Best approach to creating a hybrid low-medium volume plan?

TrainerRoad Software
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I’m wrapping up my first low volume plan and looking to create my next one. I’d like to ride 4 days a week, but it seems like that puts me in TR no man’s land as medium volume is 5 days.

Is the best approach to do low volume and add a “train now” workout for the fourth day?

If the low volume plan is roughly 200 TSS a week, would adding a fourth workout screw that up and cause adaptive training to alter one of the 3 already-planned workouts to make them easier?

Meaning if I have a low volume plan, is it going to think I’m overtraining if I add a fourth ride?

I wish TR had something between low and medium volume but curious what the best approach is to hack it together on my own.

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Nice work getting to the end of your current plan! :muscle:

Firstly, if you’ve been working through this plan for a while, we’d recommend taking a mid-season break. Take 1-2 weeks fully off the bike to rest up and recover after this training cycle. Training takes a significant toll on our body and mind, so it’s important to incorporate these periods of recovery into our annual training plans so we can come back to our next training cycle feeling refreshed and ready to go.

I think your idea of picking another Low Volume plan and then adding in a fourth ride each week is spot-on. You could use TrainNow, as you mentioned above, or you could use our Workout Library to search for an additional session each week.

With the Low Volume plan, you’ll already be getting 3 days of intensity per week. We recommend capping your intensity days to 3 days per week max. For your fourth ride, we’d advise keeping it limited to Zone 1/2 so you don’t overdo the intensity. Keeping that fourth ride low-intensity will allow you to increase your volume while decreasing your chances of experiencing excess fatigue.

The following article has some more tips on adding volume to your TR plan that might be helpful:

I wish TR had something between low and medium volume but curious what the best approach is to hack it together on my own.

This kind of flexibility is what we’re working towards for the future, so stay tuned for more on that!

Hope this info helps – feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions!

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Awesome info, thanks! Makes perfect sense.

A Z2 ride for my fourth workout was my plan too, and good to know it shouldn’t cause TR to lower the intensity of the tougher 3 workouts.

Super helpful stuff.

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What worked well for me when I did this was exactly what @ZackeryWeimer is suggesting. I structured my 3 interval workouts for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. I personally did VO2 Monday, Sweet Spot Tuesday, and Threshold Thursday because that was the most manageable for me based on workout difficulty. I found I could stack the VO2 / Sweet Spot and was better off leaving Threshold on it’s own.

Then, I did a longer Z2 / Outdoor ride on Saturday. Wednesday, Friday, Sunday became my rest days.

Just what worked well for me - good luck!

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