Have you tried Alternate Workout and selecting a lower intensity workout? For example if its a Productive Workout, you could select lower rated Productive Workout or pick an Achievable one.
Does that make sense?
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I didn’t, but I’ll try that if it comes up again. I ended up just letting myself fail, and things balanced out a bit so I could start building again without digging myself a hole.
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I was in a car accident a few weeks ago and have been off the bike for a few weeks. Today was my first day back and I logged in to TR on the web and it said I had adaptations pending, I accepted, and it had a Ramp test for today. I got everything set up and logged onto the TR App and it said the following:
“Welcome back, no adaptations, take this 1 hour 30 minute threshold over/under workout an like it. You’ve fallen behind your mates so shut up and suffer”
The app had my regularly scheduled workout, which I did go ahead and complete. In the past when ever I accepted adaptations on the website they automatically updated in the app. I’m glad it didn’t update in this instance.
I have a question. Today was an recovery day/endurance day for me but I opted to do a Zwift ride as opposed to the prescribed workout:
And I ended up doing the following ride:
Not exactly an endurance ride, more so a Tempo ride with some sprints. And the TSS and IF was more than I was “supposed” to do. Usually I would associate the “outdoor” Zwift ride to the workout but are they too different to do it? Should I just keep it as an unplanned ride and have the Black workout as a missed workout or just associate it?
We definitely cant make a solid ‘workaround’ recommendation that we can confidently say will match up with the specific systems in a given workout compared to an outside unstructured ride, BUT… that’s why we’re hustling so hard on the next iteration of AT that identifies those systems and the scope of the work you’ve done to assign Progression Levels and future adaptations accordingly. We’re hustling on it!
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Thank you. Today, I am writing down which ones I want to accept and replacing the workouts manually. Or maybe I will wait until tonight with my Chad Beer.
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Hi all! I have a couple of questions about adaptive training, and would really appreciate some insight before I bug support.
I just failed a level 5.1 threshold workout today, cutting the last two of four intervals short and missing the target NP by about 7%. AT still somehow gave me credit for completing the ride and bumped my PL up from 5.0 to 5.1. I completed a level 5.9 threshold workout back in mid November, but since then, I have failed all FIVE of the 5.0 and above threshold workouts I have attempted. I have been able to handle all of the ones in the 4s.
How does AT still have my threshold PL at 5.1? Is it because I have had much more success in V02 and sweet spot? Threshold is my bane, or maybe it’s just the way the PLs are calibrated.
Additionally, if I manually lower my FTP by about 3%, will my PLs jump up or stay where they are?
Thanks again for any insight.
- When you failed the workouts, did you end/save/complete a survey saying that you struggled?
- as a result of the above, were you suggested adaptations after that for your next threshold workouts to those threshold workouts in the 4s?
If yes to both, Adaptive Training is operating as it should!
Its wierd that if you cut the intervals short and answere a survey that you sturggled thorugh the workout due to intensity, that it would read as a success. Support@trainerroad.com will have better insight to this.
Your Progression Levels will change if you manually edit your FTP. How much they move either direction depends upon a handful of factors, and varies between athletes so its hard to say definitively without making the change.
Thanks for the quick response Ivy. Yes, I always finish the survey, and yes, it usually suggests adaptations. I always accept them initially, but sometimes I’m a bit foolish and try something a touch harder than was suggested. I still don’t understand why it would have my PLs higher than any of my recent successes. I’ll check with support before I try to edit my FTP.
Cool! Yeah I’d check with support about any PL confusion as well. They have the best visibility to the full scope of those internal ride logs to see what AT is giving you credit for and provide some context to your adaptations and PLs. They’ll be stoked to help!
After this morning’s workout I received a pending adaptation. It was a SS WL 6.2 replaced with another 6.2. Is this AT being subtle, or is it just a small bump that rounds to the same 2 digits. Mostly I’m amused, but am curious …
if you are not in erg and you push harder than the suggested interval and succeed does AT calculate that in?
This gets asked a lot. There’s a few threads on it as well. From memory the current state of play is: AT will credit you for extra work within that training zone but not if you move up into another zone. So if the workout is already at the top of say Threshold then increasing the intensity is going to push you into VO2max and AT won’t see that as benefiting Threshold to the same extent. It does depend on what you are trying to achieve.
If you feel that the workout wasn’t hard enough give AT an easier response than you might otherwise have done and you’ll be offered harder workouts in the future. Be wary of doing this too much as although you might think you can handle the increased load it could lead to burn out a month or two down the line.
If you just got carried away and pushed harder than required then the recommendation is to rate the workout as you did it.
Generally AT is quite conservative and will only push you as far and as fast as it determines you are able to handle. If your target race/event is six months away why even rush to get super fit now? Also one of the aims of AT is better compliance to the plan in terms of fewer skipped or failed workouts - when I look at my plan pretty well all the workouts in the next three months are Achievable or Productive when compared to my current PLs. There are no Stretch or Breakthrough workouts.
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Just a quick question about AT. In my build program I am prescribed the following anaerobic workouts:
- week 1 Spanish Needle / Anaerobic 5.3 / Productive workout
- week 2 Gardiner -2 / Anaerobic 5.5 / Stretch workout
- week 3 Bear Run / Anaerobic 5.0 / Productive workout
My current PL for anaerobic is 4.4. So I understand the first productive workout (or maybe this should be a stretch workout) . I don’t understand the second stretch workout (only a 0.2 progression) and I don’t understand the third workout as a productive workout (I think it should be achievable).
Or am I missing something?
There’s roughly a 1.0 band for each of the Achievable/Productive/Stretch levels so with a current PL of 4.4, Productive goes from 4.4 to 5.3 and Stretch from 5.4 to 6.3. So your current boundary between Productive and Stretch sits directly between the first two workouts.
There’s got to be a line somewhere so that the code can determine which Difficulty level to display for you (all those show Breakthrough for me as I’ve done no anaerobic workouts), so it’s almost pot luck as to what is displayed. From this support article - https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404984267291-Difficulty-Levels Achievable is at or below your current level.
And just to add to bobws input. The designation of a workout as achievable, productive or stretch is based on your current PL, not what you will be at after completing workouts between now and then.
If you complete Gardiner -2 in your second week Bear Run will indeed show up as an achievable workout. You can also expect one or more of these workouts to change based on AT adaption and how you perform earlier workouts.
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So the productive / achievable / stretch etc. is compared to my current level. That makes sense. Thanks.
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Yes. But you really only need to pay attention to the Difficulty Levels if you are picking your own workouts so you don’t overstretch yourself. Most of the time AT will hand you a Productive workout, a Stretch workout is most likely to be right at the boundary of Productive/Stretch as in your case.
Once you’ve done a workout its Difficulty Level will be shown in the info block for that workout in your Calendar, like this:
Then my next VO2max workout ended up like this:
So virtually the same Difficulty Level and IF as the first but because I’d already made the jump to the mid 5s AT reclassified it as Achievable. If I hadn’t done Cazadero the previous week so it would have been a Breakthrough.
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I discovered that if a workout is labeled as “breakthrough”, you should not automatically expect you will nail the workout. Slightly humbled, but a bit wiser now. I’ll stick to “productive” maybe a “stretch” workout for the time being with my VO2 workouts.
I am impressed with the intelligence of the app.
I take it you’ve read the AT blog How to Use Adaptive Training - TrainerRoad Blog. The difficulty levels are explained well there 