I’ve been stuck at my current fitness the last 3 months and my TP/LTP doesn’t seems to rise, even though I keep doing what Xert suggests. I usually do one race + TTT in Zwift, a 2-3 hour long ride in low intensity and fill with Xert recommended activities.
My current stats:
TP: 306 W (was 315 W as of Dec 19)
HIE: 26.2 kJ (has been over 30 kJ)
PP: 1,330 W (hasn’t been higher)
8 minute W/kg: 5.0 W/kg
LTP: 241 W
Breakthroughs:
Mon Nov 28: Silver
Sun Dec 11: Silver
Mon Dec 19: Gold
Mon Jan 09: Silver
Sat Jan 21: Silver and Bronze (two different races in Zwift)
I am doing between 7-8 hours cycling each week. TP has dropped 2 and my training load has increased by 11 (from 62). I do a Continous programtype for a GC Specialist with an improvement rate of -1.
What do I have to change to keep increasing TP and LTP? I can’t increase training hours by much. What I see of the progression chart is that TP and form keeps dropping and training load increases.
Something interesting that I noticed when quickly scanning your XPMC image is that there appears to be a lot of yellow, indicating that you’re doing a lot of activities starting with a ‘tired’ status. It could be possible that you have what we call a latent breakthrough (e.g. your fitness may be higher than what Xert currently shows, but you haven’t had an activity that fully manifests any increase in fitness).
Are you using Xert recommended workouts when you’re tired? Or perhaps you’re free riding in Zwift every day? How do you approach having a yellow status?
It could be that your tired status is impairing your ability to fully express your fitness. As others have suggested, try taking a few easier days (keep difficulty score below 65 - that’s 2.5 diamonds or less) or free ride and keep your intensity below LTP. After a week or so recovery, you might find yourself feeling more fresh & fully able to express your fitness.
When tired, unless there’s a planned race in Zwift, I tend to either do the recommended training by Xert or do a Pace Partner ride in Zwift for 90-120 minutes at about 65 % of my FTP.
Also have you considered that this might simply be it for that kind of training volume for your specific genetics?
I put in about 4-5 hours more per week than you, have a significantly higher training load and you know what? All of my performance stats are SIGNIFICANTLY lower as well. So much lower in fact, that I wouldn’t ever dream about getting to your level.
In fact looking at where this would place you in the overall picture of things you have already reached an incredibly high level. Doing that on 7-8 hours per week is something to be rather proud of! Others probably train more like 15-20 for that!
Have you ever tried upping your training volume to see if that helps?
