If I only have time to do 2 workouts a week for the forseeable future what would be recommended? I mtn bike on the weekend and I am not trying to do any events or races in the forseeable future either. I realize this approach will not help me really improve ftp, but it will keep mtn biking fun by being in reasonable shape.
I looked at the plans and all seem to revolve around 3 workouts a week. Im trying to figure out the most bang for your buck w/ 2 rides on the trainer and an outside ride on the weekends.
If you look at a plan like Sweet Spot Base Low Volume then you can see a pattern in the workouts: VO2 max one day, sweet spot another, threshold on the third. Maybe drop one of the Sweet Spot or threshold workouts depending on what takes your fancy.
Nothing’s mandated so you don’t have to follow the plan exactly. Obviously you’ll get the most benefit if you do so but then “owt’s better than nowt” as we say in the north of England - something’s better than nothing.
I think on the podcast they’ve said that the first and last workouts are the most important ones to hit. So I’d do the first 60 min workout on a Tuesday, switch the 90 minute workout to a Thursday and then that leaves you all weekend for MTBing.
If you keep the workout quality high along with consistency, it very well may raise your FTP.
It will almost assuredly do this!
I would do the VO2 Max workout almost every week and then bounce back and forth between SS and threshold workouts depending on what you think you need improvement with. I would also consider adding some true anaerobic efforts if you feel like you’re plateauing after a few months of the above.
I actually think you can get pretty fit with the protocol above since you have the time to recover well between workouts, both of the structured rides have the potential to be very high quality - something that I think a lot of people gloss over on a higher volume plan.
A 6 week plan such as sweetspot base low volume of 3 sessions a week is 18 total workouts.
You can take the 18 workouts of that plan and stretch it over 9 weeks for 2 sessions per week.
It would require some manual editing of your calendar, but I’m guessing that you could click and drag the 18 sessions to your desired location on the calendar in less than 30 minutes.
If you only have 2 days during the week but are not constrained to 1 hour workouts and you are able to recover from them then consider bumping that first workout of the LV plan up to 1.5 hours either by adding endurance at the end or another interval. Just to really get the most out of your limited riding schedule.