I may be in the minority, but having tried the masters plan, it didn’t fit my needs, or my enjoyment of training. I even had a cafe stop indoors halfway through another boring endurance ride. In addition to a big drop in power due to trying some bike packing events over summer.
It may suit those with more fast twitch fibres, but for many of us surely we should be doing more intensity as we age, not less?
Would not choosing a Mid/Low volume plan be the answer , as it fulfils all we need without the extra hours of the high volume?
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Yeah. Good question. What I think and feel I need differs from what the plan has. I def like and prefer intensity and don’t like long low-intensity workouts. IDK, but maybe going with the plan would produce better gains than going by feel? I’m sure age and individual physiology is a factor. One thing I have found is that I need significantly more recovery in my early 70s than when I was in my early 60s.
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Virtually all research says 1 or 2 intensity sessions per week is enough and 3 just as good as 2 (for those that can recover but worse for those that can’t). To make my indoor training more interesting I switched to smart rollers and Zwift for doing training either in resistance mode or even just sim mode. Nothing boring about that set up (so far) I can tell you
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My commute is a proxy for an Endurance ride, I think in combination with outdoor rides or races anything more than 2 HIIT session would be too much for me at the moment.
I’m old and also stick to 2 hard sessions a week to recover well and reap my gains
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The more hours a week you spend on the bike, the stronger you’ll be. Professional cyclists are fast because they’ve spent years consistently riding 15, 20, 20+ hours a week.
So no, moving to a lower volume training plan does not provide “all we need without the extra hours of the high volume.” Riding your bike less will never make you faster.
Conversely, no one is forcing you to do rides you don’t enjoy. And if you really hate long endurance rides then just don’t do them. But be aware that by dropping the “boring” training hours, you’re dropping your fitness to some degree.
You are the only person who can decide where the trade off there is.
As for number of high intensity days per week… do as many as you can properly recover from. For most people that’s somewhere between 1-3. It’s unlikely you’re different than most other people, but certainly not impossible.
The problem is most people who think they can do more can’t, and just aren’t being honest with themselves… so be careful if going down that path. Replacing volume with intensity is usually a dangerous route if done more long term.
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What did the intensity days look like?
I think this is a great observation in that you were able to ascertain that you enjoy more days of intensity per week than a Master’s plan offers.
For others two days is plenty, myself included primarily because I have a long commute and need to balance training and recovery (sleep). I also enjoy a long endurance ride on the weekends, especially when I can get outside. This ends up being the third hard day each week, just in terms of hours and not necessarily IF.
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This is my approach too. A couple of days commuting and a club spin at the weekend just leaves me one endurance day inside with the masters plan with 2 “hard” workouts.
If I can’t get out at the weekend, I normally swap in a sweet spot workout.
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Are you talking hobby riders like us or elites?
Don’t think I’ve ever seen any research or athlete or coach at the elite level say one workout per week was “good enough.” Maybe during a base phase but during a build or specialty phase I don’t think this would be optimal. But I consider threshold/sweet spot/tempo as “intensity”… so maybe just a difference in terminology?
Two intensity workouts build and maintain fitness when combined with high volume training needed for the long gravel events are popular.
higher volume, lower intensity is always the answer. this idea of 3 hard sessions came from that sweet spot idea for time crunched people that unfortunately can’t spend hours on zone 2 rides like most professional coaches would recommend you doing. you could potentially try to replace the endurance to a tempo ride, I find TR endurance ride too low most of the time and much prefer the lower end of tempo rides
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This sounds like an indoor trainer issue - boredom, etc.
I feel it. After an hour, I generally get antsy on an indoor ride.
I can do 100-120+ minutes if I have a plan that involves longer TTE - like 4x20 tempo / SS intervals. Somehow planning to do those intervals ahead of time makes the time tolerable.
But I can’t do 60 minutes of zone 2 on the trainer. It doesn’t work for my brain. I need some intervals to count. I was thinking of trying such a workout with some over/under z3/z2 thrown in to make the time pass.
I can ride endurance 2-3 hours outside no problem.
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It’s only boring because you are indoors. Get outside and it’ll be so much more engaging.
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I believe @ArHu74 was saying 1-2 high intensity rides as part of a weekly plan.
Ie:
1x threshold/sweet spot
1x VO2
2x Endurance/tempo
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I’m a shift worker and I’m on my feet 8 and 9 + hours a day. At the minute I find that 2 intense Masters sessions per week are enough for me.
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As far as I know, almost all good research on endurance training has been done with younger subjects. Then, (relatively young) coaches try to extrapolate these results to older athletes without really understanding first hand the physical limits older athletes have. My conclusion is that older athletes really have to be skeptical and think for themselves and listen to their bodies carefully.
As far as intensity dosing, it really depends on your goals. You should periodize your intensity distribution based on your training goals and not just follow some generic formula.
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Interesting point of reference. Dylan Johnson’s latest video is pretty good. He outlines his entire offseason and season training structure. And he specifically says he’s almost always doing two intensity sessions per week, rarely three, and that’s a late 20’s pro who’s 5-6 w/Kg. He’s also on an 8 day “week” with 3 on, 1 off, 3 on, 1 off…
But, 20+ and 30+ hours / week of volume…
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His volume was just incredible. I kept pausing the video to look at his calendar and pick my jaw up off the floor.
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Anecdotally the fastest guys I know in their 40s, 50s and early 60s at least are those who love riding their bikes, have been consistently doing high volume for years and continue to do so. And they’re fast - regular winners and podiums in AG racing and still competitive in open racing. I don’t know any riders in their later 60s and 70s who are (or ever were) racers, so don’t know how the fastest guys in those AGs train so maybe at some point high volume does take too high a toll. But at least in the first couple of decades of being a masters racer it seems to me that the aging of the body, slower recovery, etc are offset by things like historically high volume, maybe having more time to ride and recover (certainly for those whose kids have grown up and/or have retired early), maybe also being smarter about nutrition, sleep, listening to the body than you were in your 20s.
Probably the biggest difference I’ve noticed so far in late 40s is that the fitness takes longer to come back after a break, and that I can’t get away with ramping up volume as steeply. In my 20s it seemed I could do not much for a few months then just jump straight back into high volume training and intensity, be sore for a few days and then start making big fitness gains. These days it’s much more about maintaining the consistency and seeing incremental improvements.
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I actually had the opposite reaction. He mentioned 1-2 weeks of big volume (30-35) and then burning out and followed it with two weeks of 15 hours. (I didn’t pause but maybe it was different?) As a professional, I thought that 30+ would be the norm. Anything less I have to think you are leaving a lot on the table.