Currently on Mid Volume and I’m at the 4 week point and I am toast! Mainly due to work and diet tbh but up until now I was hitting my targets. With the Mid Volume, it’s training 5x a week but I want to knock it down to 4x. This might be a silly question but am I better off doing Mid Volume and taking out a workout OR adding a workout in with the Low Volume which is 3x a week. Maybe I’m better off just training with LV?
Thanks
Go LV, and add a workout or outdoor ride if you have extra time. Better to nail the LV plan then to feel like you can’t keep up and end up missing workouts.
If I decide to add a ride, should I just do a low .IF just to add some stress or an actual workout?
In Base, when comparing the low to medium volume plan, the latter add an easy ride plus either an easy or a sweet-spot or over-under to the content of the low-volume plan. Generally, people add an easy ride to LV plans to make a “low-medium” version.
Either an outdoor ride or something in the Active Recovery category (you can filter workouts in the app by Zone)
And bear in mind that Low Volume is not Easy Volume!
Personally, I’d do LV and add a longer ride on the weekend. So SSB1LV would be 60-60-90 on M-W-F, then I’d add 2+ hours on Saturday morning. That may end up being my plan when I start back up with work.
In any case, nail the LV plan then add rides as able.
Sunday is the day that I could do a long ride and a saturday I’d like to have off because of work and wanting to be fit for Sunday. With the LV plan as is, how would you do the mid week rides? Keep them as they are and do a back to back Su-M or join up 2 in the week?
I don’t see a problem with riding M-W-F-Su provided your Sunday ride isn’t crushing you and you can recover for that Monday session. If your Sunday ride is long-easy (say .65 IF or so), you should be able to rebound for the Monday session.
You could vary it, too. We get too wrapped up in “weeks”. Fix your key ride days, whatever they are based on you limiter, and make sure you go into those rides as fresh as possible, and then you can reduce intensity or volume on the “others.”
For example, if you’re doing SSBLV2, and you really want to make sure you’re fresh for those VO2max workouts, you could do Tu-W-F-Su, or leave that as an option in the event that your Sunday ride is too hard. This is commonly called “sliding” a workout. You’re planned for M-W-F-Su that week, but your Sunday ride turned into a 3 hour sufferfest, so you “slide” the Monday workout to Tuesday, and re-evaluate how you feel after that for the remaining two rides.
I would not put two TR sessions in the same day. I would skip the lowest priority one in a week if I had to.
Yeah sorry I meant “join up” as in Tu-We or Th-Fr (back to back days). I’m going to change my plan for the remaining 3 weeks To LV and do what you mentioned above. I’ll try M-W-F- Su and see how it goes. I was considering doing a Zwift race on the Sunday but that would leave me wrecked for the Monday I’m assuming. Thanks for the info, appreciate it
If Sundays leave you wrecked, just listen to your body and adjust accordingly. This is always hard for us to do, because we’re all ingrained with MUST TRAIN MORE. That’s not always true! Good luck!
Also worth considering a ride group that isn’t going too hard on Sundays.
The difference between LV and MV is a couple of things:
The core workout series from either LV or MV seems like a reasonable basis for a plan. MV seems to be designed with the expectation that you’ll get some additional volume in on Sunday. The week notes (and what I’ve heard here) indicate that it is perfectly fine to replace the Sunday ride with some other kind of volume work, such as a long Z2 ride or a not-too-hard group ride.
There should be no harm in taking the approach of doing MV, dropping the Wednesday aerobic, and making the Sunday ride something else, as long as it fulfills the goal of volume. Equally, there should be no harm in taking the approach of doing LV and adding a volume day of any kind of design on whatever day suits you.
I do MV and I also spend 1 hour a day commuting.
I took out the recovery ride and that did the trick just fine. Try that
Also, consider bringing the rest week forward
I’ve started the mid volume but dropped petit, instead of an extra day I’m adding in 30 mins to the midweek workouts. My thinking is that 4 days is a solid amount to train, makes shuffling things around easier and fits with my life in general.
Mon & Tue: off helps absorb Sat&Sun
Wed & Thu: 1 hour session + 30 endurance
Fri: rest, absorb Wed&Thu and be fresh for Sat&Sun
I did about 80% of mid volume last year. Was pretty happy with the results, but based on advice given in the podcast I’m switching to 100% of low volume this year, and I’ll be adding Zone 2 rides/runs as time permits.