High volume plan

I’m in the same boat - working from home; it’s almost like an extra two hours a day that I have to use that I used to spend commuting. I used to hate waking up in the morning to get ready to go to work, even though I love my work itself. Now I find I wake up easily, and find it easy to get going for a workout (running or bike) in the morning. Getting in a good 60-90 minute workout before 8am is an awesome feeling, like you’ve already accomplished a lot while some people are just having breakfast!

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yup agreed!

personally i haven’t managed anything above easy z2 stuff in early mornings . - but i really enjoy doing 60-2hrs fasted rides 1st thing (pre 7am) and then getting in a 2nd ride in later in day - it’s almost like you forget about the morning session by the afternoon and then end up accumulating a good volume through the day!

HOWEVER - not sure i’ll be able to sustain this once i start SSBHV !! hah but right now its quite good :slight_smile:

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Luckily you, I still have to commute so it’s a 4:30am start for me. Mind you no excuses at that time of the morning. You are right, it’s empowering. So many people asleep on the train at 7:30am looking like sh*t. I only look like that after a hard run or TR session :wink:

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I had this realization last night. is there a reason we cant replace it with 6x10’s? same amount of work. i did 2x20’s instead. i couldn’t mentally wrap my head around a 3rd 20 mins.

I’d imagine it’s a combination of building up fatigue resistance and also mental strength.

But yeah - that 3rd 20mn effort is draining…

Total volume of time in sweet spot is only part of the goal - the duration of the intervals is also a major component. Think of it this way - would 60 intervals of 1 minute in sweet spot feel hard at all? Would it prepare you for a longer effort and gain that muscle endurance?

If you look at the progression of workouts in the SSB sessions you are increasing two things over time - total time in sweet spot and length of intervals. Both matter

Better to do 3x20s with a few 5-15 second back pedal sessions in the middle than to split it into 6x10s or only do 2x20

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Perfect answer, @trpnhntr

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Absolutely spot on here. I was doing 600-700+ TSS weeks before I went on TR, just smashing it outdoors whenever, wherever I could. There is no comparison to the weekly TSS on prescribed TR plans which are much more demanding.

High Volume (Sustained Power Build) killed me by the second half (after the second ramp test). It became really apparent that I needed to be conscious about not doing any physically stressing efforts (long walks at pace, etc) in between workouts and any little thing like that was the difference between getting through a workout and failing. Those second half workouts in SPB are no joke, especially when they string them together and they’re all around 2 hours long. It got to the point where I was so mentally stressed out about not getting enough recovery and worrying about failing workouts that I had to abandon the plan and refresh.

Now I’m doing mid-volume and it seems like there’s a little leeway where I can supplement it with an outside ride here and there whereas I felt like it was such a tight rope doing High Volume.

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agree with everything you said, particularly this last bit.

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yes this was one of my concerns too! but as the winter and daylight draws in here in the UK i think weekday - outside rides after work might be few and far between anyhow … so might be easier to just do more indoor rides - except the odd weekend (again weather permitting!)

I just finished ssb 1 and it was very good but ssb 2 seems like the volume may just be a bit much with work and life is there any way to modify ssb 2 as I just don’t always have the time each and every week day ?

I’m facing almost the same issue with the High Volume plans. I debated doing Mid-Volume plans with extra rides thrown in, but I found the volume too low even with extra rides. My biggest limiter is time on the weekdays as I only have a 90 minute window to be done with my workout before I need to leave for work. I’m going to modify the plans in two ways. First I’,m going to cut the Tues and Thursday workouts to 90 minutes and replace the Tuesday SS with a Threshold workout to keep the TSS roughly the same. Thursdays workout will either be a 90 minute variant of the scheduled workout in the plan or another with similar IF and interval length. Second I plan to extend out my Saturday ride by 30-60 minutes with Z2 riding and/or and extra SS interval added. That’s what I’ll be doing when I get there, but I’m a bit from that so things might change for me.

Since the basic principle of the plans is progressive overload you need to add either volume or intensity and since volume on weekdays is limited I’ll add intensity one day and volume one weekend day. Hope that helps. Best of luck.

