When / Did you plateau with low / mid volume?

[genefish]

curious for those of you training for a few years at low / mid volume…

at what point do you feel you started to plateau? where you had to add more volume to improve.

was there a volume where your improvement was noticeable but continuous year over year? like for example was 12 hours a week enough to just keep improving year-over-year? 15?

by volume I mean Hours per week…so basically time.

I heard on an Empirical Cycling podcast Kolie say that at 6 hours per week you eventually would plateu (might be a few months might be 2 years…but eventually you’d need to add more volume to improve). I hope I got that right - this was from the Time Crunched podcast.

I am more curious to hear actual experiences from people on this forum rather than people with opinions or conclusions from studies, etc…

[WindWarrior]

I’ve posted actual data during 2 year eras. Something like this:

• 2014-2015 spin class era, 220-230 ftp on 3.5 hours cycling per week
• 2016-2017 new road bike era, 270-280 ftp on 6.5 hours/week full gas nearly all the time (I’ll also call this “Andy Coggan was right” era)
• 2018-2019 TR and erg mode era, 240-250 ftp on 5 hours/week
• 2020 return to “volume” but lower intensity era, 260 ftp on 6.5 hours/week
• 2021-2023 coached era, slow ramp from 6.5 to almost 8 hours/week, slow rise to 275 ftp. Least amount of intensity I’ve ever done.

Have some summary charts/data on intensity vs volume if interested. Key points above.

[grwoolf]

It’s not really an hours thing. Generally, you plateau when you can no longer increase and adapt to training stress. That will happen whether you are training 4 hours per week or 20 hours per week. And what you are capable of for a given number of hours is very individual. Some folks can load a lot of intensity/stress into a small number of hours and respond well to it, some can’t handle much intensity and need to increase hours to get the required stress for adaptations. And the plateau isn’t a fixed thing at a given amount of stress, there is always a plateau coming unless you continue to ramp stress.

My personal experience, I’ve plateaued at many points in my cycling history, sometimes because I was time limited and sometimes because I didn’t increase intensity enough. One thing I can say for sure, every bit of incremental fitness I’ve added comes at a progressively higher and higher cost. Law of diminishing returns and all. And getting older. This season has been my highest volume year and I’ve added some measurable fitness. But I’ve probably doubled my hours from 5 years ago and certainly haven’t gotten twice as strong during that time. FTP probably less than 10% increase, but my ability to express that FTP and ride at a high percentages of FTP is more dramatically improved.

[WindWarrior]

There is an hours component to some adaptations, where it’s more about low-intensity heart and leg muscle contractions. And it should be obvious given the success of “old-skool long steady distance” 20-30 hours/week base training. Vaguely recall seeing at least one pro doing that recently.

My hours story…

Season 2016-2017… 6 hours/week to hit 270-280 ftp, 19kJ anaerobic capacity, and 50-70 minutes at threshold:

Those red triangles are rides at 0.9 IF and above. A whole lot of “red / high-intensity / high IF” riding from late October to June.

That is likely my limit for doing high aerobic work, and even though it was loosely structured there was a LOT of stimulus:

Season 2022-2023… 7.5 hours/week to hit 270-280 ftp, 17kJ anaerobic capacity, and 30-50 minutes at threshold:

Almost no red high IF workouts. Mostly a sea of orange IF workouts, the equivalent of mid endurance to upper tempo. We didn’t do a lot of tempo, but we did do a lot of dialed in intensity vaguely along the lines of this study Dissociation of Increases in PGC-1α and Its Regulators from Exercise Intensity and Muscle Activation Following Acute Exercise where you go hard but not too hard.

Less high aerobic work

but more recovery built into the workouts, more overall conditioning / endurance riding, and my coach was focused on eliciting adaptations versus brute forcing interval sessions.

We did not focus on longer threshold, and only a couple anaerobic capacity workouts in the spring. So those were lower versus the earlier period. And the earlier period I was 55 and better recovery.

High stress job, work long hours, old enough the kids are gone but dealing with my mom’s issues, yada yada.

When I hired a coach in August 2020, I wanted to believe that could all come true. And it did.

Your mileage may vary and all that.

[Jolyzara]

My biggest low volume plateau was back in the 1990s when I was in high school. American distance running was focused on low volume and high intensity. Tempo running wasn’t a thing. Luckily the shift back to more mileage and a return to tempo/threshold happened late 90’s/2000s and things improved. Amazing how performances improved with that shift for not just me personally but across the sport.

[mtbtomo]

Started in 2014 going through 2x10 week Sufferfest plans which took my baseline general “I ride a bike type fitness” FTP from 220ish to 270ish. That was probably 5-7 hours a week. Got a coach and went up to more like 8-10 hours a week and probably nudged up to around 300w FTP during the next winter build. So it was probably 6 months before plateauing (purely FTP as a metric) at 5-7 hours and then another 6months at 8-10 hours.

And around 300w is broadly where it has stayed for 10 years. Once I posted 315watts as a high, and then some years in the 290’s, but volume pretty constant at around 8-10 hours. Some periods nearing more like 12 hours a week. But once I hit around 300w there doesn’t seem to have been any correlation between training hours my better FTP numbers and the “worse” ones.

Seems I’ve responded differently to how I’ve actually accumulated those 10 hours, rather than the ups and downs between 8 hours or perhaps sustained chunks of 12 hour weeks.

For all the talk of plateauing, there are always different things you can work on, even when your FTP levels off. Whether that’s time to exhaustion, recovery between efforts, sprinting, general day to day recovery and ability to ride back to back days, VO2 etc etc etc.

[huges84]

You will plateau at any volume if you stop providing novel (aka different and more) stimulus. Our bodies adapt to the load (or we overtrain) and then what used to be hard enough to drive adaptation isn’t (or we regress if overtrained enough).

Focus on training correctly and consistently for what you want you want to achieve, making sure CTL and relevant performance metrics are on track. You should be improving. But at some point, if you are consistent in good training and recovery, the only way to further improvement is to add volume (or improve skills / tactics assuming you’re not just chasing power metrics).

[genefish]

@huges84

But at some point, if you are consistent in good training and recovery, the only way to further improvement is to add volume (or improve skills / tactics assuming you’re not just chasing power metrics).

that’s basically my question for those training several years…what was that point for you personally?

[mtbtomo]

Not plateaued yet then after 10 years and at the age of 45 and 8-10 hours a week. I think there have been a few years in and amongst it where it’s harder to spot the improvements - some improvements won’t be pure numbers. Or at least that’s what I tell myself!

Might be less scope for changing stuff about on pure Trainerroad low volume at ~3 -5 hours… But if you’re adding races and events to that then there’s still learning in those.

[TrekTales]

I’ve been training for a few years at low to mid volume. I hit a plateau after two years at 8-10 hours per week. When I increased to 12-15 hours, I saw steady improvements year over year. Kolie from the Empirical Cycling podcast mentioned that 6 hours a week eventually leads to a plateau, and I agree. You need more volume to keep progressing.