For the last few years, I’ll ramp my CTL to around 100 during the summer, race a little bit aimlessly, then it gets cold and my CTL comes back down to 0 before starting up again in the spring.
Ideally, CTL would be kept at a lower level, not 0, before the next ramp up/spring.
I’m wondering if long term adaptations are still occurring even if I do nothing over the winter. For example, can I expect a slightly higher top FTP each year? Does the ceiling on my adaptations get raised at all?
Or am I just playing catch up each year and coming into a stable form each summer?
Basically, can you get year over year growth/adaptation by doing nothing for 2-3 months in the off season?
Hard to say to be honest, perhaps it’s worth looking over your previous training history for any clues.
If I had to guess and that’s all it would be, I think you’re just playing catch up each year.
This podcast instantly came to mind when I saw the post - I think you might enjoy it…
From the transcript…
Dr. Iñigo Mujika 20:38
first publication, we compare the performances of a group of 18 highly trained swimmers throughout the year throughout the season. And at the end of the season, we realize that half of them have achieved personal bests whereas the other half did not achieve a personal best. And we wanted to know whether there was something in training or in their personal characteristics that justified that different level of performance. And we couldn’t find anything. The only difference between those who improve their personal best and those who didn’t, was their initial level at the beginning of the season. In other words, after the offseason, some of them came back with a performance loss of about 10%. Whereas the other half came back from the offseason with with a performance loss of only four to 5%. Throughout the following year, those who have lost only four to 5% improved less, but their initial level was sufficiently high that it allowed them to go beyond their personal best. On the other hand, those who came with that lower level of performance improved more throughout the season, but their initial level was so low that they did not reach that 100%. And they could not go beyond that 100%. So for those athletes who come back from the offseason, with, let’s call it a lot of training, or with a very low performance level, it might be interesting to use some kind of strategy to help them retain some of those adaptations. Because otherwise, you might end up having an athlete who goes from 100 to 90%, to 100, to 90 to 100 to 90, and there is no performance improvement in the longer term, the athletes who were in the other group, they could go from 100 to 95, to 101 to 96 to 100 to 297. And there would be some long term progression for those athletes. So for those who are unfortunate, to lose adaptation faster, and that is pretty much a personal situation. It might be interesting to use some adaptational retention strategies during the offseason, such as introducing some kind of reduced training strategy so that they wouldn’t come back so they train at the beginning of the system.
CTL isn’t everything. What has your performance year-over-year been? Has your FTP been going up? Time to Exhaustion?
At some point, even a pro’s CTL isn’t increasing year over year. They are limited by time, too and you can still see improvements from how you train/periodize/etc.
I would be surprisied if you couldn’t see growth year over year, even with 2 months totally off the bike.