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I was doing ssb 1 high volume and looking at ssb 2 high volume I just don’t see how I will be able to be consistent enough with it with my work and family life. I guess I can get up earlier on certain days to accommodate it and as long as I am realistically doing 95+% of the workouts as I know there will be some days when my schedule just wont permit a 2 hour work out on a week day. I know I am doing this early in the year but my goal I guess is to build a very big base even if that means doing base 2x. Looking for feed back and input. I want to get to and go over 5w per kg I am right around 4.8 and 46 years old

Considering high volume SSB. I can handle mid volume can make time for high.

What sort of returns/ftp gains have people made from it?

I did SPBHV but chose to do so only because I knew I had a good chunk of time off/down time. I did a LOT of sleeping and eating during the plan and not much else (very surprised I’m still married). Maybe a twentysomething could handle a HV plan + life without concern but HV definitely requires dropping other activities if you want to do it right.

I did ssbhv 1 and it was very good, challenging but good. Now I want to progress it but I do not necessarily have have the time required for ssbhv2 so I guess I want to know if there is a way to progress ssbhv1 with it being full blown ssbhv 2. I have some ideas like adding time to ssb rides during the week when I can and weekends but 2 hours on weekdays with work and a family is difficult to manage

Yeah I guess I’m wondering:

  • What gains are you all seeing in SSB HV?
  • Did you ever plateau in SSB MV? If not, then why change strategy?

Personally, I’m new to TR but have been doing 400+hr years for the past 3 or 4 years. I can put in 10hr +/- and I’ve held a CTL of 90-95 for several weeks in past without dying so I decided to try the high volume plan. I’m only in wk2 but I agree that finding 2hr blocks of time on weekdays can be difficult. I’m still trying to figure out how I will do that when I get there.

My main question for myself is if 10hr/wk and CTL in the 90s is burning me out slowly and limiting my gains or if its ok based on my recovery.

Hello there, @tpower. I can’t answer your first question as I have never done SSB HV. However I did SSB MV and still changed since it was a little bit too much (intensity) for me. For reference, I have been doing 650+ hours for a couple of years now, changed from running mostly to riding almost exclusively. What I can say that even if I have CTL above 110 I wouldn’t want to do SSB HV, the spring is too far ahead and I would burn myself out.

This winter I will repeat what worked last winter and change it just slightly. I’ll do even less intense workouts (more tempo) but I’ll try to do more intense easy sessions, upper Z2 zone. Sorry for shameless self promotion but I don’t think that winter is the time for much of an intensity. Leave that for the KOM hunting or racing during the season.

Hey @Dostring, thanks for the reply.

I also will typically focus on Z2 efforts in the winter…well actually I’d normally be doing CX until Nov, then take a break and start Z2 efforts in Dec. I try and work around the upper Z2 HR and look for efficiency gains, extending times out, looking at HR drift, then progressing on, raising watts slightly, etc. The watts would start at 190 or so and be at 220 by end of a 4 -6 week block, depending on how much time I can spend in the zone. This worked for several years, especially when I could do 5hr or longer rides every 2 weeks or so. The last few years though I haven’t seen the benefits.

While I’ve done some 700+TSS weeks in past, even up to 900ish, I can’t imagine doing this for very long. I would use the big weeks as overload and then taper into a big race.

I like the easier riding but wanted to take a different approach this year and since there is no racing for me coming up, it seemed like a good time to try something new. I plan to finish out SSB HV by end of year, go into 8 wk build and then be pretty ready for some mountain bike racing by Mar/April. I have an extra 4 week block to play with, for either a setback/reset/specialization or whatever else might happen.

It just doesn’t seem like many people are doing SSBHV and some of the results I’m seeing from people that are on the MV plan look really good in comparison. Makes me wonder if I would do better on lower volume. I guess in the end I’ll just have to wait and see how things go. :slight_smile:

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Hey @phil155, I’m not expert but I think you can adapt SSBHV1 for another 6 weeks.

Thinking about progression though:
I would retest and if you had an FTP boost then you’re going to be doing more kj the 2nd time around in SSBHV1 to begin with.

2nd I would focus on extending one or both of the weekend workouts to as much as you can take. Do the workout prescribed and then go another hour or two. Know that you have that Monday rest day for full recovery.