One problem with SF, Trainer road and other online programs is they are geared towards time crunched athletes.

They slay them with hard workouts so athletes feel good about the work they did even if they could / would have been better off riding with much, much less intensity. I mean do you feel better about a 400kJ ride where you're noodling along or a 750 kJ ride where you were breathing hard, sweat flying all over the place, watts at ranges you can't hold for even 15 min? Most people are going to say they feel better about the 750kJ ride bc hey I did some serious work. Yet while intervals are important, aerobic volume is a better determinant of success in endurance sports

If you lack steady state and the program is chock full of anaerobic efforts and vo2 max work, I'd suggest it's not a program for you.

The #1 enemy for time crunched athletes isn't going hard, it's not going easy often enough.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Makes sense and funny you should say that as I am considering following an 80/20 training program this year.

+1 on this!

I've found the hard way that 'hero' workouts, while they feel good, tend to not fit into the regular steady buildup of a good aerobic plan.

I've been doing the 80/20 for the last 2 cycles, and every single one of my personal workouts that in prior years that I felt were necessary to good performance for me, were significantly too hard compared to the hardest workouts I'd do on the 80/20. Same thing happened with Matt Dixon's fast-track triathlete plan I did, which never was as hard as the typical 'hard day' workouts I made on my own.

It made up for that in consistency, though. Just because I no longer did that particular hero workout, meant that I felt the workouts were easy - the gradual beat down and build up is what it's all about. And I was def beat down on some of those weeks!

Love sufferfest having used it before, but alas, in my current plan and buildup, it has no place.

I agree with you on this one.

I think the Trainerroad podcast crew is generally good. But I get frustrated whenever someone, via podcast or forum question, expresses that they're feeling overwhelmed with one of their training plans.

The response is always, "Go down a level." And they often talk about how the Trainerroad "High Volume" plans are for very serious athletes, and how even the podcast guys have trouble with those. I want to bang my head against a wall. The High Volume plans are often only 8-9 hours/week. And someone who picks that plan presumably has that much time to train. And my understanding is that you don't need to be a super serious, elite athlete to benefit from doing more than 8-9 hours per week.

But they're advocating to do fewer hours. The whole "time crunched" rationale goes out the window when you advocate doing fewer hours.

I wish they'd consider offering the alternative to offering either *more* low intensity hours or the same number of hours, but less volume at high intensity.

I'm following a similar approach. Though I've kept the Sufferfest due to the Strength/Yoga/Mental Training offerings. I can noodle around on Zwift or other type of service in Z2 all I want but I'm not aware of anyone else offering this type of service. Sufferfest's 'ancillary offerings' are what keep me there.

As for the actual workouts themselves, they've since introduced a load of "endurance" workouts featuring cycling/inspiration documentaries - all in Z2. These now pretty much comprise all of my cycling volume.

Cool - I admit I haven't check out their non-cycling nor their Z2 nonhammerfest offerings. I will def try them, as I've really enjoyed their hammerfest videos in the past and have used them extensively.

do the low volume plan and work in additional easy Z1 and Z2 rides.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Yeah, that's pretty much what I do in most plans (TR or not). I ride 13-14 hours per week, but do "beginner/intermediate" volumes of intensity. Some of that is just me, though. As an endurance athlete for like 30 years I have a solid understanding that my body has a hard time responding to a lot of intensity, but responds like crazy to volume.

8-9 h/per week is not high volume. At all. Sorry folks

No triathlete training that volume regularly is really going to make significant jumps in their performance after a few years of getting into the sport. It's always going to be marginal gains and if you take an extended downside, fleeting gains. Don't get me wrong, marginal gains for 3 seasons in a row can be significant.

Yet someone who can train and recover from 14-18h/wk is going to make all those marginal gains in a single season or at most 1.5 seasons.

I've said it before in numerous threads and I'll say it again. The #1 thing an athlete could do that trains for <10h/wk and follows TR or SF or one of those other time crunched triathlete plans is sacrifice some intervals for JRA time.

Some of those plans have more minutes of intervals per week on the bike than my athletes who are training 15+ hr/wk do in the B or R combined.

That should almost be as eye opening as yesterday's attempt to overthrow the US. (too soon?)

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

  

"The #1 thing an athlete could do that trains for <10h/wk and follows TR or SF or one of those other time crunched triathlete plans is sacrifice some intervals for JRA time."


Is "JRA time" short for "just ride along", i.e. stay in zone 2 for the ride? If so, what is the minimum length of "JRA" ride that is worthwhile doing in your opinion? Is there any point in doing a one-hour "JRA" ride, or does it need to be three hours and up? I think the thing with intervals is that I have read in numerous different places that you can "trade" intensity for volume - so that a hard 90 minute ride is "worth" an easy three hour ride. So then when I only have three 90 minute windows to train on the bike, I do intervals each time, rather than any easy rides. Do you disagree with the view of "trading" intensity for volume?

As i said earlier time crunched athletes will always trade some intensity for volume. Yet if you're riding or running 3x week your total # of minutes doing intervals can be/should be pretty low. Intervals matter yet it's less important than volume and aerobic development especially for time crunched athletes.

JRA = just riding around just running around. I'll have athletes do 30-45 minutes riding and as little as 10 min runs. Yeah my athletes look at me weird when they see two to three 10 min runs per week. Yet at 8:30 mile that's ~ an extra 5k per week. Those runs don't add a ton to the fitness bank. I'd rather go to a race with $10,001.25 in the fitness bank than just an even $10k. It always sucks when your body stops cashing checks with 1km to go while your competitor keeps going.

I coached a pro cyclist who went on to win her National TT Champs. She did 2-3 1h rides/wk iirc. Although she did more 90-2h rides than 1h rides. She also rode around 8-10x per week. A lot of her riding was just riding. Heck she probably did less interval workouts per week than someone on a low volume plan. Now her interval sets could be 2h in length from start to finish and sandwiched in a 4h ride.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

So intervals are less important for time-crunched athletes? I suppose it depends on what kind of cyclist you want to be.

samtridad asks a good question. If you only have 270 minutes to ride each week, how much of that 270 minutes is in Z2?

I've done a few SF 12-week plans and I've come out the end more confident, faster and with better endurance. The sessions during the week are brutal but doable if you have an honest FTP to start. I think you must do the long rides basically as recovery rides - Z1-Z2.

IMO, if you want to get faster on the bike, do intervals. If you want to ride with more endurance, ride LSD.