"Absolute" Progression Levels?

I find tracking back over my absolute progression, year on year, very motivating. I was going to say that the personal records and season/season match features tell the story on that. (I use these a lot but suspect they are under-used and under-appreciated.) But thinking these only tell the story of my best efforts, I would like to see evidence that my ‘bread and butter’ numbers are going up, e.g. this year’s typical mid-endurance was high tempo two years ago (or whatever). To do that now I have to open various old workouts or rides, make mental note of numbers, cross check, etc. An ‘absolute’ progression as shorthand for this (beyond ‘my FTP is 20 watts higher!’) would be cool.

I also find the RPG character creation, ‘what kind of fitness do I want to build, what does that look like’ sort of concept motivating. Don’t know if the audience is really ready for the hours of aerobic ‘grinding’ required though…

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I was wondering about this.

Having a good metric for absolute fitness would be very helpful. Right now my best way to assess is year over year MMP curves.

I love the current set up for providing the compass to help me find my way, I would like a way to be able to turn around and look back and score the fruits of that labor.

I’ve seen confusion as well regarding PL, and I’m confused on why it is confusing. But anyways…

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I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around what “Threshold 450” / “Threshold 465” would even mean / tell me. How would I use this number to pick a workout? If I can’t relate this number to a workout, then how are you thinking people would use it, except for vanity? Depending upon my FTP, the same workout will have different “absolute” PLs.

I think the problem people are having today with PLs is there isn’t a guide for what PLs mean. For example, something like “A Sweet Spot PL of 5.0 means that you can do 2x20 at Sweet Spot”.

This feels like a solution in search of a fix to explaining what the TR PLs really mean, and that will suck up lots of resources explaining something new, that ultimately cannot be related to anything

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Oh damn. We could even say “You’re X% stronger than this day last year.”

That might be overkill but it’s pretty cool

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Here’s a little POC that shows an overall fitness score this is a combo of weight + FTP + Progression Levels.

Ignore the stuff on the left, it’s not backfilled all the way.

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An aggregated score is great.

Just not sure the best way to do it. Sometimes you want a singular metric, others, you’d like something more granular in different energy zones.

The thing you miss with a scalar metric is that some areas go up while other goes down, depending on what I’m doing I emphasize different power zones. But the nice thing is that you can say while the type of fitness I may have changed, I reached this level of achievement overall that aggregates everything.

This confuses me a bit. What is the reference for the absolute power? Myself and Filippo Ganna could both do Galena and clearly there will be two very different absolute outputs despite both having successful workouts.

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I don’t know… I see the whole progression reset thing as non issue.

I think the whole issue is that people see the levels as a the equivalent of game experience when that is not it.

Education on what levels are and aren’t is probably the best approach. Maybe even a rename to move away from the game sounding levels…

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At the end of the day its all about power and results. I’m not racing so results are Strava times, and going up leaderboard is post-ride smack talk fun and motivating.

On the power side, this is what motivates me:

In the last 90 days, those areas in red are new 4+ year power PRs.

I’m just not feeling much love for some abstract and relative PL increases. Within a block, well yeah the PL increases can be motivational. Big picture? That’s all about power increases and (for me) Strava segment times.

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Ultimately this is where I look to see my improvements as well. Power curve over time.

I don’t so much see an issue with the current progression level system, since it does equate to power and time. FTP goes up, and progression needs to go down to balance the equation.

There maybe a better way to visualize this, and I actually think that could be more of a analytics dashboard view on the Career page. I would love to see more visuals of performance metrics over time on that page.

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I agree, more performance metrics on the career page would mean more to me than the progression levels as an indicator of progress. Even if they were “predicted metrics” for, say, 1 min, 5 min, 20 min power etc (ideally we could choose our own metrics)

Aggregate scores are a highly contentious topic on fitness forums, such as Oura, Whoop, et al (e.g. such as Activity, Readiness, and Sleep scores). For many that don’t understand or want to spend the time to understand the metrics that make up these aggregate scores, they can be very helpful WHEN these aggregates accurately represent what they are intended to represent. However, because they ARE AGGREGATE, they can gloss over critical individual metrics important to the individual. Those knowledgeable, don’t look at aggregates or at least only as part of looking at the details for this very reason (and spend a lot of time explaining to others why their aggregates are high, low, etc).

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Right, I mean, I covered that exact issue in my message….My stance, aggregates have a place. Aggregates are limited.

