I was always a big advocate of a more is more training approach and always added as much zone 2 as I had time for to every ride. I was averaging 10-12 hours a week but it seems the ai is a big advocate of a less is more approach and I’m now averaging about 8 hours a week but I’m getting faster and stronger.
Im on a masters plan but my weekly intensity has increased despite my TSS reducing significantly. I am getting faster but I don’t feel as fatigued so Trainerroad is definitely working.
I’m trusting the process and following the recommendations of the system despite it not always aligning to my historic expectations of effective training.
I must admit that it can be disconcerting to see the aiftp prediction bounce around through a month of training but it’s not as disappointing as the old system where I would bury myself for a month only for my ftp to remain exactly the same.
My training approach is now simply follow the plan, do the work, get faster, sense check & repeat.
I think there are likely a large majority of us following your approach, but because we aren’t all opening threads to talk about it, the forum makes it look like there are far more users who are disappointed. Then the “disappointed” threads get a bunch of replies trying to help and/or voicing agreement, and it skews the picture even further.
If I’m being honest, it also feels like there are some agitators coming in to the forum to try to make it look even worse. It’s easy to forget about the silent majority, creating a false consensus effect.
52 year old who has been using structured training for over 25 years. That was me with the Cyclists Training Bible and spreadsheets way back in the day.
TR user around 2017 or so, and then thought I could do better on my own. Especially during Covid, I fell into the trap of more is more. Have been doing like 12k in mileage per year since then.
So instead of 10 hour weeks, I was always pushing for closer to 15. And a lot of that was Z2 with some medium hard intervals mixed in.
Looking back, I was never faster than when I did less hours but kept the hard rides hard or V hard in TR terms, and the rest of my week easy. And not overdoing the hours to make sure I can hit the intervals hard.
Signed up for TR again in January to get into the Beta group and your experience matches mine. Yes, my current AIFTP is higher than what I would say it is by a 20 min test. And my projection is a number that I haven’t hit since 2017 when I was almost 10 years younger.
But I am getting faster. The difference I see when I compare myself to other users and their complaints. I don’t care what the numbers say as long as it is providing good workouts. I am very very very compliant. That is always my strength. I don’t change my schedule around. I don’t change the workouts. I just do what it gives me.
Still to early to tell long term, but I haven’t felt this good in years. I think I almost forgot how a really hard workout should really feel. My working theory is that many people are like me and bought into too much volume, and they aren’t absolutely nailing hard workouts. And that is impacting their results. Let’s face it, most people don’t need 15+ hours for amateur distance races.
I am 65 and a Masters Road/Crit Racer. I’ve had my CTL up around 100 for the last couple of years and have been really fit but not got the race results I hope for.
I’ve been following TR Plan(s) for a few months now and my CTL has slumped but I’m nailing my hard workouts and I will be very interested to see how I perform once I get back outside again - and then racing.
I don’t think people are disappointed so much as no one really fully understands what is happening when things change or why the results are the way they are. For example, giving a totally different workout or FTP increase/decrease based solely on the RPE survey feels really weird and counter-intuitive to how they say the new system works (“It’s watts and HR”). People just want to understand.
I think the watts and HR are used to determine your FTP TODAY, while RPE is mostly used to determine fatigue, which will influence the FUTURE workouts you get and thus what FUTURE FTP you will have.
That makes sense to me and is basically what a good coach does (except they’re not trying to estimate your FTP every day).
but they DON’T say it’s only watts and HR. They say RPE is part of it. They also don’t say it’s based SOLEY on RPE. It’s Watts, HR, and RPE. They’ve said that, but even if they hadn’t, it’s pretty clear from all of the examples we keep seeing.
I believe Watts and HR are the variables to predict future RPE. The RPE is what is predicted by the model to serve up the workouts. Then the model of you is adjusted based on how you rate the workout, which changes future workouts and that causes the prediction to change.
So since the model is trying to predict RPE, it makes sense that how we rate workouts has a big influence.
Sure. And I want to understand the balance. Sometimes, I might rate something “Hard”, but the only way to tell the system why I rated it so is I fail the workout. For something with outsized influence on the training, that might need to be included.
