ADDRESSED: Mounting Frustration with the AI Update

[smartino8591]

I am experiencing more and more frustration with my workouts since the Trainerroad AI update last month.

Prior to the update, I felt like I was absolutely rolling with Trainerroad. My assigned workouts felt challenging, but doable. My FTP was increasing slowly but steadily. I achieved my highest FTP of all time at 316 watts, based on the old FTP detection feature. I was hitting power PR’s during threshold workouts that felt hard or very hard. I fully expected to hit my long-time goal of a 320 watt FTP in just over one week when TR released the AI update. My FTP dropped back down to 309.

This was frustrating, but I understand it is a different benchmarking number. If I understand correctly, the old FTP tool estimated the result of a ramp test, where as the new AI FTP number estimiates something different, that is more functional. In reading TR approved forum posts and listening to the Podcast, my understanding is that generally, those with an Threshold workout level above level 3, would see an increase in FTP, where as those with a threshold level below a 3 would see a decrease in FTP. My threshold level was at a 3.7 with a 316 watt FTP, but it decreased to 309. Not exactly in line with the messaging, but it wasn’t a huge swing and I was right around a level 3 so whatever. I figured I would just move past it and keep training to get back to that 320 number (which I guess is a different level of fitness than what the old 320 number would have represented).

Unfortunately, the next few threshold workouts I was assigned post-update didn’t make any sense. The actual power and the workout levels both felt way too low, and the workouts, which I did as assigned, felt easy. They weren’t really in line with what I had been doing previously, but I stuck with it. Things eventually picked back up, so I figured maybe the new AI needed some time to adjust. Fast forward to today, my first day coming off of a de-load week. The first workout I was assigned coming back off the de-load was quite literally, by the numbers, the hardest VO2 workout I have ever attempted. In the past, the first workout I’ve been assigned coming off of a de-load has always been a step back. It’s been a workout with a workout level that I had been able to complete maybe a week before the de-load. An “Achievable” workout using the old terms.

Well, unsurprisingly, I failed that VO2 workout. I then noticed the “workout levels” are all over the place. When I started this VO2 workout, it was a level 7. Then, after I failed, it was listed as a 5.4. Now I have the same exact workout on my schedule a week from today and it is listed as a 6.7. Is that supposed to happen?

I was doing so well before, and since the update I’ve been assigned at least 3 workouts that have felt like a complete waste of time - either way too easy or in this latest case, way too hard. It felt like I was going into this racing season stronger and more confident than ever, and now I am second guessing all of my training. My FTP is now a number that is barely any higher than what it was last year despite the fact that I have been incredibly consistent and doing everything TR has assigned. I have been skipping all of the fun group and team rides that all of my teammates and friends are doing to adhere to the TR plan, and now it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under me. I think the combination of randomly lowering my FTP, being assigned workouts that make no sense, workout levels that change randomly, and an “AI FTP Prediction” that is absolutely all over the place, are really starting to wear on me. I really hope the TR team has some messaging coming down on what is going on with this stuff. The system before was easy to use and easy to digest. Whatever is going on with these new features is very confusing, and very frustrating to deal with. Especially with the race season coming up in just a few weeks.

[Joe]

I like where they are going with the update but my intense days have been very hard, all out, and one fail so, for me, it’s been less pleasant than before. I found my predicted ftp went up more on balanced than the higher options so that was neat. But the workouts are killing me atm. Hoping it adaptive trains!

Joe

[Helvellyn]

@smartino8591

Well, unsurprisingly, I failed that VO2 workout. I then noticed the “workout levels” are all over the place. When I started this VO2 workout, it was a level 7. Then, after I failed, it was listed as a 5.4. Now I have the same exact workout on my schedule a week from today and it is listed as a 6.7. Is that supposed to happen?

Blue Top is a 7.0. The 5.4 is the credit you get for completing as much of it is as you were able. The workout scheduled for next week is Diamond Valley Road Race + 3 at 6.7.

Your last completed VO2 Max workout was a 6.5 that you rated Hard, so Blue Top at 7.0 seems like a sensible place to put you. Maybe the different style of workout, going from on-offs to race sim, caught you off guard?

[adski]

Wow, that sounds like it’s had a big impact, sorry to hear.

The level of investment you’ve made is substantial; notwithstanding the commitment to choosing TR over the social benefits of group rides. That is a choice i rarely make, so was not reeling as you seem to be from my FTP re-baseline dropping 20 watts. Trying to understand, I concluded it was social engineering for users with few recent indoor workouts; as I do barely any; the system doesn’t have much recent data to trust. So TR gets my attention by withholding FTP (just as poor Buster Bluth from Arrested Development suffers from withheld affection from his self-centred mother). But then the carrot: TR magically promises to return me to my “acknowledged everywhere else” FTP with an 11% increase if i just do a month of TR workouts!! The backflip seems unnecessary and disengenous, and we are all trying to understand our individual disruptions in our own way.

