New to proper training

Training
1

Hey All,

After watching a fair few trainer road videos I have made the plunge into getting some proper structure. I’m after a bit of direction or some tips so if I bore you with a brief history of me somebody might be able to offer some suggestions or guidance as I imagine its a path that’s been walked a 1000 times before.

I am proper new to road cycling but I’m well and truly hooked. I got my first bike as an adult (aged 35) in April at the start of lockdown weighing in at 100kg and an educated estimate of about 190w FTP. Rode pretty much everyday since clocking up about 7500km. I got a elite suito trainer in August and tested at 250w FTP at about 88kg the dabbled in some zwift ‘structured’ training and have managed to get to 276k at 81kg. I have hit a bit of a plateau over the last 4 weeks and really want to kick on again. i understand the progression will start to come slower now which is cool.

My ideal situation would be to train 3 times mon-fri for the serious riding leaving the weekend for the group rides with friends, Saturday always being a good 2 hours + of a solid effort and Sunday a bit more social.

Does anyone have any suggestions of how to get a plan to match these needs so that I maximize the progression from the weeks effort without the less structured stuff at the weekends ruining everything.

I dont have a power meter on the bike, and due to the none structured nature of the weekend rides having these as ‘proper’ sessions isnt viable.

Any comments or suggestions are very much welcome.

Thanks in advance for the advise and welcome!

Matt

2

Go onto plan builder and put in your details including your weekly hours available. You can shuffle the days to ensure your TR rides fall in Mon - Fri during the plan setup stage.

Alternatively look at maybe the SSBLV plans and again shuffle the days to fall when it works for you. I think mid volume would be too much if you want to do your own thing on the weekend.

The plans will take care of interval duration and TSS progression for you.

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3

Hey, congrats on your progress so far!
I have had success with SSBLV, what I do is schedule the 3 workouts during the week and leave the weekends open. I heard it’s better to add easy workouts when you feel good rather than fall behind on a higher volume plan.

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4

Welcome!

You sound like the perfect candidate for a low volume plan. Use plan builder, pick low volume, but don’t submit any event. It will just simply lay out a progression of base > build > specialty over and over again. Make sure to pick the type of riding you do so that the plan will match the type of training you need.

Then, I would set your workout days to Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday. Leaving Friday as a day off before the weekend and Monday as a day off before the training starts.

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