For this program, you’ll receive a full program of workouts tailored to your ability upon completion of the Foundations fitness assessment. You will have access to webinars with coaches and riders and our exclusive content library, but you will not receive personal feedback from a coach on your training. If you would like personal coaching take a look at our other levels here.

Your training calendar, fitness assessment and ongoing workouts will all be delivered via TrainingPeaks, an innovative training platform that gives athletes the power to plan and review upcoming workouts with precision and ease.

Yes you can, providing you have equipment that will allow you to display your workouts, record your power output, cadence and heart rate, and can sync your workouts to TrainingPeaks.

If the devices you use for training are currently connected to Strava they will continue to sync your Team EF Coaching Foundations workouts to Strava in the future as well.

Team EF Coaching training plans are run through TrainingPeaks exclusively.

A new account can be created for you at sign up. If you already have an account you can also use that to login, then there are two options:

1) If a coach is already associated with your account: You will be emailed and asked permission to switch to our coach.

2) If no coach is associated with your account: Team EF Coaching will be set as a coach for your already existing account, and will move you to the Team EF Coaching plans.

First check your Garmin Connect Permissions to make sure TrainingPeaks has access to your Garmin account.

Next log into your TrainingPeaks account from a computer and navigate to http://www.trainingpeaks.com/account/garminconnect

Select whether you want to sync 5 years of data or just future data, then click 'connect'.

After you click 'connect' you will be able to choose which data you want to sync.

Step 1 - Using the Wahoo ELEMNT Companion App, link your TrainingPeaks account (make sure you are using the ELEMNT Companion app, and not the Wahoo Fitness or Utility apps).

Step 2 - Under "Profile" select "Linked Accounts" and tap the TrainingPeaks option to authorize the sync. This will sync your planned structured workouts to your ELEMNT as well as sync your completed workouts to your TrainingPeaks account

Note - To sync, you may need to connect your Wahoo to WIFI via the app. Also, once synced, you may need to turn your head unit off and on for workouts to appear. Workouts further than 3 days in the future will not appear.

To connect your TrainingPeaks account to your Hammerhead go to you Karoo Hammerhead Dashboard, click accounts and then select 'connect' under TrainingPeaks, once logged in your headunit will be connected to TrainingPeaks.

We recommend using your device to sync to TrainingPeaks if you will be doing a mix of indoor and outdoor training, however, if you use Zwift and anticipate completing all your training indoors, visit my.zwift.com and login with your Zwift account. Then visit your Profile and click Connections. Finally, select the Connect button beneath the TrainingPeaks logo. This will then require you to log in to TrainingPeaks.

Once this is done, you can authorize the connection, allowing your training plan to load onto Zwift for your sessions.

Please note workouts based on Heartrate are not compatible with Zwift, please use Power based workouts.

There are a number of different options for connecting to TrainingPeaks. If your device isn’t listed, follow this link to TrainingPeaks where they go over in more detail the different ways you can link other devices to their plan.

Once you have linked your Garmin Connect and TrainingPeaks accounts, the next 15 days of eligible structured workouts on your TrainingPeaks calendar will immediately sync to your Gamin Connect calendar.

A Garmin Connect icon on the workout Quick View in TrainingPeaks indicates that the workout has synced to Garmin Connect.

The next time your Garmin device syncs with Garmin Connect, your TrainingPeaks workout will be sent to your device.

To push workouts from your TRainingPeaks Calendar to your Wahoo head unit, simply sync the ELEMNT app with your head unit to populate workouts. Your Wahoo will load all activities within the next three days, to start a workout, you will simply need to open the ELEMNT app, select “Pick a Planned Workout” and it should load onto your head unit for when you hit start.

There are a number of different components and variations that it’s possible to combine - if yours aren’t listed, follow this link to TrainingPeaks where they go over in more detail the different ways you can link other devices to their plan.

Great! You can move the assessment to whenever works best for you by dragging and clicking when using TrainingPeaks on a desktop or selecting move in the TrainingPeaks app.

If you don’t take the assessment, it’s not possible for us to personalize your training plan. You can continue training using the plan, but you may find the workouts too easy or too difficult to complete at the intensities shown.

However, if you have or know a value for your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), you can input this in the account area on TrainingPeaks and that will update your workouts and help make them accomplishable.

FTP, or Functional Threshold Power, is effectively a measurement of the power you can sustain for one hour, measured in watts. It is widely used to assess fitness and training progress.

The fitness assessment for riders using power meters will take the form of an FTP assessment. If you have not taken an FTP test before, it is typically an hour-long assessment that centers on a 20-minute effort at maximum exertion. Once you have completed the test, your FTP will automatically be calculated and uploaded to TrainingPeaks personalizing your ongoing training plan.

If you’ve taken an FTP test recently and know your result, you can adjust your threshold value within your account area on TrainingPeaks and adjust the category marked "Threshold".

When completing the intervals and segments in the fitness assessment, you will need to ramp up your effort ten seconds before your interval to ensure your heart rate peaks in time.

