Training Conversation: Designing the Weekly Training Cycle

A recent conversation between your own Matt Miller and myself (Leo Desforges). We thought it might be helpful, so here it is!!

MATT’s MESSAGE:

Hey dude!

I can’t get together for a training talk tonight (I have to work late, then get on the trainer, duh!) but I had a question:

I’m mapping out my week and was wondering what your theory is for sequencing WO’s within a week. The workouts I want to focus on are: Force (big gear, low cadence reps), Muscular Endurance (aka tempo), Power (15″ all out sprints) and Anaerobic WO’s.

My question is what is the optimal order for these workouts. Would it be better to do an Anaerobic WO Monday before a Force WO on Tues so that your legs are stretched out? Or is it better to do a ME (tempo) workout the day before an anaerobic WO? (these are just examples). Any thoughts would be appreciated!!!!!!!!

-m “training-tard” m

MY RESPONSE:

Great questions.

Ultimately, you have to try it out and see what sequence works optimally for you. Ideally, you will order your workouts so that you get the most high quality workouts in the least amount of training days.

So, to answer your question more directly, I would do this:

1. determine which of these workouts is most important to really nail down at this time of year. What means more in late January: a monster tempo session or a solid set of 1 minute intervals?

I might also ask: which of these workouts (and the corresponding weakness it is addressing) needs the most work? prioritize the workout that addresses this.

Last, I’d ask: which workouts are toughest for me to complete on dead legs? mentally, as much as physically… i do the workouts I dread most when I feel the most fresh/motivated.

OK to be MOST direct, I would go from shortest “interval” on day 1 when you are freshest. So coming off a rest day or two, I’d do this:

Day 1: sprint/neuromuscular work (always do sprints when fresh!)

Day 2: Force/low cadence work.

day3: tempo (if you can do this at low tempo zones, legs should come around for tomorrow)

day 4: anerobic drills (this early in the season I would not be prioritizing this type of work at all, personally.)

Just for a personal example, I like this block as of the past 2 weeks:

wed: recovery

th: low cadence hill repeats on summit ave.

friday: 2 hours tempo

saturday: hard long ride (use teammates to help motivate dead legs!)

sunday: try and get the legs to open up, if they do: sub LT interval (great TT practice).

i’d love to talk more verbally on the subject, but let me know if this helps.