Hi @adm0629! Great question!
I will help anyone who wants to participate in ZA to incorporate the workouts and rides into their training plans, but keep the following in mind.
As a background, to “graduate” from Zwift Academy (ZA) this year, participants must complete:
- 8 ZA workouts in the course of 8 weeks; and
- 4 events also in the course of 8 those weeks (these can be any combination of social rides and races or all social rides or all races).
As you can see, 8 workouts in 8 weeks is an average of 1 workout/week, and therefore not a “training plan” and certainly not sufficient training for that period.
In addition, ZA is a talent ID program, so even though it is advertised as a training opportunity, it is not a true training plan. In the previous years’ ZA programs, the workouts were designed as “tests” to extract the data that the organizers needed to identify and analyze what they are looking for, so they could weed out the masses and narrow down those who more closely match their criteria for a pro contract.
For these reasons, I will not be designing a training plan around Zwift Academy, but rather, I will guide members who want to participate and graduate from Zwift Academy on when and how to incorporate the ZA workouts into their 360 Velo training plan (i.e., which workouts to replace with ZA workouts and in which order, etc.)
As @franklim pointed out, there is also the option of joining the social rides and/or races without doing the workouts, or even doing some workouts, as these are available to all. It’s another way to engage in the whole ZA “buzz”.
Please let me know if you have any questions.