This is an old thread, but I just watched the video (for a 3rd time) and wanted to respond.
I think Dylan’s criticisms are spot-on and well supported. He doesn’t make any claim in the video that he can’t back up. The way I see it, the core of his criticism is that the TrainerRoad plans have too much intensity, but ALSO that they don’t really adhere to any scientifically established training intensity distribution models. The former is an opinion, but the latter is an easily verifiable fact. They certainly don’t follow a Polarized training intensity distribution, and they don’t even really follow a Pyramidal training intensity distribution (even though that’s what they have said they follow in their podcasts). I’m doing the MV Traditional Base plan currently. Taking next week as an example, I have 5 days on the bike, with FOUR of those days being Threshold or Sweet Spot days, and just one Endurance day. That means my Intensity Distribution, counted in minutes, is roughly 66% at Low Intensity (below VT1) and 33% at Medium Intensity (VT1-VT2) and zero work at high intensity (above FTP). That doesn’t follow any established Pyramidal model, which would be more like 85% low intensity, 10% medium intensity, and 5% high intensity.
Dylan’s points about fatigue are valid as well. 33% of your training load at medium intensity is roughly DOUBLE what a true pyramidal distribution model recommends, and it makes perfect sense that a training load like that can certainly make a rider more fatigued and become discouraging. Likewise, 5 days on the bike with 4 of them at Sweet Spot or Threshold doesn’t seem to allow a lot of recovery time, and not allowing for sufficient recovery from that seems like an oversight on TR’s part.
If you look at the MV Polarized training plan, I feel it is a total dumpster fire. It doesn’t make much sense to me at all. It’s 4 training days, with two of those being “high intensity” days, and one of those “high-intensity” days doesn’t really get high enough in intensity if you’re following what’s stated in the literature. The high-intensity intervals seem to stick you at Threshold, and my understanding is that the intervals should really be above Threshold and in the VO2max range to be effective. The intervals are also quite long, which is not what I understand the literature recommends. Turning to the low intensity days, some of them call for over 4 hours in the saddle! I’m sorry, but nobody is gonna happily do 4 hours on a trainer unless they love mind-numbing boredom and physical suffering. Again, these numbers seem to be driven almost entirely by TSS targets, rather any other factors.
TR could cut the length of the individual sessions down, add a day on the bike, and restructure the sessions to be more reflective of what’s in the literature, with High Intensity intervals loaded towards the end of sessions and hitting VO2max to push physiological adaptation, rather than sitting right at Threshold for long stretches of time.
I’m enjoying using TR, but I do have questions and doubts about the soundness of their plans. Their approach definitely seems to be focused primarily on TSS and ramping up Training Stress quickly rather than other factors (my very FIRST Base Training plan took me from a TSS of 0 to 305 in a week), or rather than any established Training Intensity Distribution models. And, hey, it might work! It’s just not what is in the scientific studies.
Personally, I’d like to see distributions that are closer to either a true Pyramidal distribution (80-15-5) or a true Polarized distribution (85-0-15), better structure and placement of the intervals in the individual sessions, and more reasonable scheduling and workout durations in the MV plans.