[Closed] Anyone had good results from a Zwift Training Programme?

I saw some using the 'Build me up' programme.

It lifted my FTP from 230 ish to over 280 (you do a test at the start and end of the 12 week programme).

More than the numbers, I really noticed my stamina improve on the MTB in real life. Climbs became much, much better.

I think the improvements came from two things:

1. Technique - I have never ridden road group rides or road that much really. There are some great cadence and pedalling exercises in 'Build me up' that made me a much more efficient and steady rider. Also, the learnings on how to recover during a ride. Reckon that efficiency drove about half the FTP gain.

2. Fitness - The ability to push and recover during a ride helped, but just getting miles in was a big benefit, and the programme mixes things up to give you a broad fitness improvement - stamina as well as just the FTP gain.

It's quite intensive, with 3-5 exercises a week. I found it hard to fit in around real rides as I was often feeling pretty pooped. And some weeks I just couldn't complete all the exercises.

Now repeating 'Build me up' and finding improvements much harder to achieve! I'm going to see a small gain, but honestly don't think I'll crack 300 - so an improvement of about 5% this time, compared to 20% previously.

Overall, highly recommended for a novice like me.

ftp 4 week builder for me. improved mine by 10%.
it took me 6 weeks to complete, but the rest days were needed.

After a bad crash in May which left me with a severely broken collarbone which required surgery and a serious concussion. I took nearly a month off any riding and basically took it easy, barely braking a sweat for the whole of June. My mate then lent gave me a dumb turbo and another lent me some sensors and I started one of the easy gravel training programs to get my legs back on track. As above I found it very effective, a nice variety of 1 hour sessions (3 a week) and a programmed outdoor ride. The sessions were a mix of HIT type intervals, longer high cadence efforts plus a few easier recovery rides. I really enjoyed it and it worked as I came out of the 6 week block fitter than before my crash.
I'm now doing the "Build me up" as mentioned above. and my FTP has risen from 195 at the end of the gravel programme to 245 (me being 80kg). I really notice it whilst out riding in the real world, cleaning climbs on the MTB that I've struggled with in the past and able to keep up longer more sustained efforts on both MTB and Road. Highly recommended also.

If you haven't done any training then pretty well anything over and above your general riding will show results. As @andrewreay notes you'll also have the issue of diminishing returns: first time round you'll get good results; second time a bit less; etc. Also if you haven't done an FTP test before it's unlikely that you'll get an accurate result, they are one of those things that you need to know how to do and what to expect before doing one.

Here's a take on them (other opinions are available of course):

And a review/critique of the above - https://www.bicycling.com/training/a26429358/cts-vs-zwift-youtube-video/

Looking at the workouts they do seem to be very "kitchen sink"/scattergun in their approach which is at odds with all (not just TrainerRoad) training programs I've ever seen. They are a bit like turning up at a gym and going: "I'll do a set of leg presses; oh, the lat machine looks interesting; Hmm barbell curls. What about squats? Looks like the bench press is free" You get the idea.

The problem with any training regime is that they are effectively "one shot" for an individual, you can't go back and try another and then compare the results because your starting point has changed.

A general training point is that the longer you take to achieve gains then the longer lasting those gains are - things like HIIT do show very impressive initial results but it's "fragile fitness" and not easy to maintain.

Away from the above negativity/realism, if that's what you've got then try it. Just be wary of burn-out.

I was going to edit the last post but "maintenance"

Also came across this takedown, "they are the spin classes of training" (skip to 5mins)

For those who do the Zwift plans are you still absolutely fixed in when you do each workout? It used to be that if you didn't do the workout on the planned day then you couldn't go back and do it or reschedule it.

Combining https://whatsonzwift.com/workouts/tt-tuneup/ with regular small Zwift races and TTs (plus the odd small interval ride outside) increased my FTP estimate from ~273 to ~295 from 1st Jan to 4th Feb this year, very close to my best of 298 from March 2019 (and in both years I got ill and lost my winter gains).

