DIY training plan

I remember @Nate_Pearson talking in one podcast about a series of workouts he just repeated and nudged FTP/% each week to make it progressive.

I’ve been thinking about this as I find the progression each week (even in SSB/Build LV) quite tough (>50, busy life, not used to structured training, 2.2W/Kg, 100 Kg).

I wondered about a week of 1* V02, 1* SSB, and 1* endurance (see screenshot)
So Baird-1, Monitor-1, Perkins. Gives an overall TSS of 225 in 4 Hours.

Would this work as plan?

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I’ve not created my own plan on TR. but I have planned my own training before. In essence most plans work on a four week cycle.

Your proposal could be fine for week 1, week 2 should have a little more, week 3 a little more, then week 4 should be less than week 1 and in my opinion no high intensity intervals.

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Seems possible. The important aspect is to grow the intensity, duration or combination each week. Couple that with appropriate recovery weeks and a new Ramp/FTP test to reset the base (beyond the manual FTP adjustments and serve as a validation).

It looks to me like you are creating something very similar to SSB Low volume but with a less variation and slightly more v02 work. The weekly TSS is about the same and in fact doesn’t go above 250 until week 5. So if you are tweaking intensity or FTP during your manual plan you’ll see a bump in TSS as well.

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Yes, this seems sensible as long as week 2 and week 3 are incremental on intensity, and week 4 is a recovery week.
Standard practice for most training plans.

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Thanks for all the replies and help.

Perhaps I just need to toughen up and learn to cope with 291 TSS of week 5 of SSB II LV…

You’ve got a few options, you could run through SSBLV1 or you could jump on to LV2 and swap some of the workouts to the -1 or -2 version to bring down the intensity and hence TSS. Or you could give your plan a try.

The key thing is that you stay motivated and not discouraged, and that will help you stay consistent which is the best advice I can give to see results. Don’t worry about what week five will bring, just focus on workout 1, then 2 etc. By the time you get to week five you might surprise yourself

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It’s a piece of work to get through all right, but if you’re getting through the previous weeks, and getting enough recovery, nutrition and sleep you should be able to handle it okay.

Turning down the intensity is not failing, neither is missing a session cause you’re tired. :slight_smile:

SSB II is hard. Particularly week 5 with workouts and the cumulative fatigue of the previous weeks.

SSB has less focus on recovery than other plans, on a 6 week cycle. Consider to adjust the plan to a 2 week load / 1 week recovery cycle? There’s a post on this forum how to go about it.

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Do SSB2LV week 5, Leconte will toughen you up automatically. Huge win when you smash that one.

About the only thing that can stop you after that is…Mary Austin. :scream:

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I would suggest sticking with the TR plans, mainly because they take a lot of thinking out of things.

As mentioned above, the TSS per week and durations at given intensities ramp up incrementally. In the beginning you will do short threshold intervals and slowly build up your time in that zone. If you are trying to bake these things into a self-made plan you’ll probably end up with a similar result as the premade plans. You can always adjust the intensity a bit - if you were completing everything without it feeling really tough at times then your FTP would be set a little low.

Finally, you really need to consider what you are trying to achieve with your plan. 1 x VO2/SS/Endurance workout per week may lead to fitness improvements but might not lead to the adaptations you want to see on the bike.

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