Another AI training app: Athletica.ai

Latest release:

  • New Forum added (thanks @oldandfast - has been a gamechanger for us)
  • All Athletica sessions now fully editable for athlete and coach
  • Microcycle weeks now swappable along with ability to insert recovery week
  • Plans can be created out to 52 weeks for triathlon, cycling, duathlon and running events - more coming
  • Recovery Profile Chart added including HRV (slide example from Endurance Exchange presentation over the weekend)
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I had the same annoying experience with accounts. I started an account for a trial, then another with a different email. When I went back to pay for the initial one, it was locked, then back and forth on unlocking it, and it still didn’t work. They were trying to manually manage it all, and I’m not really sure what the risk they’re trying to mitigate is.

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Innovating fast, I’m using it about 6 weeks now and like it.

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Ok. I signed up again. I’m in the beta version. Here are my observations:

  1. The daily availability feature still buggy, unusable.
  2. I like the format of the workouts, some are pretty dense and demanding, perhaps too much. How about 4m x 9 at 107%.
  3. The workout wizard is fine but it doesn’t always populate.
  4. Last night the website was giving me an error message when trying to download a ERG file.
  5. It would be better if they had a picture of the workout in the calendar instead of the current description.
  6. I get a weird message saying ā€œyour fitness is too high, you won’t achieve your goal by XXX, switch to a higher volume planā€ā€¦.which is kind of weird.
  7. Like Join, they have low cadence ā€œstrength workoutsā€.
  8. Unlike Join, they have a lot more intensity? Which I welcome.
  9. When I look at the weeks ahead, it looks pretty much the same, which looks like a bug.
  10. Intervals have some weird durations some time, like 31 min.

All in all, there’s promise, but in my short experience. It’s not ready for use yet. Maybe is just the Beta version

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Update:

  1. The personalized hours feature is working.
  2. I still can’t download the ERG file
  3. The weird fitness msg alert is gone.

Overall I like the layout of the week, it ā€˜s pretty hardcore, relative to join. One thing they can improve is not to prescribe lifting on the recovery days. That’s a big No, No

Looking ahead, the following weeks look almost exactly the same. I guess you do have the option of changing the workout in the wizard.

Mon - Lifting
Tue - 30/30’s Vo2max + Recovery ride 2h
Wed - Low Cadence sweet spot 2h
Thr - Aerobic + Lifting 2h
Fri - Off
Sat - Suprathreshold 1.5h
Sun - Sweet Spot 3h

My setting are: Mon, Fri off and No more than 2h on Sat, no more than 3h Sunday.

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It was fixed last night :+1:

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More feedback:

  • Issues uploading files. System says dates don’t match.

  • I look at all the rest of the plan, and it’s almost exactly the same.

  • I haven’t seen one adaptation occur yet.

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my one and only event is 24 weeks out so I see changes in the variance after a few weeks, each week is structured around, aerobic, Vo2, low cadence, and later sweet spot sessions are added in then later again threshold comes in. The duration and intensity of the session steadily increase.

I haven’t seen adaptions in yet only recommendations to adjust the load if to much is being done earlier in the week.

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Ok, a few changes:

  1. I found a workaround downloading the file from Strava instead of Garmin….so I was able to finally upload the file.

  2. I dropped down my profile to low volume (5-10h), to better reflect what I’m doing, however my suspicion is that optimally I’ll be between low and mid. I’m in the heavy winter season and the breakdown is something like 5-8h bike, 1-3h skin and 1-2h lifting.

  3. The programming changed dramatically, I’d say went from hard to perhaps too easy.

  4. The misterious Suprathreshold session disappeared and a new one ā€œRace Paceā€, easy sweet spot appeared.

  5. I might revert to mid volume, I liked the challenge of those workouts, and the extended time in zone.

Old

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What kind of volume are you looking to do. You can adjust the weekly hours under advanced or set time limits for particular days.

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Yes I can. Do those daily settings override the Low, Mid, High volume setting?

While it’s heavy winter here…I’m planning to do

2-4h Skin
1-3h Lifting
6-8h Bike

I only have one day set to limit volume, so not sure if you set all 7 it’ll override the max hours you’ve set.

Ok. Been traveling and training, haven’t had time to upload my workouts and see the adaptation. In general terms, here are my impressions so far:

  1. I struggle with the idea that you do the same 3 workouts for 3 months. I like 30/30’s for vo2, but also longer vo2 intervals.

  2. I like the novelty of working threshold at 107% short 4-5min intervals with 2 mins of rest.

  3. I like the Strenght Endurance workouts.

  4. I like the progression of intensity and density of workouts.

I’ve use this app in conjunction with Join, I have incorporated some elements of Athletica, augmenting the intensity, density of join workouts that sometimes are too easy.

However, I hesitate to even consider Athletica as stand alone app given:

  • Early phase of development
  • Primitive interface
  • Lack of variety for Vo2 max efforts.

Old.

I’m finding after a few weeks in the recommend adoptions are more frequent and some times for variance I swap out the 30/30 HIIT sessions with other Vo2 max workouts I do on a different app.

In my Cycling all-rounder / single day event base 2 mid volume there are aerobic, HIIT, strength endurance, sweet spot, threshold and recovery sessions mix over the upcoming weeks.

I like it takes all non cycling efforts like, S&C, yoga, walking etc. into account when calculating load.

The recovery and resting profile graphs are class taking in all the hrv, rhr, data from garmin watch.

These guys are innovating fast and next up I’m going to try out their Real-Time Workout Reserve they released on Garmin as soon as this freckling weather get better.

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I was interested but it’s just a % of max.

Resting HR?…,mmm, haven’t seen this. How is it incorporated?

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Agree on this. I just pushed this to my 530 last night and am looking forward to seeing real time what occurs on my next SE ride

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Have you checked out the recovery graph?

At this stage I don’t is the metrics are included when recommending session load.

Still I find it useful to see the data in this format compared to the garmin site.

Have you tried the Real-Time Workout Reserve on a garmin unit while doing a hard outdoor session?

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Then why not select the 5 minute VO2 max intervals from the Workout Wizard?

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Not much else happening in my trial, just a few observations:

  1. Creating a new session with all the workout steps is a bit cumbersome.

  2. I prefer Joins approach to low cadence workouts.

  3. The structure of the program is useful, but I prefer to customize my progressions.

  4. I prefer to start with longer threshold intervals, rather than the 4min suggested. But I do think is a great (new for me, wrorkout).

Latest releases:

  • Races can now have ā€˜Goals’ set — for the most part free-text fields but also include times as appropriate
  • Possible to do from Settings / Training as well as through ā€˜Edit Session’ on a race
  • First step towards closing the loop on the training process as it relates to goal attainment (or not)
  • ā€˜Maps’ added to session chart pop-up
  • Athletica Workout Reserve Garmin App Version: 1.3.9 debugged and working on most devices now. Here’s me working within 15% of my limit (from the past) on repeated 300w efforts. Full explanation here.
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