I generally do three 30 minute weekday workouts (1 sweet spot, 1 sweet spot/threshold/VO2 and one endurance) and two 1.5 hour rides (one hard one endurance) on the weekends. I have a plan set up through TR with a goal event in November as I have had for the past few years. I am a teacher so over the summer I can increase my weekday volume however during the school year this is about all I have time for. Since TR updated a few weeks ago, the software has been trying to switch my 2 weekday sweet spot rides to 1 hours rides. I get a message that says “you’ve maxed out on your 30 min workouts.” When I decide to keep the 30 minute ride, the AI FTP prediction drops and is now sitting at the same FTP I was before. I am currently about 3.9 w/kg. I am wondering if I have truly plateaued at my current volume and the only way to raise my FTP is to do more hours? Or, will I continue to get stronger with this limited amount of volume. Hopefully someone from TR can provide some clarity. Thanks for an awesome product!
There is only so much stimulus you can get in 30m, especially if you limit it to SST.
At some point you will have to increase intensity or duration.
That makes sense. But I am not limiting the intensity, I am just following what the plan prescribes. As the plan progresses one of the two weekday rides will be threshold / VO2.
If you have more time to train that would be good, volume is a huge driver of performance gains.
If not you could consider upping the intensity of those 30m rides from SST to threshold, 30m of SST is really very little stimulus. (I mean neither is 30m of threshold work but it’s a bit better).
Depends on what you have time for, if you max out at 30m it is what it is.
Agree more volume is usually good, but PalosBoi is doing 2x1.5hr on the weekends and 3x30min rides during the week which is 4.5hrs wk. That’s about the same as my TR plan has in it. It seems that TR AI doesn’t think that arrangement is optimal so is forcing a change. It may not be optimal, but ideally TR AI would be more flexible in terms of scheduling for those who need it. This should include schedules not locked to a trad 7 day work week.
Maybe a good idea to switch your sweetspot workouts to the longer duration and keep the 30mins to VO2max and maybe threshold.
30mins just isn’t optimal for sweetspot
Good on you for getting in those 30s mid-week, and thanks for your work as a teacher!
Looking at your calendar, you’re super consistent with your training and that has paid off, because you’re at 3.9w/kg with ~4.5hrs/wk!
I see a lot of training calendars where athletes have a ton of training days or longer days on their calendar and they take an all or nothing approach and aren’t as consistent. You’re exhibit A of being consistent over time with less volume paying off!
To answer your question directly, yes, it is likely that you’ve plateaued in terms of seeing additional significant gains with 30min workouts.
I know others have pointed out that total weekly volume is comparable to other plans, but this is somewhat of a broad-stroke perspective on training and misses the important nuance that makes you faster.
Not all training volume is created equal, but more importantly, strain-per-session is important to maintain the supercompensation process. You can only do so much work in a 30min session, and if that amount of work isn’t sufficient to serve as novel stimulus to your system, there isn’t much reason to adapt and supercompensate.
TrainerRoad AI is trying to adjust your training so you get that supercompensation, but we also added in that monopoly card design to allow you to undo any changes just in case you don’t have time to do longer workouts.
It will try to ramp up the difficulty of your longer workouts due to your mid-week workouts not straining you as much, but that also has it’s limits due to your time, but also the amount of strain your body can tolerate and return to training the next day and still get faster from both sessions.
If the workload from one session is too far above your limits, then it takes long enough to recover from that hard workout that you may not be able to get as much benefit from a training session the next day, and even multiple days down the road.
The take-home message here is yes, you can only get so much significant benefit from 30 min workouts, and there’s only so much work you can do in 30min, but time constraints are time constraints, so continuing to train like you will still have you at a very strong performance level for such low volume.
Tabatas have entered the chat. 
Not even kidding. I do wonder what the effect would be of adding a 30 minute tabata workout to a plan that has headroom for that extra bit of intensity midweek.
If nothing else it’d be a novel stimulus for a block or two.
Its a good point.
This current iteration of AI is “just” a workout picker that works within the confines of the traditional plan builder - a future iteration could use AI to actually define the types of workouts that would produce the most benefit.
