Adaptive training vs. indivdual training

Training
1

Hi there,
I’ve abandoned Trainerroad for a while now because it is (was?) just too inflexible according to my needs. I’m not sure if this is still the case when the new adaptive training is made available for the crowd, though.

So I’ve some questions and I hope that somebody is able to answer them:

There’s one group ride per week with various intensities, ranging from flat to quite hilly (I live in an area of mid-range mountains), from slow to quite fast. Distance is from 75 to 90 kilometres. Then I do a longer ride of 100 - 140 km on the weekends. In between there’re two interval sessions.

Now, is the Adaptive Training able to take that into account when it provides me with a training plan? When I’m not completely wrong, the base plans are still the same, which means that you have to decide how much time one can spend on his / her training and that’s it. When I’d choose low volume base training with three interval sessions per week this would already be a bit too much during summer. Two interval sessions (as suggested by lots of coaches, by the way - three interval sessions should be an exception because it’s too demanding) plus one group ride plus one longer ride is my optimal training. Is this Adaptive Training smart enough to take this into account?
Thanks.

2

Perhaps take a look at the experimental Polarized plans instead. They have 1-2 interval sessions and 2 aerobic rides.

3

Adaptive Training does not do what you tell it to do. It responds to your success or failures in training, and adjusts the following workouts accordingly.

Would that work around your schedule? Probably.

4

Right now it doesn’t directly deal with your situation. But does somewhat deal with it indirectly insofar as if those group rides and long rides mean that you’re progressing faster or slower in your intervals sessions then AT will help deal with that by increasing or decreasing the rate of progression in those rides.

TR have said they are working on AT being able to analyse unstructured rides and take them into account. I.e. If your group ride includes a bunch of short hills done at VO2 Max, then AT might decide you no longer need the scheduled VO2 session that week.

Other thing you might find helpful is Train Now. Which offers tailored recommendations for those 2 interval sessions based on what you’ve been doing and how long you have available.

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5

Happy to be corrected, but I don’t think that’s quite right today, not likely in the nearer future when it comes to people following a plan…

AT currently doesn’t alter the shape of your plan, or the type of workouts scheduled, only the difficulty level (“Workout Level”) of those scheduled workouts. And, even once AT begins to properly assess outside rides, I don’t think this aspect will change at least in the nearer term.

If someone’s regular group ride included a bunch of of short VO2max rides, such that they improved at those types of efforts, AT would pick up on that [Today: via them successfully completing future VO2max workouts and their corresponding survey responses; OR, in the near future (hopefully!): via analysing those outdoor efforts and directly raising Progression Levels] and then serve them up more difficult versions (higher Workout Levels) of such workouts in the future.

I suspect (could be wrong!) we are quite a long way off AT manipulating the shape of scheduled plans on the fly, ie. fully dynamic plans where AT changes Tuesday’s scheduled VO2max w/o to an Endurance w/o, and Thurday’s from Threshold to Sweetspot etc, etc. because it sees you’ve already done that work this week.

I think the aspect of new functionality that does do something along the lines you describe is TrainNow, which will see that someone’s done a hard ride/rides previously and then suggest an easier (endurance) ride next, but that’s largely aimed at people who aren’t following a plan.

6

Say you normally ride 7 hours per week. Choose a low volume plan of your liking, schedule them for the weekdays. The weekend is completely free and yours to plan.

This is what I do and I’m very happy with it. I ride less hours per week than I used to without indoor training but I’m faster and fitter.

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7

Yup, I did say TR were working on this, not that it was a current feature

8

Yup, I did say TR were working on this, not that it was a current feature

Fair enough! Pure guesswork by me but my finger in the air is that fully dynamic plans would be a way down the line. :man_shrugging:

9

With two group rides per week, you might look at those as your races. Being in “race” season, you probably don’t want to be going through build progressions and tiring yourself out. At most, I’d do one interval session per week and then in the fall plan your base, build, race for next year.

If you have a A event in August then you could make a plan to peak for that.

10

I’ve been on a 3 session LV plan for sometime now, I was doing one race a week, so simply just did two of the 3 TR sessions per week.

11

As already said above, AT appears simply to ‘tweak’ workout suggestions based on how well you completed (or didnt…) previous sessions in the last few days. It certainly doesn’t remove workouts or change them to recovery sessions because you added in a group ride and had an extra session of intensity in a week that wasn’t in the TR plan.

What would be great would be that you could simply say you want a plan with only 1 or 2 interval days a week and have Plan Builder create something that AT could then modify after looking at your other rides…in other words, exactly what coaches do :rofl: :rofl:

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12

TR’s (AT’s) capabilities may(/will) be a lot different - much more comprehensive - a number of years down the line, but presumably it’s going take some time (pick a number!) for the incremental improvements they develop to compound and get the product to that point…

The current beta is just initial baby steps on a longer journey.

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