It has 4 bulk (3 or 5) exercises. Not in days 1,2,3 etc.
How do you suggest they be done during the week?
What do you do in the days in between?
Scheduling is up to you. My approach has been to have a rest/recovery day before the two hardest-looking workouts of the week. In my case the two hardest were a) the one with the most TSS and b) the one with VO2 Max efforts. A couple of times because of time constraints I’ve done the “easy” workout of the week back-to-back with another one. It’s sometimes easier to get on the bike for 2 hours once than 1 hour twice.
On rest/recovery days I did no riding (but did walk the dog) or did a recovery ride (max 45 minutes at max 50% of FTP)
If you’re used to doing significantly higher volumes, you might want to add some easy Z2 rides to keep your volume up. I definitely would not recommend adding any intensity over and above BMU.
Oh, and respect the recovery weeks, too. Gotta allow those adaptations to happen.
You have done in compination with morning weight training?
(BMU after 7 pm)
Maintenance lifting. Once a week. As far away on each day from riding as possible and as far away from the hard days as possible too
A couple of times earlier in the plan I lifted on rest days too. It was OK. Wouldn’t do that if I’m riding 5 days though. At 54 I need my rest days to be restful.
I’ m almost 50 and i’m thinking of doing regular weight training in parallel with BMU and not just maintenance
You might be fine. Certainly for the first 4 or 5 weeks.
Just be prepared in advance and be willing to back off the lifting if you need to without feeling like you’ve somehow failed. The ever-present peril of concurrent training is that in doing both you achieve neither as well as you would like to.
I personally found BMU to be too many days of intensity for me. In particular I think it was about week 7 that really wrecked me. My legs were not recovering from just the BMU rides, so I don’t think I could have also done weights at that point.
So yeah, if your FTP is set correctly don’t be surprised if on week 7 you decide that you want to take it a bit easy on the weights
It might make more sense to do the cycling training plan separately from the weight training plan, unless you pick a really easy cycling training plan. But this is not a bad approach - it gives focus to what you are working on, and prevents you from stagnating by mixing up the training more.
The alternative option is to do the active offseason plan. I haven’t decided yet. The weights will be done as well as the rest every 4 weeks.
This is true. Weights have priority. So far my approach is working, but for the first time i will do winter training with zwift plan and i don’t know how it will work with the new exercises.
I have a unique problem. I am on week 5, but only 3 weeks in. Companion app still shows “week 3” as well. Allow me to explain. Last time I did a Zwift program was in 2019 and was my second time completing the Crit Crusher. Back then, you couldn’t do whatever you wanted and had to follow the days and wait for the next workout to unlock.
Now it seems you can cruise through the program and start wherever, and whenever you want. While I like that flexibility it has lead to me training daily and picking which rides each week I want to be recovery/rest days.
My background. I just turned 49 in Dec so I am now 50+ I race crits IRL but not enough to move up from CAT 3. Recovering from injury I thought Build Me Up seemed appropriate. Ramp tested at 266, started the program. Felt too easy 1 week in so I retested, 274. A week later, before Purple Unicorn I retested again, 290. Purple Unicorn still felt just OK but again, recovering after a while off and plan on racing again this season so I’ll hold steady and se what the FTP test says at the end. (As a reference my FTP was 338 @4.2 last year before my set back).
However due to a lack of feeling as fatigued as Crit Crusher would leave me, and more experienced using a smart trainer, I never took any rest days and would just do a Build Me Up interval every morning before work.
While I fee fresh and can continue this routine, is it a bad idea to continue down that road and should I incorporate complete (do nothing at all) rest days with the weeks that remain? Seems odd that Zwift allows users to jump around and potentially overtrain but I do appreciate the flexibility otherwise.
Anyone else complete the plan early? I’d be curious to hear your story. Thanks for reading.
Even if they went back to the old way, people would just do massive rides on the non-BMU days and overtrain anyway. People are idiots.
Just don’t be one of those people.