🎉🎉🎉 Announcement: Personalized Custom Training Plans! 🎉🎉🎉

[Nate_Pearson]

@amandab

This looks great!

I am training for a ~70 min time trial and am a masters cyclist, so I wasn’t surprised to see the plan recommend 2 hard interval sessions a week. However, I was a bit surprised to see 2x short (45 mins / 60 mins) endurance sessions a week - I was expecting a longish (2 hour) endurance session a week.

Is this a result of what the plan thinks my available training time is? It didn’t actually prompt me to enter number of hours. Or are 2x short endurance sessions a week all I need for a 40km TT? Would I get a similar response if I did combine these into 1 longer session a week?

Great questions!

Here’s an example week from your training plan. Your A race is in March so you’re very far away and have a lot of time to do this right.

This plan is more about you as an athlete than how much available time you have.

If we look at your training history, you’re doing about 191 TSS over the last 6 weeks. You have some bigger weeks in there and then some lower weeks.

You’re also triggering red days which corresponds to the inconsistent weeks; you get a red day then take the much needed rest and that hurts your consistency.

In 2022, you built up to around 290 average TSS over 6 weeks (good job!).

Now back to your plan.

This plan is a good volume for you right now. And it also focuses on those key tuesday and saturday workouts.

The other days add volume, but the real key ones are Tue/Sat.

A trap some people can get into is having those thur/sun rides be a lot longer and then you aren’t really ready to hit the tue/sat and give it your all.

Especially for a 70min time trial; you’re going to want to focus on raising your FTP and being able to operate at FTP.

As the plan goes on, you’ll get into build and specialty phases and your fitness will get more specific.

We’ll also check in with you later (still building this feature right now) and recommend volume changes based on how you’re responding to training.

tldr; This is a great volume/workout spread for your goal of a 70 min time trial

[Nate_Pearson]

@jazir1979

I’m not sure if this question is about this feature, or the calendar - but if you’ve used this feature and planned an outdoor solo ride on a certain day of the week, how can you decide on the day to do a recommended indoor workout instead? eg: I plan it this way because 90% of the time I ride outdoors on this day, but sometimes for various reasons I want to do an indoor workout instead.

If you click to edit the solo ride, you can change it to a group ride, or change its duration or intensity. But how to get a recommended indoor workout instead? Delete it and use train now? Delete it and just pick something? Surely there should be a recommended plan-based workout that it could be swapped with instead?

Right now, delete and use TrainNow. But we have a feature coming where you can one click swap to the indoor ride that would have been on your plan.

[Nate_Pearson]

@pwarmuz

• [General Fitness Option] Where could I read more about the “goals”: example: “Increasing FTP” vs. “Improving Climbing”. I like to better understand the specific focus that will be recommended. Both currently lead me to believe focus will be sweet spot and threshold zones.

Depending on what phase you are in, the type of workouts change. This also depends on what phase you are in.

@pwarmuz

• [General Fitness Option] The current goals defined lead me to believe they are most focused on traditional base and build phases. Is that a good understanding? When I compare “goals” I don’t see Speciality Phase training " … shift focus and shape that fitness towards the specific demands of your goal events". Can I assume this type of training would be unlocked if plan a race event and select [To Prepare For an Event]. ? Is that correct?

You will get Speciality phase in this still. There’s an update coming very soon that will remember what your recent training phase is and then progress you all the way through speciality.

This is only an issue for people who are working on a goal for a short time period. If you choose a longer time period for your goal based plan you’ll see speciality phases on your calendar.

[Nate_Pearson]

@cbounds

I would love a study of the people who have been burnt out on TR and look at their diet and lifestyle.

I’ve been doing high volume all outside and have never felt better. My understanding of eating and planning are miles ahead of what it was in 2018/2019.

I am one of the people who tried high volume base when it was 3 sweet spot rides. This was before PL too.
I think introducing PL has surely helped people avoid getting burnt out.

100%

What you said plus people increasing their volume very quickly. There are a few athletes in this thread who are wondering why they aren’t getting more volume; and it’s because they haven’t been training with a lot of volume recently.

If we ramp them up too quickly they will run into problems.

[Nate_Pearson]

@bikeonbikesonbikes

I can’t do this with an individual workout, can I? It seems to be an all or nothing situation when I build the plan?

You can’t do this yet, but we have this feature in development.

