I’m pleased to announce you can now pick a training plan to follow on TrainerRoad. This has been one of our biggest requests.
How It Works
There’s now a call to action to pick a training plan on your Career. We’ve found that riders who follow our plans and stay consistent with their training reap the largest FTP gains.
To pick a training plan simply navigate to a training plan and click the “Start Plan” button.
Once you’ve chosen your training plan and its start date, you’ll be directed back to your Career. There you will see your current week of training, Weekly Tips, an overall progress bar that displays the percentage of your plan you’ve completed and a link to view your full training plan.
Note for triathletes: If you’re following one of our triathlon training plans, your swim and run instructions will be included in your Weekly Tips. When you login, they will be expanded by default for you to view.
As you complete rides on TrainerRoad, we’ll automatically check them off of your plan. In the picture below you can see I’m on Week 4 of General Build and have completed the first workout of the week.
Sometimes life happens and despite your best efforts you might need to skip, modify or do your workout outside. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
Modify Workouts
Maybe you don’t have time to do the full 120-minute endurance ride on the weekend or need to do a “-1” version of a workout. No worries, you can assign other rides you’ve done to workouts in a training plan.
Skip Workouts
You get sick, you travel, you’re busy, we understand. You can skip a workout in a training plan. Just hover over it and choose “Skip.”
Outdoor Rides
The whole point of doing all this optimal training inside is so you can smoke the competition outside. We get it. Now you can also mark a workout as “Done Outside.”
Since the weather is warm I’ve been doing my weekday interval workouts inside. On the weekends I’ve been mountain biking outside. On those rides, I try to emulate the type of workout and amount of stress my TrainerRoad training plan prescribes. I’ve found this is a great recipe for success. Check out my General Build Mid-Volume plan below.
Wait, did you guys build a calendar?
What we’ve built is not a calendar and that’s on purpose. The goal of this feature is to allow you to easily see what work you need to do and what work you’ve done. That sounds simple, but it’s powerful.
A full-blown calendar has its place, and we will build one, but there’s something about this layout that really makes executing a training plan easy.
Some days you might do Thursday’s workout on Wednesday, or rearrange your week a bit due to travel. Rather than fighting a calendar to make sure everything lines up just right, our training plans feature just works.
I’ve been using it for a few months now and find it very motivating and helpful for me to stick to my plan and stay consistent.
What about the apps?
We’ve already built this feature in our Windows app, which you can download here. It makes it MUCH easier to quickly find the next workout in your training plan and get to work on it.
Our Mac revamp and Android app are in development and they will launch with this feature.
I’ve done like 4 training plans on TrainerRoad, can I get credit for those?
You sure can! You can “back date” a training plan from within your online career. So, for example, if you did Sweet Spot Base two years ago you can still get credit for it. We’ll try to automatically match as many workouts as you can. You can also tweak which workouts are assigned.
You guys should let us pull in outdoor rides so we get TSS credit!
We feel you 100% on that. Bringing in outdoor rides for analysis is totally on our roadmap. Before we dive into that, we want to make sure all of our training platforms are up to date and awesome. Which brings me to….
This is all well and good, but where the #@%! is Android! I want Android!
I’m really sorry it’s taking so long. We’re aiming for a fall release of Android. Everyone subscribed to our Android newsletter will get an update in the next week or so.
Want to be an engineer at TrainerRoad?
We’ve got big plans for the cycling industry and we need more devs to help us accomplish that. If you’re a C# dev and interested in working for TrainerRoad (remote!) check out trainerroad.com/jobs.
Happy training!
I hope this new feature saves you time, motivates you to stick with a plan and makes you more fit!
-Nate Pearson, CEO
For answers to your cycling training questions, listen to our podcast Ask a Cycling Coach — the only podcast dedicated to making you a faster cyclist. New episodes are released weekly.
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Does Trainerroad sync with 3rd party apps? strava, trainingpeaks ?
Yup! We will auto sync your workouts with TrainingPeaks, Strava and Dropbox.
Can I export these as Garmin workouts so I can follow your training plan even when the weather’s nice and I don’t want to ride the trainer?
Sup Erik,
As of right now, there isn’t a way to accomplish this. But it is something we’d like to do in the future, no doubt. When you get a chance, go ahead and up-vote this request on our user-voice page here: https://trainerroad.uservoice.com/admin/forums/131395-general/suggestions/6987721-ability-to-send-a-workout-to-a-bike-computer-for-r. There have been quite a few requests about this, and we’ll use your feedback there to determine how much of a priority everyone finds it to be. 🙂
Also, if you have a power meter and are on iOS, you can just try and use TR out there!
