When does trainer road start to recommend more volume? Ive been doing train now workouts for a few months and switched to a training plan for over the winter. I did a masters plan because I also started lifting. I wanted to see what trainer road would recommend if I did a non masters plan and it’s suggesting three hard workouts a week. I’m kind of surprised there isn’t a little more volume or zone 2 rides in there. I read so much about zone 2 so wondering why it doesn’t suggest any for me. Does it just think I can’t handle the volume at this point?
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Just start adding an extra endurance workout or two per week and hit the check volume button after a month or so. It should see that you can handle it and recommend more.
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Sweet I didn’t know about that, thank you!
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The last 10 or so minutes of today’s podcast #563 (see thread pinned at the top of the forum) is Jonathan giving some pointers for the onboarding of new users. Might be something in there you can take advantage of, too.
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I think you’re seeing what you’re seeing right now because you’ve recently only been riding 2-3 days a week. We’re not bumping up how many days a week you should ride just yet because we’re already giving you more stimulus by switching from two to three hard workouts a week.
As you adjust to your current schedule, feel free to use the “Check Volume” tool to see if we’d recommend and changes to your plan.
Additionally, similar to what @patrickhill mentioned, adding short easy rides when you can could be a good way to start to open up more volume as long as they don’t affect your performance during those key, hard interval workouts, or the long-term sustainability of your current plan. I’d say one a week to start, and go from there.
Let me know if this helps! 
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There’s a lot of misconception about Zone 2. A lot of studies showed that 80/20 is effective, meaning 80% low intensity, 20% high intensity. Many people took this to heart that everybody should be doing 80% Z2 all the time, no matter what. In reality, Z2 is so effective for pro’s because they are doing 15+ hours per week on the bike, and Z2 is what’s needed to build stimulus without burning out. At 3 hours per week, doing 80% Z2 would really limit progression. I’ve seen numerous posts on Reddit of people being frustrated that they haven’t really made any progress over several years, then it turns out they’ve basically been doing Z2 for a few hours per week, and that’s it. Great for exercise and health, but won’t build FTP.
At 3 hours per week, doing intensity for every workout leaves you at a fatigue level that is manageable. Basically if two plans are manageable for fatigue, and one of them is low intensity and the other is high intensity, the one with high intensity will make you faster. Once you get into a medium volume plan where you’re doing 5-7 hours per week, that much intensity would raise fatigue levels too much, so the plan would keep the 3 hours of intensity and mix in Z2 elsewhere.
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It helps a lot! I also listened to the podcast episode suggested above and that was great too! I feel like I could definitely handle at least one more 1hr endurance ride along with the three high intensity ones suggested right now so I’ll start by trying to add that in and see how it goes. Thanks!
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You could use something like TrainNow to pick an endurance ride on the days that you’d like, or you could edit your plan and simply switch to a 4-day-a-week plan. That way we’ll prescribe an easy ride that fits in with the discipline of your plan.
Either one works!
Best of luck!
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