[MeMeToo]

I’m confused here as i dont see “any” increases in volume in the plan the builder suggests for me. All I see is increases in TSS via intensity increases. Is this a yet to release feature?

@Nate_Pearson

100%

What you said plus people increasing their volume very quickly. There are a few athletes in this thread who are wondering why they aren’t getting more volume; and it’s because they haven’t been training with a lot of volume recently.

If we ramp them up too quickly they will run into problems.

[Nate_Pearson]

@Briceps

Maybe this glitch has already been mentioned but I get the same number of hours and TSS between moderate, balanced, and demanding.

For moderate/balanced/demanding you’re on this edge where any of those volumes would work; but during your plan AT will adapt things differently for each of these training approaches.

It’s best to read the description of the training approaches and pick the one that best suits your situation.

@Briceps

Kind of surprised too that only the aggressive approach gets me to my current number of hours and TSS (though with a much greater emphasis on intensity rather than z2) and I’ve made huge gains this year with that approach.

You’ve answered your own question in your parenthesis. A lot of your recent TSS is from sustained Z2/Z3 work (btw, crazy how well you can be consistent outside! You might be the best person I’ve ever seen.)

Our system understands that and is giving you more structured intervals (but not too much).

Or in other words, if you had the same TSS as you do now, but you replaced some of that TSS with interval work, it would be a harder plan with more recovery needed.

TSS is a good metric but there’s more understanding and nuance now. TSS was created in the early 2000s The internet was just beginning then; crazy to think about!

[Nate_Pearson]

@marktron

Great job by the team on this! Just set up my custom plan, and it feels like a very natural evolution of TR. Can’t wait to see how it continues to improve over the next several months – add me to the camp that’s extremely interested in the custom plan intelligently ramping my volume up over time.

Thank you!!

[Nate_Pearson]

@patricksudol

Do we know when? Historically I have set up my Plan Builder plans to be polarized as that seems to be most effective for me. Will we be able to select a “polarized” option so it applies it all base and build blocks?

I don’t have a date for you, but last week we had them up and running and we were reviewing different scenarios. So way before GTA6.

[Nate_Pearson]

@Trifid

I did have to go through the plan builder more times then I can remember to get it set right for me based on my experience of time available and intensity that I can sustain. The masters setting was particularly well hidden and I kept on forgetting to set the outside ride day back to inside. Maybe both of these could be set as questions on a page?

I’m not too sure on the relationship between training approach and then overriding the time allocation. Ultimately the workouts have to fit within time constraints with work and life. Does that make setting a training approach redundant? I couldn’t really see much difference with what it set between balanced and demanding when comparing the two after setting the time available. And does setting demanding and then masters make it more of a moderate plan? I know I don’t do well with 3 intensity days a week.

Setting the available time is an upcoming milestone for this. Training approach will still be really important for that.

IE you could be retired and have 6 hours to ride, 7 days a week. But the optimal plan for YOU could be 3, 60 minute rides per week.

We’re moving toward automatically setting masters/2 workouts per week for athletes rather than having them pic themselves.

[Crayonz051]

Wish it was possible to add running workouts in the plan. Looking to swap the 30min easy ride to a 35 min easy run instead

[Nate_Pearson]

@OreoCookie

I tried to create my next training plan with it and for the most part, it looks very good. However, as someone who does not race at the moment (too many commitments), but still wants to train regularly, the limitation to 3 months makes it less useful. I typically plan for a 6-month block. Splitting that in two with two Base-Build-Specialty cycles does not seem like a good fit for me.

What should I do here, should I instead opt for “Train for event” and create a fake A-event?

There’s a “Other Duration” button on that page where you can select a 6 month block.

[Nate_Pearson]

That’s a bug, we’re looking at that.

[Nate_Pearson]

Great questions!

@Chop_Stick

Run a couple of plans through plan builder, 3 month endurance focus and then a shorter plan leading up to an audax I have in November. Both occasions it suggests five days training, but Wednesday is only 30 mins and very easy, I’d rather do four days and make Tuesday/Thursday a bit longer which would free up Wednesday for the gym. If I make this change, does this affect the optimisation of the plan?

You can switch to a 4-day plan by clicking settings and then adjust the volume. As long as you’re not getting the “warning”, you’re good. You can just keep adjusting that longer sunday right until right before you get the warning.

