Bridging plans with a zwift week

[Frazrider]

Hi all

I am finishing the 10 week strength plan next week and the plan was to jump straight into SSB plans for the next 12 weeks. However I am tempted to take a week racing / riding on zwift to introduce a little bit of intensity before I start the base plan.

Looking forward to starting SSB and don’t want to stray from my original intentions but wondering whether to add a little intensity and a mental break before jumping into would could end up being 24 weeks of structured training?

What are peoples thoughts?

Thanks

[rkoswald]

Seems fine to me. A week shouldn’t make a big difference one way or the other, as long as you don’t race yourself into a hole before you even start SSB. Good luck racing!

[Dave]

No harm in doing what you’ve suggested.

[thincrust]

I’m also interested on how to do both, simultaneously. I don’t know if this is something anyone else is trying to navigate.

Longtime TR user, tried Zwift in April '20 and got mad hooked on racing. I did 125+ races this year and got a very high FTP (for me - way higher than ever before ~15%) and mandatory Cat A upgrade. Now I’m trying to figure out how to train w/ TR whilst still racing 2-3x per week. Completed SSBLVI recently and felt a.) frustrated that I wasn’t racing as much, and b.) bored with whatever progress I may or may not be achieving in doing so. I usually do MV plans but I wanted to leave slots available for racing.

[vladrath]

I would think that you would want to just cut the intensity days and do races instead.

If you are really getting the improvements that you mentioned in your post, I would consider whether you want to make any changes or just do exactly what you’ve been doing, perhaps just add a little volume?

[Frazrider]

I think it’s possible as long as you ensure you are fresh enough when start a plan. In the end I did not do it and stayed strict to the 34 week plan I had built, so jumped from 10 weeks of strength into SSB1 without the racing inbetween. Im going to try and be patient build to my A event in June and then just have lots of fun / zwift racing once A race complete.

[thincrust]

It (the improvements) happened really fast and then plateaued. And just for posterity, I went from 287W to 330W by doing nothing but a lot of zwift racing. I think coming from TR I had a really solid base to build on, and zwift just sharpened my pencil.

My greatest strengths in zwift racing are 5sec-1min power and weakness being FTP (in terms of W/kg as I’m 80kg). So being competitive in upper echelons of A require more than just short power and thats what I’m trying to figure out how to improve now.