We have this data, and I’m pushing for it to become accessible to each athlete. 
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Thanks for the details. That helps to puts things into perspective.
This is definitely good feedback. It all helps, so I, by no means, want to push back that you’re wrong here. Every case helps us improve in some way, so we appreciate you sharing all of this.
I’d be happy to work with you to see if we can figure out how to make things work well for you. Let me know, and we can start chatting about it. 
Keep in mind that the threshold 3.0 idea is a starting point for FTP calibration. Most athletes will have one workout at that level and then progress from there. 
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Hold on…. that’s new information…. isn’t it? 
I’ve missed a memo if so 
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No, it’s not new. It was shared here by Nate.
“Because we’re recalibrating to about a level 3 threshold workout being able to be completed in the expected zone, if you had an athlete level higher than that, your FTP would increase, and lower than that, your FTP would decrease.”
Threshold Level
< 3 FTP Decrease
3-4 About the same
4-6 FTP Increase
7+ Large Increase
I think myself (and everyone else) interpreted that as something that would happen at every AIFTP detection - not just the first one.
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I don’t actually know for certain – you might be right, but that’s how FTP detections go.
You start at one level, work you way up higher, then recalbrate in 28 days to bring that level back down, and repeat.
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I’d prefer it your way
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For some of us, it’s not a matter of difficulty, but debating whether the workouts are the ideal mix of intensity vs. duration. I was one of the people who saw an unrealistic jump with the new AIFTP. The inflated number basically adjusted my workouts with a significant increase in intensity and a big drop in interval durations. The system seems to be doing a nice job of serving up appropriately hard workouts with either the lower or higher FTP, but working off an inflated FTP is resulting in sweet spot workouts that push into threshold wattages (with durations short enough to make them doable) and over/under workouts that are more like over/overs or at least at/overs (again, with very short intervals). Some of us would prefer to keep our sweet spot work in a traditional sweet spot zone and keep over/unders as over/unders and push the interval durations out rather than artificially inflate FTP to normalize us in a lower workout level.
And I don’t really want to make this about how FTP is defined, but many of us use FTP in very specific ways (inside and outside the TR system) and it’s important the definition doesn’t change over time and aligns with a physiological level of fitness that we’ve gotten a feel for over time. I’m not saying the new value/approach is a better or worse, just that it doesn’t align with the physiological FTP I’ve always used in the past and would like to continue using across many systems, pacing, etc… Could I adjust my world to a new approach? Sure, but that is pretty painful and I don’t see the point if I can just use my physiological FTP and TR can work with that. The only challenges I’ve seen presented are that FTP prediction won’t work and that workout durations may have to be extended if hitting against the limits of workout progressions (sweet spot seems to be the biggest challenge there).
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This makes a lot of sense and is great feedback and a good way (I think) to summarize what people are looking for on this thread.
This is really nothing new – we’ve always had athletes who preferred lower FTPs with the expectations that higher Athlete Levels give workouts that promote higher TTE, so I totally get what you’re after here.
I’ll share this post and thread with the team to see if there is something we can do with what we have in place now that will help get you back into this position. I’m sure we can figure something out.
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@eddie if you also want to help or look at other users … I had collected some examples here:
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@eddie I think a lot of the people here in this thread are sort of off on one side of the bell curve when it comes to progression levels, I think a lot of us acknowledge that and is probably why we’re being driven towards the higher FTP number. And, along with that, many of us probably have a very good sense of what our physiological FTP is too to compare.
Maybe the question is as simple as this - if we’re in a position where we feel our AIFTP is being driven too high, are we losing anything by simply manually entering a lower value (Other than prediction, needing longer intervals for similar stimulus, and potentially running into fewer options at the top of the workout catalog?)
I’m sure a bunch of us could also very easily help with higher-PL custom workouts too across some of the zones if you ever wanted examples to help build out the TR workout catalog, or load them into a custom library if there aren’t some there already - I have an entire catalog stored in TrainingPeaks that I could load examples up pretty easily.
