I’ve noticed a plateau in my FTP since April. I’ve tried different approaches to kick-starting it again - trying different plans, building blocks etc.
This week I decided to look at what’s changed since my peak fitness in March / April.
My weekly TSS has dropped from around 700 per week to 350 per week.
Turns out my 30 minute (15 min x2) daily commute was really adding up.
Is the best way to up my TSS adding an evening session? If so what should that look like? Tempo? MAP?
Same boat on the commute, I’ve swapped 6 hrs of commuting plus training for all quality training and I’m super happy about that.
Detraining can be real. How much TSS were you getting from commuting? If your commute is 5x30 at 100% intensity(like time trial) you’d get 250 TSS.
The surprising and disappointing thing I discovered this pandemic season is just how much more effective I can make use of my time to get quality work done when compared to the bike commutes.
I’ve been loading up a lot of the tempo and sub threshold workouts to compensate.
If you used to have a 700 TSS week; you must be looking at minimum 10 hrs on the bike, so you might want to load up a plan and layer over that yet.
Remember it is not always about the volume of training which is going to make the difference. When was your last 4DP test?
I would say you can make the most of having the extra time and change the level of your plan to intermediate/advanced(?) depending on where you have been training currently?
Also, what goal are you training for or is it mainly to see a rise in your numbers?
Thanks for the responses.
I’ve tested pretty regularly.
Half monty in October. Full Frontal in June. Full Frontal in March.
Started the All Purpose advanced plan after the March test but didn’t see improvement come my June full frontal.
Training has been to improve numbers and improve on local segments.
I would be surprised if it was your commute boosting performance. While it adds TSS, it’s not likely to be very productive TSS unless you were really thrashing yourself on those rides!
I would typically ride easy to the office, and then go hard on the way home. A couple of good AC segments that I’d go full gas on.
Maybe the question I should ask is are there go to workouts to get quality TSS from if you do 2-a-days? Quality workouts that don’t overly fatigue so you can hit the next day feeling fresh.
Sounds like you could maybe benefit from a custom plan at this point. 700 TSS is a pretty hefty load on a continuous basis and considerably higher than the standard SUF plans I’ve looked at.