Sorry for another AI ftp post. Overall, it’s not what I thought it would be and I’m not really sure what the best way forward is at the moment.
Quick back story: TR was essentially my entry into structured training years and years ago. After a few seasons I hit a plateau with it and started using a coach for a few years. Going into this year I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to commit my training towards and also wanted to save a bit of money so I hit pause on the coaching and decided to come back to TR after reading about the new features that they were going to be rolling out.
On to the now. I did my own block of low cadence torque intervals leading into the ai features being rolled out. Then I used the app to make a plan to train up to the Tulsa Tough crits in June. Right away the ai ftp said 299. My all time best ftp is at or around 300 so I thought this was a little odd coming out of an easy December and one block of torque intervals. Whatever, let’s give it a try. Did the first 28 days of sweet spot and over/unders and was able to do all the workouts. Got the next ai ftp detection today and now it says 314, and in March it says my ai ftp will increase to 345 (I know this will go down somewhat but still that increase is insane). This is where I’m struggling to wrap my head around the ai and if I should go forward with TR.
I don’t want this to sound like a post that’s bashing TR. There are several things I do love about TR (forum, workout library, the ease of use with the app overall). It’s just based the training knowledge from my own experience, this doesn’t seem logical. I see my options as
1)try to push through the ever increasing numbers to see what the AI does
2)manually drop the ai ftp number to something more realistic (will this screw up the functionality in any way?)
3)make my own plan/TR alternative
I’d appreciate any feedback because at the moment I’m unsure of continuing with the TR in its current form with the way the ai is prescribing training. The way these numbers are going up seems to me like a ticket to burnout. Adaptations in endurance sports don’t happen this quick when your outside that beginning gains phase (which is well behind me). I don’t want to be in a situation where the numbers aren’t sustainable and it becomes a detriment to outdoor rides and races.
My general feeling is that if you can do the workouts, and feel like you’re making progress, everything is good. FTP is really just a metric being used to select the workouts, but how you feel is what’s real. At some level, it’s sort of like going to the climbing gym: the rating of the climb doesn’t matter as much as whether you can climb it, or not.
I would go with 1). Don’t obsess over the AI “FTP” prediction. If you’re going to compare something to previous years – take a look at your power records instead.
will make your workouts too easy.
depends on how good you are at rolling your own plan.
Based on what you said, it sounds like you’re killing it.
28 days of workouts that you were able to complete, and a 15 watt ftp increase! I wouldn’t touch a thing haha. Keep doing what you’re doing.
The next prediction is probably a bit optimistic. I’m speculating that this is a byproduct of the simulation assuming the most likely answer for every survey response, which is not realistic. So hopefully TR can improve that. But the important thing, as others have mentioned, is that workout difficulty is appropriate (easy for easy days, challenging but doable for hard days), and that the structure (rest/recovery days, overall volume, fueling, deload weeks, block periodization, etc) supports consistent progress. If you have those two things, it should be sustainable.
And then in terms of comparing to previous years, use the power records chart instead of FTP to get a more apples to apples comparison.
I don’t really obsess over my ftp and what not, and don’t really even bother to look at it in the app. I’m pretty much just looking at the calendar for my workouts, making tweaks etc.
It becomes a consideration though when the workouts are still prescribed in percentages based up this AI ftp. When it keeps shooting up this fast, it will hit a point that’s no longer sustainable. I’ve been training on the bike for almost a decade now, and now at age 34 my (ai)ftp is going from 299 to 345 ish in three months? That’s outlandish in that short of time. The initial 299 wasn’t out of the question as I was around 300 last year during race season but these other numbers don’t make sense. They should’ve called this number something else since it doesn’t actually correlate with the traditional understanding of ftp, but still for people who have years and years of training history, your training numbers don’t rise this fast in that short of a span.
Eh, I don’t necessarily find that to to be a good analogy. In my case the climbing gym isn’t keeping track of your progress and changing the climbing walls every 28 days, including rasing the difficulty of the easy climbing walls that I’d use on a day that I was tired and needed an easy day.