And, thanks for the help!
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It was def not a proper over/under workout - the unders should feel like a bit of recovery. The only reason I was able to finish this 3x9m set is due to the long rest periods and my relatively high 4-8min power. The effort was trending to very hard. I have my own way of grading - If I have strong doubts I’m not going to finish, and barely make it, it is very hard - this wasn’t quite there, but close.
I do appreciate the kind words, but this isn’t about confidence - I’ve been at this training game a long time, and I know what the work is supposed to feel like. I just completed a SS 6.4 workout tonight which was 5x10 min. at 94%. No way this was a SS workout for me- I’d say it was right at my threshold - marked very hard.
In 10 days the AI is still predicting my FTP to go from 296-303w. I won’t be accepting this and will be lowering to around 288 or so and go from there. Nobody wants my FTP to be 303w more than me, but I know this isn’t the way to go. This approach is not motivating and will crack me.
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Because a 3x6 @ 105% of FTP (randomly picking out a Level 3 Workout called Kololo) is many things, but not a threshold workout if your FTP is set to 109% of your actual FTP.
It’s then at 115% of your FTP, which is the higher end of your VO2 Max area.
If you’re trained, can you complete this? Of course. But if you wanted to do a threshold session, this is not it.
The new FTP detection gave me an FTP of 261W, which is 5 watts higher than my 60 minute power in my A Race last season. In other words: It is too high. And the workout zones are shifted up.
I don’t understand what that has to do with RPE.
At this point I honestly don’t know what I have to do to convince TrainerRoad that this new FTP detection doesn’t work for me, just as the old one didn’t. And I don’t see that magical “Your FTP might be overestimated but the wattage of the workouts should still be ok” that apparently happens. All I see is workouts that have a too high wattage to produce the adaptations they should, according to their labels.
Edit: For clarification: I am not complaining about the auto-detection feature being off. I am super-happy to manually set my FTP to the value I actually test. I don’t want or need an FTP detection, so I don’t care what results it produces. But it would be nice if the AI could work with that manually set value in its predictions and adaptations. That’s all I’m asking for. That newly introduced features will also work for people who set their FTP manually. Some of us have good reasons to do so, and it would be nice if you trusted us when we say we know what we do.
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More than happy to cooperate. Let’s get a few things out of the way first: I’m not an isolated case, please take a look at @Rizzi ‘s post:
Secondly, here’s a little poll with the training approaches of some of the people in this thread that might be concerned:
Doesn’t look like we’re “asking for it” due to aggressiveness of approach.
Lastly, I know full well that I can manually set my FTP to what I believe is a realistic value and get good training. That’s how I progressed last year (not manual, but I find my old AIFTP to be realistic), that’s how I got a good week in the middle of January. If anything, this shows that the new AIFTP I’ve been given is suboptimal for my training plan.
Now, about my training block this January. Here’s more detailed context: I started the year with an FTP of 346 from 2025, having finished a training block and due a detection, expecting increase. Maybe a few watts, as per usual, as I’ve been on a steady, sustainable rise through 2025 with no signs of slowing down. The AIFTP in beta gave me 381 (+35 watts!!!) and my first week was a disaster. That’s all good as it was beta and I was testing. Nate and Sean looked into my case and suggested that I use an FTP of 345 which was produced by a manual run of AIFTP detection from them, just to get me back on track. It did so, and I rated Scylla (Thr 4.7) Hard and Galena (SS7.2) Moderate with it, which made me think that I am indeed back on track and ready for the increased FTP I was expecting after the 346, so I increased my FTP to 353 manually. This isn’t a random value - it was produced by one of the detections Nate ran when looking at my profile, so let’s take it as baseline for my physiological zones, although I think it may still be a few watts optimistic. Nevertheless, here are the corresponding zones:
Sweet Spot @353: 311 - 332
Threshod @353: 333 - 371
VO2 @353: 372 - 424
Then came the release of AIFTP bumping me up to 366 and I started struggling again. Let’s look at watts to find the reason:
First workout @366 was Galena-1: 20@329 followed by 20@344, rated Hard. That’s one interval at the high end of my sweet spot and one in lower threshold. Not short, too. 20 minutes is respectable duration for continuous work. Looking at watts, this is more of a threshold workout than it is sweet spot, but it is mislabelled due to the FTP inflation. It is within my capabilities as an athlete, but it does not align with my plan and goals. Also builds more fatigue than necessary (and than expected). Lastly, for reference, the Galena I had done the week prior had 20@324 watts as its hardest interval, which is a whopping 20 watts less than the SS workout that came just 4 days later.
