Hi, maybe stupid question but I still ask… I have that 30week program and I am currently going trough the second weightlifting adaptative week at the moment. I just wondering if is it normal for my fitness is going down all the time? During for the Next 4 weeks the estimating ctl will drops to 44 and so on… I did this program last year too but I don’t remember the drops were that high… when it will start increase again? I have done the ftp test and it is marked correctly. In Summer ctl was ±80. #shouldIbeenworried
No such thing as a stupid question.
Your CTL will drop and be lower and that is normal. You don’t want to keep a steady CTL all year round and you can’t build all year either. You would have no peaks or valleys. You just get stale. Right now the resistance phase and building strength is the important training stress you are taking in. So you do that at the sacrifice of aerobic building and CTL building. Same thing happens to a point with interval training. The more intervals, high intensity training you do, the likely hood of your CTL going flat or dropping as you decrease workload to increase intensity. But once you start your base period than your CTL will increase. Another reason you want to give yourself 12 - 16 weeks of sweet spot training.
Think of it as math problem because that is all it is. To go from a 45 CTL to a 80 (which looks like was your peak last year) you need to average 560 CTL a week for 42 days (6 weeks). Typically you would like to have a ramp rate of 4 - 6 CTL per week during the base period so you could go from 45 to 80 CTL in 5 - 8 weeks based on those ramp rates. You should see your CTL go up a bit come the strength and power phase, but once you finish the resistance phase and start sweet spot training you really should start to see that increase.
Here is a good representation of a training cycle through the year. Orange line being CTL. So we do expect it to be lower during the resistance phase as you build up. Not jus ta flat line all year long. Each training phase as a specific goal and its not always about CTL and building CTL. Bigger picture objectives.
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Sorry, I forgot to answer. Good explanation, Thanks!