High Volume Training Plan Mega-Thread

Whenever this HV talk comes up I always ask myself, “are the people who complete the HV plans actually seeing a significant bump in FTP?” Sure you are completing it but are you absorbing it or just always in a state of fatigue? I experimented with HV all of last winter and although I had a very small bump in FTP I felt like the mass amount of SS goes against everything I learned as a runner. Always in the zone that leaves you just a little flat so you never really recover enough to absorb it. This winter I’m testing the Polarized approach that worked excellent for me as a runner. So far two weeks in and I’m mentally and physically fresher for my hard workouts and actually enjoy my long aerobic rides on the trainer where I can zone out mentally watching The Sapranos. I’m on the trainer right now.:nerd_face: I figure if I don’t try something different I will always wonder.

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700-750 TSS/week is the high side of what most of us with full-time jobs can adapt to, and if you’re doing 14 hrs a week or more, then the IF has to go down.

I wouldn’t try to do one of the SSBHV plans. I do 14-16 hours a week, but I’m strict about only two days being “hard” – and that “hard” is relative to the period. Right now, my hard is 80-90% of FTP.

I think that the FTP payoff for high volume only happens after 2-3 years on that kind of load. The big gain is in durability and TTE. More volume = more strength late in the race. To be honest, I don’t think a sprinter or a puncheur needs to bother with all the volume – USCF races are pretty short for the average rider on this forum (30-55), and smart drafting and having a nose for the right break will lead to more success than an extra 100 hours of training in a year. If you’re a TT’er/rouleur, however, to get the strength to play your breakaway game (presuming your power is high enough to actually make that happen), then you need that volume and the strength that eventually comes from it (presuming you don’t cook yourself).

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Well the increase will be limited by your potential. As long as i increased my fitness i increased FTP for the first 2 years no matter what type of training i did. Now the base is most for following the structured plan.

My goal in SSBHV is to raise my time in SS to max during the 12 weeks, also every saturday is building up to 3hour 0.9 IF. So main goal is getting a huge base which i hope I get to build on for the next 9 months. I probably would have bigger benefit of doing a big TB but i don’t think i would manage that much easy training indoors.

I’m at the end of week 4 of SSB1. So last year I did ssb1 starting at 275w and it ended up being too easy and gradually worked my way to 295 during build. This year I did a mini block of ssb in October while racing cross at 285, and then started ssb in its full form at 290. It’s definitely doable this time but not a cakewalk like last winter. I’m not sure at this point if I’ll bump up for ssb2 or not, I’m going to see how week 5 goes plus I’m sure week 6 will help me freshen up. If I do go up it’ll be 5w

I’m 44 now and ran for 6 years before I started riding 2 years ago. The running definitely helped my base endurance. I peaked really fast on the bike. In about the first 7 months of training I got up to 278FTP at 142lbs. I couldn’t seem to make anymore gains so I joined TR and trained my ass off all last winter. Ended with 274FTP (ramp test). After a summer of not much structure I am now 266FTP ar 145lbs :neutral_face:. So this new approach I’m trying this winter will be a great test. I’d love to get my ftp in the 280 range and back down to 142lbs

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Just to touch on the original question, I have a variety of entertainment. Sometimes I’ll also run Zwift, a lot of times I listen to local sports talk, on weekends I’ll watch premier league soccer

I don’t really do much more than drink on the trainer, I guess I do my eating before and after, but dates are a good trainer food that are easy to pop in.

It’s not always all about FTP. An HV plan can substantially increase your basic fitness or TTE or muscular endurance or your lactate capabilities or your short power, etc. All depends what you’re doing with that high volume.

My FTP didn’t change that much after doing SPBHV (4%), but doing SSBHV after that, I found I could push much longer times at SS. I was targeting 40min intervals for my A Race but would do 60min intervals weekly. Wasn’t able to do that after completing SSBL/MV, even with a bigger jump in FTP.

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:rofl: I’m with @RobertK. I will start off with usually music but will probably turn it off after a short while after it starts to annoy me. I have enough thoughts of my own to correlate and file to keep me mentally engaged. :wink:

I agree with that.

