Bring back Push / Pull / Delete weeks [Feature Request]

[Pbase]

Taking the time to make a video, walk us through it, and even make a graphic to show the need to use the “Time off, Illness, Injury” is what makes TR different than everyone else. This thread has been going on for a long time and I have been one of the quiet ones hoping for push/pull to come back and not understanding why it didn’t happen

…and then in one post Nate showed me why everyone was talking past each other and how to fix the issue (for people who use AT). A huge thank you from me.

[Nate_Pearson]

@JennF

I appreciate your response but I am following all instructions and still not getting changes even taking a week off or more so obviously affecting workouts and program blocks. Same with my husband who added an illness annotation and blocked off the whole week but still just deleted the workouts and put him into his regularly scheduled rest week for next week.

Next time I want to take time off I’ll do it through support so I can see how it’s supposed to work.

Thanks again.

Hey Jen, Can I show you what I’m talking about on your calendar? It would involve showing your upcoming planned workouts in the forum. I can also send you a direct message that demonstrates it if you don’t want it on the forum.

[Nate_Pearson]

Just to respond a little more about the self-coached plan “push” problems that could happen.

Here are some other consequences that happen when you push everything out.

1. Taper weeks would get pushed past races. We wouldn’t push the races, but we wouldn’t know to push the other weeks past that week.
2. Specific rides that aren’t races on days would get messed up. IE if you had a once-a-month group ride it would be pushed to the wrong day.
3. Recovery weeks would get out of whack, especially if you planned these to correspond with business trips/vacations.
4. Athlete progressions would be wrong is you took more than say 14 weeks off. You most likely won’t be at the same point that you were before, so you’d have to edit all of your workouts.

These situations are all handled with Adaptive Training. But it starts to open a can of worms with self-coached plans athletes make.

[mailman]

Love this idea! I use the same colours for annotations each time, yellow for sickness, blue for school holidays, etcetera etcetera. Having it remember would be fantastic, save me from my sieve like memory

[AlphaDogCycling]

@Nate_Pearson

What’s the coaching scenario where you’d plan out 6 months, then get injured/time off/illness and want to “push” the workouts out so you do the same ones rather than do different workouts?

My thought is that with injury/time off/illness your future plan is totally invalid. So as someone managing your own plan (your own coach), you’d have to change the workouts you have scheduled.

Quick example: My coach had scheduled out a 4 week block that I had on my calendar, but I aggravated my knee. Plan was to push everything out by a week - based on past experience, and then pick back up where we were in the block.

But I’ve also had periods where I was self-coaching, and that’s really where I see having the ability to push / pull being a necessity.

[Nate_Pearson]

@mailman

Love this idea! I use the same colours for annotations each time, yellow for sickness, blue for school holidays, etcetera etcetera. Having it remember would be fantastic, save me from my sieve like memory

Yah right? Great idea @AlphaDogCycling!!! It makes it easier to keep things “tidy”.

[Nate_Pearson]

@AlphaDogCycling

Quick example: My coach had scheduled out a 4 week block that I had on my calendar, but I aggravated my knee. Plan was to push everything out by a week - based on past experience, and then pick back up where we were in the block.

But I’ve also had periods where I was self-coaching, and that’s really where I see having the ability to push / pull being a necessity.

I agree with you and I think 7 days is the one scenario I can think of that pushing a week out you’d want to still do the same workouts.

But if it were two weeks, you’d surely want to do different workouts, right?

[bobw]

A suggestion following up on something from Nate’s embedded video…

Add an Annotation should only be for notes as per Nate’s suggestion.

Add the Illness/vacation/Time off option to the dialog using whatever title makes most sense.

The large blue button with the plus sign at the bottom right of the Calendar to access the dialog should have the text “Modify Calendar” to make it obvious what it’s for.

[JennF]

Happy to but watched your video again and I think I can better articulate what my concern is. I think I’m seeing that the blocks are static and notations will adjust individual workouts but not extend a block, which makes sense for those who have races. I’m not training for anything in particular so I would prefer to just push the block out by a week if I take a week off but that doesn’t seem to be an option. Is that correct? I think I was looking for workouts/weeks to move so maybe adaptations were happening that I didn’t see. If that’s the case I’d still like to see it work a bit better around rest weeks though as a week off for vacation followed by a rest week seems like a waste of training time.

Thanks for the response! You’re welcome to share anything from my calendar here if it will be helpful to others. I’ve got no secrets

[AlphaDogCycling]

@Nate_Pearson

But if it were two weeks, you’d surely want to do different workouts, right?