The workouts that the ai give me are still based on percentages of this AI ftp to some degree. My active recovery days aren’t active recovery anymore. My zone 2 days are now into tempo, etc. I get that there is a disconnect with AI ftp and traditional ftp, but still training numbers don’t go up this quickly in this short of time with people who already have a somewhat extensive training history.
I guess two things here: first, at today’s value of 314, how do the upcoming workouts look? Are you willing to try them or does that already look insane?
Then assuming you do go ahead, I wouldn’t worry too much about the 345 estimate until/unless it happens. It’s 28 days out and will depend entirely on how this upcoming block of training goes. If it doesn’t go well, the estimate may well plateau or go to a decrease. If it does go well, ask the same question in 28 days time.
I guess it just depends how things look right now and whether you’re OK to go ahead and try 314 or not.
I understood the point you were making, I just don’t think going to a climbing gym and endurance sports training are very similar. Sorry
I’m not just worried about attempting and completing the 2-3 hard workouts in the weekly routine. I’m worried about these large “ftp” jumps raising everything across the board too fast making the easy days into hard days and causing overreaching and burying me in fatigue. In my experience at this point in my cycling training adaptations this large don’t happen this quickly. For some users the AI might be making the training unsustainable.
I am in a similar situation. I was getting what i thought was crazy high predicted FTP, i did the training and got through pretty much all the workouts.
IMO, the new FTP number is borderline meaningless, but the workouts they give you are more or less appropriate and i am overall satisfied with the plan they have me on.
However, for me, this new AI is NOT any better than whatever they have been doing over the past few years. I dont think the current workouts i am served are any better than what they were years ago.
Agreed. Like mad your ftp is going up too fast? Mine went down and I still failed a workout or two. Would you rather that? (I’m smiling and teasing a bit when I say this)
Joe
Ps my workouts lately have been good no complaints
Your choice but I would just stick to the plan. Put your RPE as ridden. I am on the 3rd iteration. I too entered the beta with numbers that matched my highest FTP. Did the WOs. Another projected increase, after which I found too hard. It then dropped my FTP back downwards. It is now at what I consider very close to actual. So, it is still adjusting. From my trying to understand, the new version is greatly affected by its calculated tiredness (spot on for myself). I do not know how it determines this. In short, keep matching forward.
I might be misunderstanding you - but I don’t think this is right. The workout selection is blind to you FTP, just picks workouts based on wattages it thinks you can put out. The workout is presented to you as a percentage of FTP for you understanding but not selected this way.
It may be super helpful to read these posts by Nate to clear out some of your concerns and understand how we’re recommending workouts based on the new AI FTP Detection:
As I said, you missed the point. I’m not comparing climbing and cycling. I’m comparing two different things that have somewhat arbitrary measurements, and pointing out that the rating isn’t as critical as whether the activity is providing the stimulus you need to improve.
Again, I got your point. I don’t think the numerical difficulty of a climb at a climbing gym and the numerical difficulty of a TR workout is relevant to my main overall concern which is the progressive overload becoming too difficult over time. I’m worried about this AI prescribing workouts where the workout zones are skewed up (based on an inflated AI ftp number) and putting the athlete (me in this case) in state of overreaching and excess fatigue before my race season even starts.
If you think I missed your point then fine, please stop commenting on my post.
I dunno I looked ahead at a threshold workout it has for me next week right now and it’s putting the threshold sections at 95% of this 314 “ftp”. I’m worried about numbers in my workouts being skewed too far up. I can do it for a little while but how long till this craters the rider and puts them in a state of overreaching and excess fatigue.
The workouts aren’t prescribed in percentages based on ftp. They have said on the podcast that the ai doesn’t look at ftp when selecting workouts but rather just goes off your training history and the ML to select what it thinks will give you the best training stimulus.
It still feels like you are getting ahead of yourself. If you have HR and accurately rate the RPE at the end - then this will be a pretty good gauge of whether the workout is too hard (or you will simply fail the workout) - in either case if it is too hard then it will get toned down.
As it gets more data the prediction will get more accurate and may come down quite a bit. Or you may surprise yourself and complete every workout and do better than expected. In either case, it seems better to just try it and see how it goes