Would be interesting to manually swap in those HIIT workouts like you say…
When I stuck in an hour of Anaerobic 30/30s in Week 1 it gave me a 10w bump in my AIFTP for Week 4. 
Thanks for the response, Jonathan! I figured this was the case. I will try to increase volume during the week. Take care!
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks again for the thorough response. I went ahead and increased my volume slightly within my plan. AI predictor is still predicting a decrease in FTP this month (by only 2 watts but still discouraging). What I also find interesting is that the software is telling me that my “training load may be too high” although if I go with the recommended schedule my FTP is predicted to drop even further over the next month. I also played around the with the schedule to see how it will impact my FTP and it seems slight adjustments in volume impact my predicted FTP significantly (for example: changing my Sunday ride from 2:00 to 1:30). I want to continue to get stronger or at least keep my fitness at its current level and want to know how I can do that without losing fitness. The general schedule I am using has gotten me to where I am at and I don’t really understand how it now is leading to a decrease in FTP. Thanks!
Alternatively, you can step off from TR generated plan and follow your own programming, while still allowing TR AI to do its magic:
- for each selected day, plant “AI Workout”
- when adding, select Category (e.g. VO2 Max Long Suprathreshold) and duration
- you don’t need to do all steps for each day – add one and then copy/paste workout to other days. After each workout, AI will adjust following workouts depending on your workout rating and/or fatigue level
This is what I am doing currently for VO2max block; have been working very well.
I can see how seeing a decrease would be frustrating! A few notes:
- You just increased the volume of your training schedule, and sometimes it takes a while for your body to be able to express the gains you’ll be building. As a result, it’s not uncommon to not see an instant increase in FTP.
- Your next prediction is on March 7, so about 3.5 weeks out. That’s enough time that for lots to change with how your body is adapting to training, so you should expect that Prediction to experience less variance as you get nearer to it.
- I wouldn’t be surprised if we see this start to change once you get into VO2 work starting in March at your current, higher than previous volume you’ve built out. This could act as a novel stimulus at your current volume to get a touch more improvement without increasing volume beyond what you have currently.
- All of that said, I do think you are bumping into a plateau at your current volume. If you could find a way to increase all of your interval days to be 60-120 minutes, I’d expect to see a lift. It may not show instantly as it takes your body time to adapt like I mentioned in point 1, but just the same, I do think you are close to your ceiling and possible stagnation at this current volume
All of that said, I do want to add context to this by looking back at your progress thus far:
I ran the new version of FTP Detection on your training history to make sure we were comparing apples to apples for the following data points:
Since Nov. 17, 2024, you’ve increased your FTP from 264 all the way up to a high of 311 on Dec. 29, 2025, bringing you to 3.9wkg! That’s an AWESOME increase at the relatively low volume you’ve put in.
I’ve flagged your account as one to keep track of for our team to take a look at just in case it could be helpful for them in testing any new changes we’d ship.
Thanks for getting back to me again! This all makes sense. I listened to this week’s podcast and you all did a great job explaining the relationship (or lack there of) between the FTP prediction and the AI. Maybe I am putting too much stake in FTP however, when I am doing the majority of my training indoors, especially in winter, FTP is a value I can look at to make sure I am getting stronger.
I went ahead and played around with my schedule to see how a change in volume would impact my FTP prediction. What I found interesting is that at my current volume of 5 days a week I am getting a warning saying I may be training too much. The system recommends 4 days per week however I know this is not enough volume based on what you said above and if I change my volume to this, the AI FTP prediction drops even further. If I increase my volume to 6 days per week (schedule below) the AI FTP prediction drops too.
M: 1 hour easy, T: 1 hour hard, W, 1 hour easy, TH: 1 hour hard, F: rest day, Sat: 1.5 hours hard, Sun: 1.5 hour easy.
I believe I can handle this volume and make the schedule work, however I am wondering if the AI is going to “think” I am overtraining. I don’t really understand why it suggests a low volume plan but then tries to bump my workouts longer but when I increase volume it tells me I may be overtraining. How do I know I am getting stronger without putting too much stake in the AI FTP? If my AI FTP continues to drop does this mean I am losing fitness?
Famous quote: “The best predictor of performance is performance itself”. Same workout feels easier than in the past or it feels same as in the past but at higher watts.