I've spent the last five years sitting across from the coaches who run World Tour programmes — Dan Lorang, John Wakefield, Joe Friel, Stephen Seiler — and asking the same question every serious amateur asks: what should I actually be doing?
Here's what nobody tells you about training. The pros don't have a secret session. They don't have a magic interval. What they have is structure. A plan that's built around their physiology, their calendar, and their capacity to absorb training stress — and a coach reviewing the data every single day, adjusting the next week before the athlete has even thought about it.
The gap between amateurs who improve and amateurs who stay stuck is almost never effort. It's structure. It's knowing which session to do on which day, and — more importantly — knowing which days to do nothing at all.
What We Cover
This pillar is where we put everything related to the bike work itself. Periodisation — how to structure your training across a season so you peak when it matters. Intensity distribution — why the 80/20 model works and how most amateurs get it wrong by riding too hard on easy days and too easy on hard days. FTP testing and training zones — how to test properly, what the numbers mean, and how to build a training week around them.
We cover structured plans for every goal: first sportive, gran fondo, road race, time trial, gravel event. We cover self-coaching for riders who want to run their own programme, and we cover what to look for in a coach when you're ready for one.
The Roadman Position
Three principles run through everything we publish on training:
Polarised intensity distribution works. Professor Seiler's research is the foundation. 80% of your riding time at a genuine zone 2 — conversational pace, nose-breathing, boring — and 20% at threshold or above. The 2025 meta-analysis of 17 cycling-specific trials confirmed what the coaches have been doing for a decade. Most amateurs spend too long in the middle — too hard to recover from, too easy to drive adaptation.
Periodisation is non-negotiable. You cannot train the same way year-round and expect to improve. Base, build, speciality, taper — the phases exist because the body adapts to different stimuli at different rates. The riders who skip base work or race all winter pay for it in June.
Recovery is part of the plan, not the absence of one. The adaptation happens when you rest, not when you ride. A rest week is not a week off — it's a deliberate volume cut that lets the fitness you've earned settle. Skip it and the fatigue accumulates until something breaks.
Where to Go From Here
If you've never followed a structured plan, start with Zone 2 Training: The Complete Guide. It's the single most impactful change most amateurs can make — and it costs nothing.
If you're already structured but stuck, read How to Improve Your FTP. Your plateau is almost certainly fixable, and the fix is rarely "train harder."
If you're ready for coached structure, the Not Done Yet community delivers personalised training plans, weekly live calls, and access to the expert network behind the podcast. That's where the articles become a programme.