Thanks for your feedback my man! Cheers!
Nick – so I have a Powertap wheel and iOS – so I can run the iPhone in offline mode, and have it track my progress / tell me what to do, outside, on a ride?
Nothing should be different out on the road. 🙂 If you run into issues getting this done, hit up support@trainerroad.com and they’ll be happy to help. Cheers!
Hi Nick,
I really want this feature so I can try and follow a TR workout outside on the road. I clicked on the User voice link to vote but it won’t let me login. I would also be good to be able to load in from Garmin connect a outside ride. cheers, Rob
Great enhancement, Nate! Well executed.
Can’t wait until I can input TSS from outdoor rides and have them graphically displayed on the chart as well. Will be one step closer to making my Excel training spreadsheet obsolete!
Hey Eric,
I’ll pass your kind feedback along to Nate. 🙂
We feel ya! We’re super excited about it too. Looking forward to making that spreadsheet of yours a thing of the past. Hehe!
Happy training, and as always, ride hard!
Nate,
I love TR and love your podcasts. Just downloaded the beta. No instructions to back date past workouts? Beginning this March I completed SS base 1&2 mid volume and now am in week 3 of general build. How do I pick up my plan on the beta so that it displays my recently completed workouts?
Also a request:
I wish there was a way to tell the program using simple pedal commands or smartphone based control to
a. Repeat or lengthen the warm up easily without using the workout creator
b. Adjust the workout intensity
My mouse is not reachable when clipped in, so I have to stop and get off the bike to do these things.
Keep up the fantastic work,
George
Hi George,
Thanks for the love man! Stoked to hear you’re getting so much out of training with us. 🙂
Sorry the “back dating” instructions weren’t clear my friend. I went ahead and updated the copy above to make sure users are aware that you’ll need to get this done from within the online career. Sorry for that mix-up there. The instructions in the online career for back dating is pretty straightforward, but please hit up support@trainerroad.com if you have issues getting this done.
Mind submitting your request at our user-voice site: https://trainerroad.uservoice.com/forums/131395-general? We regularly comb through this to get an idea of what our users would like to see in future development sprints.
Thanks for your continued support with us, George!
Happy training!
This is a great new feature! However when I assign a ride as an ‘outdoor’ ride there is not an option for me to set a TSS. If you had that option then users could continue to use TrainerRoad to track their form (TSB). As it is now I have to use Golden Cheetah or pay for another service to do that unless I do 100% of my workouts indoors.
Any plans to make that change?
Accepting uploads of rides from a Garmin (or other) device would help to solve that problem too.
Thanks!
Hey Patrick, all great suggestions. We’ve got big plans for bringing in outdoor rides for analysis, but until all our other training platforms are awesome and built out with our latest features we’re not going to focus on that feature quite yet.
Awesome updates guys! Thanks!
Thanks, Mark! 🙂
Have you suspended the “ask a cycling coach” podcast? you guys do a great job making a pretty geeky subject really relative. Your app has completely turned my cycling around, used to never, ever, ride on a trainer more than a 4 minute tabata. Now I kind of miss it if I decided it’s too nice and ride outside. Keep up the great work, but get back on the mike!
Glad to hear you’re loving TR, Sam! The podcast is not suspended. The guys just recorded a new episode yesterday — it should be up very soon!
Will these new features be available iOS app & if so- when?
Cheers
Hey Neil, we’re looking to roll out the new plan features on iOS and Android at the same time. There isn’t an exact ETA for those updates yet, but the team’s shooting for fall time.
Really enjoying this…Finished my first Build 8 week program and now starting my next 8 week Block in Specialy Phase..
This has really helped me track my indoors but also to log my other types of rides to know I have done the weekly work but most importantly makes me want to do my training.
Thanks TR
Thanks Christos! We’re really glad to hear it’s made training easier for you! Well, maybe easier isn’t the best word to use there. 😉
Happy training and ride hard!
hi there,
love the new training plan features. I wondered if it is possible for you to create some training plans for the older athlete, an over 50 plan for example. being in this age group myself I am finding that I require a little more recovery time between the individual plan workouts resulting with my weekly training blocks overflowing into the following week. this tends for my total training plan time to exceed the total number of weeks required for completion and also makes the monitoring of my weekly tts score a little difficult. many thanks in advance.
