You can do it! If you look at my 4 year TSS graph you can see that I gradually build my volume up over years. I could probably do this a lot faster if I never got stick and didn’t have to travel, but as with everyone, life gets in the way.
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This post illustrates why I like and use TrainerRoad. I appreciate the open sharing of information from you, @Pete, @Jonathan and @chad. I learn a lot from the forum and podcast which is just as valuable to me as the product itself. The lack of BS is brilliant.
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“At what point in your cycling journey do you deemphasize structured training?”
Usually after a VO2 Max workout. 
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My option is based on myself and others who have trained indoor with TR is that once you learn what your body wants and how it responds then it’s adadable outside. TR was the first structured training of any sorts I have used. I am probably 90% as effective outside be inside, but the outdoor rides pickup allow me to improve my bike skills and stay sane(not sure about that one,lol).
I live in Maine and spend about 60-70% outdoor from December thru March and 98% outdoor the rest of the year.
I still pay for TR year round and track my progress with power on 2 of my three bikes.
My takeaway is TR is an excellent tool and allowed me to learn how to train with power!
Just want to pile in here, while I’m not a TR employee nor the fastest guy ever… I’ve ridden almost exclusively indoors this year, and it’s been perfect for me. We moved in October, sinus surgery in November, baby in February, “other” surgery in May, deployed in June, living on a ship since July… I don’t love Antelope +5, but the structure from TR has been the ticket for me this year. In spite of all that “life” and my plan to not race this year because of it, I’ve managed 11 events, a road cat upgrade, and an all-time FTP PR.
Through that 10-month journey, I’ve come to realize that the real draw of indoor training for me is the consistency it fosters, and the safety. TR is my primary platform for indoor training; I noodle around or do TR workouts alongside my digital self in Zwift, and I look forward to my sessions. Easy on, get the work done, easy off… back to whatever “life” has going then.
I’ve been training with power since 2008, and for that entire duration I’ve recognized that structured power training is best done on a trainer. Yes, you can find roads and hills and such that allow you to train outdoors effectively with structure, but those outdoor sessions will never compare in convenience, time savings, and safety with the trainer. That said, the trainer can make you crazy, but technology like TR (and Latsko fans) have really made the trainer, dare I say, enjoyable.
So my reality might be that I never de-emphasize TrainerRoad, even when I’m not specifically aiming to “get faster” at that exact moment, and that’s because it provides my outlet in the safest and most convenient environment possible.
(All that said, I’m looking forward to mid-September when I’ll go off-plan for about four weeks and just noodle around TR or Zwift whenever I feel like it. I need the mental refreshment!)
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I think your question might have a different answer if you phrased it as “at what point in your cycling journey do you de-emphasize structured training”.
It’s very possible to mix in intervals into outdoor rides without following a TR workout, or do an outside ride with a specific goal in mind. That’s the approach I took pre TR, and also in many of my outside rides this year. And I’d bet it’s the approach many of your fast Strava friends take also. So they’re likely still doing some form of structured training, just not on TR.
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There’s a fair chance that I’ve completely misunderstood the intention of your question but, my answer would be that I’ve NEVER emphasised TR. For me, TR is a challenge and I like to see if I can rise to meet that challenge.
I still ride outside. In fact this year has seen me get a record number of Sunday 3+ hour endurance sessions in, which I’m thrilled about. If it’s light enough at 6.30/7am, I’ll do an hours ride outdoors. Low intensity endurance.
Do I believe that structured training and the TR workouts have enabled me to improve my cycling? I certainly do. Would I be able to focus only on TR workouts with my races being the only outdoor riding I do? Not on your life! I ride and race a bike because it’s fun and social. Are TR workouts fun and social? They’re not for me 
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I did TR exclusively from January to mid May, as soon as it got nice out I migrated outside and supplement with TR on bad weather days, if I’m limited on time, etc. I also use Zwift primarily for just free riding indoors, but I will throw TR in there if I want a good structured workout. My biggest use for TR in the summer has been doing the recovery rides in ERG mode to keep myself locked into a lower wattage so I can truly recover because on Zwift its hard to ride at a steady easier power on some of the routes once inclines and sprint segments come sometimes I can’t help myself.
