I see this everywhere, Trainerroad is too hard, three hard days a week is too much, you need less intensity and more low intensity etc…
My hot take is - a huge number of people dont train hard enough
If you are at 6-8 hours / week, noodling around in zone 1 to low zone 2 isnt going to make you any faster at all. Sure if you are sitting at 20 hours + per week surely you cant add more intensity but the majority of us arnt there.
Eat more, train harder.
It depends.
But Z2 is supposed to make me as fast as Pogi!!! I don’t want to ride hard, it hurts.
Everyone who doesn’t do everything just like me is doing it wrong!
Why only train 6-8 hours a week when you could be training 20?
If we all were teenagers without other stressors in life that would be great. Unfortunately for me, that was 40+ years ago. I can assure you that 2 hard workouts a week is plenty nowadays.
I suppose the question is “hard enough for what”, but given that we’re on a website about a software for sitting on a trainer staring at a bar graph because it’s supposedly the most efficient way to increase fitness and making reasonable inferences from this fact about your audience’s priorities, I basically agree.
Hard enough for what?
If the goal is to maximize genetic potential, most pros don’t even check that box. If the goal is to be faster/fitter than someone who sits on the couch eating chips every day, getting out on the bike for a slow ride will check that box.
Almost all of us can be faster with more/harder training, it’s just a question of priorities. Most of us aren’t paid to race our bikes, so prioritizing other things in life (like a job/family) makes a lot of sense.
The thing that drives me nuts is when people say that have “plateaued” and can’t get any faster and blame genetics or age, but only train 10-12 hours a week. Nobody wants to say/admit that they are “choosing” to be slower, but of course we all do that when we prioritize other things in life.
I mean you’re not wrong… riding hard does legit hurt.
Counter hot take: If you’re only training 6-8 hours, you are by default not training hard enough, are you lazy? 
I think people correctly realize 500 -600h per year is a massive amount of time and perhaps notice other people keep getting faster with less hours invested.
Looking at my own case, I blame genetics, but because I got lucky:
So I’m sympathetic to people that try hard, put hours and their ceiling is low relative speaking.
I wonder what would happen if I trained harder. In 2025 I trained the most and got very fast. But 95% of the increase of volume was in the aerobic miles, I actually spent less time in threshold zones and similar on the other zones.
There are very few absolute statements one can make regarding endurance training.
Here is another hot take. Most people who are training 20+ hours a week aren’t good enough to warrant that amount of training.
I do agree with you though.
I think broadly there are just people who think they can be coached, but really can’t. They’re not willing to let go and trust the process. They’re probably the same people who tried roboinvesting for a month, decided that they could do better with two Vanguard funds, tried that for a month and decided to day trade where they lost big and were too embarrassed to update us on Reddit.
I took it to mean more that people think they’re training hard but aren’t, or they think that all Z2 and a hard group ride is going to get them to competing in cat 1 races. I know quite a few local guys that basically just ride endurance miles all day, every day, have lots of TSS and hours on the bike, but get shelled every race because they haven’t done a Threshold or VO2 workout in a decade. And can’t seem to figure out why they’re not getting faster.
A good buddy of mine does this. Legit has 1200 TSS a week, but always complains that he’s never getting faster or stronger, and gets dropped on every climb. But looking at his rides he hasn’t done any hard workouts all year. Just rides Z2 or tempo, does the occasional hard group ride. And in his mind he’s training hard.
They’re probably the same people who tried roboinvesting for a month, decided that they could do better with two Vanguard funds, tried that for a month and decided to day trade where they lost big and were too embarrassed to update us on Reddit.
this is a suspiciously specific analogy
The issue is that I also know people doing that and they are legit fast. 
Totally agree. It’s not “fair” that some people are born with more talent/potential, but welcome to life. Most of us know the guy/gal who is crazy fast on minimal training. And while it’s a rare thing, people still strangely use those people as a point of comparison (and even frustration). Training volume is one of the biggest drivers of performance, but there are always faster people doing less training and slower people doing more training. Whether you are 2.5 w/kg or 5.5 w/kg, there is still an opportunity to strive to be better (if you want to). I get that it can be more frustrating and less motivating for someone who doesn’t respond well to training, but I know guys who worked for many years to get to 3.5w/kg and are still totally motivated and into their training even though they may have no chance of being competitive in their discipline. Some people just dig the training and striving to be the best version of themselves. Cycling can be a cruel sport if your enjoyment is based on results in bike races or comparing your w/kg to others.
I resemble that remark… But keep in mind that some of us really enjoy the training process and don’t see it as a “cost”, but as a privilege to be able to ride our bike that much. I’m not dramatically faster at 20+ hours than I was at 12-15, but I am faster and I enjoy the training. A big part of that is keeping the season reasonably short (I’m already done for the year) and doing lots of non-cycling stuff in the off season. The other big part is that I’m retired, so cycling is basically my job (that I love) for the first ~7 months of the year. If I made it my job 12 months of the year, I know I could get faster, but I have other priorities.
Not for a minute do I think I’m doing everything I could do to reach my potential. And that’s why it bugs me a bit when I hear people saying they can’t get any faster when it’s obviously a choice they are making (often a good choice for the sake of life balance).
if my enjoyment was based on results, I would be in a very dark place
this is one of them
have you organized an intervention for him?
i find that the people who lose big only update us about their wins. It kills me when people try to christen their gambling addiction as “investing” (the sports betting companies use this language in their marketing). I also hate how difficult it is to help people when the primary obstacle is their own poor decision making and their inability to discern wisdom from grift/bs
what disciplines do you race, if at all?