Hello, thank you for all of your expertise and work producing training plans and sessions. I primarily ride with Zwift for general fitness rather than racing or cycling performance. My question is, are there any plans specifically designed for strength development? Maybe those that focus on lower RPM sessions? Thank you for your recommendations!
Back in the day cyclists did low cadence work instead of lifting. Nowadays, they’re more likely to do both.
Assuming you’re squatting more than just the empty bar 
low cadence work isn’t going to benefit you from a strength development perspective. The gains all flow in the other direction.
If your cycling is just for conditioning so you can squat 5 × 10s for volume without being completely gassed, you can pretty much ride whatever you like.
If you have plenty of time and like to noodle around, join a RoboPacer and average 55% to 60% of FTP for 90 minutes. If you’d rather get it over and done with, try Tabatas or other high intensity intermittent efforts.
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Just do the old faithful 5x5min, 7x5min or 3x10min at low cadence of 55/65rpm and 88-95% of FTP.
Use a heart rate monitor and make sure your heart isn’t going too high. You should be working your legs, feeling them burn. Your heart rate should still be comfortable.
If 3x10 is easy enough, do a 4x10 and shorter recovery blocks in between the work intervals. This is how I prepare for riding the big HC climbs in France all the time and it works. If it’s a 40min climb then 4x10 is 40 minutes.
After you do these sessions, get something to eat and then go do a 30 minute very easy flat ride (small chain ring, high cadence) to avoid your legs getting too sore.
Riding around with a robopacer won’t do a whole lot, you need to create some workouts.
That sounds like a reasonable approach. I am looking for endurance into brief sweet spot work at low RPM. The goal is not performance focused it is to maintain strength and muscle mass while spending time in zone 2 and 3. That is why I am not doing Tabata or other high intensity intervals. I may just not have a complete understanding either. I appreciate your insights.
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No worries. People generally should do strength training, if they can. Doing low cadence work instead just isn’t going to cut it.
Certainly. This bike work is mostly aerobic training. My goal is to complement the gym based strength stuff that I do. It sounds like I need figure out how to make some low cadence workouts in Zwift.
Assuming you are on a desktop computer:
First bit:
Then:
Last bit is this:
Be careful of the Power one and power two settings, also the durations, they are a bit finicky if you backspace them to change the numbers. You can use the intervals function to set repeats using the plus/minus controls rather than adding lots of individual blocks.
I put a few minutes at the start, then some short bursts to activate, then a 3 minute at FTP block for the warmup. Then your normal work blocks.
I hear ya, but low cadence intervals (I believe) won’t support your squat (or more general) strength, because working at, say, your 240 rep max and still being 100s of reps from failure isn’t going to have a meaningful impact on your neural drive for squats or anything else.
Of course, you can still do them for fun and variety, but personally I’d rather spin for 2 hours at 90rpm if I want my riding to complement my lifting.
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