Plan Builder Overview

If you have any activity history, Plan Builder can use that data to help shape your plan. You can sync your activity history from Garmin Connect or Strava. If you don’t have any training history coming into TrainerRoad, don’t worry. Your plan adapts to your progress as you go.

How to Sync All of Your Garmin Connect Activities

1. Log into TrainerRoad to access your Account Profile.
2. Select “Activity Sync” from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
3. Click the option to “Connect with Garmin.”
4. Authorize TrainerRoad to access your Garmin Connect account by selecting “Agree & Connect.”
5. In Garmin Connect, authorize TrainerRoad to access your Garmin Connect account and data.

If you would like a more detailed walkthrough, check out this article: Garmin Connect

How to Sync All of Your Strava Activities

1. Log into TrainerRoad to access your Account Profile.
2. Select "Activity Sync" from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
3. Under Strava, click "Connect."
4. Read through how the TrainerRoad-Strava integration works and click "Agree & Connect."
5. Enter your Strava login credentials.
6. Authorize TR to connect with your Strava account.

If you would like a more detailed walkthrough, check out this article: Strava

First you will need to let Plan Builder know if you are training to prepare for a specific event or if you would like a training plan to train for a general fitness goal. 

Once you have done this you will be prompted to choose the start date of your plan. You can start a plan at any time in the future, as long as plans do not have overlapping start/end dates with other plans.

Once you have chosen your start date you'll be adding your events or choosing your main goal and discipline! Select the options below for more information on adding events or choosing a goal and discipline.

To Prepare for an Event

This is where you will add your goal events! These can be cycling events and cycling stage races. Events can be added at these three different priority levels:

• A Events are your most important events of the season. Your training plan is designed to have you at your best for these events. As such, you can only have a few A events in a year. These events have a full taper before the event with a recovery week after. A events should ideally be 12 weeks apart in order to be in peak form for both.
• B Events can be seasonal objectives in their own right. They allow you to try different race prep and strategies to see what works best for you. B events receive a taper in the week of the event.
• C Events are great practice and experience, but the outcome of these races should carry little value. C events will not change your plan. You can treat them like a hard workout.

If you are unsure what races you are doing or what your final schedule is this upcoming season, no worries. You can always add events to your Calendar after your plan has been built and your plan will automatically adapt around the new additions.

With that said we recommend adding at least 1 “A” priority event to your plan, when you build your initial training plan. Unsure of how to prioritize your races? Check out this blog article for more information. 

General Fitness Goals

If you've chosen General Fitness Goals first you will be prompted to choose the length of your plan. You can choose between a 1 month, 2 month, and 3 month plan or opt for another duration! 

Once you have done this you will prompted to choose your plan's main focus by selecting your primary training discipline and your training plans primary goal: 

In the next step you can decide how aggressive you want your training to be by choosing your Training Approach. When choosing your training approach there are six options; conservative, moderate, balanced, demanding, and aggressive: 

• Conservative - A conservative approach is for athletes looking for more modest gains while benefiting from a reduced training load. This is a great approach for athletes looking to maintain their fitness or who are returning from injury.
• Moderate - A moderate approach is for athletes who want steady progress and constant improvements with a comfortable and manageable training load.
  This is a solid option for athletes who haven’t trained in a long time or are new to the sport.
• Balanced - This approach is called balanced because, for most athletes, this is the best approach to progress fitness while receiving enough recovery to remain consistent and prevent long-term fatigue.
• Demanding - This is an approach for athletes who are prepared for a demanding plan and who understand their recovery needs to make progress.
• Aggressive - This is an approach for athletes who want to push the boundaries of their current limits. Athletes will need to have a solid understanding of their nutrition, hydration, rest, and recovery needs for this training approach.

Be sure to read the descriptions of each option on the slider. When in doubt we recommend opting for a more balanced approach! Once you've generated your schedule you'll be able to view your training plan! 

 

 

Here in the schedule step, Plan Builder will automatically recommend a training schedule based on your training approach and imported training data. You will see an outline of what a general training week will look like. You can customize your schedule in the training week outline in these five ways:

Dragging and dropping workouts:

You can drag and drop workouts in the weekly schedule to the days of the week that you would prefer to complete them! 

Note: If you drag two workouts so they are close together you may receive a warning. Be sure to give yourself enough recovery between workouts!

Changing the duration:

You can change the duration of your planned workouts using the time drop down for each workout

Changing the workout type:

You can change your indoor structured workouts to TrainerRoad Outside Workouts, Group Rides or Solo Rides from the drop-down menu

Adjusting amount of workouts per week:

To adjust the amount of workouts per week or the number of intense workouts per week go ahead and click on the settings icon located in the top right hand corner of the weekly schedule.

From here you can adjust how many days per week you want to train and how many intense workouts you want per week.

Keep in mind, if you choose to do more days of training you may receive a warning that your plan has too much training load. You can restore the plan to the original settings to get you back on track by selecting Restore Schedule.

If you'd like to tinker you can also reduce the duration of workouts, or change how many intense days you have per week to get your desired training schedule.

