I thought it could be worthwhile to have a thread for general training plan advice which does not necessarily warrant its own thread.
I’ll start by asking for some advice: I’m just starting a mid volume short-power build phase. When that finishes it will be December and the amount of time I spend training, especially longer outdoor rides, drops considerably. The cold and the darkness just puts my whole body into hibernation mode. I’m thinking of doing low or medium volume ‘enthusiast’ plan (preferably low). Would this be sufficient for keeping fitness, or at least enough that I can pick back up at around 450 tss when the days get longer?
@theo, @Crownan brings up the very point I wanted to convey: it’s all relative. The farther you are from your potential, the more improvement you’ll see initially, and rapidly.
I can’t count how many riders I’ve coached over the years who thought they had “good base fitness” because they rode their bikes a few times a week. Then we’d get them on the trainer for a couple 60-minute sessions a week during the winter months and see their FTP’s grow 10, 20, 30%!
So even a couple of days of structure and high quality can go a long way, certainly toward maintenance but very likely toward a fair amount of improvement too.
Hi there first post and new to trainer road. I’m just starting out and picked a general plan for rolling road racing. It’s been 15 years since I’ve done any racing and I’m mentally ready to get back at it. I’m about three weeks in and think it might be beneficial to do the base and then build and once I finish that repeat that again as there wont be any racing in my cards till next season. My rationale is that I’ll get a lot of sweet spot training in and can increase my FTP. Does this seem reasonable?