Wait until the, “why are my spider levels so short” because your ftp is only 200…. or do you do it in w/kg… or….
I like this idea a lot (for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons).
I see “absolute PLs” as capability calculations like the “Personal Records” chart in TR:
Each category represents power for a certain duration (e.g., anaerobic estimates the power you could hold for up to 20 seconds, Endurance represents the power you could hold for 3-5 hours, etc).
Then as you train different energy systems, you see those measures improve…
I would not mix relative and absolute PL together as this would increase complexity substantially.
I rather fix/underscore the fact that the relative ones relate to the current plan/workouts. The relation would be to the latest FTP measurement (either test or AI).
But it would be very useful to see something ABSOLUTE “relative” to TIME. This is something that I miss from the beginning I started to use AT.
PLs on Y axis and time on X axis.
You would have to think different scenarios of what can happen over time… Currently, in my case, when - after 5th case of week long illness since November - my FTP dropped 20W, my absolute PLs compared to beginning of my first plan I stared in October might be even NEGATIVE numbers (?) Actually I would not care (it is negative situation), and would find this useful visualization when trying to crawl back up out of the deep hole I am in now…
@Nate_Pearson I like having an FTP figure. I race TTs and therefore knowing my 25m effort pace (which pretty much matches my FTP) and judging pace and effort against that is useful. And it is more universal. I would be disappointed if it disappeared as everyone refers to FTP in some way shape or form.
Its a known (and known how wrong it is) quantity/benchmark.
I also like PLs as they tell me something about my mix and how I am progressing. It is a simple enough view. I keep a spreadsheet of FTP and progressive weekly PLs.
It is all fine as it is.
I was just thinking something like this… Relative Progression Level (RPL).
I mis-spoke. Should have said “training zones” not energy systems.
I pretty much 100% agree. I don’t care about absolutes; I love the relative levels and think that they’re pretty simple and intuitive to use. But hey, if others get confused anything that helps is good. As long as I don’t have to use or see the absolute levels, (they’d be pretty irrelevant to my progression).
I love the progression levels and think they’re pretty intuitive. But. Your chart and explanation just made no sense to me. Whatsoever. Hey ho, back to school for me I guess!
I don’t think it’s be a good idea to mix the two, because for me they mean different things. Borrowing from video games, I think of my FTP as my power bar (roughly equivalent to the strength of my attacks in games) whereas my PL corresponds to my “mana/force/magic bar”, i. e. it corresponds to the number of matches I have. I could have one character that could deal devastating attacks but only twice. And another with moderately strong attacks they could repeat 8 times in a row. Just adding up the total damage someone could deal wouldn’t tell me as much.
Hope my analogy makes sense.
With PLs the added difficulty is that they are, as far as I understand, subjective to some degree whereas power is objective. I don’t see an easy way to adding the two up.
The more and more comments on this thread, and the more I think about it myself. I really don’t think the extra info is a good thing.
People just need to understand where their FTP is in relation to their PL’s.
I think showing improvement in PL’s from start of block at each of the last couple FTP should be enough.
Maybe a statement at the bottom of the graph.
“At your old FTP, you’d be a 10.0 and able to hold your FTP for 68min”
or
“Your new FTP means you’ll achieve x-amount more (Work, or Distance) in an hour”
I’m coming to the opinion thar most would better served focusing on achievable vs productive vs etc., and hide the levels altogether.
The workout levels at least are useful when building your own plan, as a way to order workouts targeting a specific power level (e.g., VO2 max) so you can build a progressive difficulty.
But other than that, I agree with you that the better focus would be on achievable, productive, etc. This is way I really think TR needs to get away from plans with specific workouts, to plans that just show workout:
- Duration
- Type - e.g., Sweet Spot, Tempo, etc.
- Intent - e.g., achievable, productive, etc.
And then AT 1 or 2 days prior to the workout would replace the above with a specific workout, but still show the intent (achievable, productive, etc.) on the specific workout.
No, I don’t think so. This is a difficult problem and most people aren’t used to reading and interpreting graphs. Deciding which metrics to look at is a key qualification of a coach, so this is something that TR has to tackle.
I’d like to see changes in PL comparing like-to-like. Compared to my last Sweet Spot Base training phase, are my PLs changing more quickly or more slowly? Converting PLs into stuff like “we predict you can hold x power for y minutes” is pretty useless to most. It’s only important if you are doing TTs. If you are a crit racer, repeatability is more important. And so forth.
The metrics that TR picks should IMHO be coupled to the training plan someone picks and ideally be customizable. It would also reveal the inner logic of some training plans. E. g. with a 40k TT plan it’d be entirely appropriate to make “hold x power for 50–60 minutes” the key metric. While for a crit plan, TR could say “you are able to make 7 attacks at above threshold”. Of course, I reckon that in reality TR would use proxies but should explain those in a mouse over or so.
