Approaching the V40 category next season so figured this offseason would be a good time to start adding strength training into the mix.
My question is though, after reading/watching through the TR podcasts, is how is everyone fitting these sessions in and what are they doing to your weekly TSS.
I appreciate they (say 2x sessions per week) should not be on rest days, but at the moment im doing 6 bike sessions a week, e.g. this week:
This is giving me around 420-440 TSS a week with an extra 2.5 hours (10x 15min) of unaccounted Cycling when commuting to work per week predominantly in Z2 with occasional Z4 (Its hilly-ish).
I would imagine the strength sessions should be added on Tues and Thurs but given these are working days, I get up at 6:30 and head to work at 7am, not getting back till 5pm with my rides then around 6-7pm.
The podcasts suggest keeping the cycling and strength exercises separate by at least 6 hours but without getting up at 4am, I cant see how I can fit these in without doing them back to back (either Cycling then Strength or vice versa) or significantly effecting my sleep.
I have a family with young kids etc so me going to bed at 8pm just isn’t realistic.
Separate to the scheduling, when I add these sessions to TR, no adaptions are suggested or occur so I am assuming I need to manually alter my weekly TSS to accommodate the additional load, although I am not sure by how much as ive got no idea of what weights I can lift, let alone what TSS a session would be equivalent to.
Any experience with these issues would be appreciated
Don’t worry about seperating strength and cycling if you can’t make it work in your schedule. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Just do your strength AFTER your interval sets (yes, Tuesday - Thursday in that schedule). You will see benefits from it that way, just fine. I did it for years myself.
Also, don’t include strength in your TSS (IMO). TSS was developed for a specific thing and strength isn’t it. It just throws off the usability of your PMC which should be cycling-specific.
And maybe drop a bike session over the winter to make your life easier, more recovery. Since you have the small but not negligible additions of the commutes. 2.5hrs a week for 50 weeks a year or so adds up!
An extra rest day would certainly be appreciated and to be honest, TR did recommend 5 days a week rather than 6. It was me setting aggressive & 6 days that reached the 440 TSS.
I started strength a few weeks ago. Just getting past the DOMS adjustment phase now…
I’ve had to sacrifice harder bike sessions because my legs have been feeling fried for days though that has improved quite a bit now. Since it’s base season anyway, I don’t see a need for hard sessions anyway. I do feel like my threshold has improved already with the weight training - I can push and extra 5-10 watts - neuromuscular gains?
I’m trying to lift the day before my rest days so I’ll have a full 24/36 hours to recovery and that means riding and lifting on the same day. I usually just do easy endurance the day I’m going to lift.
Another option would be to just do once a week to start with - like Sunday since Monday is your rest day. I do like the option of adding another rest day to your schedule.
Do you have any history of strength work? IMO, you can more seamlessly drop it in if you have a history of it vs having to incorporate lifting while also trying to learn how to do it.
I’ve got a pretty good strength background. So how I do it without a double day is:
have a similar weekend to yours
lift monday
rest tuesday
interval wednesday
endurance thursday
rest Friday
Sometimes I’ll ride shorter endurance Tuesday if I’m not really going for it in the gym. If I do two lifts then it gets more complicated but it would be a much lighter lift and I’d try to do it as a double day on the Thursday.
Definitely temper your riding expectations for the first 2-3 weeks as you work through the additional fatigue and soreness. But at the same time be prepared to go super super easy in the gym so you don’t totally wreck yourself starting out.
No history really. I was part of a gym last year and the year before that doing regular circuit classes but binned them off when they changed times that didnt suit me anymore.
Wouldnt say I noticed any gains at all over that period as so much of it was upper body work. But I was there supporting someone else as a social thing so gains wernt the main purpose.
Im expecting a few aches & pains when starting these proper. Think ill give it a go and see how I fair, then re-assess workout type, length & qty.