It sounds like your situation is one where a great deal of motivation comes from FTP. This update certainly seems to have prioritised establishment of a ‘new TR FTP baseline’ over an individual’s existing anchored personal FTP baseline. That is slightly more authoritative as hard earned, years established, and relevant everywhere but TR.

Not well acknowledged is the major (but short term?) disruption to existing users, and yours feels particularly acute. I get it, and feel your pain. I hope this improves for you. Perhaps a nice relaxing ride might help

[Pbase]

I had a similar experience where I felt like I was mentally always rating my VO2/TH on the harder side of the curve, but I’m also coming off a winter with almost none of either, so I think it’s in my head more than my legs. My last VO2 workout was just the right amount of hard. I’ve just been sticking to the plan, accepted the FTP, haven’t changed any workouts, etc., and it seems to be dialing me in really well now. I’m feeling tired this week, and next week is recovery week, so I feel like things are as they should be.

[Caro.Gomez-Villafane]

Hey @smartino8591

I am sorry for the frustration you’re feeling. It’s never a fun feeling.

I did take a look at your Calendar and since your recalibrated AI FTP Detection on Jan 22nd, I would have to agree with @Helvellyn that maybe the style of the workout, or maybe even crept up fatigue caught you off guard?

How were you feeling yesterday coming off your Recovery Week? Recovery Weeks are meant to be very chill weeks, and on this specific one I see you kept your strength training, added a 3 hours on the bike on Saturday and on Monday another strength training. Depending on what you focused on your strength training on Sunday, you’re legs may have gone into Blue Tops tired.

Note: we are, however, digging into your account a bit more with Eddie/team!

[LPlante]

I’m also a little frustrated with how the update impacted my training. When the update was rolled out, I was due for an FTP update from 314 to probably around 319-321. The update set my FTP (I know not really your FTP but whatever) at 332 which is quite the jump and initially predicted I would be able to push this to 342-345, which seemed ridiculous. Fast forward 3 weeks and as I feared the 332 number is just too high for the workouts I’ve been given. Part of this is probably due to me not rating past workout adequately and using Hard instead of Very Hard. But the update seemed to have made all my Endurance workout harder than they should, especially given that they are still based on the 332 number which probably means I’ve been doing way more low tempo than I should prior to hard workouts. So they are obviously manageable but limits how much I’m recovered between hard workouts. I was able to complete one V02 Max workout under the new ftp number because I’m usually better at managing these higher output for short duration but my past 2 threshold workout were simply too hard and had to bail or set the wattage lower. The new predicted FTP now puts me at 326 in a week which probably is more inline with my actual FTP. I felt the progression level were better suited to how my body adapts to training…I’ll give it another month to see how it feels but I’m a little disappointed so far…

[Pbase]

Just lower the slider on the endurance workouts. That will make them less taxing, and likely only minimally impact the predicted FTP.

[Helvellyn]

… and/or just manually choose easier endurance rides if you know or suspect that you need something less taxing.

[Pbase]

I like my easy rides to be easy, so I just lower it overall. It didn’t drop predicted FTP at all. Some people may see a minimal impact, but it’s definitely worth trying to see what happens.

[LPlante]

I get that you can lower intensity for each individual zone but still the only way to actually properly do this right now is to lower the slider completely to the left which essentially makes every endurance workout too easy as apparently balanced is not longer as balanced as it previously was. Looks to me like the system is either trying aggressively to maximize every workout by making them very hard (relative to their zone/time/level) or too easy…Again I don’t expect this to be the same for all users and I can be falling outside of what the model use but for me the older approach was simple and well balanced.

[AldridgePrior]

@LPlante

I get that you can lower intensity for each individual zone but still the only way to actually properly do this right now is to lower the slider completely to the left which essentially makes every endurance workout too easy

Taking what you wrote at face value, then if moving the slider all the way to left (“Conservative”) makes every workout too easy, but Balanced has them too hard, then setting it to the halfway house of Moderate seems a reasonable middle ground to try…

Then, when you come to do an Endurance workout take a glance on the day as to whether what’s being suggested seems like it’s pitched correctly for you (which hopefully it might be), but if not use Alternates to swap to something that is.

[JoPage]

But surely the system should be selecting the right workouts every time so users shouldn’t have to use the slider?