But more than anything, my ability to put out numbers close to my FTP in a couple of events plus mostly meeting the ERG workout demands on the same day improved dramatically, my fitness score at www.crickles.org went from 100 to 130 during that period (78 to 98 on the Strava "power and relative effort" fitness scale).

However, the workplan became increasingly brutal from week 5 of the 8 week plan, in terms of TSS demands and there were no "rest weeks" (you got the odd day off each week).

I'm currently doing the much more moderate https://whatsonzwift.com/workouts/back-to-fitness/ with the odd TT or small, but not usually on the same day, because I'm trying to regain some fitness after having a third multi-week setback this year in October. I feel it's working and the workouts being ~40mins long is more manageable, plus the workouts themselves so far seem more focussed on the interval type per workout than the TT Tune Up ones that often looked like a whacky rollercoaster, often with horrid 400W+ short sprints after a warmup regadless of what the rest of that workout involved.

@whitestone this might be a silly question, but how would you know if you were 'burnt out'?

I Zwift a few times a week, then usually have a big outdoor ride on a sunday. Some days on zwift I feel stronger than others. Is this just natural? Or is it a sign of over doing it?

If you can shed any light its appreciated!

As for the OP, I have been zwifting on a regular basis and gone from the guy at the back of the pack when riding with chums, to the guy waiting at the top of the hill for the others. To the point now, my riding buddies mock me for being so fit/powerful (all relative to our group of riders). I have done various zwift workouts and races. I am sure these have helped improve FTP etc, but I think the biggest thing is just having the ability to ride whenever, for as long as I like. Which has increased the amount of times my legs pedal a week tenfold!

Burnt out/overtraining - it's just a general feeling of knackeredness, it sort of creeps up on you and often results from not riding well so you think you need to train more and so just becomes a vicious circle. Remember that there's life stress as well so things like having a physical job contribute to your TSS as do job worries, kids being ill, not getting enough sleep and so on.

Here's a podcast about it:

I'm pretty sure they (trainerroad) have covered overtraining in their weekly podcasts as well but you'd have to search to find it.

Edit - found one from last week, here's the clip:

/Edit

You'll always have some ebb and flow so it can be hard to figure out when it's happening. Earlier this year I headed out on the Yorkshire Dales 300 group start but by 80km it was obvious there was nothing in my legs and I was just struggling. Looking back at what was happening in the weeks prior to that was quite revealing, I was skipping workouts, not just one or two but almost an entire week's worth but still heading out on the bike and doing way more than the planned TSS. So the plan would call for TSS of 233, I'd do 24 of that but my outdoor rides amounted to 540!

I backed off, particularly on the threshold and above stuff. By mid October, so three months later, I was pretty solid on the BB200 and was one of only three or four to get under 24hrs. If I'd pushed on then a full burn out could have taken a year or more to get over.

Keep a diary. I make notes on every workout (TR have a field to let you do this) so I can check how I performed on the workouts in the past. I also use Intervals.icu - my workouts get pushed to Strava and then pushed over to Intervals. That tracks a whole bunch of metrics like Chronic and Acute training load so you can make some informed guesses as to what's going on. Since it pulls from Strava I get my normal rides accounted for as well.

Recovery is just as important as the workouts themselves, I do just three workouts amounting to less than four hours a week. At 61 my FTP should be on a slow decline but this last year I saw a 13% improvement (241W to 272W) and that's from being pretty fit anyway.

@whitestone many thanks for the links and the info. I guess there are many factors that I don't really consider, like you say, work stress, life, kids, etc!

I will take a listen to your links and hopefully that would give me a better understanding.