If you struggle to hit a certain intensity, remember that your heart rate is variable. It will naturally be lower after a heavy workload, or during illness. This is your heart protecting your body from the stress and strain of over-exercise. In this instance it’s important to read the signs and ease up, as overtraining and over exertion can lead to dips in performance and health.

It’s pretty simple – go all out. A 20-minute effort should be tough, and it should push you to your limit of exertion within that time period. We’re looking for a relatively consistent 20 minutes of metered maximum capacity exertion.

One of the most common issues we see in riders is being conservative during these tests, holding off from giving it their all, in order to perform better later in the test.

Ultimately, this is a huge mistake. Leaving something in reserve during testing can set back your training trajectory and leave you feeling like you’re stagnating. To get the best possible results from your training, make sure to fully commit on these efforts.

If you don’t take an assessment, it’s not possible for us to personalize your Training Plan. You can continue training using our workouts, but you may find the workouts too easy or too difficult to complete at the intensities shown.

However, if you already have a value for your FTP, you can input this in the Account area on TrainingPeaks. This will allow TrainingPeaks to personalize your future workouts.

Don't worry! When you first start the Foundations Training Plan you will only see a week worth of workouts in your TrainingPeaks account, this is your intro week. Following that you should see the Foundations Training Plan load automatically. Should you wish to choose a different training plan you can find them in the Training Plan Library in TrainingPeaks.

Yes. Our Foundations Training Plan has 7-8 hours of training each week as standard, but If you find that plan proves to be too easy or too hard from a workload standpoint, you add additional workload from the Workouts library. To reduce workload volume we would suggest reducing the time spent warming up and cooling down that is scheduled as part of the existing workouts in your plan.

Simply insert a 'day off' into your calendar on the days you are on holiday or when you can’t train, and no workouts will be scheduled on those days. Insert a rest day in TrainingPeaks by clicking on the Plus (+) button which appears when over a day in the calendar, and then select “day off” on the specific day or days in question.

We recommend that you follow the training plan as scheduled and skip workouts if you’re not able to do them on a certain day. That said, you can move workouts to other days by dragging and dropping, in the TrainingPeaks calendar. When doing so, it’s important to add a rest day on the now-empty day, to make sure that the training you moved isn’t added again when the calendar syncs.

In order to cancel please log in to your account on teamefcoaching.com, once signed in go to ‘account’. On this page you’ll see a link to manage your subscription, you can cancel there.

While it is not strictly necessary to set your zones to the EF system, to have the most seamless experience, you will navigate to your Settings [the gear icon next to your name at the top of your screen], then click Zones. Please note this is easier on a computer than on a mobile device.

Under Heart Rate, choose Threshold and enter your value. If you aren’t sure what your Threshold HR is, look at your Maximal Heart Rate graph [located on your dashboard] and use the peak value for 30 minutes [make sure your data is not corrupted with bad values, this is common for maximal heart rate values]. You can also enter the maximum and resting, but these won’t effect your zones, we use Threshold to set your zones.

Next, in the dropdown menus under “Auto Calculation” select Threshold, and then manually enter the zones using the chart below. You will multiply the % x your Threshold HR to get the numbers. Keep in mind that “working in pennies” usually doesn’t make sense, for example: if a given zone is mathematically 141w - 164w, you can round to 140w and 165w or even 160w. No one targets 141w successfully while riding outdoors on roads with wind, hills, etc. More importantly, training is not about precise application of output during a workout, it is about accumulating physiological load on the body for a given duration. Power is just one way to approximate that load.

1: Recovery / 50-65% of Threshold

2: Aerobic Endurance / 66-75%

3: Intensive Endurance 76 -85%

4: Tempo: 86-94%

5: Threshold: 95-105%

6: Maximal Aerobic Endurance: 106-110%

7: Maximal Glycolytic Power: 111-115%

8: Neuromuscular: 116%+

This is a tedious process but unfortunately Training Peaks does not allow the auto calculation of the Team EF Coaching zones to be applied automatically for individual training plans. If you join our Foundations training program, your zone percentages can be applied with a few keystrokes.

Keep in mind that the HR zones above threshold only apply if you have been riding hard enough for long enough for your HR to reflect this effort, but they won’t apply if you change intensity quickly. For example, if you are riding along at Aerobic Endurance and then execute a 10 second maximal sprint, your HR won’t reach 116% of threshold HR in this effort; it’s not long enough to stimulate the cardiovascular system to that degree. This is because power is a measure of output, and heart rate is a measure of nervous system response to load. It takes a bit of time for the nervous system to ramp up heart rate to reflect the load you are placing on your metabolism; this is why it is so easy to over pace the first minute of a maximal five minute effort.

To set your Power zones, you will manually calculate your numbers using the % below:

1: Recovery / 40-64% of Threshold

2: Aerobic Endurance / 65-75%

3: Intensive Endurance 76 -86%

4: Tempo: 86-95%

5: Threshold: 96-105%

6: Maximal Aerobic Endurance: 106-120%

7: Maximal Glycolytic Power: 121-150%

8: Neuromuscular: 150%+