Winter Power Foundations 12 Weeks Master Cyclists

This training plan will build your cycling foundations progressively, building up duration and intensity as the weeks go by. To make sure your progress is sustainable and you do not overtrain, we have built the plan with the classic periodisation of three-weeks increasing the training load, and 1 week of de-load to allow your body to recover, build, and get stronger.

By building up foundations, we mean building up your ability to sustain longer and longer periods at endurance pace, and to increase your power at this pace : that means increasing your FTP. You will see three training zones in this training plan, each of them has different physiological impacts; they can be summarised as follow :
- the development of a stronger heart muscle,
-increased muscle mitochondrial enzymes (the mitochondria are the energy producing parts of your muscle cells),
-development of more capillaries (small blood vessels bringing blood, nutrients and oxygen to the muscles)
-an overall increase in stamina.

The plan is built with 12 weeks of structured workouts :
-each week includes 2 indoor workouts, 1 structured outdoor workout,
-weeks 4, 8 and 12 or de-load weeks, where we’ll also include FTP testing if you want to follow your progress !
-for each workout, the planned TSS is provided, please note that it is only an estimate and that the actual TSS and physiological cost of your workout will be provided by your real ride only.
-indications of cadence are provided when important, otherwise indications of power zones are provided in % of your FTP (you will have to do some maths and/or add the “% FTP” screen on your bike unit !)
-you will ride between 4h and 7h a week, with an average of 5h a week. The total TSS of the weeks will be between 235 during the de-load weeks and 605 in the last training week.
-we advise you to add gym sessions (core, resistance and plyometrics) to increase the efficiency of your training !