Best think of the ZA workouts as power tests more than the usual workouts. The free ride segments are there for a reason this year.
1 Like
So, I can see the workouts here:
Zwift Academy 2023 | Indoor Cycling Training Program | Events
It is nice there is a “long” and “short” for each. I felt the ones from last year were a bit too short if I recall correctly, but the long ones look like a reasonable length from a first glance.
Is there any way to see the detail on the blocks within the workouts outside of the graphic? i.e. The specific lengths of the intervals etc?
At the moment you can see them by scrolling through the next 6 weeks on ZCA, select long and/or short for each week and the details of length of interval and your power are viewable.
As from 6th Nov all ZA workouts will be available on your game Home Screen.
1 Like
I was kinda hoping there was a way to do it without quite as much scrolling before the event starts - I know it will be visible in the main app soon. Took a pretty long time to get to week 6, but I pushed through 
The long workouts look pretty interesting to me. It’s too bad there are only 6 total, would be nice for them to have a plan that had 2 or 3 workouts per week. Maybe the idea is to do one workout, and one race in each week for the 2 days of intensity? The races seem short though, so if that’s the case it would be nice for there to be a short and long race.
Edit: For example - Race 1’s 2 lap longer version is only 23km, Race 2’s longer version is only 27.8km.
2 Likes
Agree. It would be nice if there were a few suggested schedules for the full 6 weeks based on the amount time you have available.
I’ll probably treat it like a base phase with 3 or 4 extra Z2 rides in addition to the workout of the week.
2 Likes
I suppose plan is do as much as you can in 6 weeks under these guidelines:
“
We recommend that you leave at least 48 hours between each session and aim to complete two sessions per week to get the most out of the program.
so finishing the sessions in chronological order will help you get the most out of Zwift Academy.
Feel free to do each race multiple times if you are up for it!
Complete the workouts between November 6 and December 17. We recommend the following schedule: Workout 1, Workout 2, Workout 3, Race 1, Workout 4, Race 2, Workout 5, Workout 6. “ [ races start week 3]
Cat C& D have shorter races.
Personally I am concerned that the Group Workouts without rubberbanding may be lonely affairs. I would have thought the free ride efforts would have been more motivational if we could all have started to push whilst still all together.
Anyway another challenge to occupy the next 6 weeks.
Ok, so maybe my confusion is… The events in the CA show one ZA workout per week. The second does not show up until 7 days after the first etc. So if you wanted to do the first two workouts in the first week via the ZA events you could not, unless I’m seeing it wrong. The workout events are set up to do one workout per week.
1 Like
I see these events as “intro to workouts” and now combined with “intro to racing”. They’re definitely not designed to include me (even as a C category rider) but I want the aeroad colorway so I’ll probably do it anyway. It would be great to have some longer races and more frequent workouts in the plan. Anyone who rides regularly or races 1+ hour events is kind of on their own here.
3 Likes
I fully agree with you. The way it is set up doesn’t allow you to follow their advice unless you only do it on your own with workout on demand.
I’m not much of one for workouts, don’t have enough discipline, but I enjoy these and will only do 1 a week and both races to complete the programme. I am not doing with expectation of major fitness gains but it will ease me into winter training. Without the Academies I may never have tried workouts and it puts yet another set of kit in my garage I may never use (although quite like the look of this one)
1 Like
I agree as well, though the top-level marketing would make one think different, ie “six-week crash course for athletes looking to get faster, stronger, and understand the ins and outs of training smarter. Zwift Academy is a pro-level program that delivers serious fitness gains…”
Compare to Zwift’s own “FTP Builder” (also known as the “Beginner” course) 6-week course that is 28 hours worth of training over 28 sessions, but supposed to be for those new to training.
As I said earlier in this thread, it looks like Zwift are very much doing the minimal effort needed for ZA this year.
The more I read their advice, the more confused I am.
So, they say this is a 6 week program on the main page: “This year, Zwift Academy will include six structured weeks of training, with six workouts and two races total.”
But then the advice is to do two workouts per week. How do those things make sense together?
The advice is to do Workout 1, Workout 2, Workout 3, then Race 1 which starts on week 3 etc… They also suggest doing 2 workouts per week… The only way to make sense of this is if they expect you to do each workout multiple times per week.
So, their advice would work if you did it this way:
Week 1: Monday: Workout 1, Wednesday: Workout 1, Friday: Workout 1 (optional).
Week 2: Monday Workout 2, Wednesday: Workout 2, Friday: Workout 2 (optional).
Week 3: Monday Workout 3, Wednesday: Workout 3, Friday: Race 1 (optional).
Etc…
But if you only do each workout once you couldn’t actually follow their advice because race 3 starts in week 3 and you’d be on workout 5 on week 3 if you did at minimum 2 unique workouts per week. It would … also not be a 6 week plan.
So… Is the idea that each week we should be attempting to do the same workout multiple times? Is that how we get to a 6 week plan at minimum 2 workouts per week with only 6 workouts?
1 Like
My guess is they had coaches design the workouts, and they had marketing people design the plan.
1 Like
It would be nice if one of the highlighted coaches who designed the workouts could come here and talk about how they suggest you can turn 6 workouts into a 6-week structured training plan. How do they see someone improving after doing these 6 workouts?
I would think doing 1 workout per week is an odd way to try to improve, but I am also not a coach, so to have it explained would be nice.
If you were to do 2 workouts per week, this would be done in 3 weeks, 3 per week it would be done in two, so it would be nice to have a coach explain how much gain you’d expect to see in 2 or 3 weeks if you adhered to the structured plan as written.
If the answer is “not much if any” then I would suggest the next Zwift Academy be better, might need to have more workouts maybe, but that’s ok.
2 Likes
Coaches generally expect to be paid to answer questions (which is reasonable). I imagine that hasn’t happened here.
If there is a contract up for offer to a women’s team through ZA, why is there no women’s only racing in this series?
The designers at Dig Deep were invited to jump into Nathan’s podcast.
I plan on doing # 5, 3, 2, 4, race 1, 1, race 1, 6, 2, race 2, race 2, 5, Alp.
1 Like
Just to point out free ride section doesn’t work on Wattbike Atom and ATV - this was meant to be fixed a few releases ago?
Last time I tested free ride in a workout, it worked as expected on Windows. My other half just let me know (loudly) that it’s not fixed on Apple TV
Having done workout one is there anywhere you can get feedback on what your average power was for the 30sec or 2min efforts? I didn’t do it as a group workout.
1 Like
Wattbike seems to be broken since 1.51