This has been my hypotheses. Anecdotally from folks on the forums, it seems like the users getting too high of an AIFTP, may be experienced riders doing high weekly TSS focusing on longer SS type efforts. Like you said, these people could be falling outside the general population. Nate had mentioned in the beta stage that people getting large AIFTP bumps were very low compared to the population. I have nothing factual to back this up however.
This is interesting… my hypothesis went the other way. Many of the calendars shared seemed to be athletes who are “time crunched” and/or coming off training only a few days a week. Maybe there’s more to it…
I feel like more experienced athletes in general will be closer to their FTP Ceiling, thereby having higher athlete / workout levels because at that point you’re pushing out duration / Time in Zone. Basically - having a longer TTE at your Threshold doesn’t necessarily mean your FTP should be set higher or is higher than it is. TTE at FTP is going to be anywhere from ~40 - ~70 minutes depending on the individual (If you subscribe to that definition.)
If TR is using a certain athlete level / workout level to benchmark AIFTP, even partially, the model would start to fall apart for that class of athlete with the higher TTE at FTP, and AIFTP would be too high.
I’m sure we’re both wrong lol. Honestly, I have no idea - I can really only speak from my own experience and it could be a combination of things. Age may play into it also - TR thinks I’m currently better than I am and thinks I’ll be even better in the future despite my power numbers eroding over the past 6-7 years now that I’m in my 50s.
Middle of the bell curve back in the day was right around 3w/kg, depending on age/sex.
Yep, I recall Nate posting a bar graph showing 5 or 10 year buckets for male and female, and you’re right, the vast majority were within a somewhat narrow range of w/kg. I’m outside that range, so that could be a factor.
The whole power level thing with tr is strange though. I just manually changed my ftp since I had successfully completed my planned block of training. Power levels dropped for everything but threshold, which stayed the same. I am not currently training at threshold, so my pl was only 3.3, but most everything else was high 4’s and 5’s which are now 3’s and 4’s.
I have yet to see any tr ai suggested workout be anything near what I would think is best for me. Are people frequently getting suggested workouts that are eventually rated as very hard after completion?
I don’t think “Very Hard” is ever, or is rarely the goal. In general my experience is most productive workouts are supposed to be a solid “Hard.” Very Hard or All Out would indicate a workout that’s too intense, fatigue, something like that most of the time.
Maybe I’m reading your response wrong, but at the same time if you want the system to give you / serve you the best workouts, you should at least be doing some of what it serves you - if you never do threshold it probably leaves you at a 3 because there’s not many workouts below that and it probably knows it doesn’t have enough data.
In March/Early April, I was getting lots of VH workouts. TR does seem to VERY slowly be catching on and lowering my FTP, but it still wants to bump it up after every workout where I’m rating as expected. I find it annoying that it’s constantly trying to push me back into workouts that I’ll rate VH. It seems really reluctant to lower me but overly optimistic to raise me.
When I say none of the workouts are right, this is for any category of ride. Sweet spot with power levels significantly higher than my current ss level that I’ve rated as hard endurance still in upper zone 2 for a “recovery” day and other random mish mash of suggestions.
Surely this would be highly dependent on the interval you are doing?
If your anaerobic or vo2 max work is not very hard you are probably doing it wrong.
I don’t think this is true. You are rating the entire workout not the individual interval. Each interval could be very hard on it’s own, but if TR gives you 4x5min VO2 and you think you could have done 5x5 then you should rate that workout as ‘hard.’
To take it to the extreme, if you do an hour Z2 ride and throw one all out 10sec sprint at the end, I’d still rate that workout ‘easy’ even though I did have a max effort at one point in the workout.
Sure - I’ll agree for VO2 and Anaerobic in some scenarios. But this also depends if you follow the TR Approach to VO2 or not. I personally don’t, and do the “Max Effort High Cadence High Breathing” approach if I’m specifically in a VO2 Block. If I’m doing more specialty work though and Max Aerobic Power style VO2 - it is more of a “Hard” approach.
Going All Out or Very Hard has downstream impacts on subsequent training, so I think in general you’re targeting “Hard” most of the time,
Different issue then. You need to separate workout difficulty and the zone. If you answer TR surveys correctly, you could have an appropriately “Hard” workout, but it could be Threshold when it’s a Sweet Spot workout, or Tempo when it’s supposed to be endurance if your FTP is set wrong - and that depends on the individual.
TR will in general get workout difficulty correct, but for some people (I’m one of them) I need to manually set my FTP lower to make sure I’m training in the right zone.
Post-Workout Surveys – TrainerRoad
No need to separate them out by workout zone, just answer how it feels.
That’s missing the point.
Please be nice, was just trying to help.
TR has always said to just rathe the workout by how it felt.
Please don’t respond to or tag me anymore. We’ve been through this.
For some users the TR AI FTP is too high. When it prescribes a sweet spot workout it is actually a threshold workout. For example, if ai is 10 watts higher than tested, the 94% sweet spot is actually 98% of tested ftp. Even in this case, the workout completed can feel Hard and rated as such. If you lowered the FTP by 10 watts, TR will prescribe a sweet spot workout with more time in zone but at your 94% tested ftp. Completing this workout can feel Hard as well and rated as such. Both workouts are rated Hard.
They’re not talking about rating workouts hard (versus something else), they’re talking about how if your FTP is incorrect, a Threshold workout is actually VO2, a SS workout is actually TH, etc.