I have been using TR for the last 4 months, following the plan as much as possible…
Did 3 hard “interval” trainings per week, and 1 endurance.
Until December it was pretty good, I could complete all kind of workouts and PL was increasing nicely…
But since beginning of December I had difficulties with finding balance between personal stress (family issuues etc), getting some minor health issues (having a cold, not feeling 100% fit) and training.
Garmin is also showing lower HRV status, and body battery is not charging as before…
Last 6-7 weeks I try to stick to the plan, but also had to adjust some Threshold workouts to a lighter PL because I really had trouble to do the longer Threshold intervals…
I also switched to 2 hard workouts per week and try to do 2 endurance workouts, just to keep the volume but a bit lower intensity.
Vo2max intervals are still going ok, but in November I had no problems doing 5x 12 minutes at Threshold, now I find it difficult to do only 3x 12 and I am toast…
Lower intensity workouts like Endurance, SST are not affected and are still reasonable high PL.
Trying to find balance in my life between personal stress and workouts, but I am a little concerned about overtraining issues??
FTP is still increasing last few weeks with 1-2 watts per block of 4 weeks
What should I do?? I would like to keep increasing my FTP and sustained power, but also don’t want to destroy my fitness by doing to much…
Should I stick to lower levels for Threshold Workouts and see if things progress the coming weeks, or should I do something different in my training to help increase the interval time for Threshold workouts?
your ftp didn’t actually go up and you’re discovering that now. decrease it to where it was around November and work on a TTE progression to get the continuous time at threshold up
I went up from 250 to 274 in 4-5 months, so it is possible I would hit a ceiling someday (maybe now)…
I will keep my FTP at my current level and try to work on TTE from now until I am satisfied with the PL’s and then see what my AI FTP recommendation is.
A couple of thoughts:
What was your training like before TR? If this is the first time you’ve done interval training you might have taken on too much. It’s possible that you took on too much even if you’ve done some interval training in the past. Many (most?) people struggle with 3 intensity days per week.
Workouts with lower PL are inherently less demanding and if your PLs are now higher, the workouts are going to be much more challenging. For me, one I hit a threshold PL of about 5, I feel the workouts become significantly harder.
What phase are you in? Many people feel base is very manageable but in build, things get hard.
Make sure your endurance days are actually easy and not 75% of ftp.
Especially since you say you have some life stress.
If I ever do a TrainerRoad endurance ride, it’s usually a PL of 3 maybe 4 if it’s over 2 hours.
The AI doesn’t know about all that other stuff you have going on. Just to throw a number at it, what if that stuff amounts to a 10% increase in stress and a 10% decrease in your recoverability?
Also, you’re doing the workout feedback, but are you responding according to the table that Chad put together regarding what each response option means?
I just finished the Built phase and now entering the specialty phase.
Before I started with TR I did a lot of endurance riding and social club rides (Tempo/SST), I did not really do Threshold intervall, just some Vo2max like intervals like getting up a hill fast (2-3 minutes).
in 2024 my average time on the bike was 8 hours per week, did 12.000 kilometers.
I know i would struggle with Threshold, felt it from the start, but then the intervals where only a few minutes…
In November my PL was 5-6 and I started really struggling to finish the workout but still did… In December I failed some and choose more achievable level workouts (around lvl 4).
it looks like we’re circling back around to the definition of ftp lol but if you want to have a better assessment of your ftp and where to build your progress, i’d recommend a) dialing your current setting back a couple percentage points and b) try to see if you can maintain at least 30-35min at that number uninterrupted.
I personally start struggling with TTE near threshold when life stress builds up, so what you are describing is something I’ve noticed for like a decade now lol.
Conversely, if you just started structured training ~4ma, the timing of this is suspicious that you may have been accumulating fatigue for a while now and not recovering enough between rides/on recovery weeks. So taking some time off could be something to consider too.
Because AIFTPD is just a black box taking data in and producing a result using an algorithm. It doesn’t know what is happening physiologically in your body. FTP doesn’t go up a couple watts at a time.
At some point people hit an FTP where they’re going to sit for a little while, and you need to bed in those gains by extending the length of time that you can hold that FTP. That’s how our bodies adapt over time. FTP growth is usually stepwise and when someone is relatively well trained, it takes novel stimulus to grow it.