Thanks for the feedback! We are actually in the process of creating a blog post that’s specifically geared towards aging endurance athletes. In it we’ll be including some things to keep in mind as you get a little older in your quest to stay on top of the podium. 🙂 As far as a plan for only aging endurance athletes goes, we think it may be better for you to make your own adjustments to the plans as you see fit. For instance, you recognized the need for a little extra recovery and you included it where you needed it. As many individuals age, they do so largely specific to their individual physiology (of course there are changes that are more inclined to happen to all of us, i.e. decline in V02max, decreased muscular capacity, increased body fat), and especially as we get older that’s harder to dial-in in a general wide reaching way. Therefore we think it’ll be best to recognize what sorts of changes you may need, and make them accordingly. Of course we’re here to help with some suggestions!
Something to keep in mind: longitudinal research has proven that a reduction in intensity over volume has proven to be more detrimental to your overall fitness. That means, if you’re going to cut anything short, it should be the volume (duration X frequency) instead of the overall intensity of the workout(s). It’d be better to cut an interval short than reduce the overall intensity of the workout. So maybe consider reducing the volume of your plan to make sure you’re hitting all your goals. Or simply keep do what you’re doing; these plans are meant to be manipulated as you need to for your own personal success. You’ll need to plan your training relative to your events on timeframes a little different than the typical TR number of weeks. Best way to go about your new changes, simply count the new number of weeks and schedule accordingly. Also, TSS shouldn’t really be affected as it’s a 6-week rolling average. 🙂
Hope this helps!
many thanks for your reply and information provided. I have just purchased and started to read “fast after fifty, by joe friel as recommended and will see how it goes for me. 🙂
Have a read of Joe Friels “Fast after 50”. One of the things he recommends is making your weeks 8 or 9 days to give you more recovery time. I’m doing it and it seems to work.
I just got done reading Fast After 50 as well! Good read. Glad to hear the adjustments are making a difference! 🙂 Happy training Cary!
This is a great update to TR and I’m really enjoying using it. You can see that the functionality has been well thought through. Nice work Nate and team! I’ve a couple of features you could consider for you next release – I’ve put links to them on the TR uservoice site.
– When you mark a ride completed outdoors – you could also allow the TSS to be input manually – then we could see the total TSS graph on the career record all of your training – I know there are plans to allow outdoor rides to be imported from Garmin/Strava but this manual way would hopefully be a pretty easy change to provide a stopgap until that can be done. https://trainerroad.uservoice.com/forums/131395-general/suggestions/15280842-allow-manual-input-of-tss-when-marking-a-ride-comp
– Specify an End date in addition to a start date when adding a training plan that has previously be completed.
https://trainerroad.uservoice.com/forums/131395-general/suggestions/15280923-specify-an-end-date-in-addition-to-a-start-date-wh
Hi Nate,
Love the app, really changed my focus.. went from casual when I have time to 4 days a week, got a target/mission.
As Jonathan is about to discover, scheduling life round work and family life gets challenging (well he has it easier in that riding is part of his work, for the rest of us, it’s very much not).
As such, it’s difficult to schedule time, and if we do, it’s a very fixed schedule, IE, I only have a fixed amount of time in the mornings before work. (aka 04:00 – 05:00) with one exception of a 03:30-05:00 for a 90min session.
Implying I end following the “Low volume” plans. but now… the SS love volume was 4 hours a week, the general build love volume is more like 4.5 hours a week, this difference in time/plan is making it difficult,
Would be really helpful if a low volume plan is always say 4hours, a medium volume always 6 hours and ay a high volume always 8 hours.
Makes this scheduling, aka juggling match allot easier.
looking forward to the new MAC and iOS apps, and… the calendar and… the ability to import weekend outrides, other words have one interface like starve, where I can see all my rides and how they added to fitness (falling over) level.
G
Thanks for the feedback George! Really glad to hear you’ve been able to find a bit more direction in your training. Jonathan’s baby boy Simon was born just a couple weeks ago so he’ll understand exactly what you mean. 🙂 Go ahead and shoot your request on over to our user-voice page so we can better track this kind of stuff. We’ll use the feedback to plan for the future. (https://trainerroad.uservoice.com/forums/131395-general) Thanks man!
Hey Nate:
Great update that I’ve been hoping for. I know this is not the forum to add suggestions but I have a question and wanted to know if it has come up before to see if I should start a new suggestion or just add my vote to an existing one. This new set of features is going to address several issues I and I’m sure many people have with busy lives. That is we’re constantly adjusting the plan either by moving days, cutting workouts short, combining weekend rides, etc… So I know I can now modify a workout by simply assigning the workout I did in substitute. But that is after the fact. But when I know have to modify a planned workout before I begin I have to find a workout that targets what the current plan I’m on is shooting for that day. So what I’d like to know is whether you’ve seen anyone propose this suggestion? I would like to see a sort of drop down list for each planned day with similar workouts that are either shorter or longer that target the same things so I don’t have to go searching around. Thanks again. TR is not only a truly great product but your organization is so user oriented toward improvement. You guys really do show that our input is valued and actually important. I have been a member for years and that is not changing any time soon.