I decided that I wanted to do HV plans (I’m on TB now) because I just upgraded to Cat2 and I feel like I really need a big aerobic engine to be successful. So FTP bumps are great but I will be just as happy or even more so to see longer TTE, more repeatability, less degradation in my PD curve after 2500Kj, and so on.
Over the past couple of seasons, I have seen that I can build good short power (9.2 w/kg 1m) really quickly, which allowed me to race and do well in cat 3 crits, but just having a good 1m power won’t cut it anymore. I also noticed I have raced the best when I have a (relatively) large number of miles in my legs and weeks/months of consistency.

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That’s a good call and perhaps one that most people don’t entertain — the WHY.

Don’t do an HV plan just because it’s there, or you think you can. Think back from your goal, does it actually require HV training?

Had a look at the Enthusiast Maintenance HV plan (6.5 hrs/wk) and I’d say anyone who did this entire plan (4 months) would come out ripping! It might not take you to the end of a 4hr road race but you’d definitely crush a 35min crit. That’s to say, a HV plan doesn’t have to be 15hrs/wk and 5,000kJ/day.

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For me all my goals are soft goals. It’s all about enjoying the process. That’s why I switched over to biking. I set a bunch of hard goals as a runner and every time I accomplished a goal it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be. It led to burnout.

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My entertainment is movies/series for anything below 95%, harder i do music + youtube videos.

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Yeah its obviously working for you, probably best sticking to your routine rather than trying to shoehorn something in which isnt sustainable long term, but maybe something to look at if you have a specific goal coming up, easy gain to make

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I did SSB HV 1 at the beginning of my third season, and the FTP bump was modest (something like 4% or 5%). However I absolutely conquered a 2.5 hour climb at the end of week 5 because of all the muscular endurance. Was feeling strong :muscle:t3: - it’s not always about FTP.

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I’ve said that before after listening to the MAF-centric Endurance Planet podcast. One of the hosts has done so much MAF (low HR) training that his Aerobic Threshold is now very close to his FTP. Thus, even without boosting his FTP, he can perform at a much higher % of FTP with much less effort.

This isn’t something that I’ve ever heard discussed on the TR podcast. If FTP is the border between low and high intensity, then the AeT:FTP relationship should be just as important as what’s most talked about in the TR circle, the FTP:VO2max relationship.

This also touches on ‘pro training’. When we see pros out doing 6 hours of Z2 work, like the EP host, because the pro has trained their AeT to such a high level, it doesn’t translate to amateur/weekend warrior zonage. To an amateur, a pro’s 70% FTP might feel like 85% FTP.

The above also shows the importance of years of endurance work if you want to be a long-haul endurance athlete. It also reveals that you can become quite fit in a healthy manner (not performance orientated) without doing much high-stress exercise. Ya just gotta be consistent. :+1:

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The time needed for that to succeed though is way higher than a 9 hour a week plan, most folks just don’t have the time for that.

I think the time required is relative. I averaged around 10hrs/week during last winter’s base phase of 3 months doing nothing but zone 2 rides. I never felt fitter and my gains were big this year. I probably averaged 6hrs a week the prior year.

This year I’m upping my volume again. So I don’t believe we need to match the weekly hour commitment of the pros. We just need to increase the volume relative to ourselves. And I’d bet the pro’s did exactly that over their careers. They didn’t just wake up and start doing 25-30hr weeks.

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Yes I agree. I’ve been working on aerobic capacity since late August. Loading weeks were 7.5-11 hours, the goal was 9-12 hours/week (“high-volume” for me) but learned some valuable lessons along the way. Did not stick with only zone 2, did some tempo and some (outside) intensity. Given what I’ve learned from Friel’s Fast After 50 and Alan Couzens’ blog and Olbrecht’s The Science of Winning should have thrown in a structured (relatively easy) vo2max work a week. Going to finish this year’s base with a nice bump in aerobic capacity, and a good template for next year’s base.

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I did a 4 week outdoor block of ~12hrs a week and I learned very quickly to pay attention to how hard I was riding. “Am I really in Z2 right now?” So I switched the power output number on my Garmin to %FTP and it really helped me control the IF of my outdoor rides. I also started paying more attention to kJ’s, using the metric for info about fueling and another way of measuring the amount of riding i was doing.

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