Again, I had no idea that it could take so long to recover from a proper burn out. And now I feel like I am probably the fittest I have ever been, I always worry that if I haven't ridden for two or three days then I will lose fitness and muscle, which I suspect isn't the case at all!

so i've always been pretty fit on the MTB. THis year (with lockdown, and a fractured wrist later in the year) i really ocmmited to riding more on Zwift.
The races and riding helped push my FTP up from 260 to 292.
I then started the ZA workouts (still going on that!), and these really helped not just fitness, but technique..pedalling more smoothely, and actually realising that I can make and sustain BETTER power sat down and pedalling harder and faster, than jsut turning 50rpm adn really gurning...

I quite like zwift.. I've never really committed to a PROPER workout plan though.. I really should I guess!

DrP

I'm currently just on week 3 of the gravel grinder programme on zwift.

I'm wanting to stick to a programme ,even if it's not perfect, as a way to be consistent, but also for me to limit my riding/stresses, I've even dropped my recorded FTP deliberately as another limit.

I'm thinking consistent and steady effort with health issues I have will be better in the long term than my habitual massive booms and busts.

I'm now realising how hard I was actually pushing myself doing my own thing, no wonder my heart's not been happy, and how totally drained I was, which affected work and family life.

I've had offers of free trials of Trainer Road (and I enjoy their podcasts), but as I pay for zwift to make turbo life less dull I might as well use their programmes.

There's Chronic Training Load (CTL) which is your daily average TSS over the last 6 weeks and your Acute Training Load (ATL) which is the daily load from the last week. The difference is taken as your form/fitness. There's a bit of weighting involved in both figures, they aren't just straight averages. So a day or two's recovery isn't really going to affect CTL very much but your ATL will drop meaning your effective fitness actually goes up! Form/fitness in this instance is really your capacity for work, it's partly how taper weeks work.

There's some evidence that long term training, as in over many years, changes the mitochondria in our muscle cells such that even a multi-year layoff is recoverable. So if you trained from 15 -25yrs then did nothing for five years and then took up training again your muscles would respond quicker than a sedentary 30yr old starting training for the first time. It's why professional athletes can basically take a month or two off and within a week or two are back up and running/riding.

I feel like a drug pusher with this!

I've three free month trials for TrainerRoad available so if anyone wants to check it out (and potentially compare with the Zwift plans) then PM me. Unless you are signed up, paying or free, you can't access the workouts and their descriptions and goals, I think they had people just copying them over to other platforms so ...

I saw some using the ‘Build me up’ programme.

It lifted my FTP from 230 ish to over 280 (you do a test at the start and end of the 12 week programme).

More than the numbers, I really noticed my stamina improve on the MTB in real life. Climbs became much, much better.

I think the improvements came from two things:

It’s quite intensive, with 3-5 exercises a week.

Overall, highly recommended for a novice like me.

same here but with a 215 to 250 FTP improvement and a 3/4 stone weight loss 🙂

@whitestone how intense are the TR programmes, even things like low volume sweet spot base? I might PM you, but I've read lots of people struggling with them due to the intensity levels, not something I want to risk in my case as I'm trying to be good, or rather sensible.

Early this year I had a peak CTL based on TRIMP on elevate of up around 130 or so, with TRIMP based TSS scores for rides regularly in the several hundreds, a hilly (2274m) century clocked me 1047 for that ride. I was training for the Turra Coo 300k audax despite heart issues, but totally run down, in a hole and in retrospect stupid. Massive stress scores as my hr was always too high too long due to being a heavy clydesdale.

With regards to TrainerRoad LV sweetspot base I think it is pretty easy. It gets you ready for the more intense workouts later in the programme. As it is based on only doing 3.5 hours per week it loads up pretty quick substituting volume for intensity. If you have plenty of time you can go to traditional base. But you don’t have to finish every workout - sometimes you will struggle - other stuff can make a difference but you will make good gains.

Zwift plans will make good gains for people new to structured training but you will soon get fatigued.

I would take Whitestone up on his offer of a free months of TrainerRoad. You can run them concurrently as well if you want to.

