Rider Profile - Tips to Pick Random Workouts to Get Better

Hi.
My 4DP profile says Im a climber (no news for me that always loved climbing and have a lightweight with my FTP around 4.2wkg).

I dont want to follow a plan on systm, at least while the plans are so rigid and have a lot of manual work to do to get it ok for the shedule I have. Adaptative training like TRoad has would be spetacular.

So my question is about what random workouts I should pick in the 2 or 3 days a week I workout in the trainer from tuesday to thursday (weekends are for large outdoor rides and mondays and fridays usualy I give it a rest or just a short recovery ride).
So far I’ve been picking one climbing and one mixed workout a week (tuesday and thursday) and an endurance ride or an RGT soft ride on wednesdays. Why?
Because my 4DP weekness is VO2 max and in mixed workouts theres some training to adress that and I still get better or at least dont loose my ability at climbs doing at least one specific workout for that every week.

Any thoughts on that? Tips to get better on VO2 max not loosing my FTP power are very much welcome.

@SSaldanha I would suggest selecting a plan so you have a framework and then as you move through the plan you can delete and replace. I do that from time to time when I have events.

For example, this week I had a VO2 max workout on Monday but I was traveling Tuesday and had a race Wednesday so I deleted the Monday workout and replaced it with a 30 minute session that had a few sprints and some time at threshold and the rest was easy spinning. That set me up well for last nights race.

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@SSaldanha I believe that this methodology is still being followed in SYSTM from the Sufferfest days but one of the philosophies with Sufferfest was that if you improve your Aerobic ceiling, VO2 Max, you would also pull up your FTP as well since those work in a sort of tandem to each other.
I can tell you I have had the same weakness and worked on it for awhile and it recently changed to sustained power weakness. In the process of increasing my Aerobic abilities I would say my FTP has several incremental increases. It has gotten to a point where my FTP has not really risen but it has become easier to hit that threshold level and hold it for longer and repeatedly. So I would say VO2 work will only help you.
Also read up on VO2 and VO2max as these are two different things because believe you me VO2max workouts are brutal and doing one every week is hard.

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Hi there.

You’re in a good place with that ftp by the way :muscle::muscle:

To your question

  • weakness is a ‘term’ that just means a person producing ‘n’ watts for 20 minutes on average can often reach ‘y’ watts for 5 minutes in a given test scenario (4DP). Which is an incredibly useful pointer, but do remember it’s just a pointer :+1:
  • if we leave the above aside, I am a complete believer in the mantra that VO2 helps push everything else, so doing VO2 workouts will benefit your training. You’re not going to lose anything else as you’re doing your weekend stuff and I’m guessing they aren’t zone 1 rides :rofl:
  • to get the best from the three days you want to train, I would do:
    Tue - Nine Hammers (or similar) (ideally after a 20 min warmup if Ready Steady Go if you have time).
    Wed - I’d do G.O.A.T or Power Station (yes I would (because I have tested this) so these on back to back days)
    Thur - this is tricker as you’re getting closer to the weekend already. I’d be tempted to make this a recovery day, do Primers or equivalent on Friday and then be ready to hit Saturday.

I can go in to this in more detail if you want. Feel free to PM if you want.

Go rip up your PB’s :slight_smile:

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Thanks.

I think I just missed some important info in my 1st post. Im 46y/o and do not sleep too much. At the best 6 to 7h maximum a night so its getting a bit harder every year to cope with consecutive hard days.

I don’t have the schedule flexibility to follow a plan either, but I look at the workouts in the plans for guidance in planning my week. For example, I had both sprint triathlons and my first century ( to be done in a few weeks) on my calendar so I looked at plans for both and adapted my outside workouts. This gave me some suggested workouts that took my profile into account.

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