[AldridgePrior]

@JoPage

But surely the system should be selecting the right workouts every time so users shouldn’t have to use the slider

See my post here for my opinions on that:

Trainer Road FTP vs …FTP

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that there’s a cohort of people who, having chosen to use a tool such as TR (but this applies to all software, IME), take the view that they’ve outsourced all responsibility to the software and thus never need to really think or make a decision themselves again… While it’s true that the TR software, like many of the other software tools we use in our day-to-day lives, becomes ever more capable, TR is NOT a full-fat super-premium coaching service, and ev…

The software isn’t perfect, and no software ever will be. If the default behaviour doesn’t work precisely for your requirements, tweak a setting or two or choose an alternate workout etc. It’s been designed with this user flexibility in mind, rather than simply railroading us into only doing workouts the AI prescribes. Like any tool, it’ll probably work better if some pragmatism is applied to its usage.

[LPlante]

I agree with your assessment but my fear is that now the system seems to heavily rely on the user to complete workouts as prescribed for it to properly function with the new FTP philosophy. I think the previous model was more forgiving when users changed their set workouts with another. In all fairness, TR are selling this new models as being able to prescribe the right workout at the right intensity and so far this has not being quite right for me. I think the older model was more flexible and customizable and FTP updates were far more conservative and worked well with workout levels.

[megsambit]

@Caro.Gomez-Villafane

Recovery Weeks are meant to be very chill weeks

I’ve noticed that my recovery weeks now feature typical, more taxing endurance rides near my current endurance level than the very easy endurance rides of the past. I know a number of folks have commented about this in various channels. My understanding was that the newer approach is for recovery weeks to be “endurance” weeks and not truly easy weeks, and this seems to conflict with that.

I know I left my previous recovery week feeling fatigued [though I had reintroduced strength training, and I am sure that contributed], and this week, also recovery, was looking equally taxing to me before I needed to schedule some travel.

I think we could use some additional guidance about how to shape our recovery weeks to work for us.

[Pipipi]

I think I’m getting used to the new update.

There’s always the shock of the new, like breaking in a new pair of shoes that don’t feel comfortable straight away, exactly how long should I give things to bed in before I admit that it really isn’t working.

As someone who’s time crunched, who is definitely not an expert but does has some TR experience, it has been kinda weird. Maybe in the way that I just want a stereo to play music and I can control the volume, and it almost seems like there are all sorts of graphic equalisers that are adapting and changing the treble when I tell the stereo what song I want. No, leave the bass where I had it set thanks, just crank up the volume high. Maybe to 11

[Helvellyn]

@megsambit

I think we could use some additional guidance about how to shape our recovery weeks to work for us.

Recovery weeks are almost as individual as taper weeks. Next time, maybe see how you feel going into the first ride of the week. If you don’t feel like doing much, sub in a recovery ride instead.

Repeat as necessary.

[AldridgePrior]

@LPlante

I agree with your assessment but my fear is that now the system seems to heavily rely on the user to complete workouts as prescribed for it to properly function with the new FTP philosophy.

I’m not sure that’s the case, except for a (very?) small minority of people struggling with the new system, who rightly are trying to find the best way to get the new system to work well for them… If that was not so, then instead of seeing perhaps several dozen (guesstimate?) of people posting about such issues here we’d being seeing hundreds and hundreds, and that’s patently not the case, with a consensus appearing instead to be that the new system works very well for most people, and better than the old TR AT system.

A small but significant proportion of those posting here with issues seem to get their problems resolved once they’ve become more familiar with how the new system works differently to the old. The edge-cases remaining where people mainly appear to be struggling with the new system is where there have been very large changes to someone’s AIFTP Detection, with those who’ve experienced large increases seeming to be the most likely people to still be facing some difficulties, albeit one that can be addressed (at least temporarily) by them manually lowering their number for a while. Hopefully, TR will take a look at these cases to see what can be learned from them and whether the system could be improved to handle these edge cases better.

Only TR have the usage metrics to get a fuller picture, and Jonathan has alluded to that in a post yesterday I think, but they seem pretty/very happy with how its been received in aggregate by the user base. “They would say that wouldn’t they”, but I kind of believe them, because on many levels the new system is excellent.

[spinnnout]

@JoPage

But surely the system should be selecting the right workouts every time so users shouldn’t have to use the slider?

I think in the old system they had to come up with an ‘average person’ and decide what they could sustain, leaving a buffer for life. Then a number of users who either believed they had a great recovery strategy or were data poor in history wanted more lenience in fatigue detection and the slider was born.

Fast forward to now and I’ve seen Nate tell people to “play with the slider and look at the impact on AiFPT prediction” which suggests you are onto something… I won’t be surprised when plan builder starts to make a recommendation for the user (like it does with number of training days per week).