I’m planning to take a bit of an off-season for 6 weeks to focus on my other sport (rock climbing), as well as working more on some strength and flexibility. A 6 week break will set me up perfectly to move through a full training season before my first A event of 2019. I plan on strength training such as heavy squats, dead lifts, etc 2 days per week after climbing sessions, as my climbing gym has a free weight workout area.
I still want to ride 3-4 days per week, because A) I love riding, and B) I don’t want to lose too much fitness before starting Sweet Spot Base. I’ll do one long ride on the weekends, with a TSS somewhere around 225. I also plan to do some mountain biking for a change, on nice days, but will build my calendar around TR workouts in addition to that weekend ride.
Given what Chad said on a recent podcast regarding how quickly different fitness is lost, it sounds like I should perform an anaerobic or VO2 max workout at least once a week to maintain that, correct? Would a good strategy be something like 1 long weekend ride, 1 VO2 max workout, and 1 Sweet Spot workout? What specific TR workouts would be ideal for this purpose? Thanks!
Your description is a perfect fit for one of the Enthusiast plans. Just pick the plan that looks like the right kind of workouts and time commitment and do the first 6 weeks of it. Based on your goals, I’d look at the Maintenance plans first, there is a good variety of workout types that should keep the fitness you have.
https://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/plans/category/23-enthusiast
I would make a case for a low volume base plan as well. I am in the same position with off season and while I want to maintain fitness I also want to enjoy riding, not dread an indoor workout and have flexibility for outdoor and other activities that will not impact my training. Low volume base gives me the flexibility to not worry about over training, I can crush every workout and feel great after, and gives me some structure to maintain my fitness.
From my understanding the fitness that is lost the quickest is also re established the quickest. So I personally would not worry about top end fitness because it will come back quickly once the season starts. Hope this helps.
Following link goes to the article discussing fitness loss and offseason plans from TR.
How Fast Will I Lose Fitness?
Should you decide to take some time off, your concerns shift to just how long you’ll rest and how much fitness you can expect to lose. The good news is that the deeper, more basic forms of fitness that take a while to establish also take a while to dissipate. Much like maximum strength built in the gym, aerobic base adaptations change very little inside of the first week or so.
But higher-level forms of fitness like sprint capacity fade much more quickly; so will the magnitude of your highly anaerobic bursts. To get a good sense of how long your fitness sticks around, consider Vladimir Issurin’s data on Training Residuals:
- Aerobic Endurance – Establishment: 25-35 days; Residuals: 25-35 days
- Anaerobic Power – Establishment: 14-22 days; Residuals 14-22 days
- Muscle Endurance/Threshold – Establishment: 10-20 days; Residuals: 10-20 days
- Sprint Power – Establishment: 2-8 days; Residuals: 2-8 days
That’s another option for sure.
Thanks for the advice guys. I’ve started the Enthusiast Maintenance plan, I think it’s perfect for my needs. I’m new to TR, and somehow didn’t realize those plans existed! Hopefully I’ll be able to balance those anaerobic workouts with doing some weights, we’ll see how the first couple weeks go.