Hi all,
It’s been a couple weeks since I started TR, I was wondering if you all could drop some knowledge on my established training schedule. Here are my goals:
- Get faster on the bike so I can enjoy riding with groups and possibly racing in criteriums in the future.
- Maintain my maximal strength so I can continue to throw my kids in the air for as long as possible.
- Crosstrain to maintain/increase bone density.
Some details about me:
- 40-year old male
- Full time job
- Married with children
- Started cycling in May 2018, most of my time on the bike is spent commuting
Training Schedule:
- Monday: Bike commute 30 mile roundtrip + 1.5 hours weight training (5/3/1 deadlift, front squats, military press, pull ups)
- Tuesday: Bike commute 30 mile roundtrip + Trainerroad workout (currently in SSB1 phase)
- Wednesday: 1.5 hours kickboxing
- Thursday: Bike commute 30 mile roundtrip + Trainerroad workout
- Friday: Trainerroad workout
- Saturday: 3 hours group ride or Trainerroad workout
- Sunday: Rest day
Please let me know what you think about the routine. I’ve been on it for about 2 weeks now, I am definitely tired but I’m not sure if I’m overtrained.
Thanks!
I assume you’re doing a Low Volume plan, but then adding in an extra workout? What does the extra workout look like and which day are you adding it? What were you doing before you started TR? Just random outdoor rides? If you’re feeling tired after 2 weeks, you’ll have trouble keeping this up when your plan moves to Build.
After a a couple of years of TR and some weight training, here are a few guidelines that I use for myself so that I’m not so wiped out at the end of the week that I can’t turn around and do it again the next week:
- You have 3 different kinds of activities here. 1) TR 2) Weight training 3) Kickboxing. Make sure you have it clear in your mind which are the priorities. Maybe it’s TR, Kickboxing, Weight Training in that order. Life happens, you get tired, you have to travel, whatever. Things will happen that mean you can’t do everything in a given week. Decide upfront how you’re going to to adjust (which you’re going to drop). In the order I have above, if you get to a week and you’re tired and you need to back off, you’d skip weight training that week so that you were fresher for TR and Kickboxing. If you were super-tired, you’d then skip Kickboxing and only do TR, etc.
- Cycling is a lot of focus on legs. In weight training, I quickly learned that the more I did leg weights, the worse my TR workouts were. So, I generally don’t do squats as I’m too tired. I also generally do weight training in the afternoon of the high intensity TR days. For me those are Tuesday / Thursday / Saturday mornings. So I will only do weight training in the afternoon on those days. I can’t lift as heavy (especially anything in the legs) since I’m tired from the morning, but I get about 36 hours of rest before I hit my legs with the next brutal TR workouts. TR is my priority, so I want to be freshest. You have weight training on a Monday doing deadlifts and squats and then want to do a tough TR workout the next day, maybe consider changing that up.
- I have learned that its better to bundle things together on a single day, so that I can have more rest days. 6 workouts on 3 days with 4 days rest make me recover way better than doing 6 things on 6 days with 1 day rest. What I found was that the first couple of days were ok, but then the remaining workouts in the week I was just too tired to go all in on. You have to prioritize rest in order to allow your body time to absorb the stress and recover.
- Commuting is still work. Your commutes are only 30 mins (I assume 15 mins in, 15 mins out). I would recommend stretching them to 20 mins a leg and going extra easy. A 15 mins commute is not safe or long enough to get any training benefit, so all you’re doing to do is make yourself tired. Go easy, or catch the bus.
So, knowing what works for me and looking at your schedule, I might rearrange things to be:
- Mon: Easy commute
- Tues: TR early morning / Easy commute / Weight training afternoon
- Wed: Rest
- Thu: TR early morning / Easy commute / Kickboxing afternoon
- Fri: Recovery or Aerobic TR ride (Lazy Mountain or Pettit)
- Sat: Group/TR ride
- Sun: Rest
Very unlikely you’re overtrained. That generally takes a heavier schedule than this and many months/years to ‘achieve’. Pretty sure you’re just tired. If you went from not that much and then started doing this, you’ll have an adjustment period to go through.
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Hi, on first pass you are doing a substantial amount of work, approximately 15 hours a week. This is high for someone who started cycling only a year ago.
I used to race on just a similar commute and weekend ride without all of the other training. If you wish to race I suggest dropping the kick boxing as this is not conducive to the muscles used on the bike.
The cross training could be focused during an off season .
Strength training is recommended but on a day when not on the bike as your riding is sufficient load , especially as you are adding a workout on top of your commute.
Hope this is helpful.
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@Raythebike
I don’t agree with this. I personally think that it’s better to keep them on the same day to maximize rest the following day. There is good information in the Strength Training thread on the topic. Here is a passage from @chad which you can find near the top:
As far as scheduling your strength workouts so as not to negatively impact your endurance training, our recommendation is to separate them as much as possible but do them in the same day rather than schedule strength work on a recovery day.
Everybody responds differently to training stress, so you have to do what works best for you however.
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@julianoliver I’ve seen this before, but on my rest days I do 30 minutes of core work with an exercise ball , kettle bell swings and arm/lat work, no legs. So it’s different muscle groups than cycling -so my legs are resting. Then after an easy swim I do steam and a jacuzzi for 10 mins each,
so I leave very refreshed, not tired. The jacuzzi is similar to a leg massage.
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I would say this path could very well lead you down the path to overtraining. Structured interval training indoors will definitely catch up to you as you progress through TR. That is a lot of other work you have piled on. Know what your priorities are and when you begin to feel fatigued cut whichever activity is lower on the priority list. As @julianoliver stated, everyone responds to stress differently.
I would do strength training on the same days as my trainer workouts. Make sure they are on opposite ends of the day. Keep your rest days for just that, rest. I wouldn’t do anything more than some recovery stretching.
Not so much over-trained, as under-recovered.
The difference is that overtraining is a long term thing, where your body just gets totally beaten down by continually training load over many months. It’s more than just a muscular thing - immune system, etc can get compromised as well.
Under-recovery is more of a short-term thing, where your body doesn’t get the time to respond/hyper-compensate to the training stimulus. Insufficient recovery means you just won’t get the most out of the workouts you are doing.
That’s a lot of workouts there, plus a fair bit of extra TSS in the commuting. I’d suggest nixing Thursday’s TR workout to give you a light day mid-week. And also make sure you try to keep your commuting to zone 1/zone2 effort levels. If you look at even TR’s high volume plans, they include a rest day, and a light day mid-week.
Alternatively, focus on kick-boxing during the off-season, and perhaps just once a month (during the recovery week) just to keep your hand in there.
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