first of all i like to make an excuse for my english, as i am from germany
I am currently struggling to decide which plan would result into biggest fitness gains. I am relatevely new to cycling, started about 2,5 years ago at the age of 21. Currently logged about 33.500 km on strava
(Strava Cyclist Profile | Roland S. if anyone is interested). Recently (on december 19th) i hit my max. power for 85 minutes @261W (so ftp at this time was maybe 270W ?) @58kg body weight. Gotta admit i was a bit too greedy the days after this PR and didnāt gave my body enough recovery so things started to fall apart the days after this (first symptoms of overtraining). Finally i got sick on 14. january (yay) und didnāt do any riding until the 19th january. Since then i mostly did endurance rides to come back from that (i did one sweet spot workout)ā¦
I am willing to commit up to 14 hours per week for training, but no more. I thought of starting with Traditional Base High Volume III and maybe repeat the same one after this (hopefully with a higher ftp or at least more ease). On the other hand i read that a lot of people suggest sweet spot baseā¦ Definetely want to work on my base as i think i would plateau really fast if i started a build phase nowā¦
Yeah, i have no specific events in mind. In summer i like to do long rides of about 4-6 hours (riding those with more ease would be nice)ā¦ And i like hunting PRs on Strava for local climbs and so on
So, looking at the SSB High Volume II, i see 5 sweet spot workouts per week. I think I would be able to do them, but not quite sure if this will actually raise my FTP. I think 5 SS workouts each week might be a little bit to intense: I think my body just would be able to recover from the workouts to a point where no adaptions are made (not quite sure if this is how it worksā¦ but i think after you have done some work the body first have to come back to the level where you started before the workout and after that, some improvements will be made).
This could result me in thinking i am not doing enough work, adding another workout each week and then tip over the edge of overtraining (Mid 2019 i was badly overtrained, had a lot of sleep problems for weeksā¦ - Not very good at the ālisten to your bodyā thingā¦)
What are your thoughts on that? In 2019 i did ride about 15.000 km, the year before about 11-12.000 km and i started cycling about 2.5 years ago (before that i didnāt do any sports, was very skinny my whole life until now :D)
Iād look at mid-volume base plans and then re-evaluate when the weather breaks in the spring.
When I lived in Chicago and Boston, Iād see a lot of people come into January and February wanting to spend a lot of time on the trainer but by the time spring rolled around and certainly by early summer, they were āburned outā and not wanting train. Indeed, theyād get to April with great fitness and then, by July had lost a lot of it because they were only āriding.ā
I experienced something similar when I moved to Los Angeles and could ride 300+ days a year, I did just that. I effectively tripled my KMs and experienced burn-out. Going from 19000km/yr to less than 1000. I got really fat
If your goal is to continue riding and improving over the course of your 20s. Identify some tangible goals (not just āget faster/strongerā ) to work toward, start working toward them conservatively, and re-assess at the end of each training block. If you feel like you can add to the training load, donāt immediately go up to HV, add 30 minutes of endurance to your rides. Then re-evaluate again. Better to do that then not be consistent at training, finding yourself hating the bike/ride/etc or injured because your body just isnāt ready for that volume yet.
(Mid 2019 i was badly overtrained, had a lot of sleep problems for weeksā¦ - Not very good at the ālisten to your bodyā thingā¦)