I’ve been doing the low volume plans for about 2 years. I’m currently at an FTP of 310, though that feels like a stretch as I am more of a sprinter/anaerobic rider. I don’t think I could actually ride at 300 for an hour, but I can hit >1000 for 30s, 800 for 60s, and peak in the 1500-1600 range. I’m in the 86-88kg range (not overweight per se, carrying some upper body bulk which is mostly useless for cycling)
The general low volume plan seems to call for two 1 hr rides per week and one 1.5hr ride per week, with some variation occasionally. I’ve been increasing volume by either using the workout alternates and choosing a longer time or just doing the workout and then immediately after I’ll do a shorter Z2 workout to bring me to ~2 hrs of riding time. What this typically turns into is one 1.5 hr ride and two 2 hr rides. There is some variation but I’d say I’m doing 4-6 hrs per week but have stretched up to 7-8 some weeks. In the weeks I did more I just added another easy Z2 ride of up to 2hrs.
With this setup of 1.5-2hr rides I basically need at least one day off to feel recovered/ok. I could ride again the next day but would need 2 days off to recover after that. When I did several weeks of 7-8 hrs my FTP in TR immediately jumped from ~300 to 310, but I was pretty tired often and didn’t feel like riding hard on the trainer or outside. Over two months or so I just did Z2 and dropped back to 4-6hrs per week for a while and now I feel good again (FTP still at ~310).
I’d like to increase my total number of hours again but I’m wondering if the longer sessions were what was digging me into a hole.
Question: With limiting my hard sessions to 2 times per week, would I be better to continue with 3 sessions per week with longer time (~2hrs), or would it be better to break it down and ride more often and instead do maybe 1 hour per ride (maybe 2 hard 1hr Threshold/VO2/Anaerobic, and all the rest Z2)? The idea with option 2 is once that feels fine I start increasing the Z2 session lengths.
Edit: In looking at this it seems my option 2 is essentially the masters mid volume plan, whereas my option 1 (what I’m doing now) is the masters low volume plan with added in time to equal the mid volume plan.
