Hi all,
I started training seriously at the beginning of April after I bought a power meter and a Garmin device. Before then I was doing some rides but I was not recording them and I was rock climbing regularly, but I am not sure this counts as aerobic.
Anyway, the reason I am writing is that I misinterpreted the fitness graph when I started training. I read “Avoid staying in the high risk zone for long or you might become over-trained” and I thought it meant I could stay in the red zone for some time, then go green then back into red. But apparently I got it all wrong.
The result is the following graph:
As you can see, I spent significant time in red.
I’ve now understood (after reading books and talking to Gerald M) that I should not do this or risk overtraining. So I now have several questions.
Given my past, is it good if I now stay in green for 3 weeks, then gray for 1 week then green for 3 weeks and so on?
how long should I stay in gray? And should I get into gray at the beginning of my recovery week in the middle of it or at the end of it?
Oh my goodness, 69 weeks without even one single propre recovery period
Don’t look at the fitness number as a goal to achieve. It is a help for better planning
The max fitness number you will achieve is greatly dependent on the time availability to train
Ramp up time with mostly (at least 90%) endurance work until you are at your time limit. Really limit intensity during that phase.
Once you are at the limit of your time availability and coping well with all that training, carefully introduce some extra intensity.
Once you reached this point, fitness number will no longer grow. But that doesn’t mean that performance will plateau. It means that you have found your longer term load that you can achieve with the available time and that your body can adapt to.
Better performance comes with consistency (doesn’t seem to be a problem in your case), good balance of low/high intensity and very importantly, good balance of work/recovery. You should every 3-4 weeks take enough recovery to make your fatigue drop significantly while keeping fitness more or less equal. Thus reducing load in such a way that you don’t loose much fitness but allow your body to recover.
If you want to be at your best for an event, taper before that event. Let form go up to the fresh zone and enjoy the feeling of being really strong. You worked hard for it!
Once a year, take 2-3 weeks almost completely off. Only do some cross-training and very light activity. Explore other activities, have fun, rejuvenate! Then start building again. Even with the same fitness number, you will grow stronger year after year.
69 weeks? I do not know where that comes from. As I said I started riding consistently at the beginning of April. That’s 16 weeks, not 69.
You’re telling me to ramp up with mostly endurance. Where should I ramp up from where I am now?
I guess right now I need to ease off and stay either in green or gray, shouldn’t it?
This chart shows an ever increasing fitness for that period of time. I wonder who can sustain that?
Anyway, you first need to recover from the work done. Take an easy week by reducing the training load to 60-70% from the avg of the last 3 weeks and avoid intensity for that week.
Then increase the load again with a max of 5-10% per week for a period of three weeks. Back-off again to 60-70% of that for another recovery week.
That’s what is called safe building and it will avoid injury/overtraining.
I do not know where that 46 comes from. I just took another screenshot (with dates this time. I should have paid more attention) It now says 66 weeks ?!?.
Whatever, I understand I have not been recovering enough possibly. But I did recover Month of april was fairly light. Then I started training hard in May. I had a few rest days (possibly not enough by looking at the graph) at the end of may, and again at the beginning of June, and now I am easying up a bit this week with mostly Z2 training apart from yesterday.
My question is whether it is fine If I do 1 week low intensity and 3 weeks higher intensity from now on, or if i should take it even easier because I have spent so much time in the red zone.
Just found out that this indicates the selected date range at the top left but the chart only populates from the fist date with an activity Learned something again today
Now, on we go with the correct information.
Building a fitness number of 110 in not even 4 months is HUGE. How many hours a week do you train? Even to sustain this big a ramp rate, you must have had a significant aerobic condition before. Going from 0 or almost zero to +/- 12-15 hours a week of training is not something that can be done by the average person.
The typical thing with beginners is that they improve very fast in the beginning, no matter what they do. And they usually train too hard because that’s what they think they should do. You can get away with this for 3-6 months but if you continue for longer, you will either experience a performance plateau, get injured, overreached or overtrained.
To avoid the above negative effects, you need to build more slowly and give your body time to adapt. You need to ‘load’ for three weeks and ‘unload’ for one week and repeat that for the rest of your journey.
You are talking 3 weeks ‘higher intensity’. If you really mean Intensity as in more then 75 % of your FTP, that is way too much. You need to build your aerobic engine and that is done what a majority of work below 75% FTP. Just add some sparse high intensity work like hill repeats, sustained FTP intervals.
My advice for beginners is to train only low intensity and keep the high intensity for your group rides where you will have more then enough high intensity at this level. If you want more challenge during your solo training, go longer, not harder.
