Can TR help a little more by addressing the needs of "older" althletes

[stonerider]

Chad, As you are gearing up for Cape Epic, I think you’ll find it impossible to complete the same amount of work in training you did in your 30’s now that you are approaching 50. The hard training you have coming up will probably provide you some good insight for the Masters athletes who use TrainerRoad. I’m speaking as a 52 year old with a wife, 3 kids, and a full time job.

[bbarrera]

@STP

we’re talking about one giant hole in TR’s product line and one that is only growing with time.

back in 2016 TR was working on a masters plan. Four years later and I don’t see this as a priority, and I’m not holding my breath for redemption via adaptive plans. Plans and trainer control are the core of TrainerRoad, this topic couldn’t be more on-topic for TR. So what to do? I gave up and bought a masters appropriate plan for 8-12 hours/week. Seeing fantastic results. Love the TR app, love TR traditional base, but the lack of masters plans is a real issue. And by masters plan I don’t mean offering easy way to adapt plans from 5:1 to 2:1, or 3:1 to 2:1.

[mcneese.chad]

@stonerider

Chad, As you are gearing up for Cape Epic,

• Time to roll out my non-patented phrase:

For clarity, I am NOT Chad Timmerman (TrainerRoad’s Head Coach).

• I’m Chad McNeese (hence the forum name), an active forum member and big fan of TrainerRoad. #TheOtherChad

• Coach Chad’s forum name is “@ Chad” (without the space, which I added to not tag him unnecessarily).

[Lee_Kaliski]

… I bet you get that “just a bit”.

[mcneese.chad]

At least once a month (3 times this month already )

[killroy123]

Gotta get those numbers up, those are rookie numbers.

[bbarrera]

@bbarrera

Honestly the plans look good if I was in my 20s or 30s, but I’m in my 50s and they are inappropriate. I’ve posted that on other threads, most recently in response to a questions from TR’s Bryce.

here is one of several posts I’ve made on the topic (response to Bryce):

Do I resubscribe?

I’m not looking to make many modifications to a plan. My observation, and one shared others, is that TR SSB plans have too many “hard” days (I’ll refrain from using the word intensity). Here is a 3.5 year old TR blog post on BASE and aging athletes: [image] Last I looked only the low-volume SSB plans have 3 intensity sessions/week, MV has 4/week, and HV has 5/week. I realize the plans have changed, guessing that blog post was written prior to the current SSB plans. And still no masters plans…

[Lee_Kaliski]

In fairness, I´m not sure if it´s accurate to say that they´re “inappropriate”. Hard" and often require a little thoughtful adjustment that for some part I think my experience has enabled me to work out. I don’t know your background, and please, I´m not trying to push any buttons or anything, but do you have much experience? I´ve found it takes a long time and a fair bit of trial and error to listen to your body and try and get it right (and let´s face it, the best in the world often get it wrong!). I´m not suggesting a “magic bullet” (as I´m well aware no such thing exists) but it would be nice to see some more info out there. (Personally I find the Friel book a bit old hat to be honest.) I think my best tactic was to “turn down” the length of the harder sessions to maybe a “-” version and that way maybe aquire some of the adaptations without the all the duration and really address recovery and most definitely - gym work. I came from a place whereby I´d worked as a bricklayers labourer in my early 20´s to get my way through my masters degree (and boy was that hard work), and then I became somewhat addicted to the gym in my early 20´s and so came to cycling with quite a lot of strength focus (too much really and it´s taken me years to lose some of that weight (not helped by my Beglain beer addiction, but there you go…) Masters plans was something I hadn´t really considered when I wrote the original post to be honest.

[mcneese.chad]

@Lee_Kaliski

do you have much experience?

Short and sweet, Brian has plenty of experience and a knowledge base about training that is at the top end among members this forum.

He is one of the more prolific posters in the group and knows of what he speaks. I’ve leave the rest to him, but know that his info is well researched, reasoned and can be trusted.

[johnnyseven]

I think it is agreed upon that, as ‘older’ athletes we need more rest (turning 55 in a couple of weeks). So, I would imagine any masters plan would involve mixing in more rest days and easier workouts along with the intensity. As with anyone, recovery rate seems more of an individual thing. What is right for myself may be too much or not enough for someone else. The question becomes how much ‘recovery’ do you add into the plan? If that recovery rate is not right for you and you end up just adjusting the plan anyway, aren’t we back to square one?

For the record, I have no problem getting through SSB as is but, do add extra recovery to Build and Specialty.

[Lee_Kaliski]

Thanks… Just for the record I certainly wasn´t trying to imply otherwise, I´m just new on the forum so am not familiar with the names.

[bbarrera]

@Lee_Kaliski

In fairness, I´m not sure if it´s accurate to say that they´re “inappropriate”. Hard" and often require a little thoughtful adjustment that for some part I think my experience has enabled me to work out. I don’t know your background, and please, I´m not trying to push any buttons or anything, but do you have much experience?