I've tried Zwift and TrainerRoad training plans in the past but I don't think I've ever completed one!

Personally I find the TrainerRoad plans have given better improvements than Zwift. With a smart trainer and TrainerRoad I've just pedalled away while watching either crap I'd never otherwise watch on Netflix or watching the CX racing during the winter.

I've just done the Ramp Test on TR earlier today which gave a slightly better FTP than I was expecting so I'm going to start the low volume sweetspot plan I think.

@longdog. Sweet Spot base is in two parts. Pt1 is as much getting people used to the trainer, there's lots of cadence and pedalling drills. Notwithstanding those points there isn't much supra-threshold work in SSB Low Volume pt1, in fact there's only three workouts out of the eighteen that go above threshold amounting to maybe 50mins in 21hrs of training. Much/most of the rest is in Sweet Spot so 88-94% of FTP.

Part two has more VO2max and is more stressful, it's often viewed as being halfway to the Build phase. I'd say that part 2 is about 20% harder than part 1 based on the typical IF (intensity factor) of each workout (An IF of 1 for an hour's workout would be you riding at your FTP for an hour, so 0.85 would be something like 3x15mins at FTP plus the effort from the warmup and the recovery intervals).

I'm just talking about the actual intervals in each workout here, each workout has a ten minute or so warmup and each recovery interval is at about 40% of FTP. There's probably a max of 40mins of effort in any hour of workout.

I find I can do the low volume plus long weekend rides at Z2 without problem. I did try doing mid volume for a while but that was just before the aforementioned burnout in the middle of the year so I don't think I'll go there again!

My current CTL is 64, it's been up to 72 earlier in the year, I probably should let it drop for a month or two before building it up again. Ultimately you need to figure out what you can handle - the TR forums have lots of threads along the lines of "This is so easy, how do I add extra work?" The usual answers are "give it three months, you'll be crying for a rest!"

Another thing..I've started not just using Zwift for training, but have been recording ALL my activities on my garmin Fenix (so..I'll record the turbo ride on zwift -> strava, and also on teh garmin -> strava..then delete the garmin entry from Strava only..).
It then allows me to keep a record of my training and stress scores, as i do a lot of 'real' riding and running too.

I've found it quite useful for planning my recovery rides, or figuring out when I can train harder too..

DrP

Just done my first session on the Build Me Up programme. Struggled to "spin" at a higher cadence (100rpm) instead of my normal high gear / 50rpm approach (as DrP also states). Hopefully I'll get a bit better

I found that if you teach yourself that, actually, femur-bending torque at 50rpm ISN'T as much power as a reasonable effort at 100rpm, you can ride faster and further..
I learnt this in zwift races initally, but also it translated to real life (tm) mountain biking.

I might stick a power meter on my Single speed, and see what power I actually make (power..not cran torque) when climbing etc...

DrP

If your normal cadence really is down in the 50rpm range then I'd be wary of trying to pedal at 100rpm as you'll bounce around and potentially damage your bike and/or the trainer. Just lift things until you feel uncomfortable and you feel like the pedal's pushing you up off the saddle on the upstroke. Your muscles need time to adapt to the different pace and to know when to activate and when to "switch off", your hamstrings just aren't used to working in that way. One of those things that just takes time.

Do any of the workouts have pedalling drills? I.e. you concentrate on applying force during certain parts of each revolution such as pushing over the top of the pedal stroke? They help as they get your muscles used to what they *should be* doing.

I've been doing the Absa Cape Epic workouts on Zwift once or twice a week as a substitute for getting outside a bit less. I can appreciate what is being said above about the training plans/sets of workouts having quite a lot of high intensity stuff, but that suits me as my rides outside are for fun and mostly fairly low intensity winch and plummet type outings. I'm 'enjoying' the workouts, but it's too soon to comment on their efficacy. What I'm hoping for is a bit of a fitness boost so that I'm fresher for the fun stuff for longer during the days out.

whitestone...
I've never had 50rpm as a normal cadence..I guess I was just under the impression that standing up made more power than sitting and spinning..I was wrong (bar a fast stomping sprint).