Hi,
I did ride for many years when I was younger. First in my teens and twenties, then I did more riding some 10 - 8 years ago, and since then I had been doing occasional rides. For the past year and a half I had been training from time to time on an indoor spinning bike, but I never recording any of that, as I did not have a power meter or heart rate monitor. I also ebiked to and from work but not very regularly. Then at the end of March I bought a power meter, a garmin unit, and a heart-rate strap and I started being serious about riding and that’s when my curve started.
At the end of May/beginning of June I started a base phase with Trainer Road. I have been doing mostly sweet spot and some over under intervals. Now after this week of rest, I should be starting a build phase.
Do you think that is too much? I honestly feel comfortable riding for 4-5 hours at sustained pace outdoors, or doing 1h workouts with significant sweet spot indoor. So I am not sure I am a complete beginner.
To add a bit more info, my first, self administered ramp test on an old indoor trainer without a fan was 161W. Then I did one when I started with trainerroad on May 26, on the same on-wheel trainer which got me to 181W. My latest test, on July 2, on my KickR core but using the same power meter as on the old trainer scored me at 207W.
I should also add that I have been managing my calorie intake to lose 2Kg per month, so I am now at 61Kg give or take, which gets me at 3.39W/Kg.
The distribution of HIT/LIT is not only for beginners. It’s for everyone up to the elite athletes. Contrary to the belief of most people with little knowledge of endurance training, it is the LIT part that makes an elite athlete.
This is slowly getting more and more acknowledged but it is still very difficult to explain that the ‘No pain No gain’ philosophy isn’t working on longer term.
There has been lots of research over the last 2 decades and it all shows the same. Train slow, will make you fast. Be it cycling, running, rowing… any endurance discipline. The slow training will significantly boost your aerobic performance and the high intensity will be the icing on the cake, a small layer that makes it superb. The research shows that elite athletes do something like 90-10% low vs high intensity.
if you constantly train at moderate intensity, your body isn’t ready to do the high intensity as it should be and you are no longer improving, just feeling tired all the time.
Look for 80-20 training (running), Stephen Seiler 's YouTube channel, Polarized training, Gordo Byrn 's Endurance essentials e-book, etc etc.
I understand the need to alternate between easy and hard. But your 80-20 sounds more like a polarized plan, is that what you are referring to?
Also, neither your 80-20, nor my TR plan are consistent with being constantly at 70% FTP which you suggested above.
Honestly, I would find cycling utterly boring if I were to do only rides at 70% FTP for the next months after riding as much as I have. Particularly because the only way I have to do that outdoors is ride very very slowly on the hilly terrain I have near here.
The concepts for the training are diverse, finding the best for each person taking into account the characteristics of the objectives and personal tastes is decisive, because, from that, we will have a better engagement with the training process.
I suggest you hire a trainer where you can discuss your process, not just a machine putting something together based on numbers alone.
This discussion has been done over and over and I really don’t want to bloat the forum again with all that. I gave you some sources that explain what, why, how. Read up if you feel like it and if you don’t, no worries. Just be cautious and pay attention to what your body is telling you. As long as you carefully listen to that, things will rarely go south.
I was just trying to warn you that it’s not a good idea to go to hard all the time. If I just made you a little bit aware of that, I’m all happy.
But you asked if there was a possibility that you are overtrained… Pay attention to fatigue, grumpiness, diminishing motivation/performance, sleeping disorders… If any, back off and don’t push it any harder thinking that you need to put in more work.
You need to also include your daily commutes, and outside rides along with the TrainerRoad plan, which then puts your whole training into perspective. Right now, only showing TrainerRoad give the wrong impression to the advice you’re seeking from others.
All the sources I mentioned clearly advice to avoid the 75-90% zone as training intensity. It is the zone that creates lots of fatigue without addressing a specific physiological system of your body. Stay below most of the time, go above for a fraction of the time.
75%-90% is tempo. So I get it if you are suggesting I do Z2 + Sweet spot or higher.
But in your message above you suggested never exceeding 75%. I am not sure I understand if you are suggesting this, and why.
I never said that you shouldn’t go beyond 75%.
You should avoid planning to much work above that 75% because you will always get more. Group rides, going up a hill, just for the fun of it… If you have an urge to do it, just do it. Having fun is after all what is, for most of us non-pro’s, what it is all about. But staying healthy is even more important.
What I would like to do, is keep my group rides, except maybe on recovery weeks, and do my training with intervals during non-recovery weeks. Do you reckon that is too much, or is it ok if I manage to keep myself out of the red zone?
