I’m confused. TR is an app for indoor cycling. You can plug and play your own workouts and make your own training plan. Does he not like app based indoor training?
Or does he not like the training plans. (In which case don’t use them and make your own plan).
I’ve nerver heard TR say their plans are the only way and superior to any other. I have never hear them say their plans will make you be a world class cyclist. Now I have heard them say they are trying to help busy individuals with limited time get faster.
They provide a platform to help you get faster. Not sure why people get so negative and hate on something positive.
Ah ok. I guess that’s where my disconnect is. I don’t use TR for coaching but the platform. I could see how one “coach” would badmouth another. Still bad form in my opinion.
Qualitatively, yes. Quantitatively, no. There is simply no getting around the fact that the higher the intensity, the greater the stimulus for adaptation.
I’ve plateaued the past couple years and possibly slid a bit this year. Meanwhile, my teammate and previous TR user has made incredible gains. Furthermore, I’ve felt I’ve underperformed in competition relative to my consistency and training hours. The final straw was my “A” race, which I do every year, I felt horrible. Reflecting on the past years “A” races, I felt like TR never prepared me properly even though I followed the plan to a T with nearly 100% compliance and consistency.
So I spent a 2 hour Zoom call with my teammate who had incredible gains and he walked me through everything he had done. I started following his recommendations, modified a bit, and so far feel stronger than ever. So maybe it’s TR or maybe I just needed a change after 5 years using TR (novel stimulus). Not to mention, TR seems to be reducing TSS/volume in their plans over the past couple years where at this point in my training I need more. My past weeks TSS have been 820, 920 and I’m finishing up my 1000 TSS week. Yet I still feel motivated and strong.
I’m in the same boat, I did adaptive training back when it was new and maintained near 100% compliance on high volume plans and did not race CX that well and my power curve didn’t improve. Starting this past fall, doing my own coaching, I’ve gotten my FTP up 10w from 295 to 305, and my 1-5min power especially has grown in a way it hadn’t with adaptive training, some of it is I’m not using ERG mode so I’m not confined by the percentage but also I’ve done more focused blocks.
I no longer have access to view TR plans, but I believe there is no plan that only provides VO2 workouts (I may be wrong, someone please correct me). As someone who does sweet spot super well (I’ve gotten my 90min power to 92% and that’s only because I didn’t keep going), I was kind of maxed out and I think doing more vo2, and more properly with 3-5min max efforts, helped to shake things up.I also do more volume, generally 14hrs and sometimes up to 16, but I was doing 12 previously so I’m not sure how much to attribute to that. I don’t do as much tss as you, generally in the 700 region, but I’d like to think I balance things well with intensity twice a week plus a lot of z2
A bit much to describe in a forum post. At its most basic level though, I just plugged my CTL goals and events into TrainingPeaks and let it spit out an ATP. Then weekly I do intervals Tues/Thurs and tempo or trail on Saturday. All other rides are high z2 (70-75% FTP) to reach weekly TSS goals. Weekly intervals change based on what training phase I’m in and/or if I have a race that weekend. I pick workouts loosely using TR and PLs.
Sounds very much like how I trained as a 40-something road racer:
M,W,F: 1 h on the ergometer @ the level 2/3 border (IF = ~0.85)
T,Th: 1 h of intervals on the ergometer
Sa,Su : race or longer outdoor ride with periods at race intensity (e.g., 1-1.5 h of fartlek in a 2-3 h ride).
CTL = 75-100, depending on the time of year
I hit upon this pattern after a lengthy period of experimentation, with one key part of the puzzle being titrating the intensity of the M,W,F sessions.
Sometimes the adaptations you are looking for are coming from duration and not intensity. More intensity = more adaptation is not true for every type of adaptation. And even less true when you look at it in the context of your entire training plan.
If doing your endurance rides at 55% vs 65-70% allows you to do your hard days harder and also ride an extra couple hours/week then you are going to get more out of it in the end.
When it comes to endurance training, there are no adaptations induced by duration that aren’t induced by intensity. It’s only a matter of the total “dose”.
As to what “dose” is optimal, I don’t think science can really answer that question. As a half-century student of endurance sport, though, my impression is that things start to saturate somewhere around 15 h/wk.
IOW, if you’re only training 10 h/wk, then most individuals could probably get better by just training more. However, if you’re already doing 15 h/wk (on average, so 700-800 h/y), then I’m not so sure.
I would agree that you design a training program by penciling in the key (most intense) workouts first, then flesh things out with “moderate intensity filler workouts” (as they are known in our household) to the limit of the time or training tolerance available.
This seems to be the perennial question. Can one just ride a shorter time at tempo or sweet spot versus spending more hours in zone 2. People usually seem to burn out trying sweet spot only method.
I think inflated FTP’s are involved as well. We think we’re doing SS, but we’re doing the higher end of Threshold, etc. Not to mention the recent push to work higher in Z2.