Most probably, but not necessarily:

• Scenario 1: I get sick in the middle of a block, and need to take two weeks off to recover. In this scenario, the workouts after sickness will only definitely change
• Scenario 2: It’s the end of the year, and the plan is to do Rapha Festive 500, then take an easy week, and then start a 4 week Sweet Spot block - assume all 6 weeks of this is on the calendar. But I go a little too deep during Festive 500, and instead of 1 week recovery, I need 2. The 4 week Sweet Spot block wouldn’t really change because I needed an extra week to recover from Festive 500. This is a real world scenario I’ve hit a couple of times. Replace Festive 500 with any big event - e.g., Leadville, Unbound, etc.

[Nate_Pearson]

@JennF

I think I’m seeing that the blocks are static and notations will adjust individual workouts but not extend a block

Are you saying you want to stay in a plan block longer? IE if you were in Sweet Spot Base I and you missed a week, you’d like everything to get pushed out so that sweet spot I is now 7 weeks instead of 6 weeks?

I hear you on the rest week before a recovery week. I just tried that and I think I’m confused because I think it’s supposed to make that recovery week a work week. I’m seeing what the reason is behind this or if it’s a bug and I’ll report back.

[Nate_Pearson]

But then doesn’t your taper week for your next race need to be adjusted too?

It sounds like we have two scenarios now:

1. After my A race, I might need extra recovery time so I’ll want to start the new plan “from fresh” after a longer period than I had planned.

2. I have 7 days off and I want to repeat those workouts 7 days later.

[FatBoySlim]

Thank you to @Nate_Pearson and the TR team for diving into this and for the great explanation and Dialog. I think I did not do the annotation correctly. I believe I may have used it as a note for my covid experience!

Thank you again!

[JennF]

[Are you saying you want to stay in a plan block longer? IE if you were in Sweet Spot Base I and you missed a week, you’d like everything to get pushed out so that sweet spot I is now 7 weeks instead of 6 weeks?]

Correct. Since I’m not training for an event I don’t want to miss out on part of a training block and would rather extend it. Certainly not as important as it was prior to AT, but since each block is different I’d like to get the full benefit of each block if I can.

But part of it was also just a lack of understanding since notations have been compared to push weeks many times but in fact they work completely differently.

[Nate_Pearson]

I just had a call with a designer about this. It’s not very clear in our product and I think we should get rid of the name “annotation” and just make it:

• Notes
• Sickness
• Time off
• Injury

@bobw made this suggestion and I think it’s a good one. I think this would clarify a bunch. And then we can add some text around that sickness/time off/injury may adapt your plan. Or at least it’s an input to Adaptive Training. (IE if you take “time off” on a day where you didn’t have a scheduled workout there’s really nothing for us to do)

[Nate_Pearson]

@JennF

[Are you saying you want to stay in a plan block longer? IE if you were in Sweet Spot Base I and you missed a week, you’d like everything to get pushed out so that sweet spot I is now 7 weeks instead of 6 weeks?]

Correct. Since I’m not training for an event I don’t want to miss out on part of a training block and would rather extend it. Certainly not as important as it was prior to AT, but since each block is different I’d like to get the full benefit of each block if I can.

But part of it was also just a lack of understanding since notations have been compared to push weeks many times but in fact they work completely differently.

Honestly, I have never thought of this scenario! I don’t know how hard it would be to do this so I can’t promise anything. But what here’s what I’m thinking:

For those without an “A” event on their calendar, extend their current block equal to the time off/injury/illness amount. Then push all other blocks out accordingly.

IE:

1. You’re on week 2 of General Build (8 week plan)
2. You schedule time off for all of week 3
3. General Build is now a 9-week plan and you start your specialty phase 1 week later

Does that sound right, @JennF?

[JennF]

[For those without an “A” event on their calendar, extend their current block equal to the time off/injury/illness amount. Then push all other blocks out accordingly.

IE:

1. You’re on week 2 of General Build (8 week plan)
2. You schedule time off for all of week 3
3. General Build is now a 9-week plan and you start your specialty phase 1 week later]

Exactly @Nate_Pearson! That would be the ideal scenario.

Thanks again for taking the time to help us all understand this better. Much appreciated!

[John_Hallas]

That pushing a block out for a week is exactly what I have tried to do in the past with no success. If you have no target date it seems logical to me that it would be good to push the block,out after missing a week.

[Nate_Pearson]

Thanks! I asked our team how hard this is. Once we know that we can go from there.

[AlphaDogCycling]

The other thing is: I don’t really do a lot of events. I normally only do:

• Festive 500 - just a large endurance block
• 1 week long training camp - COVID has killed this for the last several years
• 1 - 3 Gran Fondos, but as these are for fun, I don’t necessarily taper for them

So you could probably count me as an enthusiastic cyclist, not a racer. So my overall plan doesn’t have hard, immovable (e.g., race dates) pegs that I’m working around. So if I need to push things out a week, the entire calendar of workouts can just be pushed without worrying about refactoring them - unless the reason for the push (C19 for example) necessitates refactoring the plan