Of course the professional cycling world has a lot to teach the rest of us who don't ride as much. But I think there can also be problems in simply taking directly from pros and this is especially true when it comes to training.
What's interesting is how bike manufacturers have already nailed this issue. The bikes sold to amateurs may well feature all sorts of pro-kit but in some important ways they will be fundamentally different - the gearing will be very different, and the frame geometry/available positions may be much less extreme.
It'll look like a pro-bike but really it's not.
With training programmes I don't think people have been so clever. These can appear to be essentially professional schedules with a few tweaks to the numbers, and that can cause problems:
1) Amateurs have all sorts of calls on their time and are much less justified in asking for their training to take precedence. The tweaked "pro-plan" may have reasonable time demands for the amateur but the frequency and scheduling may make it impossible.
2) Zone training can require considerable testing and managing; when the amateur cyclist just wants to get out and ride they instead get tangled up in Zones and intervals. It can also be mis-leading with amateurs not really understanding the Zones or relying too much on them and not listening to their body.
3) A rigid plan that an amateur follows without really understanding is going to be a problem. They haven't got a coach to explain what is going on, and because they don't understand it they can't modify it when needed.
4) Even the pros complain about scheduled training that falls on cold, rainy days. For the amateur with less time, and more on their mind and plate, having a bike ride when they don't want to go out can easily lead to a plan being abandoned. Amateurs are supposed to be doing it for fun.
All of this can mean the wonderful "professional plan" may be disappointing and demoralising for the normal cyclist. We may need something simpler that we can manage because we understand what's going on.
Italian events and European climbs