Training on four on, four off day shifts
A fortnight of cycling sessions worked out for a four-on four-off twelve-hour day roster: why the block carries nothing, where the quality session lands, and how the four-day break is best spent.
Who works it. The day half of most continuous rosters: manufacturing, logistics, utilities, emergency dispatch.
What makes it hard. Twelve-hour days plus commute leave an evening that looks usable and is not. The temptation is to squeeze four short evening rides into the block and then rest on the days off, which is exactly backwards.
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 four on, four off (days) 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Days 1–4 Mon–Thu | 12 h day | Rest A twelve-hour shift. Nothing planned: thirty easy minutes after food at most, and it does not count as training. | — |
| 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 60′ · 60 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. | 42 |
| Day 7 Sun | Day off | 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 8 Mon | Day off | Long ride 2 h 15 · 135 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. | 103 |
| Days 9–12 Tue–Fri | 12 h day | Rest A twelve-hour shift. Nothing planned: thirty easy minutes after food at most, and it does not count as training. | — |
| Day 13 Sat | 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 14 Sun | Day off | Endurance 60′ · 60 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. | 42 |
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 7, day 13; the longest ride on day 8. Change the roster and both move, which is the entire point.
The three things this roster decides for you
An evening after twelve hours is not a training window.
It looks like one on paper. In practice the session is short, poorly executed, and costs you sleep before the next shift — three compounding losses for one tick in a log.
Your training week is the off-block, and it is a good one.
Four clear days is more usable time than most nine-to-five riders get. Treat the block as a rest phase and the break as a training phase, and the fortnight carries real work.
Front-load the break, do not back-load it.
The last day before going back is worth leaving easy: starting a run of twelve-hour days already tired is how the whole next cycle goes wrong.
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.