Training on a four-crew continuous rotation
Four mornings, two off, four nights, one off, four afternoons, one off — the sixteen-day rotation that runs most continuous-process industry. A full cycle of cycling sessions placed around it, with the reasoning for every day.
Who works it. The backbone of continuous-process industry across Europe: power generation, refineries, steel, chemicals, paper. In Poland it is simply called the czterobrygadowka, the four-brigade system, and it covers 24 hours with four crews.
What makes it hard. The clock moves three times in sixteen days, and twice you get a single day to do it. Finishing nights on Monday morning and starting afternoons on Wednesday is not a rest day in between — it is a turnaround. Most people train on those days because the roster calls them free, and then wonder why the next block is so hard.
What one full cycle 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 four-crew continuous rotation roster, covering one 16-day cycle. 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 Quality on an early-shift day goes in the evening and has to stay short: you have been awake since quarter past four. 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 |
| Days 2–3 Tue–Wed | 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. | 62 |
| Day 4 Thu | Early | Rest Rest by design, not by accident — the week's hours are spent. | — |
| Day 5 Fri | Day off | 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 6 Sat | Day off | 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 7 Sun | 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 |
| Days 8–10 Mon–Wed | 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. | 72 |
| Day 11 Thu | 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 12 Fri | Afternoon | 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 13 Sat | Afternoon | Rest Rest by design, not by accident — the week's hours are spent. | — |
| Day 14 Sun | 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 15 Mon | Afternoon | 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 16 Tue | Day off | Sweet spot 3 × 12 · 76 min The hard session goes here: the first day in the cycle with a slept night behind it and no shift in front of it. 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 |
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 12, day 16; the longest ride on day 5. Change the roster and both move, which is the entire point.
The three things this roster decides for you
The two days after the mornings are your only real block, and you can only half-use it.
It is the single stretch in the cycle with two consecutive properly slept days. It is also the stretch immediately before four nights. So the big ride goes on the first of the two and the second one stays easy. Two hours the day before a night block costs you the whole first half of that block, and the block is where you can least afford to be behind.
The afternoon run is where the training actually happens.
Four consecutive mornings free, each one after a full night of sleep, finishing in time to be at work for half past one. That is the richest training window the roster contains, and it arrives once every sixteen days. If you only get one thing right in this cycle, get this one right — it carries more of your fitness than the days off do.
The single days off are turnarounds, not rest days.
One day to move your sleep by eight hours, twice per cycle. Treat them as travel days across time zones, because physiologically that is what they are: get light in the morning before the afternoon run, get darkness and quiet before the nights, and ride nothing that needs legs or concentration.
Do it with your own dates
The cycle 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.