Training plan volumes for female riders

[Raven22]

Looking at the strava stats for my cycling groups, I notice that the guys are riding way more hours. All the training materials I’ve found online are prescribing 10-15 hours for a mid-volume plan, but it seems completely unattainable for me without essentially riding Z1 all the time. In particular, any anaerobic efforts result in my muscles requiring an extended period of recovery.

I feel like I’m not doing enough, but then it appears that all the serious female riders in my group also do fewer hours, closer to 6-10 approximately. I’d love some advice from the ladies, and coaches who’ve worked with both sexes!

[Ivegotabike]

If you are doing 6 - 10 hours now and have the time to increase to 10 - 15, the key is to do it slowly, over, say, 6 - 8 weeks. i.e. add 1 hour per week.

If you aren’t training 6 days per week, add extra days. Initially Z2 / Z1 rides only.

If you are already training 6 days per week, add extra Z2 / Z1 volume to your existing workouts to build your overall volume.

Once you are established at the new volume then consider increasing the proportion of higher intensity work (in line with the requirements of the events you are training for). It is common that there are only 2 or 3 high intensity workouts per week. Specific blocks of training may have more, but for most people 3 hard sessions in a week is plenty.

Rest and recovery becomes more important as you up the workload.

Frequency, then duration, then intensity.

[Alex]

In general I agree with your findings that the biggest volume equates to biggest performance, I analyzed about 20 thousand riders here and saw the same pattern, but in order to handle that you need to have the right combination of ingredients to recover fast enough to be healthy and make gains from that volume.

I agree with @Ivegotabike build your volume first with low intensity and most people can handle the the most volume at zone 2 heart rate or some were around 65% of max hr and once you get to your desired volume then start slowly adding intensity. Many of us are like you that we start to fall apart quickly with intensity. @Robert_UCL is respected coach here, lets see if we can get him to respond.

[Raven22]

I’ve been a life long athlete, and did endurance sports for about 2/3 of my life. My training time unfortunately appears tops out at around 12 hours a week no matter what I’ve tried. I keep trying to push through this ceiling and end up either burned out or injured. It just feels like my body can’t recover quickly enough no matter what I do. Maybe it is just my physiology, but I’m not one for excuses!

@Alex Would you have anonymized data sets of male and female riders, that’d be helpful in figuring out where I am on the bell curve in terms of volume (ala cyclinganalytics).

[Raven22]

I’m super disciplined with intensity, as doing a hard race for example will set me up for a minimum of five days of recovery. I seem to make significant gains just doing Z2, so it kinda pushes the “house” up. My typical week has no more than 2 “harder days” and usually just one (Jack’s serious italian plan). I’m not sure if riding Z1 is more productive vs. riding a couple hours less in Z2.

[Alex]

I have a lot of data but no easy way to access it. Intervals has the best comparison data, you can sign up for free and connect strava or garmin. You can do a lot of cross comparison m/f age based comparisons.

Intervals.icu

[Alex]

You should read Maffetone’s books if you haven’t, he addresses your issues very clearly. Any of his books are good but the Big Book of Endurance is a classic.

[Ivegotabike]

I agree with the Maffetone suggestion. If you make significant gains just doing Z2, that is a sign that you (like most of us, whether or not we want to accept it) still have a lot of room to improve our aerobic system / aerobic capacity.

If you could do 12 hours of Maffetone aerobic base trainng per week for 3 months or so, I think you would then be able to add intensity back to the plan in a much more sustainable and effective way.

6x 2 hours MAF rides per week, or 4x2 hour plus 1x 4 hour, would be tremendously effective.

I also agree with the intervals.icu recommendation. I don’t think there is a better cycling data analysis tool / data set anywhere.

These are the categories in intervals that you could compare your own data to

Consider having a read of this thread too Building and Measuring aerobic fitness

[Raven22]

I can’t find a comparison for weekly training volumes though. I’ve done 12+ weeks very easy and ended up slower/ unable to ride at all. I’m sure everyone has a breaking point where more training volume results in a reduction in performance.