I will never be one of those people who do 3/4+ of their rides indoors on TR just to prepare for a few events per year, I enjoy TR and the challenges it gives me but it will never replace riding outside and having fun.
TR has been around for 7? years, and although they are Trainerroad employees, they’re still amateur athletes. That’s a long grind, and outside of cyclists that are paid (DPro’s, Coaches, etc) I can’t think of one in my area that has been at it solid for 5 years straight. No matter how good they are people take breaks from burnout, life, etc. Some of these guys are former National Champs or KQ’ers; mentally it just seems being on the razor’s edge can only last a year or 2 for 98% of us.
The past 2 years I’ve ‘leapt’ over 2 guys who I worshipped when I first started in 2010. One’s had 2 kids, another is just burned out from 10 years of training. It feels good to drop and get compliments from them, but I’m not naive enough to think if they started training again I’d have a chance.
Point is, cycling is a supplement to life and its far from a constant for most. Some of us are on the razor’s edge of fitness, others are just having fun or doing the bare minimum.
You phrased it that way, I did not. I said de-emphasize Trainerroad, which you obviously have done in recent months. You can have structure and ride outdoors and not need TR plans or workouts. At first glance your recent ride history pretty much illustrates that exact approach. You added context which is helpful because to the casual observer, at least recently, it looks like you for the most part infrequently use TR plans or workouts.
To be clear, I am not arguing against the efficacy of structure or training nor am I bashing the Trainerroad program. TBH it looks like I use it more than you, perhaps even to my detriment. I’m asking if that is the best approach or if in general people with a more balanced approach (adding a healthy dose of racing, group rides, chill rides, flowy singletrack rides, et al.) achieve greater success? That’s a fair question.
In some areas in life, following a plan to the last detail yields the greatest benefit. Here it seems replacing some of the training plan rides with group rides, skills rides etc. is the approach most people use. Is that because you’ve achieved most of what you wanted through structure and now are willing to loosen the reins a bit? So 3-4 months of structure then a 3-4 month racing break, then back to structure? At what point in your cycling journey did you make that call?
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That is pretty amazing and especially so going from Cat 5 to nearly Cat 2. I would love to hear more about that FTP climb on the podcast, specifically what workouts you did, which volume plan etc. Perhaps it’s already out there but it’s nice to hear the story from the source and always good to hear from someone that’s had that kind of jump to, “stick to the plan.” 
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Yes, fair question but one that I see as highly subjective. Everyone has different training history, cycling skills, priorities (life and sport), measures of success and other related motivations. People will benefit from varied levels of combinations of indoor structured training, outdoor structured training, fast-paced group rides, casual group rides, and any other activity they choose.
There are pro level triathletes that spend nearly all their time inside, and others with a nearly inverted ratio. The same is true for every level of athlete down to the casual rider looking for general health and fitness.
People new to the sport may benefit more from group riding to learn the skills and tactics necessary to compete. In some cases, those skills supersede fitness in importance to events. Others with much more skill and experience can benefit from more structured training to peak fitness in particular ways that may be difficult to attain outside.
All that is to say that people need to consider their particular experience, fitness and cycling needs and ultimate goals. There is no “perfect answer” for everyone. As such, I think we can review examples as is done here, but we need to be careful about drawing broad conclusions and applying them to a wider range than is appropriate.
The TR examples have been better developed with input from Nate, Pete and Jonathan in an effort to help with the initial question. Each one makes sense in the context of the info they provided. But even with all this additional info, these specifics only serve to prove the point that there is no single solution.
Anyone claiming that one solution (whether that be all inside, all outside, or some specific split) is right for everyone is mistaken. In the context of this discussion, trying to prove or disprove one theory with these few examples is likely to fail. Without a broad perspective to the individual situation, goals, and experience of each one studied, you may well be missing info that is relevant to the choices made and work done (or not done).
Returning to your first statement (bold in quote above), balance is most likely the “best approach”. But that balance can and will likely differ between each and every athlete. The only way to establish the related balance & distribution is to look at all I mentioned above (and likely more) then set the scheduling with that broad picture in mind.
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If your question is when one may start to de-emphasis TR, I think there are two answers which you can see in the posts on this thread.
Intra season, many people move outdoors at some point and even if they keep structure in their training they tend to either simplify the TR workouts and/or plans or come up with their own workouts.