@Chop_Stick

Also, and reading some of the posts on this thread, it doesn’t seem to want to give me any longer rides at the weekends, which is the bread and butter so to speak of my training as these days my ‘events’ are longer distance things such as audax. Will the plan gradually ramp up the length of the outdoor endurance rides, if not, will it affect things negatively if I do more than the 90 minutes suggested?

Depending on the situation, the Sunday right could be progressive. We also have another feature coming that will make it very progressive. It’s next up on our roadmap.

@Chop_Stick

My goal for next summer is a series of rides 200/300/400 and 600km , the 600km will be over two days, I was hoping that this new feature would help me with the ramp rate required, rather than just prescribing interval workouts. What would be the best way to set the system up to get it to work best for me in this situation?

We’ll definitely have the ramped endurance day feature out that will work in your situation with plenty of time to prep for your race.

For right now, I would stay consistent and do those interval workouts; then as long as you can handle it, we’ll gradually increase the endurance rides.

[Nate_Pearson]

@kitenski

So I’ve my first plan all setup, looks good, using the tactic of an outdoor group ride for a weekly indoor race seems to work fine.

I also play field hockey, with training on a Wed and a game on a Saturday, should I add them in manually as runs or just leave it out?

You can record them in Strava/Garmin and we’ll suck them in, or you can add them as an activity in TR. I don’t think we have field hockey, but something like running might be a good substitution for them.

Then plan will then adapt based on your performance.

[fluff]

Q: Any reason this isn’t a beta opt in thing? It seems quite buggy & unfinished for a live product.

[partytime]

I know in threads like these people mostly complain but this worked well for me and now my plan is more in line with my goals (increasing FTP, 1 hour per day plus 1 long ride on the weekend, no A race)

[Jesse_Vernon1]

If you’re saying you’re getting rid of TSS, you should!

[Will_Peters]

I just built out a new plan with newest implementation of plan builder and to be honest, it looks pretty spot on based on my recent training history.

My general history for 2024…

• Early on, Jan - Apr, I was averaging roughly 8 hours/week, fairly consistently… riding/training 5x/week (at least)

• May - start of July, life happened… lost job/ got new job with long, crazy and varying hours then went on vacation first week in July. Given this, my riding/training over the course of these 10 or so weeks was VERY inconsistent, maybe getting on the bike 1 or 2 times/week, but for many of those weeks not at all.

• Mid July- present day, now settled into new job and hour, training has gotten more on track, but I am struggling to get back to the hours I had done earlier this year given all the time off and my 51 year old self. Currently I am at about 4 hours/week, riding 3 -4 days/week…

Given that history, what did the new PB write for me… you guessed it 4hrs/week, over 4 rides/week! I would call that pretty spot on given my recent history.

---

I provided my history above to give context to what I’m about to say for all those that are currently stating the new system is WAY under delivering on the hours it’s giving YOU. I certainly mean no disrespect and I certainly don’t know or have access to any of your individual training history (I can only read what you all are writing). All I would say is to take a look at your RECENT history and see how closely the new PB lines up with it. While I WAS doing and could handle twice the volume earlier this year, I currently can’t get close to it now (consistently) without feeling destroyed and the new PB IS seeing exactly that.

YMMV and if you got this far, thanks for reading!

Oh, one last thing… BRAVO @Nate_Pearson and the TrainerRoad team on this newest implementation! It may not be working for all but it’s seemingly spot on for me!

[Briceps]

r moderate/balanced/demanding you’re on this edge where any of those volumes would work; but during your plan AT will adapt things differently for each of these training approaches.

Very interesting, it’s fun to play around with the feature. My current focus for this fall is to raise the FTP a bit but no real important races until Spring of 2025 and using the General Fitness Feature recommends an aggressive approach.

You’ve answered your own question in your parenthesis. A lot of your recent TSS is from sustained Z2/Z3 work

Sometimes I have to type things out before I really process them…that definitely makes sense now that I think about it. Although I don’t think I can currently sustain 3 intensity days per week on my lack of sleep (18 month old still not sleeping through the night thanks to all those teeth coming in) the feature and volume recommendations gives me a lot of positive confirmation that if I could slowly increase volume and hit the 3 days/wk of intensity my coaches comment about the possibility of hitting a 370W FTP seems maybe achievable (thought it was absolutely crazy 6 months ago).

Blockquote (btw, crazy how well you can be consistent outside! You might be the best person I’ve ever seen

When my plan says z2 I stick to it! Combination of being a dad and always having to ride solo, very flat terrain, and being very type-A…