I know that red light green light currently doesn’t support strength training input and their plans to do so in the future, but for now is there any suggested way of feeling out yellow and red days to account for strength training?
I go to the gym twice a week and I lift pretty heavy. I also pretty consistently get yellow or red days after my trainer road sessions.
What I wonder is, if I get a yellow day after a trainer road session and I also had a pretty heavy strength day that day or the day before, should I interpret my yellows as reds? Similarly, should I interpret my reds as ultra red? Like TR it’s already telling me to take it easy based only off of my bike sessions, so if I added strength to that is it fair to say that I should bump up the level of severity for the suggestion to take it easy?
I strength train seriously along with doing a TR low volume plan. I get a lot of yellow and red days where I still need to strength train. I’ll typically be willing to do an upper body session on a red day and I will do a lower body session on a yellow day. I have tried to avoid doing lower body sessions on red days (and usually on a red day my legs are telling me that lifting weights for them would not be a good idea).
If you are doing two total body workouts per week, I would train with weights as normal on a yellow day. On a red day, I’d push upper body hard and either skip lower body entirely or reduce both volume and intensity from normal.
I’d love to see weight training to be taken into account in the model but as a previous gym rat I feel like RPE and recovery perception varies so much between people that it would be extremely hard to predict. There are some people who will get pretty sore and have lasting effects from a gym session and others who seem to bounce back more quickly. Perhaps you would need to have something like a Whoop or equivalent sending HRV into TR’s model to guesstimate things, but you still might not be able to account for a huge pump at the muscle without an overload of the heart/cardio/HRV?
Good question, and, honestly, I dont think there is an answer.
TR support told me I was doing too much last week, and I need to prioritise.
My garmin is currently telling me I am doing too little and have fallen outside my optimal training load
Yesterday morning my legs were telling me I could smash an interval session, but my calendar was yellow. I did an easy run and heavy weights session.
Today my legs are screaming at me not to do anything but my calander is ‘green’ and i have an interval workout in there. My garmin is still telling me my training load is low.
Im actually going to go and ride some scary technical mtbking stuff and ignore both TR and Garmin.
Overall, I am stronger and fitter than ever by squeezing in regularly 20 to 30 minute heavy weights and continuing to ride social stuff and squeezing in the intervals where I can.
Sure, my FTP would probably be higher if i religiously stuck to the TR plan, maybe. But my technical skills would suffer, as would my social life, as would my happiness. What’s the point? A good result in a race that no one cares about and everyone has forgotton by Monday?
It’s tough to come up with a hard and fast rule in situations like this – not all gym sessions are equal, so they won’t affect your on-bike training in the same way.
I think as a general guideline, though, if you get a yellow day after a hard day where you had a big on-bike workout and a big gym workout, you should definitely feel free to take some extra rest!
If you get a red day and your fatigue continues to linger even after some rest and you have another workout scheduled, you could continue resting or reduce the intensity of your on-bike training to Z1/2.
RLGL is all about fatigue prevention, so keep that in mind when you make adjustments. Listening to what your body is telling you is always a good call.
All that said, we’re working on getting RLGL to account for weight training, so stay tuned for more on that in the future!