Restoring your Original Schedule

If at any point you'd like to restore your plan back to the initial recommendation go ahead and select the Restore option located to the right of the settings button and then hit Restore Schedule:

Finally you can go ahead and give your training plan a name, and take the plan to review!

You will see a breakdown of your custom training plan with details of your schedule and an overview of your plan phases and when they start, before you add the plan to your Calendar

 

Your plan will be composed of these three different phases:

• Base Training Phase is where it all begins. It's the foundation of cycling and triathlon success, developing resilient aerobic fitness and laying the groundwork for higher-intensity, discipline-specific training later on. The importance of base training can't be overstated.
• Build Training Phase builds discipline-specific fitness on your aerobic foundation, pushing you out of your comfort zone to increase your sustainable workload and make you faster.
• Specialty Training Phase Focuses your training on the specific demands of your goals and/or events. This is a demanding discipline-specific final block of training.

Plan Builder will detect events already on your calendar, and ask you to "Include" them once you reach the “Events” step of the process.

No problem! When new events are added after a custom plan has been added to the calendar, we’ll ask you if you would like those events to be accounted for in your plan and edit the plan to better fit that event.

You can add time at any point in your TrainerRoad Calendar once your plan is built. Learn how here:
How to Add Time Off to My TrainerRoad Calendar

Go ahead and choose a start date when you actually started training, even though it's in the past. This will make the plan automatically start where you were in your training!

In your plan, when you have extra time before your goal event, alternating between Base and Build phases ensures your body stays responsive and well-prepared for your target event.

Utilizing the Base phase after building fitness allows you to reduce fatigue, prevent plateaus, and enter your Specialty phase with the energy needed to maximize your event-specific gains.

TrainerRoad Base training is not the same as Traditional Base training. So when TrainerRoad Base training is used after a Build phase, it does not revert the plan to significantly easier Z1/Z2 training. Instead, it strategically shifts your training to maintain progression while giving your body the necessary preparation for the final push into the Specialty phase.

Note: If your plan is long enough, alternating between Base and Build serves the same preparatory function mentioned above.

Your recommendation is customized for you based on your current capabilities as an athlete, your goal, and your Training Approach. If you are seeing a different volume than what you have been doing you might’ve been doing too much volume before, or not enough.

We recommend doing particularly long Sunday Endurance rides outside. You’ll notice that your training plan’s Solo Ride still has wattage/RPE targets and instructions on how to ride so that you can maintain the same goals as your scheduled workout.

We do a deep analysis of all of your data to intelligently recommend how much volume, intensity, and recovery you need.

Masters plans are training plans with one less day of intensity per week. You can adjust how many intense days per week your training schedule has. To do this open the Settings panel to change between 2- and 3-days of intensity per week. Masters should use 2-intense workout plans.

You can adjust how many workouts per week your training schedule has. To do this open the Settings panel to change between 2-6 workouts per week. We highly suggest using our customized training schedule recommendation, though.

When you start building a plan, you will be asked if you want to build a plan for an event or fitness goals. If you would like to build a plan to maintain fitness, select fitness goals, then select your discipline and choose “Maintaining Fitness” as your goal. This will build a plan focused on maintaining your specific level of fitness.

If you edit your plan in a way that would be detrimental to your fitness goals, or ability to complete the plan, you’ll see a Warning banner on the page. This means your plan schedule is not recommended.

Changing workout durations to be shorter than the initial recommendation, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you may be able to handle more than you think!

Yes! Plan Builder can build plans structured around your primary discipline and goals.

Plan Builder can build plans structured around your primary discipline and goals.

If you don’t have Activity Sync set up with TrainerRoad, we recommend getting that set up so that all of your training, strength training included, is imported to TrainerRoad. If you do anything that would lead to long-term burnout, Red Light Green Light will adapt your TrainerRoad workouts down or prescribe a Rest Day.

You’ll see the option to optimize your current custom plan if you have one added to your Calendar. You can always update your Training Approach and Training Schedule by clicking on the plan name or plan annotation from your Calendar.

You’ll see the option to optimize your current custom plan if you have one. You can always update your Training Approach and Training Schedule by clicking on the plan name or plan annotation from your Calendar.

You can use the new Plan Builder on the TrainerRoad website!

Yes! You can even make plans with only 2 workouts per week. You can adjust the duration of any workout to be shorter if you want.

Yes! Plan Builder will adjust around any event added to your Calendar.

Yes! You can still add individual training phases to your Calendar. To add individual Training phases to your Calendar select Training Phases at the Training Plans page.

If you aren’t sure what the exact dates of your priority events are you have a couple of options!
Add the event to your plan with an approximate date of when it may be. Once you know the date, update the event date on your Calendar and we’ll ask to update your plan to peak your fitness for your event.
Build a plan without an event, selecting the event’s discipline and your personal goal. Once you know the date, add the event to your Calendar and we’ll update your plan to peak your fitness for your event.

Coming soon! For now, building a triathlon plan will use the original version of Plan Builder.

Currently you cannot build a Polarized Plan Builder plan. The good news is that this is something we are hoping to implement in the future.