Should I accept “Achievable workouts” in my training plan? How do they help if my aim is to increase my FTP ?
Why not always use a “Productive” workout plan for the next training session?
I’m using a high-intensity training plan.
Not all workouts are supposed to be hard, eg Wednesday’s, Friday’s and Sunday’s sessions are meant to be easy to moderate not hard. After a rest week the workouts tend to be slightly easier again too. If you make every workout harder you’ll burn out, just answer the post ride survey and let AT do its thing
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I’m with @ArHu74 !
Do a little experiment for us… assuming your FTP is correct, only ride workouts marked as ‘Productive’ for a few weeks straight. No breaks.
Then come back here and let us know how you feel. (And where you threw your bike into a ravine and doused it with gasoline).
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What they said 
My (usually) Saturday ride is the same every loading week. A short warm up then 3 hours at either 65% or 60% depending on what insult I’ve inflicted on my legs in the preceding few days. 1st hour 5% under, 3rd hour 5% over.
By keeping it the same, I can use it as a benchmark to make comparisons week-to-week and block-to-block. So I can see that for the last 4 times I’ve done it, my avg HR on the 60% hour has gone from 122 to 117 to 115 to 102. You bet I’m going to check next time to see if that big drop to 102 is ‘real’.
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TSS is cumulative as is fatigue! - your overall TSS should trend up apart from in recovery weeks…not every workout 
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There are three ways to get better. Ride faster, ride more, consistency. Sometimes doing the same workout but it is easier is improvement. As mentioned above not every workout needs to be hard and pushing your limits.
That said, I do think the “productive tag” should go slightly under your PL value. It may not raise your progression level but prevent you from showing decline in you fitness levels. After-all if your PL is 5.3 a 5.1 workout is still “productive” in terms of fitness and you aren’t losing anything by doing it.
PS. I did an achievable workout yesterday. It wasn’t easy. 
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I think this depends. Huh, heard that before. I’m returning from a hip replacement and 2.5 months off the bike. I used AI ftp detection after 10 rides to set my ftp again. It sucked!!! I was down 15% from pre injury. For the last 2 months almost all my rides have been productive or a few stretch. I’m in base build so every other ride is endurance or Z2. I’m pretty fired up to ride and build back my fitness. My ftp is up just over 5% from the starting point. I’m only hitting the ftp detect button the last 4 day block of each month so I anticipate another bump the end of Feb.
Bottom line IMO is it depends on where you are in your training cycle. Hit those productive workouts as long as the indicators like resting hr and hrv stay under control. Build in a recovery period every 3-6 weeks and get faster.
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That’s a good idea, @Helvellyn . A weekly benchmark workout might help me check on the progress.
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Aye. If you make it a nice, steady endurance ride it’ll fit perfectly no matter what other training you slot it into.
It’s also handy as you can use it to monitor cardiac drift / decoupling.
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For the intensity stuff it’s a lot more of a reach than for the endurance.
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Just to emphasis this point again! I’ve been there, especially when I was much younger. The drive to push hard is strong in most of us, but if every workout is hard and pushing your limits, you’ll burn out fast. This applies to cycling, running, swimming, strength training, etc.
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