Men will tolerate (and need) more volume because they simply regenerate muscle tissue and red blood cells at a higher rate than women. I’m interested specifically in the magnitude of the differences, which will be some form of a bellcurve for both sexes.

[Ivegotabike]

Whilst I do agree with your generalisations, I don’t accept that they apply at the volumes being discussed in this thread.

12 hours per week can be structured to be persistently productive for M & F. It is a serious undertaking that should not be taken lightly, but it is achievable and maintainable.

That does not mean that someone (either M/F) can jump off the couch and do 12 hours, but it is straightforward to build up to that volume in a way that makes it sustainable and productive.

A couple of things have caught my eye from your previous posts

“it seems completely unattainable for me without essentially riding Z1 all the time. In particular, any anaerobic efforts result in my muscles requiring an extended period of recovery”

“no matter what I’ve tried. I keep trying to push through this ceiling and end up either burned out or injured. It just feels like my body can’t recover quickly enough no matter what I do.”

“a hard race for example will set me up for a minimum of five days of recovery”

“I seem to make significant gains just doing Z2”

Quite alarming was the “unable to ride at all” part of this “I’ve done 12+ weeks very easy and ended up slower/ unable to ride at all.” What do you mean by that?

Without seeing more data to make a more informed decision, these things point to you doing too much higher intensity work at that volume level than you are ready for.

Maybe your choice is to stick to 6-10 hours and make the most of that time, or do the work (on and off the bike) to build up to the 10-15 hours that you mention in your first post?

Decent cycling fitness can be achieved in both scenarios, but there is no doubt that there is a general link between higher volume and higher fitness in these volume ranges.

Those ranges you have mentioned are wide though: 10 is very, very different to 6, and 15 is very different to 10.

[Alex]

As @Ivegotabike pointed out without seeing your data its hard to give solid advice but this “smells” like too much intensity based on current state at that time, you said you got slower on more volume but that can mean a lot of things. The general premise of building up volume on low intensity and then slowly adding intensity is a model that works. How much you can and should handle and optimize around is impossible to say without clear data and testing over a period of time.

I can say universally when I looked at data which is predominantly male most 280w+ FTP guys did 8-10 hours a week average for the year which likely means peaks of 12-15 and most people down around 180w did about 6 hours average. But generic values like this mean almost nothing for you specifically. How much sleep you get a night can have a major effect on what is your optimum volume. No one takes all the important factors and consolidates them. Genetics plays a major factor. Life stress. So just looking at age and gender is not deterministic as to what is best for you as an individual.

[Ivegotabike]

Intervals does have two charts that might interest you. I don’t think they have much value in the form they are presented, but they are there

Hours / week and Load / week

Here are the broadest categories Male and then Female

The purple and red vertical lines that are confusing the chart are my data that I couldn’t find a way to remove.

[Raven22]

Wow you found it! that’s exactly what I was looking for! The sample sizes are way bigger for the men (probably some self-selection bias). Thanks so much!

It looks like the right tail of the distribution past 10.4 hours is about 8% of the total area, so pretty much 92% of female riders are doing 10.4 hrs or less a week. I suppose I’m pretty much where I should be given that I’m not a kid/ pro/ retired !

[Alex]

Yes, and as you alluded to, you know fast people doing lots of hours. That’s one of those things where part of the reason they’re fast is because they can reasonably recover from lots of hours. Many pros are pros because they recover so well. Obviously there’s other factors. But I think your evaluation is right. Somehow I get the feeling for a lot of serious cyclists that 10 hours is a good number to optimize their potential. I realize female might be a bit less than male and many serious males can optimize higher than that.

[Raven22]

I just like to have one higher intensity day, because it helps maintain my ability to do hard efforts… and it’s fun racing my club mates!