That’s a good Idea Russ and we have some similar to that planned. This is just the first of many revisions to make it easier to follow a training plan :).
Great arcetli, thank you again for writing.
I’m not seeing this in the IOS app, is it PC based only? I just completed the High Volume Century plan with great success, and this would’ve been so much easier. I use TR through an iPad with my Wahoo Kickr.
Hi Jason, the training plans feature is currently built into our Windows app. You can try the beta of it today here: https://www.trainerroad.com/download/beta. Our Mac revamp and Android app are in development and they will launch with this feature when they’re ready in the next few months.
This will be a great feature. What does anyone do towards the end of the season, after their big event but before they need to start Base 1? I don’t want to start Base 1 too early as I will then finish the build and specialty phases too early. Can you just repeat Base phases in succession?
Coach Chad often recommends users to fit as much of the Base/Build/Specialty cycle within this offseason while still allowing a few weeks of active recovery or time off the bike completely before the regular season of training starts up. For Base, pick a low- or mid-volume Sweet Spot Base plan or a mid-or high-volume Traditional Base plan. SSB will give you a little more intensity if you’re feeling up to it or Traditional Base if lower-intensity work is sufficient and necessary. Then, seeing as we can’t complete an entire 28 week cycle twice in a year, you’ll need to make some adjustments to the plan. See how many weeks you have until your training season starts and truncate the Base and Build phases if necessary. For example, you could do the first or second half of either Base plans and either the first or second half of the Build phase. Then finish up with the entire Specialty phase if you can fit it in. Or you can of course make variations of this but it’ll be largely dependent on what limiters you need to address (e.g. Base to build aerobic endurance, Build for more sustained/short power building, Specialty to refine and sharpen those discipline specific skills you’ve formed in the Build phase). Just remember to get some recovery in however form you prefer between the off season training and next training season. 🙂
Hope this helps!
Great, thanks for your help!
Very welcome!
Hi,
How do I un-assign a ride that was mistakenly assigned to a workout within a training plan?
When I try to assign a new ride to the workout nothing happens. I’ve tried assigning a different ride and then going back to the correct ride but now everything is assigned!
Cheers
Darryl
Sorry for the troubles! You should be able to assign the correct ride after resetting that cell. Shoot an email over to support@trainerroad.com when you get a chance and we’ll see what’s up. Thanks Darryl!
Maybe I’m too new or too slow (mentally!). I’m not really seeing how this is different than following the plans as usual. I’m doing the Build Phase II right now and it doesn’t seem like it will change if I put it into this new feature. Am I missing something? Thanks. Trainer Road is the best.
The difference is you’ll be able to visualize your progress. As you complete workouts you’ll see them “checked-off” on your week of workouts, and you’ll also see a percentage of your plan that you’ve completed. Say you miss a workout or take it outdoors, you’ll have the option to mark that day as either an “outdoor workout” or as a “missed ride”. Or maybe you end up doing Tuesday’s workout on Monday — you simply go to Tuesday and “assign a ride”. So you’ll type in the name of the workout you did on Monday, into the Tuesday workout box. This just keeps track of your progress and intends to help you save time and keep you motivated to follow a training plan.
Another useful part of Training Plan integration into the apps is you’ll know exactly which workout you have on deck as it will indicate which workout is up next.
Hope this helps!
Hi let me know when you do “You guys should let us pull in outdoor rides so we get TSS credit!
We feel you 100% on that. Bringing in outdoor rides for analysis is totally on our roadmap. Before we dive into that, we want to make sure all of our training platforms are up to date and awesome. Which brings me to….”
We’ll be sure to update everyone on our social channels. Happy Training!
Great update. A simple thing like the progress bar really helps motivation too.
A question about virtual power. I realised last year that with my trainer, Cyclops Mag, the power it records is way higher on TR than on other platforms I have tried. Sometimes up to 50% higher. While I understand consistency is important, the rather large difference means my numbers are substantially inflated, especially when I use Strava and Golden Cheetah for aggregating my data. I could live with 10% either way but at the moment this is just too much. I can’t justify buying another trainer at the moment when I can use alternatives – even though I would much prefer to use TrainerRoad as I love what you guys are doing.
Thanks Karl!
