Thanks @Brennus. I understand what you’re saying. This forum and the podcasts now mean I feel empowered to modify coach Chads plans and workouts to meet the requirements of my training. I have no ego to bruise, 
.
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I am on week 3 Sweet Spot Base II Mid Low Volumes. What is the best way to change the rest of the workout plan and gain the 2-5% plan improvements?
Yes, we know when you pause in the middle of a ride 
. We’ve got a backlog issue to have an option to display your workout this way online.
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Compare your upcoming workouts vs the workouts in the training plan.
For future changes I’ll make it more clear about what changed.
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Hello Nate.
I’m new to TrainerRoad. TT’s are where my focus lies come May onwards next year and this is why I have joined TrainerRoad.
I am on SSB mid volume at the moment.
I would LOVE it if you could create some specific programs for 10 mile TT’s. (The 10 mile TT scene in the UK is very popular).
You have your 25 mile (40K) TT plans but I would love something that would be ideal for shorter Time Trials, once I have completed my SSB and Build phases.
I love your podcasts by the way.
Regards,
Colin
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I see the changes between the old and improved version. Is the way to apply just the remainder of the plan to the calendar?
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@Nate_Pearson - if you could give me a heads up when you’re about to make a post about changes to the training plans, I’d appreciate it. I want to make sure I get the popcorn ready for all the action rowdy forum action 
As for me, I’m still waiting for the next “hot shit” 
but I’ll jump on board with your marginal gains in the meantime 
Thanks for making a great product better…
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There’s no way to do that 
. We’ll write a better guide in the future…or maybe this time. It’s been asked a few times.
Great question Colin. We’ve covered this in some past podcast episode but I remember Coach Chad’s answer. The plan he would design for a 10 mile TT would be very similar to a 40k TT. Just lots and lots of time at threshold!
So for you, I would go into sustained build and the 40k TT plan.
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I agree. Hopefully not all workouts are made easier to the degree that all users can complete them…afterall we all have our own strengths and weaknesses. As @Nate_Pearson said…hard workouts should be hard. I sometimes feel better about my training if I’m pushing myself hard and don’t quite make the last interval after an hour or two.
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Hi Nate, (regarding the question about 80/20) there is a lot of scientific research and discussion (also podcasts) about this subject. Did you lived under a stone, haha? If you just Google “Intensity Distribution of Endurance Athletes” you will find a ton. By the way, this training philosophy called polarised training is not theory based but rather evidence based. The researchers first looked at the training intensity distribution of elite athletes, and then thay try to figure it out, the why part…
Also a good reading:
The Physiology of Training
Advances in Sport and Exercise Science
By: Gregory Whyte
Good luck in educating yourself.
PS
Don’t get this wrong, I just found your answer about this topic very shallow and you just waved the suggestion away, as if you already know it all. You say: “the best athletes do not train this way”. If you say something like this it would be professional to back it up with some source. Which athlete’s? What research?
Dont’t get me wrong 2: I am not totally against the TR approach. I am also user of your service’s. In any way this upcoming year. Yada yada yada, we should go biking and less talking 
Friendly greetings
We are totally not going for 100% compliance rate. They will still be super hard and make you hate Coach Chad 
.
This is something that I’ll share more later, but it looks like kids younger than 20 REALLY have a hard time completing the hard workouts, while people in the 40s actually do better (on average so far) than people in their 30s!
I believe this goes with some of the “grit” stuff we talked about last podcast episode.
I’m not sure if those holds true on all of our workouts, but I checked just three of them and the results were shocking! I’d thing the young pups would do better than the more seasoned riders, but that’s not the case!
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Probably also young guns overestimating their FTP.
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I feel this could be just the tip of the iceberg… with all this information about athletes you could extract lots of interesting insights like:
- what training plans / workouts are providing the best improvements (is always harder better?)
- what workouts are selecting the guys with better power numbers
- what workouts are more effective to improve certain parts of your power curve
- how do you compare with other cyclists
- how outdoors rides affect / improve your performance
-automatically customized training plans according to my power curve, goals and constraints
Etc
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I have researched this. Maybe I’m not doing it right. Can you link me to data that shows that cyclists who do 80/20 will perform better than a “Periodized Coggan” approach? If you could link me to data that shows that elite cyclists train this way that would also be helpful.
This is probably not the thread to talk about 80/20 and if it’s the best way to train, there’s another thread in that that I’ve already mentioned this stuff in it.
Here’s what I’m looking at:
- I can’t find a pro who users TR that follows 80/20. Not a single one and we have high-level pros, TDF stage winners and gold medalists in our system.
- I know for age groupers that the riders with the highest watt/kg do more 2-hour workouts at around .85 IF compared to weaker riders. They get this through sweet spot riding.
I know Seiler has this pretty well documented in cross-country skiing, but as mentioned on the other thread, there’s limited evidence (and in my view contrarian evidence) that it is the best way for cyclists to train.
Let’s move the conversation from this thread to over here if you’d like to continue: Polarized Training Discussion (Fast Talk podcast & Flo Cycling podcast)
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That and more! It’s almost endless. We’re starting with “easy” gets and going deeper from there.
That’s why I wanted to set the tone and tell people that we’ll constantly be improving as we learn more.
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Amazing to see these data driven improvements. It’s so cool to see this commitment to the science in every aspect of what you guys are doing.
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It would be cool to be able to see where you sit amongst your ‘peers’, with various categories available to switch between.
An interesting idea might be to have anyone with a license put in their category so you could slice by that as well.
Find Nate’s posts in this thread for the info hey have shared so far.
I have a really dumb piece of data I want to see.
When users self select workouts (i.e. outside of the plan) what is the spread of selections in alphabetical order?
Reason being is that when you use the filters, you’ll get everything starting with “A” first by default. I have a feeling that this may be skewing the data of self selected workouts earlier in the alphabet, and perhaps leading people to select workouts that don’t quite do what they were looking for (beacsue the library is so huge and the filters sometimes don’t QUITE cover what you want).
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