Which is exactly what I said in my post in the next paragraph
Great link and definitely explains Dylan’s true motive to use this video to monetize his channel. Assuming 60k views at $4 per 1,000 means he’s raked in a massive $240, which is a total win when you factor in the time it took to put the video together.
engage tinfoil hat
Just catching up on episodes on That Triathlon Show and yesterday listened to the Wolfram Bott episode - Head Coach for the German Triathlon federation development. He stated he is now following the ‘Norwegian Way’ - more polarized with his athletes. However, when Mikael asked for advise for age groupers he said those training less hours “My advice in regards to training is that the less you train, the more intensity you can do, however, it is easy that it can get bit too hard” (quoting the shows notes. He specifically said the too hard is related to testing n basing on FTP. For his athletes he uses lactate testing version of INSYD.
All this to say both approaches have their place. Seiler made observations of Norwegian of cross-country skiers that led him to observe the 80/20. If you have ever cross-country skied you will know how taxiing it is to go hard. I tried doing an 80/20 running from Matt Fitzgerald and for my fitness standpoint, what he classified as Z2, was actually higher. Likewise, Phil Maffetone observed through many thousands of athletes that MAF zone could be simplified to an age formula and modifiers. This is based on averages, but statistically the deviation from the mean will happen fairly quickly, and I as an individual am quite far from he mean - learned my body. Likewise the ramp test is very likely based on an average distribution, and those that tend to fall on the higher side will suffer more. Too much distributions talk - im in the middle of modeling our tech support and refining our actual distributions…
@RecoveryRide I am American and I still find references to the constitution and its amendments confusing. LOL.
Good stuff, @RecoveryRide. I used to tell my parents that they were infringing on my rights to free speech. How do you think that went over? 
My daughter does it now. What goes around comes around.
Hmm and ole Joe Rogan left Cali for Tejas (no state tax) and his shows are 1million+ viewers hmmm for the most part it´s an honest way to make money. Now I have to check out Lance´s numbers love him but I refuse to pay for a WEDU membership Heck I bought Treks during his heyday and US Postal and Discovery team kits. It´s all good. 
Yep. Made us look. Talk about it and I unsubscribed from his channel. I felt it was click bait. My first cycling coach hated TR as well. For obvious reasons. Nonetheless, I will take TR for $120 bucks a year all day long over Johnson or my old coach.
I agree that the ramp test overestimates FTP and that may be some of the reason for burnout. I have experienced it myself. In July I started with SSBLV 1 and saw good increases.
For what its worth in December I felt that my FTP was too high just using the ramp test (essentially I believe I had been training the wrong zones all along). I went on the forum here and sought advise from people. I used the 20 minute test to retest and got a lower number. I lowered my FTP and switched my training plan from a LV to MV. I completed all the SSBMV 1 workouts without any failure. On the flip side I’m also 33 and prioritized sleep as much as possible.
My plan going forward is to take a whole week to reassess my FTP using the ramp test AND the 20 minute test after the z2 recovery week (on separate days). I’ll do the ramp test to help me have some idea of the pacing I can sustain for the 20 minute test.
Which of those isn’t true? He is super young, he has very limited coaching experience, and the video he made is clickbait at its finest. I mean just look at the thumbnail.
He could have simply made a video about training principles and could have left out TrainerRoad and that one plan which doesn’t reflect what TrainerRoad is offering anyway. A simple “some training providers out there use distribution x or y” would have done the trick. That way he could have made the same points while not talking down on his competitors.
The latter is just poor taste and rightfully got him a shitload of criticism. Though also a lot of attention. I doubt this reaction was unexpected and undesired. 
Yeah, it’s not sexy.
I guess there might be a bit of push and pull between wanting to have plans that cover a variety of scenarios, but not so many as to cause confusion. I think that’s a poor answer though, especially with the plan builder tool, which is what all the advice is to use. If the plan builder tool had the option to ask more in depth questions I’m sure that it would be able to determine that a 25 year old with 5 days to train is likely to do well with the mid volume plan, but a 50 year old with the same time to train would do better with the low volume plan with added endurance rides.
Basically, the plan structure as it is feels like it will become obsolete as plan builder adapts and as trainerroad develop things on the AI side in terms of adaptive plans (which is what I understand they are doing). If the software can track how an athlete is progressing, after an initial standard plan it should be able to automatically create a bespoke plan that then adapts to take into account how the rider performs.
A typical trained 25 year old will be more than capable of doing 5 days of intensity a week, and even adding in lots of additional endurance rides on top of that. Hell, even just a few years ago I was more than capable of doing this while still working full time and doing other activities. At 37 I have to be a bit more careful - I can normally manage (and really see the benefits from) the mid volume plan (and indeed, I adapt them to have longer versions of the same or similar workouts), but I can’t add in extra workouts and the impact that the rest of my life has means that I sometimes have to scale things back. In 5 years time I will put money on 3 days of intensity (and I’m including sweet spot as intensity, some may, and have above, disagreed) being my top limit. Trainerroad are hopefully working to get to a point where their software deals with these differences (both in terms of initial plan recommendations, and then automated custom plans)
Maybe we can get DJ to do a vid on the lack of Masters-oriented plans?