For you, your “noob gains” are probably over, and you need to spend some time bedding things in for a while. Make your “new FTP” your “old FTP” for a while and then it’ll go up again.
I think that’s your answer. Doing intervals is really challenging and more difficult (for most people) than endurance and social rides. Then you hit Build with strong PLs and the workouts are just simply hard.
There’s a couple ways to handle this. You might switch to Masters Plans, reduce overall volume, reduce intensity of the workouts using alternates, or even reduce FTP. There are other options too, it’s your choice.
I tend to be a rider who does better on short VO2Max stuff rather than longer threshold stuff. When AI FTP suggest a 1-4w increase (probably influenced by the VO2max performance) I usually ignore it and leave my FTP as is, its within the fluctuation of personal performance, power meters, etc anyway and only increase my FTP, in 5w intervals, if it goes up by 5w or more (which isn’t very often). I prefer to improve my TTE anyway.
I would extend that to 10W, personally. If I were relying on AIFTPD or Xert or Intervals or WKO5 to determine FTP, I would never set it at anything that didn’t end in a zero, then wait for a 10W change to move it.
I know my FTP is not to high, Last month i did sort of a Time Trial, riding for 1,5h as hard as I could and my avg power was only 10 watts lower than my FTP in TR. My heartrate was not even at threshold and had some reserve left…
I just struggling at long intervals above 100-110% of FTP (the over-under ones)…
I know my personal stress is of influence, that is why i decreased the intensity a bit the last few weeks.
In June i have a big event, I will ride 1300km in 8 days with a lot of climbing 21.000 altitude meters.
Last few months the focus was on building strenght, but the downturn was the decrease of TTE…
Coming weeks i will keep my FTP at this level and try to work on the TTE…
I hope the personal stress will decrease quickly, and I can recover better from the workouts, because I need the hours on the bike for the event in June…
Thanks for your help. and i will try to find more balance the coming weeks…
Power outdoors is generally easier to hold because of things like air cooling and momentum etc. If you don’t have the exact conditions replicated indoors (and even then there’s still nuances) your FTP can still be too high for indoors work.
I took a look at your TR Calendar to get an idea of what might be up (in addition to getting the details you posted above).
I’d agree that it sounds like you may be getting through the last of your “beginner gains” – as much as we all want our FTP to keep increasing indefinitely, we humans seem to bump into “ceilings” from time to time.
It sounds like you’re pretty confident in your current FTP based on some of your recent rides from the last month or so, but that you may be having trouble consistently “expressing” that FTP, as we like to say. Focusing on your recovery (sleep, nutrition, hydration) and lowering the extra life stressors as much as you can could certainly help you out here.
I also noticed you said you have an event coming up in June. It looks like you’ve been on your current plan since August of last year – is that correct? If so, another idea I’d propose is to take 1-2 weeks off from training to really focus on recovering. If you’ve been training since August and your goal event is in June, that’s a long time to be “on” and training hard – especially if you’re feeling run down now after a stressful December.
Taking a week or two off now will help you shake that extra fatigue you’re feeling (especially after getting sick last month!). You’ll likely find that you come back to training feeling refreshed and more motivated to tackle those harder sessions (like the over-unders). With your goal event being in June, you’d also still have plenty of time to get your fitness where you’d like it to be.
Finally, on another note, I like the tip @HLaB gave you just above… If you find that you’re able to more easily push out higher power when riding outside, that may be a sign that you could improve your cooling setup for your indoor trainer. When we’re outdoors, we have lots of air moving over us and cooling us as we ride… Inside, not so much! It’s thus very important to make sure you have a powerful fan (or even multiple fans) to ensure that you can cool off sufficiently while on the trainer.
Hope that helps – feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions!
With almost a decade of structured training under my belt, I’ve come to agree with this. 1-5 w isn’t really a big enough number to make training that much different. I’d work on TTE and/or moving your PL’s out until you see a big enough jump to actually warrant changing your FTP.
If I were relying on AIFTPD or Xert or Intervals or WKO5 to determine FTP, I would never set it at anything that didn’t end in a zero, then wait for a 10W change to move it.