Yes I struggled for a few seconds before picking that word, and admit it may not be the best word. My background with structured training starts in 2016 with a zero-to-hero “clydesdale desk jockey finishes the DeathRide” in seven months. Until the pandemic I rode weekly with very experience people, some of them former elites/semi-pros, and most of them with FTPs in mid 300s. Big club with plenty of mentoring, and have used stock plans from CTS, TrainerRoad, and now FasCat. Background is science/math/eng geek and since you mentioned it in the mid 90s I had 3 people working for me in Belgium (company paid trips!!!) and also developed a Belgian beer addiction… Two years older than you, had a 280 FTP in 2017 after a full year of training with CTS/Strava plans and club rides, in 2018-2019 yo-yo’d between 220-250 as I put more focus into strength training to deal with 30 years desk jockey neglect, and back up to 260 this year following a masters appropriate plan (to be honest I think its a better 8-12 hours/week plan for just about anyone). Hope that helps, and have a great day I’m back to chasing end of quarter deals…

[mcneese.chad]

Understood, and welcome to the group.

FYI, clicking on a member name/icon will take you to their info page. The “Summary” page in particular can be a window into their activities and posts within the group. You can see their popular posts, likes to and from them and other potentially interesting info. Certainly not a whole story or something to judge entirely on, but a piece of the puzzle.

[Bryce]

@mcneese.chad

• I tend to agree. I think TR (and users) would benefit if they broke the Enthusiast Plans into their own page, even with the Base, Build and Specialty Phases.
• These get overlooked frequently and I end up sharing the links to people who have never entered the Specialty section, assuming it didn’t apply to them. Thoughts, @Bryce?

I like this idea personally, and I will pass it onto the team for consideration . I’ve definitely experienced situations where I’d like to do a few short rides per week to prevent drastic a drastic decline in fitness, and a Base/Build/Specialty maintanance plan built into Plan Builder could be just the ticket.

As for Masters Plans, our ultimate goal is to develop a way to alter your plan using Plan Builder to help 45+ athletes achieve a higher work:rest ratio. This is something that we’ve talked about for quite some time, I know, but it is still on the roadmap. We have been working hard to set the groundwork with features such as the basic Plan Builder, and most recently, the ability to adapt to skipped weeks due to illness or vacation.

We will continue to improve Plan Builder to meet the needs of more and more athletes and we really appreciate your feedback to help us focus our efforts.

Cheers

[Lee_Kaliski]

Well plan builder is certainly a big improvement. As an example I was doing my usual winter build up towards my “Spring Classics campaign” (which I usually start with very consistent training indoors about November) and I was interested as I think PB came out just literally days after I´d made my own so to speak. (A race was the Paris Roubaix sportive, Flanders the week before, GW the week before that and usually Nockere the week before that!) I found it interesting in that it actually came up a little bit (not a lot but a significant “little”) easier than my own estimate. Going on experience when I did something pretty much identical last year I think this would have left me a little fresher later, especially when one factors in all the travel and driving to and from (I´m about 3 hours away from Flanders but we usually stay the Flanders and Roubaix weekends). Unfortunately of course I haven´t had the chance to test my theories but if the longer rides I´ve done over the last 2 months have been anything to go by it would have been interesting to see the results!

[toribath]

For sure. Being familiar with the ways you body responds to training and being able to adapt plans accordingly is a super helpful skill.

I have seen the impacts of aging on recovery in particular alluded to on the podcast frequently, but I think it could be really handy to have a more cohesive approach expanded upon in several episodes or blog posts. I also think that, given the main criticism of the TR plans is that there’s too much intensity, there’s certainly a place for a plan/option that offers more rest in between key workouts. I think that could apply to older athletes, newer riders, or people who do a lot of outdoor/group rides.

Finally, at 22 I’m certainly not qualified to speak on the market for masters plans, but for what it’s worth all my cycling friends are 55+ and train quite differently to me. In particular I’ve noticed that they can sustain a far greater volume than me due to a bigger aerobic base, but I rely more heavily on intense sessions- due in part to my faster recovery time, but also because I’m balancing training between study, work, and the inevitable pub crawls

[bbarrera]

@toribath

at 22 I’m certainly not qualified to speak on the market for masters plans, but for what it’s worth all my cycling friends are 55+ and train quite differently to me. In particular I’ve noticed that they can sustain a far greater volume than me due to a bigger aerobic base

I ride with a couple local 22 year olds and they put in a lot of aerobic base miles, one of them is cat2 road racer and his typical week is 20 hours of mostly base. The big difference between 22 and 55 is they can do a really hard workout and recover faster. And not sure if this is age or physiology but the other one has much higher 1-min power (~900W vs ~450W) and can easily drop me with a hard kick and then settle into threshold/tempo effort. But on long steady state threshold efforts I can hold my own.

[Lee_Kaliski]

What you think with all those trips to Belgium and the beer available there we older riders aren´t partial to a beevie or 3? Age-ism I Say !

[willball12]

Question. Does a periodised program that’s designed to ‘make you faster’ actually look much different from one which is designed to reduce natural reductions in power as you age?

[Lee_Kaliski]

I see what youre getting at and as I´ve tried to be the first to admit, the answer is - quite possibly not (maybe not the answer some wanted to hear! ). But my post is as much about the means by which we might better manage that rather than deny it!