Planning a cycling week: session purpose, priorities and recovery

Before starting any session, the rider should be able to explain his purpose. This is the question that organizes the chapter 9. The training value depends on both his function and his position within the week.

Friel distinguishes three main purposes: to develop a capacity, keep it or favor active recovery. Mixing these functions without realizing can leave the program demanding and little specific.

What sessions deserve to be protected?

The development sessions, called breakthrough (BT) in the work, offer important stimuli to the limiters. They need conditions to fulfill this task. The others help preserve capabilities and absorb the load.

It does not mean that every BT should end in failure or exhaustion. Its importance comes from the relationship with the goal, not from the ability to produce the greatest fatigue of the week.

The annual planning points to categories and priorities. The next programming of the execution defines the concrete session, considering what the athlete actually managed to accomplish and how he responded.

First, identify the less flexible schedules

Friel calls anchors the training commitments difficult to move: as long as possible on the weekend, the available gym schedule or an important group session.

Then flexible work is distributed. This process avoids drawing an ideal week without checking if it fits in the routine. But an anchor does not automatically justify a bad combination: it may be necessary to review group participation or reduce another session.

If the athlete pedals only three times, concentrate the three days and stay the rest of the week without exposure produces a different distribution from that of spaced sessions. Frequency and interval between stimuli enter the decision.

The priority of the phase defines who gets the best conditions

When the force is central, the academy needs proper execution and previous recovery. When the specific work on the bike gains priority, the resistance training must adjust to it.

It is not possible to protect all sessions as if each was the main one. The week needs to express a choice: which capacity is being developed and which will receive maintenance?

Editorial example: an organization by function

The table is not a session schedule. It allows you to review an existing agenda without assuming that everyone needs the same days or the same amount of work.

Two short sessions replace a long one?

Friel answers for the purpose. Dividing the day can better preserve the quality of work of skill or specific efforts. But when the task is to sustain activity for a long time, the continuous duration has a role that arithmetic sum does not reproduce fully.

Two ninety-minute and three-hour cycling exercises occupy the same time, but do not present the same sequence of fatigue, feeding and position maintenance. This distinction is more useful than stating that any division always equals the original training.

How to evaluate the week performed?

Compare the intention with the execution. If the light cycling training became a dispute, it changed category and cost. If BT had no quality, check the previous sequence before concluding that it lacks capacity.

The program also needs to accept adjustments. A removed session can open space to recover and preserve the next one; adding it all again may compromise the same priority.

The week works when sessions help each other. The chapter teaches you how to plan relationships between stimuli, rather than collect individually interesting trainings.

Reference: FRIEL, Joe. The Cyclist’s Training Bible. 4th ed. VeloPress, 2009. Chapter 9, “Planning Workouts”. Pages in the PDF file: 205–226. A selective synthesis written in our own words. Examples labeled as editorial are Enduran-se’s own examples; they are not additional cases reported by the author.

Cada um no seu ritmo. Juntos no caminho.