Blending strength and sweet spot, or no?

Hi team. Long story short, I was not able to do the off season weight training I had planned. So much volatility in my gym openings/closings and availability, plus rainy weather, my best use of time was to just ride when I could and wait it out on the weight front.

So, riding was steady but not guided by a plan. Our county just reopened yesterday, as the weather is getting better for riding, so my question is whether I just skip the weight training 10 week program at this stage, do an abbreviated version, or just blend into a sweet spot program. I had previously completed SS1. I don’t currently have a targeted event for 2021 but my bet is few options will emerge until late summer.

Thanks

In a typical year it would be too late to start a resistance training program if you had planned on big rides or races in spring and summer. However if you don’t have anything on the horizon you could do the resistance training program now.

So ideally you would have at least 14 weeks of sweet spot and interval training completed before doing your first events. The resistance training program is 10 weeks. So you are talking 24 weeks from now. So you would have to count that out and see if it would fit your schedule.

During the resistance training your legs will be quite sore and you won’t feel that good riding. You would be putting a lot of stress in the muscles. But this is to help make the proper adaptations. But again you’re riding would suffer and you would be riding less.

So if you are looking to do some group rides or want to do more riding as it is getting nicer I would just start with sweet spot 1 and forgo the resistance training this year. You really don’t want to mix both as the strength training would take away from the sweet spot training and the sweet spot training would take away for the strength training. You wouldn’t be able to give both the full attention to make the most out of it.

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Makes perfect sense Jake — thank you.

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