If I take a whole week off, when I come back, I KNOW I’m going to struggle in the first workout. But then it changes a whole week or more because of that when it’s not necessary. Then I end up having to adjust the workout manually and then rate it appropriately because it took me 1 or 2 workouts to tell my body that it can’t assume we’re never working out again and to get itself sorted out.
A lot of what you say makes perfect sense…. I’m just not sure what it is about TR that stops you doing 12-14 hours a week? Dynamic endurance lets you work up to 5hr endurance rides?
Are you worried that it won’t do that because you believe it is too concerned with short term short-duration gains?
I wish this issue was a concern to me - I’d love to have time to train more than I do!
The good thing about TR is that there’s lots of inbuilt flexibility to do things your own way if that’s what someone prefers. For those wanting greater volume, new features in this release support people doing that much better than previously (an old TR weakness, now addressed), but if that’s still insufficient user can either tweak plans or plan their own blocks, by leveraging TR AI workouts or by selecting regular (pinned) workouts if they want ultimate control.
For those with lots of training experience and strong self-knowledge who wish to do things in a specific way that they think is optimal for them, they should still be able to do that, as well as if not more easily than they could previously. Even in these cases, it’s possible that the ML model (today, or in the future) might have insights that could move the dial more effectively than manual selection, but for those that don’t trust that line of thinking, or wish to risk that route, then they can still do their own thing as described above.
Suppose it depends on how much easier its making your hard days but that makes sense to me in general.
Volume and intensity is a balance - if you have been prescribed workouts based on lower volume but then add in volume I would expect the intensity to be reduced.
So you can add in volume to which could improve overall fitness faster but the rate of increase in FTP might be slower.
But I suppose a possible issue is that in this new system “reducing intensity” can be the same as “reducing FTP setting” - but increasing the FTP setting is the number we are encouraged to chase.
TL;DR You add in volume - your predicted FTP reduces - but that isn’t the whole story.
I was going to say something similar. Also, I think “punishing” is definitely the wrong word when we all know exactly why it’s doing it. If you intentionally use a program that has a methodology baked in when you don’t like that methodology, you have to accept that you’re not going to like the results and it’s your fault, not the AI’s.
If users don’t like it, they can turn off Fatigue Detection, pin workouts, change to a more aggressive approach, swap in different workouts, build their own plan, etc. If anything, when users feel like the AI is forcing them to go too easy, intentionally not using these methods is you punishing yourself.
What was your actual training history for the 2 months before signing up with TR? It would also help if you could post screen shots of your calendar or link to it.
I’ve noticed it certainly wants to put guardrails in for new users to make sure they don’t burn themselves out. I think it will often ease you into training vs letting you immediately get to the level you want. You may be flagging it’s fatigue detection since it’s lowering levels.
There was another user posting similar issues to you and he was riding hard 4-5 days a week, riding seven days a week, and ignoring his rest week. You may be able to do that for 6 weeks but it will catch up.
I’m with you there mate, I’m a huge advocate of the ole SSB plans. So much so that I sprinkle them in at regular intervals. The AI doesn’t like it but it works for me.
I don’t have the history of doing over 8 hours but the system is telling me that I would improve more if I did more volume - it’s telling me I should be doing nearer 10 but I only have time for 7.
Are you sure you didn’t accidentally place any restrictions on your training time when you created your plan?
What happens if you press the “check volume” button?
Are you on a SS plan or a self created one? If not, that’s definitely worth a shot rather than using the Custom AI plan since it’s not going to ever just give you a ton of SS and that’s what you want. Make sure you turn off the Fatigue and AI and pin all the workouts.
In the custom AI plan, it’s nerfing your hard days because the extra work you’re doing prior to the assigned workouts is causing it to make your hard days easier. It’s taught to make your hard days hard and your easy days easy. You keep making your easy days harder, so it’s being forced (by you) to pull the lever and make your hard days easier. I get you don’t like this training style (philosophy), so the simple solution there is to go back to #1.
