I am currently on my trial and not a paying client yet. Still to decide weather to jump or not.
I am a keen cyclist doing criteriums and road races from April-September.
Currently on the mid volume plan and have set som of the races as goals when the season starts in early April.
However i find the plan from week to week having very little variation.
For my eyes to see almost every week looks the same with the same workouts.
To my knowledge of training they best way to build is with periodization and changing some of the focus as you progress.
I also miss sprint workouts, crucial for fine-tuning muscle cells. High-intensity bursts stimulate fast-twitch fibers, boost mitochondrial density, and improve oxygen delivery. These adaptations maximize power, improve lactate threshold, and enhance overall cycling performance.
I’ve often thought this in the past and at first glance it does always look similar. However the use of the “workout wizard” well help with variety across the weeks, plus the more that you train with the system it will change the sessions to match your current fitness/fatigue.
In my eyes the AI should mix and match the workouts anyway without having to go through the workout wizard. Not sure how everyone else feels about that?
FYI I also use Stryd Training Plans for running with power, it’s pretty much the same with them. For a HM/Marathon training plan they will have the same 3 or 4 intervals on rotation, just increasing lengths/reps as you go down the plan.
I believe in your plan you start with build since you have early season races coming up. The plan will get you ready for the those races for sure. As @jockefc23 mentions whenever you want variation, you can use the workout wizard. Nothing stops you to add a few sprints in as well, but in principle you want to repeat same workouts over long time, which change as you follow the plan. One of those workouts is highly effective HIIT VO2MAX workout and the workout wizard gives you several alternative options from 20/10 to 60/60 sec intervals.
If you have your favourite workout you can easily schedule that one in also.
As you keep plugging away at your plan, the workout change progressively. So when you look at your plan today, keep in mind that those will change depending on what you - or don’t do.
Btw. The entire system is build on the HIIT Science book written by Dr. Laursen and Buchheit together with world leading experts in their fields, so you are in good hands
Hi @tgarne ,
Yes - for next week’s key HIIT session from your calendar for example. You have very high variety to pick (flick through the tabs). What’s novel is that each of these sessions is made specific to your ability. To the best of my knowledge, you won’t find that anywhere else. You should also try to get your head around workout reserve (WR); blue line here in this screenshot. Very helpful for cyclists and you can also get this in real time on our Garmin app if you run the Garmin system.
Best,
Paul
Prof and Marjanna pretty much covered it, but from a new-ish user perspective (a few months now) yes initially it can feel the same each week, but definitely changes week over week as you follow the plan. If you click forward to look at a few weeks from now, yes everything will look the same BUT you haven’t YET done the work for it to respond to. As each week passes, the next week will change in response to the training you did.
It does take a couple weeks or more for the program to learn you and your capabilities so if you need to adjust in the meantime feel free to do more / add more, and it’ll learn from that.
Oh and you should have some HIIT days, my plan had 1 a week for cycling and 1 a week for running with the rest more zone-2-ish. Maybe they haven’t shown up yet as it’s doing baseline building?
Lastly, the workout wizard is awesome for adding variety. You can pick based on goals, or injury, or overtraining, etc. and have replacements with good variation but similar training impacts.
I am sold. Going to give it a shot. Had a coach going in to this season, but cut him off early summer.
Tired of doing the planning for myself and my GF(on cotract with an elite team).
I think it is always best with a second set of eyes - I hope the AI can help me out here
