequently asked questions in this Help Center Article. If you have more questions, reach out to our Support Team at Support@TrainerRoad.com
What’s Coming Next?
TrainerRoad is adding new functionality to PlanBuilder all the time. We’re currently working on features that allow athletes to integrate time into their training plans for vacation and time off. We’ll also bring Plan Builder to our mobile apps in a future update.
We strive for constant improvement here at TrainerRoad because we know you do the same with your training. Plan Builder is one of the biggest steps yet in our quest for constant improvement, and we’re excited for you to use it to get faster!
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Superb development!! Cong.
But how does it work with specialization? I mean: I’m focused on Marathon mtb races but i can’t add This information to the plan builder.
Please let me know asap
Regards
Marco
If you add a Marathon XC “A” event to the Plan Builder, it will build you up specifically for that type of effort 🙂 All of the plans will be based upon your A event for the season.
I just finished my base phase. If I now start with plan builder will it bring me back to the base phase?
If you set the starting date as today, yes it will have you run through Base again. However, if you set your start date to the date ~12 weeks ago when you actually started training, that should take into account the Base training that you’ve completed 🙂
It may not be perfect first try and may require some trial and error, but you should be able to shuffle things around a bit to get things set up properly for the rest of your season.
great work! does your FTP play a part in planbuilder now ?
All of the workouts within the training plan are scaled to your current FTP, so each workout will be just right for your current level of fitness 🙂
This is awesome. – some feedback
– great advice on starting the timing earlier to allow for the previous training. I have just completed base and build so I will start at the beginning of the the base or should it be the build ? Q- what is a realistic time frame that we should take into account?
– I ran through a plan for the next 22 weeks that included a criterium series and a road A race with the following outcomes
– each A and B race for the series was preceded with 2 days of rest – I would have expected at least some high intensity work to keep the legs fresh in the two days.
– I didn’t like the outcome of the plan and proceeded to delete each week ( that was a lot of weeks, an undo feature would be great )
– deleting each week left the weekly tag associated with it – when I deleted the tags manually it crashed your page – twice ( had to confirm – sorry ) ( about the time of this comment – so you can check your logs, let me know if you need any more info)
– so looking forward to this feature as my year is all about crit followed by road followed by track. I’m keen to see how it will handle national crit races in the beginning of the road season.
hello there, I was wonder if you can help me out, I had a year of subscription last year, but this year I decide to stay off the bike, may I get back the refund for this year, because I decide to stay off trainer road at the moment. my email:sinhchiem@gmail.com user name is SinhChiem
Thank you.
Hey there!
For any questions related to billing, go ahead and reach out to our Support Team at support@trainerroad.com 🙂
I just started mid volume general build plan, I noticed there are two scheduled workouts on Saturday, do I chose one or do one on Saturday and the other on Sunday? Thanks
Hi Jonathan, I love your podcasts. I have been road cycling for 8 years. I ride with our local mainly male club (or did before lockdown). We have 5 groups: very fast group then groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 (entry level beginner). I ride with group 2. Even though I am a 61 year old female cyclist I am very motivated to cycle faster and be stronger on the hills. I currently weigh 8st 12 lbs but am 8st 4lbs at my lightest. I am 5′ 4″ tall. My FTP is currently 160. I have plenty of time to train and I have a Wattbike Atom and a Kyota road bike. I followed the watt bike 3 day haute route 12 week plan last year and am currenly following a 6 week 25 time trial plan just to improve my speed. I just want to be able to keep up with my group who seem to be getting faster.
What training plan from TrainerRoad would you recommend I follow? Your advice would be greatly appreciated as I am not sure that I am actually doing the right thing.
I have been following your YouTube broadcasts and have enjoyed them and learned a great deal. Thank you for putting these together.
During a recent segment, you mentioned that you were allowing access to the Plan Builder to see how it worked. You mentioned that it wouldn’t be the “full version”, but would give us a general idea of your recommendations. I am interested in trying this out before I formally subscribe. How do I do this?
Hey, Carlos!
Happy to help. You can go directly to the Plan Builder portion of our website [here] to select your training load and discipline and get a generalized idea of what your training plan would look like, without subscribing to TrianerRoad! You won’t be able to fully view the plan or add it to your TrainerRoad calendar without an active subscription, but keep in mind that we do have a 30-day, money-back guarantee for athletes who are interested in trying it out!
Hi, I gather from a Youtube post that you are looking at a plan builder for age group Masters riders? Can you advise when you hope to have this live? I am looking to subscribe but want my plan in place before 1st December preferably.
Cheers
Hi, Steve! It’s definitely on the roadmap as soon as we finish up some higher priority releases and fixes! That said, this certainly merits some modification of your plan (likely just your build phase) through your calendar. It’s best to err on the side of recovery instead of extra strain when this sort of adjustment is in question, but the team (support@trainerroad.com) is always happy to help walk you through the steps on how to modify your plan!
Hi Ivy,
Good to hear – i just landed here after googling “trainerroad planbuilder too hard age” 🙂 .
Am 52 and finding the Century plan builder a little tough – especially back to back Threshold / supra threshold efforts.
That said, ive been a bit naughty and am doing 1-2 group rides as well a week , where i have good intentions to chill a bit and try as i might , it turns into an ego fuelled smash fest 🙂
cheers
Andy.
Hi there,
I’m hesitant to sign up with TrainerRoad because I don’t have any power tech: just a non-smart spinning bike indoors, and very basic computer (speed, distance) on my outdoor bike. I’m fairly certain that neither of those will work with VirtualPower. However, you mentioned in podcast 284 that TrainerRoad is viable for use without any tech (just RPE). I’m not sure I understand that, as the whole premise is that it works BECAUSE you can train to clear power indices. How exactly does that work if I don’t have anything “smart”? How’s it going to track my performance?
Hi Jeremy! Happy to help, training with RPE is explained at length in the following articles, along with information about tracking analytics and performance:
‘Outside Workouts With RPE: a Power Analysis‘
‘Riding by Feel: TrainerRoad Outside Workouts With RPE‘
If you have further questions, feel free to drop us a line at support@trainerroad.com and we’ll gladly help out. Cheers!