Long term, after several years of doing TR plans, one can have learned enough about structure in general and what they really need to focus on as individuals that “going your own way” becomes tempting. One may still use TR plans as a guide but the structure is customized and if you’re following them on Strava, it won’t be clear they are a TR user, even if they are (or no longer are).
Personally, I’ve always been in the outdoors for the summer crowd and after several years of doing TR plans, I’m moving towards taking what TR has taught me and going a more customized self directed approach. But I’ll always use structure.
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I agree with you, totally subjective. That is the reason I wanted to throw it out their to hear everyone’s individual story/journey to see how I (or others) might apply that to my own training. 
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I think you missed my point. Every one of those 83 structured rides was entirely a TrainerRoad workout or contained a TrainerRoad workout within a larger ride, whether inside or outside. Every workout I do comes from our plans, or things we are testing at the moment. Starting back in October of last year it was Traditional Base, then an extended SSB, then General Build, then XCO Specialty.
Just as we recommend in many of our plans and design around, many weekend workouts can be substituted with group rides, which I only did with our race simulation Saturday Drop Ride here in Reno. Other than that, if I had an outside ride that wasn’t a race on the weekends, I was knocking out a prescribed interval structure from my plan or something we were testing, and in some cases, tacking on more volume.
All of that said, this line catches my attention:
To be honest, and I ask for your understanding, that statement above makes me feel like a portion of you just wants to be told “Don’t follow the plan, it won’t make you faster.”
I want to be told that too.
I think that’s a normal human tendency to want the more stringent option to be less effective than the more relaxed alternative, but in my experience that “carnal man” inside of us is rarely right.
I think it’s also natural to feel “Everybody must be doing something different than me. My current approach is too simple.”, but more often than not, and I can confirm that this is the case at both the highest and lowest ends of cycling, training is surprisingly simple. There are key principles of human physiology that govern our body’s ability to perform a certain type of work, and while a properly structured plan will leverage those principles, what truly matters most is consistency. In fact, when we look at our data, the overwhelming differentiator between athletes with low vs. high power to weight ratios is consistency.
“Good training” in my opinion is as simple as the athlete consistently doing the sort of work their body responds to for the demands of their event, offset by the right amount of rest. Our plans take care of all of that beside the “consistently doing the work” portion – that’s up to you.
Once again, in my personal opinion, if I had executed every workout of our plans with precision this year instead of missing workouts, going too hard with a hero interval at the end of workouts, tacking on extra volume, etc., my jersey would likely have some stars and stripes on it right now.
But that’s the same battle we all fight. We all have great potential, and TR gives us the framework we need to reach it, but if we look back, chances are we weren’t perfectly consistent, and that is the variable that seems to predict training success above all others, so it’s hard for me to jump to doubting other pieces of the puzzle if I am not first executing on the most important one of all.
If we were perfectly consistent and still didn’t get the results we wanted, then we either need to change the stimulus (more volume or intensity) or examine the whole other side of the equation (rest & recover).
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Well that’s one hell of a good answer. Thank you for the candor and insight.
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“I think you’ll find that I do the occasional long ride outside but that’s it.”
Wow, that’s too bad.
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First, I can’t imagine dealing with the number of “mentions” or replies you must get daily. lol.
Second and more importantly, thank you for mentioning the Endurance Diet. I’ve struggled with diet and weight for all my 39 years, and I’ve tried pretty much every ‘plan’ out there. I definitely want to pick up this book and see if I can unlock my own jump from 284 to… who knows…
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Interesting Article: Progress from process: What it takes to make it to the WorldTour - VeloNews.com
Interesting to see that the changes in training were small over a 4 year period but what made the biggest difference was following the plan consistently.
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@Nate_Pearson is not alone, I went from 193 to 298 in 14 months of TR (which includes recovery from a Grade 3 AC joint separation). My FTP is probably actually in the 300s but I’m in Specialty and my A race is 4 weeks away, so I won’t be taking any FTP tests. I also moved from mid pack Cat 2 (MTB) last year, to winning the Cat 2 series and moving up to Cat 1/Expert this year. I finished 6th in my first Cat 1 race this past weekend and just 40 seconds behind 4th after a 2:19:27 race.
Even though I race XC and MTB 100s, I do 90+ percent of my rides indoors on TR.
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