Periodisation for Cyclists, How to Plan Your Season

James. You're listening to the WattPlan Podcast, and I'm James. I fit my riding around family and work, I've stood on the odd podium, I'm building WattPlan, and I read more sports science than any sane person should. This week, the big picture. Base, build, peak, taper. Is periodisation real science, or just a tidy way to fill a calendar, and how do you plan a season so you're flying on the one day that matters? Lyra, our AI research voice, is here, and the studies are in the show notes.

Lyra. It's partly science and partly sensible bookkeeping. The core idea is to plan backwards from the event, build a big aerobic base first, make the hard work more specific as the date gets closer, then cut the volume right back at the end so you arrive fresh. The last part, the taper, is where the evidence is strongest. The neat calendar of phases in between is mostly coaching experience.

James. That's a surprise. I assumed the phases were the bit with all the research behind them.

Lyra. Not really. Nobody has run a long trial of base, build, peak against something else in amateur cyclists. What we do have is a good picture of how the best endurance competitors train across a year, and solid pooled data on tapering. We looked at two studies for this, one for each.

James. Go on, start with the best in the world.

Lyra. That's a 2010 paper by Stephen Seiler in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. He looked across descriptive studies of national and international level endurance competitors training ten to thirteen times a week. They kept landing on the same split, about four sessions in five at low intensity and one in five hard. [1]

James. So base all year, basically, with a bit of hard stuff on top.

Lyra. Close, and the detail matters for periodisation. He describes them as building a high-volume approach with the high-intensity work applied carefully throughout the training cycle. Throughout, not saved for a build phase. And studies that made already well-trained people do a lot more hard work didn't show convincing long-term gains.

James. But hang on, that sounds like it argues against phases altogether. If the best do roughly the same thing all year, why have a base phase at all?

Lyra. Fair push. The share of easy riding barely moves, so you're right that the phases aren't a switch from easy to hard. What changes is what the hard sessions are. Earlier in the year they're broader aerobic work, later they look more like the event. In WattPlan's base the hard days are sweet spot, and threshold and VO2max join in the build.

James. And the base phase. The article says eight to sixteen weeks of it. That's four months of winter.

Lyra. For a rider with a spring event and a year to plan, maybe. Most of us start later. WattPlan sizes the phases to the time left. Give it twelve weeks to an event and it plans four weeks of base, four of build, three of peak and a one week taper. Eight weeks or fewer, it skips base and peak and goes straight to build, then the taper.

James. Let me check I've got the recovery weeks right. Every fourth week is easy, so three hard, one easy, all year?

Lyra. Nearly. It's three loading weeks and then an easy one, counted right through the plan, so a new phase never resets the count. The week before a taper is never a recovery week, because the taper is the unload. A recovery week drops the hours by about a third, keeps at least two rest days and has no hard sessions.

James. Now the peak. The article says volume drops forty to sixty percent in peak. Is that what happens?

Lyra. Not in WattPlan, and it's worth being clear. The article's peak phase is really a taper. In WattPlan, peak weeks are full weeks, as hard as any in the plan, and all the cutting happens in that last week. Which brings us to the second study.

James. The taper one.

Lyra. Yes. A 2007 meta-analysis in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise by Laurent Bosquet and colleagues. They pooled 27 studies of competitors, judged on real race or field performance. The best results came from a taper of about two weeks, with volume cut by 41 to 60 percent and intensity left as it was. [2]

James. Two weeks. So that forty to sixty percent in the article comes from tapers, not from a whole peak phase.

Lyra. That's a good catch, and I think it does. It's the same range. Cutting that much volume for three or four weeks of peak is a lot of lost riding, and the analysis didn't test it. Keeping the peak weeks hard and the taper short is a judgement built on that.

James. Real life, though. Work blows up for a fortnight, or I get a cold in week six. Does the whole thing collapse?

Lyra. No, and this is where people get periodisation wrong. The phases are an order, not a contract. If life takes a week, don't try to cram the lost week back in. A missed key session can move to a sensible slot later that week if there's room, and if there isn't, it's dropped. Pushing through when progress stalls rarely works. Often what's missing is rest. The calendar can bend. Base, then sharpening, then unloading is the part to protect.

James. So miss a week and I don't try to make it up.

Lyra. Right. You pick up where the plan is now, not where you wish it was.

James. Okay. Where do the different riders come in? Because I'm not sure someone new to this needs a season plan at all.

Lyra. They need one event and their available days, and that's about it. If you're new to structured training, the phases look simple from the inside. Easy riding plus one or two sweet spot sessions a week, a lighter week every so often, and a quieter last week before the event. You don't have to plan any of it by hand.

James. And for someone training with power who wants to see the progression?

Lyra. Then watch the hard sessions rather than the hours. If your time stays the same, the plan doesn't grow by adding hours. Each kind of session gets more work in it as the block goes on, so the same Tuesday slot asks a little more each time it comes round. That's progression you can see in the targets.

James. And if you race several times a season, not just one big day?

Lyra. If you race through a season, keep one event as the A race the plan builds to, and add the others as races on the plan. A race you add counts as one of that week's hard sessions, so the plan doesn't stack another on top of it, and if you ride those days you get openers the day before and an easy spin the day after.

James. What can't the research tell us here? Because it sounds like quite a lot.

Lyra. It is quite a lot. Seiler's picture comes from elite competitors training ten or more times a week, not from someone on six hours. Bosquet's tapers were in competitive sport, not amateur sportives. And nobody has tested a full base, build, peak calendar against a simpler plan in riders with jobs and families. So the phases are a reasoned structure. They aren't a tested law.

James. Fine. What should I actually do this week?

Lyra. Pick your one event for the season and put its date in. Then look at the phase you're in and what your hard sessions are this week. And find your next recovery week now, so you don't treat it as optional when it arrives.

James. One date, trust the order, and don't skip the easy week when it turns up. I'll be honest, the easy week is the one I usually skip.

Lyra. Then that's your job this season. The phases only work if the easy weeks and the last week stay easy, because that's when the work you've done turns into speed.

Lyra. The full article and every study we mentioned are on the WattPlan blog, linked in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed this, follow the WattPlan Podcast wherever you're listening, so you don't miss the next one.

James. And if you want a plan built around the time you've actually got, get WattPlan on the App Store or Google Play. Thanks for listening.

Voices produced with ElevenLabs. James's voice is a clone of his own, Lyra is an AI voice, and James reviews every episode.