Yes, I can see that. I guess what I’m interested in–the spirit of my question–is what you’re seeing in terms of trust and adherence, which are coaching issues. I can see there’s a software bug, but I’m wondering how people are responding to this bug in training, other than just coming here and griping!
Glad it’s working for you! What is EA?
‘EA’ - guessing they were referring to Energy Availability model/concept ?
Just to add, there’s a calculator here with more info on the EA stuff
I don’t post much on any public forum, but thought it would be useful to add my experience. I posted a while back about an issue with my numbers being lower in TR versus what I see in my Garmin and turns out there was an actual issue, that seemed to have been fixed.
Like everyone else, my AIFPT dropped initially for the new system and then it’s been steadily increasing again. With the new system, I very rarely fail workouts so that’s expected. However, this last 3 weeks, even though I’ve only failed one workout and moved it to another day because I wanted to try it again and was able to complete it the second time. However, after that my predicted FTP has been steadily dropping even though I’m completing the workouts. Now there’s only one more day left in the cycle and it’s 4% lower than when I started which I know is wrong.
I understand there’s a bug with outside rides and since I ride outside 95% of the time, that I would experience it, but I didn’t expect it to reduce the AIFTP number to lower than when I started this 3-week cycle.
I’m fine with ignoring the number, but my concern is my workouts will start getting too easy since I am definitely progressing.
Yes sorry, energy availability. It’s been really interesting. Originally when I was trying to drop weight I fell into the simple deficit camp and quickly got into a hole. Then I started using the energy availability model and the perodising carbs thinking of Sam Impey and the weight continued to drop and my ability to hit the workouts consistently and within the predicted difficulty just happened.
thanks for the reply, Eddie.
completely get your point with regards the consistency and following a plan, unfortunately I’m a shift worker and it’s not a luxury i always have. As such, I have to bend the structure to my availability and to my capabilities on a day. I’ve used the same approach with TR plans for a decade and had reasonable results. Ironically despite it not being the idea, AIFTP means I can tweak my plan and see what gets the best result. May be it’s not what is best but realistically it’s the approach I have to take.
Another side is before I started to experiment, I experienced a number of poor workout suggestions and a much higher number of failures than normal due to a massive bump on my initial AIFTP and since then have been seeing reductions (up until the last prediction), and I’ve not seen much, if any, progression since the start of using it (my power curve reflected this until very recently) so I didn’t really I was risking much by experimenting!
I get the feeling with out a vast amount more data (sleep, nutrition, hr, detailed pre workout surveys etc) AI in my case will always be fighting a losing battle, my perceived exertion on a day between or after nights is a shot in the dark, could be high or low and my schedule changes week in week out.
I’m very much the same in regard to “gaming the system”
I’m a robot when it comes to training, won’t miss or change a workout unless I’m dead!
But… what I have done is perhaps “under rated” the workout when it comes to the end of workout survey - what I mean is when it’s says that I was meant to find the work out “easy” then I would mark it as easy - despite finding it slight more difficult than easy, why? Because when you game the system it makes the FTP higher and that’s hat we want!
Well up to the point where you fail the next workout!
Since the introduction of AI FTP I’ve seen a 34w increase in FTP - which is my highest ever and at 60 years old, so I’m sort of happy but could I hold it for an hour - not a chance!
Has it made me faster - yes I think so, can I maintain this increase it for a prolonged period probably not!
I’ve gone all in with the AI and will see how it pans out over the next few months!
I’m with you. I have been with TR for many years, trusted the team with all their changes, but I have a distinct lack of trust in the new AI system.
I’m not anti-AI, but why should I need to invest time I don’t have to get a training product I pay for to work in the way I want it to?
For better or worse, I’m coming back from 6 months off training due to a spine injury, so any training is better than none. But at some point I will care about getting that training right, and I’m hoping that the powers that be have figured it out by then, because I don’t have the mental bandwidth to engineer my own training. If I did, I wouldn’t need TR in the first place.
I’m with you. I have been with TR for many years, trusted the team with all their changes, but I have a distinct lack of trust in the new AI system.
I did a detection this morning. Down 4.1%. New prediction is +15.6 percent. Yeah, you can say I’ve lost trust in the system.
I should also note, that the fatigue system seems very broken and totally doesn’t understand multisport athletes.
TR seems to think if I go for even the easiest run I need a week off. I’ve had to turn off the feature because it was trashing my training.
I’m also not particularly convinced that it understands the needs of masters athletes very well.
i agree with this. Especially as compared to a custom Masters multisport plan. There is incongruent messaging from TR and since AI does not adapt runs/swims it is, to me, an incomplete tool at present. Once i have to adapt the training myself i’m right back to the structured plans prior to the AI rollout. I don’t renew until the end of the year so i’m watching for development until then.
I have ditched Trainerroad for now since at this time of year I do almost all my training outdoors …I may return in september/october depending on how things are shaping up, maybe the mad prediction stuff will have stabilised by then.
I try and adhere to the prescribed plan and my experience has been very positive. I got an initial drop on my FTP when the FTP calculation change was introduced (~20W). However, despite my initial disappointment, the workouts since have been so much better. Before, I never really used to progress through progression levels. When the next increase in FTP was calculated, the progression levels decreased, meaning I didn’t get to ride workouts with higher progression levels.
I have even now changed my training approach to “demanding” as I wanted a more aggressive ramp on the workout duration and number of workout days. It’s working really well, as long as I focus on sleep and eating! Before the latest updates, I felt a bit trapped in my prescribed 3 - 4 days of TR workouts a week with yellow and red days appearing on my calendar, putting me off from adding days or duration. I have found that yellow and red days usually need to be observed.
I haven’t experimented with the system massively. Occasionally life happens and I get to see what the FTP impact is when I can’t complete a workout due to illness or travel. I haven’t needed to experiment with feedback surveys as sometimes workouts are harder than predicted, and I get to see the new FTP decline. I just want TR to take the hassle out of training and give me a workout with highest probability of steady progression over the long term. For me, it works well.
Hope this helps.
Are you saying that in the new model your PLs stay high after a new monthly AIFTP detection? If so, that’s awesome, but that’s also not how TR say it’s supposed to work.
I have zero trust left and will be cancelling. The system is trying to set my FTP to 277 Watts despite the fact I’ve been getting stronger for months (for example I did threshold workout on Sunday at 285 Watts with zero aerobic decoupling (to if my new self selected 300 Watt FTP fit). The FTP detect is now completely broken for me and my requests for assistance have been met with vacuous assurances the system to figure it out. That was well over a month ago…
I was recommending Trainerroad strongly before this latest update.
The decrease seems to be small for a modest 1-5% increase in FTP. It often used to feel like a monthly reset outside of specialty phase. It might be the case that as FTP is now a level ~3 threshold, that the other progression levels are still scaling, and the monthly progression level reset will return! Either way, it’s been really cool to do some higher sweet-spot workouts as I often felt like I was doing harder low progression level workouts every-time my FTP increased.
Totally. I purposely dropped my FTP a while back to get longer intervals. I just got excited when you said it might be possible to have the AI actually prescribe those more.
What was the workout? Was it inside or outside? Got a screenshot of the workout?
I’d be happy to look at this. Let me know which workout you’re talking about and I’ll take a closer look.
Let me know if we can discuss what’s going on here, or if you’d rather chat via DM or support ticket.
I’m sure we can figure something out. 