One thing I have noticed is that I have issues finding time for the longer workouts, because I often don’t have more than an hour.
I have usually stuck to the low volume plans, but usually find that I have space in the calendar for additional workouts , but as one progresses into the mid plans the workouts themselves get increasingly longer… which becomes an issue…
I would love for a feature that would be like “Mid Volume - Time Constrained” or such, where the workouts aren’t longer than an hour.
I understand that there are probably issues with adaptations if one only do 1 hour workouts…
Either way, what modifications can I do to the plan if I don’t have time for the 1:30h or 2h workouts that many of the plans have.
Should I just follow the plan but change the workout to the “-1” or “-2” version of the same workout?
How much riding are you doing on top of the structured workouts? Any outdoor unstructured riding?
IME, 60 min of quality, 3X a week is enough, if I can additionally pile on a ton of unstructured volume outdoors.
Without that volume, 5 hours of total training time per week, e.g. 3x Intensity (sweet sport or higher) + 2x Z2 will probably deliver minimal gains, albeit enough to maintain.
Well this summer when we’ve had nice weather in Sweden (doesn’t last long so gotta reallllly spend some time outside) I have been doing 1-2 structured workouts a week.
During the winter and spring though I have been doing the low volume plan, just cause it doesn’t disrupt life too much.
But with the amazing gains I’ve had from the low plan, I wanna carry my momentum from summer into the winter base months, and try the Mid Plan.
The only issue being the longer workouts that goes with it…
So right now its fine with the low plan, this is more me trying to figure out the fall and winter now beforehand…
I did a feature request for something like this. A lot of the workouts have +1 and -1 versions, the latter are often shorter duration. The request was that you could select “Sweet Spot Base Low Volume -1”, etc. So it might appear
On similar lines when you load the TR app and today’s workout appears you can view its variants and choose one of those instead. Not sure if this is desktop, mobile or both.
Also look under Speciality => Enthusiast for some maintenance and time crunched plans. (Really obvious place to find them I know)
I posted a similar question the other week and spoke to support about it.
I can train 7x week, restricted to 1hr/session.
I’m short there is no option to achieve time restrictions, you have to either add sessions to the LV plan and shorten the longer rides. Or do MV and do the shorter version of the all.
They suggested I run pan builder and then manually shorten the workouts.
I don’t think this is optimal, the structure of the program doesn’t feel right.
I’m doing the mid volume plan and use the -1 or -2 versions of longer workouts when I need to. For example, Saturday’s workout called for a 1.5 hour ride with 5 x 10 min intervals, the -2 version was 1 hour with 3 x 10 min intervals.
I have the same issue as you! I’ve been trying to figure out how to switch things around and do -1 versions here and there, but I’ve found that doing LV and then adding in some of my favorite one hour workouts on my free days makes me more compliant. I typically try to compare the IF/TSS of the MV plan with what I’m doing to choose an appropriate workout.
One 90min is fine, since I can plan it on either Saturday or Sunday, but the Mid Volume has two 90min, on both Saturday and Sunday…
@Gary_Gumnut What is it that you don’t feel is optimal?
@Donna_Wilson Yeah I am guessing that its how its gonna have to be, it just doesn’t feel right if I have to manually change every workout, would be a lot easier if they were all restricted to one hour from the start.
You say you are Progressing well on the LV plan. In that case the most important is to not work against that (keep well rested, not add to much at once, …)
So I would definitely advise to add endurance work on the other days. You can fit an hour like Pettit or Baxter/colosseum (minus version) or black.
If you feel cooked take a day off or a shorter and/or easier workout like west vidette or dans or lazy mountain.
The mid volume plan essentially also does that (Wednesday, Sunday). The Sunday workout of the MV plan was previously a long endurance ride but the compliance was bad. Therefore it was changed to an interval version but the weekly notes still say that you can do endurance instead.
It doesn’t matter that you don’t hit all mid volume plans directly. You work slowly towards it. You progress already as it is now so everything extra is bonus!
Finally, give some thought if you can maybe better invest the time off the bike to make you faster/promote longevity of the sport/prevent injury
food prep, get quality groceries from a nice market, …
Yeah so what the low volume did well was that I always felt rested when hitting the new workouts, and I never felt that I had to move one due to being too tired or such. And one big key was also that I was super motivated to continue due to the balance of life and the training.
Will definitely do some gym work this winter as I realise how good it is to keep up on glute activation work as well as core.
Adding a baxter or such is a good tip! Its one of those workouts that is hard enough that you feel that it gives something, but still easy enough that you can watch some TV or such during the workout!
