What kind of percentage do you loose in your off season? How quickly do you regain it?
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How long an off season?
What sort of rides are you doing off season.
How much training are you doing during the season?
How old are you?
Sprinter or climber?
Lots of questions that n ed to be factored in.
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Main thing is the rides that you are doing. The right rides and volume can certainly increase fitness and FTP.
My typical summer volume is 16-30h/week. This winter dropped to 5h, 3x/week max effort sprints only. According to TR AI detection, FTP remained same. Obviously not measured metrics like TTE and endurance were probably terrible, though.
Once got outdoors again, low intensity long distance endurance came back pretty quickly. Boosted to 30h with no issues. Donāt know about TTE, just started stretching it.
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Iāve not completely stopped structure but with group rides Iām down most weeks to one workout and I usually take it outside. My FTP (AI FTP) has remained stable, increasing slightly the last time.
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I think a few replies missed the capital YOU
I never stop structured training, so canāt really answer. I do take a couple weeks off a few times a year (summer family vacation and Christmas), and I try to walk a lot and do some running to make up for not having a bike, so I never really notice any drop.
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I guess it depends on what your unstructured riding is like compared to your structured riding. Iām guessing I drop 15-20 watts from 285 to 265ā¦ bit if Iām not testing it I donāt really now for sure either.
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I also loose the top end and speciality, around 5-10% depending on what āoff seasonā means.
What hurts the most is what I loose in mental habituation: Hard efforts feel much harder after not doing them for a while.
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Whatās an off season?
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This is one of those how long is a piece of string questions. Plus itās very dependant upon what you do outside structured training periods. It can vary greatly.
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Check this one out @JoPage
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Thanks @Pbase i have literally juat started a new training plan and put it through as High Volume but then pondering in the early hours decided to completely change direction to low volume, and now Iām even more confused.
Honestly, my plan was get up, drink tea, change training plan but I got sidelined by a sneaky forum visit and now look what youāve done. 
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During offseason or when just taking a break from structure I still try to do one interval session per week that has about 30min of threshold or about 15min of VO2max.
I find it maintains your top end pretty well. Something like 3x10 30/15s not done all out isnāt that hard to do.
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For me personally, with structure on TR, I gained about 3w over 12 months.
Quitting and just riding the bike as and when i choose has cost me nothing in terms of watts.
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Thanks all to have replied to this thread. I appreciate the question was a bit āhow long is a piece of stringā but the answers have been interesting none-the-less.
I asked because I was interested. My FTP at the start of the year, after very little decent riding October through to December was 3.2 watts/kg when I rejoined TR. I felt rough, and was tired.
Then I was on base for a couple of months and didnāt see any change in FTP. Well, actually AiFTP put it down by a watt or two but I was feeling much stronger so just didnāt accept the change. Once build started I finally saw some increases and went up to 3.4 watts by the middle of May and saw huge improvements at the VO2-Sprint side of the power curve. Specialty didnāt go well as I picked up a bug, but I still had decent consistency right up to the week before the June AIFTP detection. Iād lost a bit at that point, but figured that made sense as I had been on a taper, then also had a bit of recovery and a holiday. I was still riding regularly though.
After that I have been doing a mix of some Z2 endurance work a few other interval sessions, and a fair amount of social and unstructured riding/long days/camping etc. I have been riding as normal with a normal amount of TSS. Gym work has also been pretty consistent. Yet I am pretty much back down nearly to where I was at the start of the year now as have just run another detection.
Itās interesting that it was SOOOO much hard work to put on that 0.2 watt/kg, but it falls away sooo fast, even with stable TSS and intervals if there isnāt the brutally hard sessions in place.
My other half is completely the opposite. Iāve seen him on bed rest followed by no real weight bearing for 3 months after a serious leg injury, only to be back to full fitness within 6 weeks of getting on the bike. He never seems to loose much, even if he is barely riding, and when he does bother to make an effort, the fitness comes back in a blink of an eye!
I was kind of hoping that I would keep everything but the top end if I was still riding so when restarting a training plan, I would be jumping up from a higher point, but hey ho! At this age I start to see why they say staying still IS gaining!
Iām no expert in this field, but what I picked up in the last years: There is kind of a āfast fitnessā, meaning fitness that brings you certain achievements (like best 20min power, choose what matters to you), but they are short lived. Once an achievement gets repeated over weeks, or even after a long day, thatās when it starts to get āreal fitnessā. And this is the kind of fitness you wonāt loose that fast.
We can all press out some percentage above our usual punch weight and thatās good for race days, but it can be very brittle and depend on so many factors (like having a good day).
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Considering this question and reflecting on my own experiences, I find it takes a longer time to regain what I may lose, compared to the time I have had off (eg 2 weeks off takes 3 to 4 weeks to regain) - but itās also dependant on what aspect of cycling fitness youāre focusing on.
By way of example, over the last few years there have been a few occasions where Iāve been forced to take 2, 3 or 4 weeks off the bike due to illness (Covid etc).
Iāve seen my FTP (as assessed by my performance on TR workouts and AI) drop between 5% and 10%.
Whatās interesting is that I seem to lose more of my short power more quickly but it also comes back relatively quickly (maybe after 4 or 5 weeks).
If I take longer than that off the bike (for example I was forced to take 4 to 5 months off a few years back) then things take a much bigger hit. Not just FTP -and short power my FTP went from around 315 to 225 but my endurance and durability just disappeared.
I did some reading that suggested blood volume and other things like mitochondrial efficiency falls away when that sort of time frame of inactivity occurs and these things take a bit longer to come back.