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I think keep the same system but add a visual of how progression level changes relate to ftp changes. After an ftp change, with the old progression level chart, animate in an indication of the old ftp (a vertical bar/line) then animate the progression level range for that ftp. Then slide the progression level range to the right, leaving the progression level bars where they are. When it reaches the new ftp range, reassign the progression levels to the appropriate numbers. Progression levels that fall to the left of the new range get pulled up to “1.0”

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Joel has the crux of it.

Progression levels really just determine the difficulty of your next workout.

In an absolute progression, levelling up, banking experience it’s about getting points. So 10xBaxter would progress you like 3xPolar Bear.

That’s not how fitness works.

And the workouts are relative to FTP.

For a true absolute progression you’d need a fixed for all time FTP, and a library of workouts that scaled up instead of FTP.

Again, not what you’re trying to communicate.

For the Character Sheet, I think you’d be better forgetting progression levels and banking kilojoules per zone. That tells you how much energy you’ve put into each zone, and is a fair estimate of where your strengths lie.

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Yeah I’m good ignoring it, If tracking workout difficulty increases is working for you then I understand your position. I’m not using a more aggressive progression approach, and honestly am not seeing that equation balance in my own non-TR training.

My experience with workout difficulty and FTP increases clearly doesn’t match that of others posting about it. Here is my perspective… Seeing some of my best numbers in 4 years, and started my season in October. There hasn’t been much “TR style” progression on ~8 hours/week. When I compare this base season to the older SSB 1 MV plan, the TR plan starts week 1 with 100-min Sweet Spot and 35-min Threshold from (over-unders), and ends week 5 with 148-min SS and 48-min threshold. Over comparable period to SSB1, I went from 48-min to 72-min of tempo, and the remainder endurance. The old SSB1 LV goes from 86-min SS in week2 to week5’s 85-min SS and 45-min Over-Unders. My progression in Nov/Dec/Jan involved exchanging some endurance for above threshold work.

Ok so looking at my data and applying NI (natural intelligence :thinking:), I’m left with several ideas, one being that above 6 hours/week during a 3 month base, focusing on progressing workout difficulty is overrated for me. But that’s my experience, and I absolutely believe some have the opposite experience. More than one way to get fast, different responses for different athletes, and all that.

On a first things first principle I’d rather see better power-based analytical tools before absolute PLs, but understand it might be faster to do some absolute PL feature sooner.

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I think after my most recent FTP change (as estimated by AI), I am actually more skeptical of the progression levels, so maybe this would help. Or at least provide language or a framework for discussing it.

In my case, going from a tested 200W FTP with Endurance PL of 3.3 to a 208W FTP estimated by AI, my Endurance PL was dropped to 1.9. At the old FTP and PL, an example achievable workout might be Baxter -2, which would require 46 minutes between 120-150W. At the new FTP and PL, an example achievable workout might be Taku, with 35 minutes between 125-146W. It seems like a tough sell that after the FTP increase, I am getting equally (much less more) challenging or productive Endurance workouts.

Looking at Threshold… I’m also skeptical, honestly. With a Threshold PL of 2.6 and FTP of 200W, a representative workout might be Tweed +1, which is 4x5 intervals at 204W with 4 minutes of rest between each interval. After the FTP adjustment, my Threshold PL dropped to 1.0, and a very similar workout would be Jefferson: 4x5 intervals at 198W with 5 minutes of rest between each interval. I mean those are pretty similar, but it’s definitely not the case that the new PL with the new FTP puts you at a more challenging, or even equally challenging, workout.

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I dont see the point in this at all…
How do you factor weight…I want lower weight for a higher w/kg ratio.
I want higher FTP
I want higher PLs.
But really…what does it mean? Isnt it really just a function of w/kg and where our PLs end up. I dont care about a number of the progression levels. Endurance as a level is pointless as it is just a function of time. Tempo? Relevance? Etc… We have lots of different progression levels but do I really care where they all end up? Does it really reflect my fitness? Progression level affects my next workout mostly but not much else.

I don’t have a strong opinion either way regarding absolute vs relative PLs. But I do want to express how much I appreciate PLs. I do not race - I just want to get faster. As such I really like the immediate motivation boost of seeing PLs increase during a block. FTP improvements are too far apart from that, and ultimately unreliable (too likely to go down). Just psychological I know.

Absolute numbers would be more useful for long term comparison, but at least for the moment that’s not an aspect of much importance to me. I’ve got FTP and W/kg for that

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Dumb question, if we want absolute progression levels across zones, can’t we just look at those w/kg charts for different time periods?