Plan to increase volume - roast me

Here is my plan to increase my volume over the summer. Feel free to tear it apart (and hopefully add suggestions)

Background: Historically, I average around 30 hours a month. This is typically comprised of three 8 hour weeks, one 4-6 hour week, and maybe an extra hour or two with the left over days. Currently sitting at FTP of 282 and weight of 90kg. I am currently at 17.7% body fat (measured at a performance lab), and I think I could get down to 86kg without becoming fatigued and I estimate by july-august I will be around 300 ftp.

I am trying to up my volume quite a bit this year. My plan is to begin increasing volume by doing 4 week blocks in the following way.

Week 1: 8 Hours
Week 2: 9 hours
Week 3: 10 hours
Week 4: 7-8 hours but be more diligent about not doing hard efforts.

In the next month, I’d like to do 9-10-11 with the same rest week, so on an so forth until I am at roughly 40 hours a week.

My plan to increase volume throughout the block is to more or less increase the duration of my Saturday ride. Suppose it is 3 hours on the 8 hour week, then for the 9 hour week I will make it 4 hours, then 5 hours, and etc. I have reasons for doing this, but would also be happy to hear how you all might approach it.

Anyway, feel free to ask for more details. Otherwise; does this seem reasonable? Am I being overly cautious and should just pump the numbers up with z2 miles right out the gate?

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Maybe a bit conservative, but overall I see no issues with your plan.

Enjoy the added fitness. :sunglasses:

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You can definitely add volume by increasing endurance time, but I would also recommend dropping the intensity of that endurance time when you do. 50-55% of FTP isn’t out of the question depending on fitness and overall volume. A lot of volume increase plans fall off the rails because people add hours at 65-70% and end up hating the bike.

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Plan looks great. But since you wanted to be roasted:

Normal people :- )
Voldemort : )

Sorry, it’s the best I got. :rofl:

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I see what you did there!

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Looks good. Along the lines of @kurt.braeckel comments, I recently did a bump in volume about 6 months ago (Nov/Dec). I started by doing my normal rides and then adding on 30 minutes of easy recovery at the end of the ride. That meant doing a 2 hour endurance ride at upper end of zone2 power (190-210W, and then spinning at 100-120W (40-45% ftp) for 30 minutes. At one point I was riding in the rain and completely dropped the intervals and just did upper z1 / low z2 power. Resulted in a nice bump in fitness and power curve.

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This was (is) the old timers way of adding hours. Not me!. I feel this is approaching junk miles territory.

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LOL good for you! I got a really nice fitness bump that 6 months later hasn’t stopped! Have you read the literature? It doesn’t take much intensity to get both cardio and metabolic/muscular adaptations. So happy I tacked on junk miles. Love it when you fly over threads and poop on posts. Pigeons. Best!

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Yeah sounds sensible, good approach, have fun!

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I’m planning on something similar this week. 2 TR interval workouts, sat group ride, ramp up zone 2 time on sundays.

I might just suck at it, or be too old for it, but personally, I find that adding volume AND increasing FTP don’t work together. I tend to have to focus on one or the other or I burn out…but the comments above make sense. I’m probably overdoing it with adding volume at .65 or so and should probably try it as mentioned with far lower IF.

Thinking this might me a typo? otherwise… my word :melting_face:

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:rofl: