Hello,
I’m looking for some advice on scheduling my TrainerRoad workouts into a typical week of my cycling (and full body weight) training. My current week looks like:
Mon & Wed - Cycling Intervals (1.5hr ish)
Tue & Thu - Gym
Fri & Sat - Long Rides (3hrs+)
Sun - Rest
I’ve just started a low volume build plan with trainer road and allocated two of the three sessions to Mon and Wed to replace my old interval sessions, but I’m struggling with what to do with the third.
Would you recommend:
-Replacing a long ride with the 3rd TR session
-Incorporate the 3rd TR session into a longer ride (I don’t have a power meter outdoor so quality would be compromised)
-Do the 3rd TR session on Fri/Sat morning and do a longer ride in the afternoon
-Any other ideas?
Cheers,
Chris
The key sessions are the Tue / Thu intervals so you’re already hitting them.
If you read the weekly notes Chad often gives the option of replacing the Saturday workout with something longer and slower so you could just ignore the weekend workout and keep your Sat / Sun long rides as they are.
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What are you hoping to accomplish? General fitness? Prep for an event?
Off the cuff, you’ve got a lot of intensity stacked back-to-back during the week with your intervals followed by weight sessions Monday through Thursday. I’d be concerned with your ability to maintain that schedule without injury or burnout.
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Just training for general fitness in the short-term and seeing how I respond to 8 weeks of structure.
My next event won’t be until Spring next year, but I’ll probably look at a SS Base and Build plan prior to this.
+1 for just replacing the 3rd session with your 2 weekend rides in that case. If it’s general fitness and first time on structured training then may also make sense to do a SweetSpot base plan instead of Build, in which case there is even more logic with replacing one of the 3 SS workouts with a longer endurance workout.
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That’s a good point - my weights sessions are primarily upper body and core so my thinking was that I’m at least alternating the intensity between upper and lower body - do you still think this is too much? If so, what would you advise I do differently?
Thanks for the response. I have had some structure in as much as what I’ve highlighted above - but it’s been more of a traditional base or polarised approach so felt I’d be okay jumping into a build plan.
If it’s upper body and core and then you hammer the legs with intervals, you should be fine. I think your plan is fine for general fitness. Just be aware that recovery is recovery - your body doesn’t really know its dedicating resources to different muscle groups, so you can still overreach even though you’re giving your legs a day off. Lifting heavy on your upper body will still hamper recovery from the interval sessions somewhat, but many people can manage that.
IF you’re going to do any leg lifting on those intermediate days, I’d recommend low weight and higher reps. I’ve had success running 7 days a week with lower volume leg weight lifting to build strength. If you’re doing 90 minute interval sessions, you don’t need to lift as well if you’re in it for fitness.
I agree with the others that with that schedule you’d be fine to do your outdoor rides in lieu of the weekend TR session. You’ve always got that weekend trainer session as a fall back if you don’t get outside for whatever reason.
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Yeah that makes sense, in that case I’m feeling tired Mon-Thu then I’ll just take an extra recovery day off and manage it that way.
I’ve tended to only do low or body weight leg exercises to prevent soreness impacting my interval sessions - I may add some extra resistance in over the winter when the longer rides are less attractive.
Yeah I think I’ll keep the 3rd TR session on the plan as a back up, but then try and incorporate the efforts into a longer ride e.g climbs of 10-15 mins in length!
Thanks again everyone.
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