Training on a continental rotation
Two earlies, two afternoons, two nights, two off. A fortnight of cycling sessions placed around the fastest-rotating common roster, with the reasoning for each day.
Who works it. European manufacturing and process industry, where the eight-hour continental rotation is still the default.
What makes it hard. The rotation moves forward every two days, so your body never settles into any rhythm. The upside is that no block is long enough to do real damage; the downside is that you are permanently slightly out of phase.
What a fortnight actually looks like
This is not an example typed out by hand. It is the output of the same rule engine that builds the plan on the front page, run against a continental rotation roster. The shift decides the size of each day, then the hard session goes in the best remaining window, then endurance fills what is left.
| When | Shift | Session, and why it is there | TSS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 Mon | Early | Tempo 2 × 12 · 62 min The hard session goes here: the best window of the week — slept, with a free morning. Quality needs Body Battery of at least 50, over 6 h of sleep and HRV still balanced. Miss one and you move the session by a day rather than shortening it. | 52 |
| Day 2 Tue | Early | Endurance 45′ · 45 min Endurance fills the rest of the week. It is what the base is actually made of. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 31 |
| Day 3 Wed | Afternoon | Long ride 2 h · 120 min The week's longest ride. On a low-carb diet this is what moves fat, not the intervals. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 89 |
| Day 4 Thu | Afternoon | Rest Rest by design, not by accident — the week's hours are spent. | — |
| Day 5 Fri | Night | Endurance 45′ · 45 min First night of the run: the day is free, what follows is not. No quality, no long ride. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 31 |
| Day 6 Sat | Night | Z2 40′ · 40 min Night shift inside a run: endurance only, and only if the daytime sleep happened. Only if the daytime sleep ran past 5 h and Body Battery is at least 50. | 24 |
| Day 7 Sun | Day off | Endurance 45′ · 45 min First day after the nights. Easy riding resets the body clock faster than lying still. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 31 |
| Day 8 Mon | Day off | Sweet spot 3 × 10 · 70 min The hard session goes here: the best window of the week — slept, with a free morning. Quality needs Body Battery of at least 50, over 6 h of sleep and HRV still balanced. Miss one and you move the session by a day rather than shortening it. | 65 |
| Day 9 Tue | Early | Rest Rest by design, not by accident — the week's hours are spent. | — |
| Day 10 Wed | Early | Sweet spot 3 × 12 · 76 min The hard session goes here: the best window of the week — slept, with a free morning. Quality needs Body Battery of at least 50, over 6 h of sleep and HRV still balanced. Miss one and you move the session by a day rather than shortening it. | 73 |
| Day 11 Thu | Afternoon | Long ride 2 h · 120 min The week's longest ride. On a low-carb diet this is what moves fat, not the intervals. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 89 |
| Day 12 Fri | Afternoon | Rest Rest by design, not by accident — the week's hours are spent. | — |
| Day 13 Sat | Night | Endurance 45′ · 45 min First night of the run: the day is free, what follows is not. No quality, no long ride. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 31 |
| Day 14 Sun | Night | Z2 40′ · 40 min Night shift inside a run: endurance only, and only if the daytime sleep happened. Only if the daytime sleep ran past 5 h and Body Battery is at least 50. | 24 |
Sessions are written as percentages of FTP, so they scale to whoever rides them — there is nothing here tuned to one person's numbers. The quality session lands on day 1, day 8, day 10; the longest ride on day 3. Change the roster and both move, which is the entire point.
The three things this roster decides for you
Short blocks mean you can train through most of the cycle.
Two nights is not four. The sleep debt stays shallow enough that endurance riding through the rotation is realistic, which is not true on longer night blocks.
The afternoon shift mornings are the prize.
A full night of sleep behind you and a free morning in front of you is the single best training window in any roster, and this rotation hands you two of them every cycle.
Protect the turnaround, not the shifts.
The expensive days are the ones where the shift changes — finishing an afternoon and starting an early, or rolling into nights. Those are the days to leave alone.
Do it with your own dates
The fortnight above starts on an arbitrary Monday. Yours does not. The week planner takes the shifts you actually have next week and places the sessions the same way, in your browser, with nothing sent anywhere.
The reasoning behind every placement is written out on the rules page — including the rule I got wrong first time and had to change after it failed against my own data. Eating around the same roster is covered on the nutrition page.
I work a rotating roster myself and publish the whole plan and its results, including the weeks that go badly. That is the only claim this site makes: not that it works for everyone, but that it is real and you can check it.