That’s interesting about your VirtualPower readings. The power curves we use are either directly from the manufacturer or we’ve used a power-measuring device to create them ourselves. A majority are the former though. If you’d like to investigate further with us, our support team would definitely be happy to look into it. Things like tire pressure, trainer roller pressure, and trainer warm-up time can affect the accuracy of these readings.
I also noticed you and one of our agents had spoken about this in the past as well. Feel free to get in touch with us to try and get back on track. We’d love to have you training with us. 🙂
Thanks Nick
Would be nice to get it looked into. I did a cross check between TR and Z on two or three days: I rode on one platform then switched to the other after a few minutes and then back. I selected a gear, maintained the same cadence with the same setting (5) on the trainer. May be in my previous note I mentioned the specific difference – something like +100w. Reason how I found out was by doing the trial on the other platform, inputting my FTP from a test I’d done on TR and not being able to complete an interval.
Regards, Karl
I can’t find anything about starting a plan on my iPad? I don’t see this button. Help
I do not see start a trading plan on my iPad? This would be amazing if it was there help!!!
Edward, we’re getting ready to release this feature to iOS. Stay tuned!
Hey Nate. Loving Trainer Road. I’m sticking religiously to my training plan and looking forward to significant gains. In fact, my FTP has shot up from 211 to 249 following the first six weeks of Sweet Spot Base High Volume.
I’ve recently subscribed to Training Peaks and wondered if there was any way I could export my weekly TR workouts into TP to use their calendar facility?
Thanks again for a great product.
Regards, James (England)
Hey James,
Thanks for getting in touch and really great work on your FTP improvements! Hard work always pays off. 🙂
Regarding your question on Training Peaks: you can’t export our plans (or week of workouts) into their calendar feature, however you can use our feature called ‘RideSync’ that will automatically export your workout data directly into your Training Peaks account upon completing each workout.
I believe you can add each individual workout into the TP calendar, just not all workouts in one fell swoop. Using RideSync will help organize all your post-ride analysis into Training Peaks, though.
Let us know if there’s anything else we can help you out with. And always feel free to let us know at support@trainerroad.com if you run into any questions or concerns — we’re happy to help.
Happy Holidays James!
Many thanks for taking the time to reply, Nick. Regards, JB
Most welcome!
Cheers James!
Hi,
loving the iOS app, the ability to link to a wattbike, following plans, and the ability to assign outdoor rides, but what would really make it perfect is the ability to assign a strava ride to a workout, so your TSS is more accurate for a given week. any plans to do this? Or, is training peaks the only way for the short / mid term?
thanks
Steve
Short term! It’s building built now and we’re starting internal use of the feature at the company on Monday.
I don’t have a release date yet; testing is always unpredictable.
how about now? 3-months from the ‘short term’ comment! I’m a few podcasts behind though so maybe there is a Gem of an update in there –
Hi James,
We’re getting closer and closer to getting some external riders onto testing it out! But we’re still ironing things out internally at the moment.
We’re really excited to get it out for everyone to enjoy. Stay tuned!
Thanks for your patience. 🙂
Hi,
Stupid question but what if I want to start a plan midweek? Would the prescribed days adjust to reflect when the first workout is done ie if I did the FTP Test on Friday, would the next workout be Sunday?
Jamie,
They don’t auto-adjust. Though, you can make your “week” of workouts fit the 7-day week however you wish. You’d just need to pay a little extra attention to which prescribed workouts fall in your “week” of workouts. The plans are totally flexible. 😀
I’d suggest doing a couple of rides outside of the plan leading up to your FTP test. Whichever workouts look appealing, honestly. Then you can start on Monday like the plan prescribed.
Don’t hesitate to let us know if you run into any questions or concerns while you’re getting started. We’re always happy to help.
Happy Training!
I just read that you don’t export the training plans to TrainingPeaks. There’s a plan for this in the future or this will never happen?
I would love to have this feature, it would make my life easier.
BTW, congrats, great job on TrainerRoad!
Hey Nuno!
Unfortunately that is correct, we don’t have the ability to export Training Plans at this time. This is something that we are considering implementing in the future along with a revamp of our Calendar and Plans features, however our Development Resources are currently tied up on a big project we’ve been working on. In the meantime, your best option will be to either manually copy the prescribed rides over, or just allow the TrainerRoad Workouts to post to TrainingPeaks post-workout, and populating your TrainingPeaks calendar that way.
If you haven’t set up your workouts to export to Training Peaks yet, go ahead and give permissions here: https://www.trainerroad.com/profile/sync
Cheers!
I´m doing the sweet spot base on the low volume which means trainning three times a week.
Will adding two extra outdoor rides affect the results? (One is a 90 mins easy ride and the other one a long ride on the weekend)