as the rest of the tranierroad-community I have a busy life with work and family and I am currently doing SSB LV 2, after doing 1 first. I constantly have to make a lot of adaptations due to other commitments and the ever-present kindergarden viruses. I find that the 5 back to back weeks of training is hard to do consistent, and I often fall ill with cold.
What implications will it have for my training progress if I rebuild the plans to a kind of 2-1 schedule, with half a recovery week every 3 week?
I’m guessing I will lose some adaptation due to missing a lot of TSS loading over time, but I kind of do that anyway with the occasional work travelling and getting sick every 3-4 weeks. With already planned 4-5 days of recovery every 3 weeks I can shuffle it a bit around. I am thinking that if the body feels well at the start of my recovery period I can just do a 120 TSS workout and then rest.
I will ofcourse prolong the duration of the plans to accomodate this.
It is absolutely fine to adjust and find what works well for you. There is no magic to 3:1 or 2:1 or other progression. Just be consistent, make a plan and stick to it!
Long Version:
For Base I find that 3:1 or frankly just consistent weeks of 450-550 TSS at an IF around 0.7 to 0.75 for 2-3 months is fine.
For “Base” I do at least one hard day every 5 days but the rest is ER and Tempo. I’ll also do at least one long ride each week. 2+ hours trainer or 3+ hours outside. But I’ve been riding and racing a bike for about 40 years so have a fairly deep “base”. So my Base phase is about building strength and getting mentally ready for Build. I like to lift weights and do a ton of core so I add “serious” strenght training on top of bike work during fall/winter.
For folks relatively new to structured training it’s a very good idea to build in rest weeks. 3:1 works well for Base.
For Build phases, I have a strong preference for 2:1 structures. That allows time to recover physically and mentally and get the most out of each workout. I’ve done this with TR Sustained Power Build and it worked well.
Some easy principles:
If rest is needed then take it.
Don’t ignore impact of work/life on your training.
Don’t get to wrapped up in following the plan to the watt or to the second. Performances are built over time through consistency not by one day.
Ignore the massive TSS, CTL and FTP numbers you read in forums :-]
Through experience, and perhaps contrary to 1 and 2 above, sometimes mental fatigue is not physical fatigue. Get on the bike and give it a go. Some of my best workouts have come on days when I didn’t feel like riding but went out and within 10-15 minuets felt good and was ready to go. But if that doesn’t happen, or if the first bout is terrible, it’s OK to bail and live to fight another day. If you find yourself bailing too often though, something else is wrong and something is off so take a moment to assess your programming.
As above, you are better to apply more recovery and stay healthy.
I started a dedicated thread showing two good options (although there are more) for easy reference. My thread sprung from comments shared by Nate. You can find a link to that source info in the 1st reply to my thread.