What's fun about zwift too is you can join other group workuots - I did one a month ago (some brazillian team) where they did pedal and cadence drills - was odd but interesting riding at 60rpm at FTP - like leg presses..!!

DrP

Just done my first session on the Build Me Up programme. Struggled to “spin” at a higher cadence (100rpm) instead of my normal high gear / 50rpm approach (as DrP also states). Hopefully I’ll get a bit better

This is where I really got the benefit of the Build me up.

When I started, I found my cadence (from MTB) was way too low for typical road efforts. The pedalling drill sessions in Build me up really helped me lift RPM in a managed way, and stay smooth. Over time, the programme lifts maximum cadence higher, but you have plenty of time to adapt and then build.

Just stick with it for now, and don't worry if you can't keep the higher cadence. Just go as fast as you can whilst staying smooth, even if it's not the 100+ being requested. The speed will come.

The other one I struggled with was standing. Rarely could I stay standing for the stated intervals to begin with. But over time, I got better and by the end of the programme was more than able to complete them. Remember, the numbers are just targets - not absolutes.

@DrP - my comment was in response to Blackflag's comment. I'll occasionally stand (to ease bum pressure) and it's immediately noticeable that there's a drop in power output of maybe 15% for the same cadence so I'm obviously using much more of the pedal stroke to generate power when sat down.

Cadence is interesting. The most efficient cadence depends on what you are measuring: for aerobic efficiency it's down at 60rpm whereas for endurance it's at your naturally selected cadence and for power it's about 10rpm above that.

ah yeah, fairy nuff!

DrP

Thanks for that info Whitestone. I'll drop you a PM.

The zwift gravel Grinder has a cadence pyramid session, lowest 60rpm, highest 100rpm. I find 60 very low, my natural is low/mid 80 generally. I have 10 heart beat difference between 60 rpm and 100rpm at same power.

Zwift gives you a time/deadline to do a session by, if you miss the dead line it just cancels that session. It doesn't tell you to take a day off at particular points, but some sessions are 'recovery' and there are some prompts to say recovery is good.

For me I like the structure and build within zones as I'd be tempted to do more and harder left to my own device. Erg mode is good for controlling effort too

The other issue I found with cadence drills in Zwift was they prescribed what cadence you would do. TrainerRoad says work at your natural cadence and gradually increase so it isn’t prescriptive with the cadences and therefore works for you.

I like zwift dictating cadence as it gets me out of comfort zone. As a result I’ve managed to up my natural cadence which has made a difference on the road.

I was going to ask something like this.

In theory I should be rounding off the Build Me Up plan this week, but combination of work and darkess and general lack of interest has knocked me off the wagon for the last couple of weeks. I was finding it awkward to fit much else in around the workouts, so with a weekend MTB ride, STW Zwift league and maybe a night ride, I was sacking off workouts here and there.

I was getting a bit bored too. I think I'm going to freestyle it for a bit over Christmas, do a couple of interval sessions a week, the odd race, normal riding, and see how I feel about it. I'm not a racer, so any gains are purely for my own amusement, and the plan wasn't really amusing me 😔

Wasn't up for an ERG workout before dinner earlier, but fancied trying the new Two Bridges Loop, which is the hilliest of the four new routes added in last night's update (~6.5Km and ~80m climbing split over a handful of small ramps). It was nasty doing three laps sticking in one gear, sending me z4-z7 up the little inclines and then desperately trying to recover on the flat/downhill for ~35mins including a little sprint at the end before a cool down... That course is going to be brutal for races and TTs at full-on pace! 😮

I found the massive gains when you first do a zwift/trainerroad training program was largely the result of getting better at the FTP test the second time around.