I took a break from TrainerRoad for a bit, but I’m thinking of coming back now. I see that a few changes have happened in the last 8 months that I’ve been away.
When I left, the “recommended” way to set up a training plan was Low Volume + add endurance rides for volume. Is this still the best way to go?
For instance, I ride about 12-15h a week, divided anywhere between 4 to 6 days a week, with intensity work on 1 or (usually) 2 or (rarely) 3 days/week. Are the masters plan strictly 1 intensity day/week?
I know that this volume would put me in the “High Volume” category, but I’m not interested in doing more that 2 days of intensity/week (other than a very occasional 3 intense days per week), which was an issue for me before with TR plans.
Any insights on your experience with the new training plans would be appreciated.
As @BrianSpang said, if you start up a High Volume Plan and toggle on the option to make it a Masters Plan, your intensity days will be capped to 2x/week.
We’ve also introduced a new feature recently that allows you to customize the duration of your workouts in your plan to what suits you best. You can now make a given workout longer or shorter depending on what you’re looking for – and that change will be saved and applied to your plan so you don’t have to keep manually adjusting things.
These articles might help you out if you’re looking for more info:
Further, we’ve also added in a feature called Red Light Green Light that can help you monitor your fatigue as you move through your training plan. If that was an issue for you in the past, it could be a helpful tool to help keep your training on track!
Hope that helps! Feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions.
That’s what I did recently, too.
My experience with the „new“ TrainerRoad was much better training load wise than before.
I am in team „more is more“, so two things helped me a lot:
One thing is master plans. Two or three intensity days are my upper limit since I do 1-2x/week strength training additionally and have a stressful live.
Second thing is red light-green light. This really saves me from my own overmotivation.
I.E. last Monday it showed me a red day. The weather was great, I had a free day and normally I‘d went out for a ride although I felt very tired from the last (outdoor) training rides.
This time, I thought: why would I pay for TR if I ignore the red light.
That saved my week and I felt great during the next training rides.
To your question: it depends, what your goals are.
If you just ride a lot and want 2-3 intensity days per week, then you can go now very well with suggested rides/trainnow, your outdoor rides and red light green ride.
With a specific goal you could choose the (masters) plan that suits your amount of training days per week the best and set whatever duration fits in your calendar.
Im on a low volume masters plan adding external ride and also do probably what is a high volume. I like the flexibility of the LV masters plan, I have the two days of HIIT and the endurance day, after that I am free to ride outdoors as I want.
