Staggering Training Volume

Training
1

Hi All

I am getting back to fitness post hip issues.
My hip still isn’t right but I can do low level zone 2 riding without it flaring up.

I can do about 6-10 hours a week depending on work.
A friend has told me I need to periodise my weekly volume in order to get the best adaptations, (i.e. increase volume each week in order to overload and get an adaptive process).

My question is:
If I am doing zone 2 which creates little fatigue, moving forwards, does it make more sense to do a week at 5 hours, the following week at 6 hours, the week after at 7 hours until I get to 10 hours, then start the process again?
To me it seems if I have 8 hours free a week, why wouldn’t I just cycle 8 hours? Why restrict 3 hours?
If I follow a linear periodised model, every 5 weeks I would drop training hours each week and then slowly build them back up but to my untrained brain, this again just seems to be dropping hours.

I know about recovering from injury so I am not asking whether building up post injury is a good idea. I am asking if you have 10 hours a week to train, do you just do 10 hours training each week or do you deliberately hold off on hours in order to add them in later to try to get your body to adapt to them?

TIA

David

2

It all comes down to biology. Your body needs time to adapt to the stress. Jumping in 100% increases the risk of injury. Additionally, increased fatigue inhibits recovery and can ultimately keep you from getting out there the next day. By allowing the body time to recover you will actually be gaining more when compared to doing too much.

3

But that was my point.
I am sitting at 125bpm on the bike, (max HR is 203bpm) so I finish the workout feeling absolutely fine. My legs feel ok, my joints feel fine and I can replicate the same workout the next day feeling the same.
It’s such low intensity, is there a need to drop to 5 hours a week and stagger increases?
If I were cycling at 250w I would totally get it. But I’m talking low Z2 efforts intentionally avoiding anything hard to save my hips.

That’s what my question is about

4

Once you’ve built up to 10 hours no need to drop back down to 5.