You missed the point of my post, which maybe wasn’t made clear itself.
I don’t think those are the statements to be made, I’m just suggesting a one-sentence comparison is in my opinion better than a convoluted graph showing PL changes. Comparing SSB against only SSB is problematic as well because we are not exclusively working one zone between FTP change.
You’re right in that it’s a TR choice to make.
Nate, and team, I know how you all care about perfection and pleasing the crowd. I also don’t know if there is overwhelming support for changing this, or overwhelming confusion.
However, keeping it simple is 100% the way to go. Even if people don’t like it. This is kind of how Apple does it, their way or the highway. (I do want to stress i know you all care about your users though so its a tough balance).
Please do not change this. The way i see it, the current progression levels make 100% sense. When your FTP increases, presumably you can’t do the same level of a given power zone workout. People can learn to understand the progression levels are frankly a number for what workouts you can achieve.
I do understand the want for an absolute, if doing so, i think a toggle would be the best. And frankly, put it in the settings as an option to turn the toggle on or off.
I think people will grow to love.
@Nate_Pearson calls a significant share of TR athletes as “data scientists”. I understand that non-data scientists could be confused or could misunderstand. But I think this is in the nature of things: I think it is better to give users more rope to hang themselves, but make a lot of it optional and digest it properly. Done right, it could be educational and explain why TR does what.
This could be mitigated to some degree by smart defaults. E. g. Plan Builder asks you how experienced you are with periodized training. You could reveal different levels of detail to the (I think) four different choices.
Yes, and there are lots of other factors (life stress, sleep, etc.) that influence training. Still, I’d like to see it and data similar to that.
As a long-term Apple user, this isn’t quite right. Apple makes software that spans everyday users to professionals. One principle is to have the 80 % of most-used tools at one’s fingertips. But then there are other principles like progressive disclosure of functionality, which is essential to make Apple’s pro software easy to use, yet powerful.
I understand your concern, though, and I am just advocating for an Apple-like solution: have progressive disclosure. Users like you who would prefer to not be overwhelmed with things they don’t need or want shouldn’t be forced to. But I think the other group who wants more analysis tools also exists and can be catered for without making TR harder to use for people like you.
As long as it’s not the default for new users. There’s enough people bamboozled by the reduction in PL with an increase in FTP.
Like I said, I’d tie that in with experience level in Plan Builder and allow for manual customization.
I don’t think this idea is fundamentally good or bad, but it’s critical to contextualize what it’s for.
Is it descriptive, indicating that achieving a higher score is an end goal, an indicator of progress?
Is it prescriptive, a tool for determining what workout or plan to embark on next?
Is it predictive, saying that if you’re at XXX score, you’re going to do better in your goal event?
When a metric includes more inputs and is portrayed as more all-encompassing, users tend to project all of these things onto that single number. It’s a rare metric indeed, in any environment, that can shoulder that burden. CTL/ATL/TSB was seen as the Holy Grail for a while, but it didn’t take long for people to realize that athletes responded quite differently to different TSB situations.
I like basketball metrics. Analysts were pretty excited about the development of all-in-one benchmarks like PER, APM, and the like. They all have a certain value but they all have to be understood in the context of what the inputs are. Certain metrics favor certain behaviors, etc. All-in-ones tend to be helpful for raising questions but not for drawing conclusions (player X appears to have impressive abilities but his team doesn’t outscore the opposition more often when he’s on the floor, what’s going on there).
Even something as simple as “power divided by weight multiplied by highest workout level achieved” immediately calls into question the weighting and aging of those factors, and could very well encourage athletes to over-pursue the inputs in pursuit of a high score as a goal in and of itself. A TT athlete might achieve a personal best Threshold score shortly before their goal event and then go out and flub the race because they’re overworked or undernourished. You’d really have to be careful to tell that athlete what the score was for and how to use it.
I agree with some other sentiments in this thread that “Progression Level” is a good example of a term that gave people the wrong idea about how the metric should be used. That’s purely a prescriptive metric; “here’s our idea of what you should do next.” It really doesn’t describe the athlete’s capabilities and shouldn’t be portrayed as such. So when “Total Fitness Score” or whatever is released, be prepared to do a lot of explaining. I think the idea is to produce one number that’s simple and easy to understand–but I suspect it’ll have the opposite effect.
Yeah but there is a fine line. I’m not going to be overwhelmed personally, but it is a source of friction in the product. But as i said, if done well its fine. But id rather it be in the settings so that i can leave the toggle off and never have to see it. But to each their own.