I’ve always struggled with consistency, being a triathlete doesn’t help much.
Here’s the first half of 2026, after that I quit and am only now putting myleslf back into training, primarily to deal with the weight gain.
TR still recommend four workouts per week in the bike plans, and I used to do three or four hard bike workouts a week when I was Ironman training, plus hard swims and runs. These days the science is saying do very little by comparison, and as below I can get to 250W averaging 200 or less TSS.
However I’m only interested in consistency right now, and looking at the first half of the year it was only 3 rides a week got me to 250/252. 1x hard, 1x endurance and 1 ether sweet spot or endurance.
If consistency is everything it’s cracked up to be I’m thinking of going to just two workouts per week until the new year at least….thoughts?
I’ll be lifting swimming running as well, but statistically I e never seen a correlation that shows an impact on cycling. Aim is also twice a week per discipline to promote consistency.
IMHO. If you want to lose weight go to the gym and watch your nutrition. Only eat whole foods. If you want to get faster on the bike, train like it. I have lost over 105lbs. The first 50 was pretty much just from riding a lot and took years. The last 55lbs has only been since this Jan 1. I ride less and spend less time in the gym. I have been really strict on my training and pretty strict on my nutrition. Adding 40 plus watts to my ftp and over 1 watt per kilo to my power to weight. Accomplishing things that I never even thought possible. I attribute it to my whole food diet.
you don’t manage weight on a bike. Get into the gym and lift and get your diet in order.
As for training, I think your plan is a good one. 2 bike workouts a weeks. Then you said 2 workout per discipline. That’s 6 days a week, 2 runs, 2 swims, 2 rides. That’s a solid amount of volume if you can be consistent with it. If I understood you correctly that is, couldn’t quite determine 100% if you meant 2 workouts per week spread across disciplines or two workouts a week for each discipline.
I think your instincts are right about consistency though. I’d think you’d be generally better off with lower volume and perfect consistency than higher volume but all over the place.
I agree with the replies so far. I’ll stay away from weight loss as that’s a rabbit hole but if you want to restore consistency drop your bike sessions to two and make them mentally easy: I’d suggest one endurance ride (using discipline to keep the IF low) and one ‘vibe’ ride where it can be anything from an hour easy to that plus smashing hills or just pushing it up to tempo or extending the duration a little. Make sure to leave something in the tank and make it fun.
If you can manage three do the above and add in something structured, whatever is appropriate for the time of year and your goals. Looking at your training history it looks like you nail workouts when there are three to five but the next week or two suffers even though you don’t aim to do as much. 100% you’d be better off doing less but consistently.
Caveat: I resistance train three times per week (in maintenence though so it’s easy) but don’t run or swim.
This is great advice. Particularly making it fun and letting yourself off the hook in general. I do find sometimes that I go into a free ride in Zwift just to have a little easy fun and end up smashing PRs because I wasn’t intimidated by some evil looking intervals staring me down.
I’ve used the calculations in episode #600 to look at the last six years training, and my best consistency scores, 19-23, correlate with my peak FTP and race results. Although it’s not the only stat that correlates. Moderate consistency appears to correlate to my average FTP scores around 250, seemingly of itself.
Those calculations also reveal my consistency in running never gets better than 34 even when I was marathon training, so perhaps that partly explaining my years of weak results at running.
All of that is to say it’s encouraging me to got for low but very steady volume up to Christmas and see what happens.