Hi, I’m in a phase of planned low intensity exercise only due to a temporary medical situation. I’d love to have a little more control over the training plan to exclude anything above endurance. For now I just change it whenever one of the harder workouts pop up. Is there any other way to go about this? I’ve already artificially lowered my FTP. I can’t really use the feedback as a tool because I am advised not to attempt workouts that would raise my HR too much. It would be nice to have a very gradual increase in the intensity. I know TR can’t design training plans for medical conditions but I could if I could for example swap out the hard day for another easy day on the plan design.
Could you just schedule endurance days in a plan? Maybe a maintain fitness plan and swap all “hard intervals” for endurance.
Traditional Base I has only endurance / Z2 workouts. You could manually drop this plan onto your calendar until you’re recovered and cleared for more intensity.
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I’ve tried that when making a new plan but can’t seem to find a way to change all workouts to endurance or recovery. There seem to be a minimum of 2 “hard” interval workouts per week. I am manually changing them every day for now, when they come up.
ok I will give that a try, thanks!
I think you can select where it says hard intervals in the plan builder and change it to endurance.
Also I think there should be a new solution for you once the TR AI update rolls out
well I was still getting workouts that were tempo so I just reduced my FTP even lower by 60 Watts and will answer the surveys so it doesn’t adjust the difficulty up too fast. Or maybe I will just do TrainNow. But I would like a gradual increase in intensity over the next 6 weeks. I guess this may be a situation where I need to design it elsewhere since it’s not the typical use for TR.
Hi @amfindlay, +1 for hitting up Traditional Base 1 for as long as you need to avoid intensity on the bike.
And… just in case you have the space to consider this, if you’re expecting to be required to exclude interval work for several months & if your medical professionals consider it acceptable: Strength training may be a viable way to stave off FTP declines over this time. This podcast episode goes into it:
The TLDR version is that all cyclists in the study did pure Z2 for 12 hours per week (so it’s much like what you’re expecting to do on the bike). Those who did heavy strength training generally saw subtle increases in power at high intensity (despite doing none of those sorts of efforts on the bike during the study period of 12 weeks). Participants doing either the core exercises or no exercises (besides riding) generally saw declines in higher zones (as expected).
Of course, if your advice is to avoid high intensity because of problems with muscles, bones, joints, or tearing something stitched up in an operation, then yeah strength training would be totally out of the question. Your medical professional’s advice trumps anything I can suggest, but just offering it in case it’s deemed viable & safe.
I’m bringing this up because I did it about a year ago & I’d say I had moderate success with it. Three rounds of Traditional Base 1 (Mid Volume, & for different reasons than why you will be), along with a similar strength training protocol as mentioned in the video (which I’ve continued ever since). TR AI dropped my FTP at the end of the 3 months (which is understandable on TR AI’s part) but I followed it up with TB2, TB3, TB2, then TB3 again (all at mid vol also), & the FTP headed north immediately.
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Hey @amfindlay, I am sorry to hear about your medical condition. I hope you heal fast!
It sounds like in your case, what would be best is to use TrainNow and select the recommended Endurance workout for the day. I don’t think trying to follow a plan right now makes a lot of sense as we don’t have just Endurance workout plans.
Once your doctor gives you the OK to resume interval work, I would start a proper training plan then.
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Thank you!! This is so helpful. I have two weeks off strength training and then have the ok to get back to that. That gives me a lot of hope at not losing a ton of fitness. I have good medical advice on rehabbing. I developed a pulmonary embolism and have to keep the intensity low for the next 6 weeks at least. I caught it really early because I picked up on some very abnormal shortness of breath I was having on a couple of rides. Anyway I’m on the mend and it’s a perfect time of year to be on my trainer anyway. I’ll give that podcast a re-listen.
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Thank you!! I set up a training plan and will just swap out any workout above endurance. I have good medical guidance and will of course follow that! I couldn’t see a way to move a hard workout down to easy in the training plan template so that confirms that I wasn’t missing anything.