Why No Low Volume Weekday / high Volume Weekend Plans

Gosh I have been doing TR forever now. I am amazed that TR/Coach Chad has not come-up with an actual plan that is as low volume as possible M-F, but super heavy on the weekend. Am I wrong but isn’t that what the environment the majority of us face with our work life balance? I think there is a whole heap of us who need the rides during the week 60 min or less with a smile towards a lot of 30-45 minutes. But come the weekend - throw it at us with huge rides. As I start making my calendar for 2021, I am looking at the later weeks getting into build and I can already see where I will get derailed and do what I do every year.

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I agree, this would be nice to see, it’s more or less the training schedule just about everyone I know uses. I think part of the problem may be that they don’t see a lot of users actually complete the longer rides in the workout catalog or the training plans, thus the shortened 90-120min rides with a focus more on sweetspot in lieu of 3+ hours with more L2.

I’m the opposite :slight_smile: I train during the weekend but have my rest day during the weekend due to family commitments…
In fact, if possible I try to squeeze everything Monday to Friday with Saturday being a bonus.

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ya it can go either way. I think most people don’t have an even-keeled 7 day week. One side of the equation is heavy with either family or work. I guess what I am surprised is not in existence is something in-between short and mid-volume plans (ie a 4 day week). 2 days lighter on volume and 2 days heavier (that still can be put together back-to back. Now don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting epic trainer days on the 2 heavier volume days. Rather looking for precision for best results with 2 days being low volume and 2 days that are still reasonable to do back to back like a Saturday/Sunday but heavy enough to compensate for the 2 prior lighter days… Right now I am adjusting existing short or mid volume plans so much I might as well be making it up on my own from the git go.

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I think this is where a true Plan Builder would be perfect, rather that the current Plan “Loader” that more or less just loads the existing plans for you. If you could specify days and hours of the week that you’d like to train and have it build a plan for you based off that you’d be golden and wouldn’t need a bunch of pre-packaged plan options.

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That’s it - exactly right, And even better - do all of that plus if you went out and did an epic ride with your friends it would adjust everything thereafter (if we are dreaming).

This was the gist of my suggestion in this post: Plan Builder for Masters Age Athletes [Feature Request] - #26 by AlphaDogCycling

That instead of proliferating plan types, TR needs to create a system that essentially encapsulates what @chad or any coach would do in crafting a “custom” plan for you based on your goals and life constrains. This would essentially eliminate the current plans. There would be workouts and a plan builder only

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You can do half of that now in plan builder as it lets you specify the days you want to train. You can’t specify the number of days - I’ve not tried doing something along the lines of choosing medium volume then deleting one of the days, might be possible, might not.

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Yes, you can choose the days that get the plan workouts loaded into, but you can’t say how long you want the workouts on those days to be which is more of what the OP was getting at.

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Yep that’s what I was getting at. Right now it’s either a design to go regular plan throughout the week or a time-crunched plan throughout. At a bare bones I would like a plan that allows half of the week to be time crunched and with the remaining days I am not time crunched to maximize me without overcooking it as a plan should be able to accomplish.

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For me the holy grail would be the ability to define an overall broad aim (e.g. maintain, build or a specific type of goal e.g. crit, fondo) and even on a week to week basis be able to say what time I might have the following week. Or if I have to suddenly change to a shorter version of the same workout due to limited time, replan the rest of the week or even the next week to take account of real life. There must be a huge amount of data in TR’s hands that in combination with some algorithms based on training methodology, would be a game changer.

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