Do you mind if I steal this idea for my next test week?
Or just go as hard as you can for 45-60 minutes. Sucks but you’re in no danger of over-testing
For sure! For what its worth I believe I have a more anaerobic contribution when it comes to the ramp test (at least that is what I have discovered, still new to training etc) I test higher on the ramp then on the 20 minute test.
So in beginning of January I did the ramp test, got an FTP of 222. Similar to what I had my FTP set to, but was struggling with workouts etc. I knew I could not hold 222 watts for an hour, but I thought it was reasonable that I could hold it for 20 minutes.
Two days after the ramp test I did the 20 minute test. Averaged 223 watts for 20 minutes (that was a 20 minute PB). Based off the result my FTP was now set at 211. I accepted it and fully completed SSBMV 1. Sweet spot felt much better than it did before (again I think I was working at and above threshold prior to trying the 20 minute test).
Well you made an ageist comment:
The lol is a nice touch. I guess this is the safe space to bash TR and millennials? 
I think you have offered some fair points, and his lack of experience might well play a role in his choice to publish the video, but a blanket statement about 20 y/os come on. I’m 42 for the record and have plenty of opinions on work ethic and communication style of millennials but they deserve a fair trial too.
Anyway, my popcorn bucket is now definitely empty. Y’all enjoy. If Nate, or TR chime in again, come and get me.
@redlude97
Yeah, the floodgates really opened, didn’t they. In fact, it is the original reason I even joined the forum in fall of 2018. “Surely my legs shouldn’t be feeling this way”, I thought. “I must be doing something wrong”.
I’ve moved on since then (except for still participating and getting value out of the community) but hopefully some subscribers (especially those trying to self-coach) will get an improved experience.
Fan of both TR and DJ…my experience using TR SSBMV and Specialty plans for a year was that I saw a marked increase in my FTP for the first 6 months and then hit a plateau and quit TR. I chalked this up to being an older athlete. I started a polarized training plan after the year and saw a steady FTP increase which continues. That being said, if TR introduces a new Masters program based on a polarized model I would become a customer once again! Thank you Nate for accepting Dylan’s Radical Candor!
I think the lack of conviction in my agist comments does not come across on the internet. I was being half serious at best with those comments. Mostly tongue in cheek humor. With ~5% trolling for the people taking this thread waaaaayyyy too seriously…
In case any Masters forum participants need any more reason to feel their age, I think technically Dylan is too young to be considered a Millennial.
So we have this huge debate about whether the TR plans are the most efficient, or have too much high intensity. I am doing LV and my estimate is that 90% of users do either LV or MV. For those groups the whole discussion seems to come down to: should I replace one high-intensity workout per week by a Z2 ride or not? Dylan believes we should, the TR team that on-average we should not. Probably easier to experiment with that on an individual basis than to find scientific evidence for such relatively small change. And from that perspective I don’t have high expectations for the podcast next week.
The emotion in the discussion seems to be triggered partially by the style of the communications, but also by the suggestion that TR might not be state-of-the-art anymore in terms of making you faster. The latter is a sensitive topic for any premium-priced product and can only hope the TR team will be able to accelerate meaningful innovation going forward.
Chiming in because, while I haven’t read all 1600 replies to this thread, I’ve read a lot of them and most of them seem to be missing the point.
It seems like the real dispute here is a detail-focused one over what, precisely, constitutes “going hard” or “a hard day.” Both Dylan and the TR guys seem to agree that more than two or three days of “intensity” in a week is a bad idea. Both seem to rely a lot on the research of Stephen Seiler. But they seem to disagree about what constitutes a day of “intensity.”
Dylan uses a three zone model and seems to assume that any workout including efforts above zone 1 counts as one of the hard days for the week. Obviously, Coach Chad disagrees, and seems to think that you can do at least some amount of sweet spot work without that counting as one of your hard days.
Basically, then, I think the core of the dispute is whether you can effectively “simulate” (i.e., mimic the physiological effects of) a longer Z2 ride with a shorter sweet spot workout. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, or even whether there is one single answer to it (it may vary across individuals, or you might be able to do it for awhile but not indefinitely, etc.), but I’m pretty sure that’s what the actual disagreement is.
It’s also a super-relevant question to most amateur cyclists: do I have to go on two or three (or four or five) hour endurance rides multiple hours per week to maximize performance, or can I approximate the effects in 60-90 minutes with the right kind of structure?
(Apparently mandatory disclaimer that I am both a TR subscriber and a fan of Dylan’s youtube channel.)