Currently doing SS Base High Volume plan designed and managed by Adaptive Training.
Any idea why recovery weeks scheduled in my plan happen every 6th week in Base 1 and 2 and are all Zone 1/2 rides during those weeks? While this is my first go with TR and it’s going fine, thought that a recovery week every 4th week was a widely accepted training approach and typically mixed in SS intervals into one or two of the rides during the recovery week.
The TR AT plan Build 1 phase does have me going to an every 4th week recovery week but still with only Zone 1/2 rides during tha week.
Any insight into the timing and intensity of these recovery weeks would be welcome. Thanks
Since the intensity level is relatively low in Base, the TR plans assume you can handle 5 versus 3 work weeks before recovery is needed. This changes in Build and Specialty which are both 3/1 work/rest ratios. Furthermore, your FTP has likely not changed much/any after 3 weeks of SSB so there’s no need to recover then perform a FTP test.
If you’re doing SS during a recovery week you’re not recovering. It’s typical for recovery weeks in any fitness plan to have less volume and no intensity to allow for super compensation. Adding SS to a recovery week will only blunt your recovery. It sounds like you’re more referring to a “Taper” which reduces volume but maintains intensity. This protocol is typical going into an important event/race where you’re trying to hold on to as much fitness as possible while ditching fatigue.
if you had started a year ago, you would be doing 5 days/week of sweet spot. The plans were updated in February, and based on data they reduced it down to 4 days/week. At this time, Adaptive Training simply helps modify the template to give workouts at an appropriate level (appropriate within TR point-of-view).
Regarding insight, my key observation having done SSB-1 HV four years ago is that you may or may not respond well to that much intensity, workload, and load/deload. Even TR’s head coach notes that two workouts are plenty, and the third is approaching marginal gains. Not clear how many will positive respond to 4 days/week of sweet spot, along with the 5:1 load/deload.
If you don’t respond well, don’t be afraid to change things up. In the words of TR’s head coach, the plans were made to be adapted. Today, Adaptive Training is primarily focused on adjusting workout difficulty based on completion and your feedback. As far as I know, its not looking at the bigger picture on a weekly and block basis. Remember, this is a platform to support self-coaching, so don’t lose sight of that.
Sorry that isn’t totally correct. If you are new to TR as stated, and you’ve only done the ramp test as FTP estimate, the first and primary objective in the beginning is for AT to adjust workout difficulty based on your feedback. Partly because TR doesn’t do a full fitness assessment and power profiling, people are coming in with different levels of fitness, and therefore it is not appropriate to having everyone doing the same workout as it was before AT. Once AT has made those adjustments (you can speed up process), I believe AT does have progression objectives for the key weekly workouts, as per the goals of the block. And based on your feedback/completion, for those key workouts I assume it can make minor adjustments to being more/less aggressive on those progressions over the length of the block - I believe AT does that today, but not sure. So that is all very good and a clear improvement over pre-AT, but what if you respond better to fewer hard days? What if you respond to more frequent but small doses of intensity? What if you respond better to some intensity during recovery weeks? That is my point, you should still think of yourself as the head coach, and AT as an assistant coach.