Second workout @366, Reinstein-2: 3x12 Threshold where each 12-minute block consists of 4 OUs: 2@337 + 1@373. The unders are fine, but the overs are in VO2 land. Ultimately, it was me losing my breath again and again that caused me to consider the workout a failure. It was not about accumulating and managing burn, but about VO2 capacity after the first set. Maybe I could’ve pushed through without backpedalling on a better day, but that still wouldn’t be an OU as it is meant to be. For comparison’s sake, I had an OU with identical structure the week before - Scylla (hard). It had unders at 335W and overs at 355W. So Reinstein-2 came with basically the same unders but overs at 18W higher. That’s not smooth or natural progression for a balanced approach in threshold zone.
I’ve been pushing my next Sweet Spot workout (Tray Mountain-1: 3x15@329, so top end sweet spot) forward in time for the past 2 days because I’m really not looking forward to it. The algo downgraded it to fit within my capabilities and I don’t expect problems completing it, but I’m frustrated and I still have slight soreness in my legs from the failed Reinstein-2.
I’m concerned that this is happening to other users as well. They might be fitter or tougher than me and getting through workouts instead of failing, but that doesn’t mean that their workouts are correct and serve their intended purpose. I’m also concerned that this experience is a recurrent one in my case. The first time it happened may have been in beta, but it still happened, and there’s nothing indicating that it won’t repeat on my next AIFTP detection.
Last observation: the model working with the new AIFTP is pushing me towards all time PRs on a regular basis (Reinstein-2 matched 12m, Galena-1 had PRs in the 15-20m range, Berge in the 60s-90s range) in my first base block already. I see that as a huge red flag.
Looking forward to making the product better for everyone!
P.S. If anybody has examples with watts like the two I gave (Galena@345 → Galena-1@366 with the 20W bump over 20min and Scylla@345 → Reinstein-2@366 with the 18W bump in overs), please share. This is the hard evidence that will actually make a case.
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Sounds like it is about right then?
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I can weigh in here. By moving to the beta, my FTP was bumped from 370 to 386 W. At 370, I completed Tunemah (Threshold, 4.8, 3 x 12 min) with overs @388 and unders @352, I think. Next Threshold workout with 386 FTP was Indianhouse -1 (PL 4.5, 3 x 12 min) with unders @ 367 and overs ramping to 404 W (I think). I failed in the 2nd of 3 blocks and completed the third block @96 % after some additional rest. As originally prescribed, 367 W was basically my FTP and therefore did not offer enough respite to attack the overs.
To be fair, TR has adjusted progression and scheduled Cloudripper -2 (PL 4.0, 3 x 9 min) last week with overs @ 408 and unders @370, which I was able to complete due to the reduced duration of the blocks and the adjusted ratio of over/under of 1:2.
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Definitely not. For this performance, I
-
peaked
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was rested
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was focused and well prepared
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without daily stressors of family and work surrounding the performance
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experienced a considerable race day boost
There is no way this reflects my current abilities, especially not in training when squeezing in sessions between family and work obligations.
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Maybe your FTP has gone down in the off season (if you had one) and you’re only now starting to build it back up, too.
You haven’t said anything about what type of race your A race was last year, but unless it was a 40k TT, or something similar, your max 1 hour power should be considerably less than your FTP.
For reference my max 1 hour power for last years A race was 40 watts lower than my current, off season, FTP and that was me going as hard as I could for at least the first hour of racing.
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