Sounds like a great feature. I love the way the algorithm adapts my workouts to keep them relevant to my fitness and training levels. This feels like a natural progression and a good way to further refine and fine tune my workout recommendations.
I can’t see myself ever using the manual FTP update and don’t really care how often the auto update runs. I’m not even too interested in what the AI thinks my FTP is. I’m not a competitive rider. The key things for me are that the workouts feel like they are the right intensity and I have some sense of how my workload is varying over time. My PLs and FTP are a proxy for this as is the shape and size of the blue blocks. It’s all useful feedback but not more important than how I feel when I get off my bike.
Realistically if occassional workouts feel too easy or hard I would just bump the intensity by a few percent. If it was happening all the time I’d rather do a new ramp test to take it out of the algorithms hands.
Auto makes the most sense for my training. FTP does not stay stagnent and the Ramp test are just not fun. The Ramp Test day could be used for a better training opportunity. I personally
Believe my strongest efforts are when challenged
To push through longer and above theeshhold intervals.
My newbie feedback: When I started TR a few weeks ago, I had been doing outdoor rides and occasional steady state intervals with my FTP set at 175 (a friend’s guess based on our rides together). TR uploaded my data and set my FTP to 72. I did a ramp test and it put me at 159, which seems about right.
All this to say: I am all for AI, but if I feel it is 80-100 watts off (or even, let’s say, 15-20 watts off), I want the ability to double check it somehow without contacting support or just guessing what my FTP really should be.
I thought the questions in the initial post were all about whether to have manual at all or just auto, so I gave my anecdote in favor of keeping manual as a failsafe. If AI sets my FTP to less than half what it should be, I don’t particularly want to do a few workouts and just hope it will catch up. My 2 cents.
@Nate_Pearson Speaking of outside training. How close is TR to having ALL outside rides be accounted for regarding Progression Levels, FTP increase/decreases, etc? This is the time of year many of us do most of our riding outdoors, so should be a high priority imo.
AI FTP needs something like 12 rides with power before it can give you a good estimate. Did you have that when you started with TR? (When I started, long before AT and AI FTP, it gave me an estimate of 65 or something. I think the vanilla, non-AI FTP starting points are pretty conservative.)
PLs allow for the small variations in your performance in each zone.
And using a power curve only gets you so far, as it doesn’t address things like repeatability.
You can have an FTP at 300 but only be able to hold it for 40 minutes but you might be able to hold it for 70 minutes. PLs allow us to work you up to those longer durations where appropriate.
This is how AI FTP Detection works! It looks at where you are in your training plan to give you the detection at the right time.
Athletes plateauing has to do with a ton of variables. History, genetics, life stress, too much volume, too little volume, motivation, nutrition, sleep, other workouts, recovery, and a bunch more things.
We have a few blog articles about what to do if you’re plateauing and I suggest you read that. I don’t think we can solve that with just PLs or changing your FTP.
This is what happens. AI FTP Detection doesn’t look at planned work at all, and only has what was actually performed as an input.
The “smart” feature of this is that we will try to work you farther through your PLs in certain phases if your FTP hasn’t changed that much. If it’s a big change we’ll still let you know.
This is because we believe you’ll get greater benefit in your racing if you finish specialty with the harder 7/8/9 progression level workouts rather than raising your FTP and doing the 2/3/4 progression level workouts.
For steady state, this makes perfect sense because you want to be able to hold those longer intervals.
But even for the other specialty phases like crits and cross, those 7/8/9 PLs get you deep into repeatability and the type of stress you’re going to experience on race day.
As we’ve said on the podcast many times, race performance is more than FTP.
AI FTP DETECTION TAKES INTO ACCOUNT ALL OF YOUR RIDES! Inside and Outside. Structured or Unstructured. TR or Zwift or Garmin or Strava or anything else as long as we get the file.
Even those with just a HR monitor, but it’s best to have a power meter on them.
Outside rides do not impact PLs yet, but we’re working on that and we’re in the validation phase of that project.
After reading this whole thread, I’m really disappointed with the fact that AI-FTP detection only takes structured TrainerRoad workouts into account. I don’t think y’all can really consider this to be a fully functional feature until it looks at outdoor rides, Zwift races, etc. Really, it should be able to work with any ride that has power data associated with it!
J/k. Keep up the good work!