For sure it took me a LONG time - circa 7 or 8 months to begin to get back closer to where Iād been - even longer to regain full fitness and then look to push on beyond that.
My age may have an impact (Iām 52) so rebuilding may be harder than if I was 32 - but for sure there seems to be a window in which I can stop cycling and see some preservation of ability (see summary of my personal experience below):
1 day to 1 week - no change
1 week to 2 weeks - minimal insurance loss (5%?) and some short power loss (5% to 10%?)
2 weeks to 4 weeks - 10% to 15% endurance loss - 20%+ short power loss
4 weeks plus - increasing reduction in endurance and short power with a perceived cliff edge at around 7 weeks.
When translating this to the OP question of what happens when you stop structured training but still ride, I think a similar effect applies - but with much reduced impact.
Indoor training in ERG mode is distinctly different to hard outdoor rides - so there is some circumstance specific adaptation loss, but riding hard is riding hard and I think maintaining endurance is probably easier than maintaining specific higher zone ability.
Iām fining the work around is to (in the summer when my outdoor riding takes precedent and itās too hot to continue daily indoor intervals) that I push the outdoor volume at lower intensity and keep at least one VO2 max or maybe Threhsold / sweetspot session in my weekly plan - to keep my body attuned to the ERG training sensations.
I have to add that after being forced to take a week off, provided the training was good before that, I often had better fitness because of being well rested. Sometimes some days off actually improve fitness (itās often 1-2 days more than I think, till I get really energetic).
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OMG I TOTALLY relate to your response, I feel like I have to be SO much more consistent with regular training (and that includes strength, flexibility and structured workouts!) whereas my husband can take weeks and even months off, hammer out a few hard rides or workouts and still (!!) be destroying people in group rides. Racing Iām sure heād be put in his place a bit more for Cat 3, but that also has to do with the higher level of competition out here on the east coast vs. the Midwest IMO.
The only thing I notice thatās different is his fatigue, he canāt sustain his usual diesel on the front AND taking town line sprints, he needs to sit in a bit more and a couple of times heās gotten himself into trouble trying to run paces that he used to in high school (Iām talking 7min/mi) and ended up tweaking something in his foot. 
But besides that, I do find it incredibly frustrating that if IāM not consistent it shows up immediately and takes FOREVER to feel even remotely back to ānormalā, yet barely registers for him when heās completely off the bike (he had to recover from a separated shoulder for a few months) and now heās more or less back to 80-90% of his pre-injury status, just with a few extra pounds he canāt get rid of.
Unfortunately a lot of it comes down to the physiological differences of men vs. women, our physique doesnāt prioritize hanging on to muscle like guys do and we have to do MORE to just keep what we have, let alone build more muscle!
I was actually just having this conversation with people at a lunch the other day, the top female cyclists in the UCI could probably survive in the menās TDF peleton, but take any basic cat 3 or above male and theyād basically destroy a pro womenās field. We donāt have to like it, but it is what it is 
Another caveat Iād include is that even when it seems like the FTP isnāt moving (or maybe even declining) there are plenty of other systems youāre working and improving on! When I started using TR, I used to take a lot more notes in my post-workout and I wish I did that more now, but I find itās helpful to go back to āknownā workouts or workouts Iāve recently done and feel the noticeable difference in RPE or length of intervals increasing. Donāt forget about those, itās not all about FTP gains (and we arenāt robots, improvements arenāt always linear)! I know I need to remind myself of that a lot too 
Finally, Iām not sure how old you are but I got my first ārealā road bike in 2016, started racing in 2017 when I was 32, did several HARD seasons of road and CX then went to gravel like everyone else in 2020, and coming back to racing and structure was HORRIBLE. I will NEVER not have structure in some form or fashion after that experience, but even with structure as Iām nearing 40 I can tell Iām not recovering as easily as I used to in my early 30ās, and higher watts need more work on the trainer to be able to access. (Getting a MTB in 2020 and did some XC racing, but trying to keep up with these east coast riders has helped kick my butt and use power systems that feel totally different from road and even CX helps too)!
Iāve always been able to hold a large percentage of my threshold, a lot of those early group rides I was always āred-liningā and thanks to several years of TR structured workouts and racing I finally experienced what it was like to be āfreshā or recovering adequately in the group to still help out with pulls on the front, if anything now not being the automatic back of the bunch Iām pulling guys back to the sprinting bunch and itās annoying haha!!
But I still struggle with super punchy efforts if I donāt do structured training, my body doesnāt like them but it gives me something to focus on constantly improving.
Hope this helps! 
getting off of ranty/rambly soapbox now
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This episode was really helpful to listen to:
Fast Talk Femmes Podcast: Increasing Longevity in Endurance Sportāwith Katerina Nash - Fast Talk Laboratories.._gsMQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2ZfABhDBARIsAHFTxGy671r3mCGnDIvwwfVeHpZAW08dSGwFfAzQ7f5J55IOrtnuhad4CpEaAoCdEALw_wcB&gbraid=0AAAAAByunjtAdBDEDI0gHq_L7oMDnTH10
Katherina talks about dialing down intensity now at 45 years old, also being okay with her ābig buttā and her body changing and missing fat in her face now that sheās older, āI guess weāre just never happyā¦itās just a chapterā
I really needed to hear all that
Interesting that she doesnāt do intervals anymore, but then again sheās been at such a high level for so long it feels like āapples to orangesā comparison for that aspect. And she does still train! 
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