Dylan Johnson's "The Problem with TrainerRoad Training Plans": it's gonna be a busy day around here

I would say yes for the amateur athletes world.

I can do SS work based on my FTP but struggle with the Vo2 stuff so trying to focus on that. Gotta turbocharge this Diesel engine

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Not to take anything away from our crew but have they actually ever coached anyone personally, or is their coaching experience just putting the TR plans together?

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:man_facepalming:t2:

It would be interesting to see, if in the future, you could choose to set workouts based on MAP rather than FTP. Then you just get a percentage of one figure, MAP, rather than a percentage of a percentage guess at FTP. An option in your settings based on your preferences, for doing the ramp test, as your testing protocol, and using a percentage of MAP to set interval intensities.

Lifted from another thread:

re: doing an FTP and MAP test.

This is what I alluded to how TR could improve their platform, and a lot of coaching revolves around multiple test durations.

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You would not get rid of the variability this way. @old_but_not_dead_yet created another thread where he posted a link to an explainer by the inventor of the ramp test. TrainerRoad (and I think also Zwift, and probably most pieces of software that use ramp test) estimate FTP as 75 % of maximum aerobic power. Ric Stern says that most people fall within 72–77 % and 75 % is smack-dab in the middle. So depending on where you fall, you’d still have the problem of how to scale to your FTP or what percentage of MAP sweet spot is.

Ric Stern recommends to use the lower bound 72 % and then correct up if necessary. That could be a solution, but practically speaking, also comes with its own trade-offs. It’d mean that most people would have to “correct” their FTP, since 72 % is the lower end of the spectrum. I reckon many people will be tempted to correct it up too much.

I just think it is a difficult problem with no obvious solution that’d work for everybody.

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Dumb question, but how’d that help? To estimate FTP from a 20-minute FTP test, you also need to subtract a percentage from the power you managed to do. AFAIK Coggan originally subtracted 5 %, but nowadays it seems the recommendation is to use 15 %. Clearly, even if you err on the latter, there is invariably a statistical distribution and you don’t know where you fall individually. The variability seems quite similar to be honest.

Do an actual TTE test for your FTP; all work done at or below is based off that result.

Do a MAP/ramp test; all work done above FTP is based off that result.

But, like I suggest, this is moving in the direction of SF 4DP, so TR probably want to avoid that. Also, seems like more moving parts discourage TR users so compliance might be very low.

TTE seems like an option for experienced athletes, but doesn’t seem to be a good choice for TR. According to this test protocol, you’d first have to do a 20-minute FTP test correctly (re-test if you missed your power targets). Then rest a day, then do the TTE test.

If you know what you are doing, all power to you. But I think this is overkill for what TR and other platforms use FTP for: to scale their workouts. At least personally, that has always worked very well. TR’s FTP never overestimated my power, at times it underestimated it a little.

Sure, that’d assume that TR adapts zones to the individual athlete. Given the amount of testing that is involved, I don’t think it makes sense for TR to adopt that. Especially if in most cases the changes would be rather small (e. g. +/- 2 percentage points in case of VO2max). The simpler solution is to rely on the user to do that manually.

If you have a coach or know what you are doing, go for it, though. This is not a ding, I am not poo-pooing better methods. I’m just saying, this is too advanced for the average or even many advanced TR users.

I suppose that’s the problem of sweet spot being defined off FTP.

To be honest I don’t care about FTP all that much. It’s just something that makes scaling the same workouts easy enough.

But I was talking about do ramp test, use the MAP figure, calculate percentages off that. Don’t bother trying to work out an exact FTP.

So scale workouts directly off MAP. If you want sweet spot that just set the intervals at around 70%. If you are working at 95% or 90% of FTP does it really make a huge difference to adaption and ability to execute them? I’d argue it’s far more important not to overdo it when above threshold and I think a percentage of MAP would be good for that.

Agreed, and also what I said — more than one moving part seems to be too much complexity for the TR platform/users.

So…you get what you get, benefits and problems alike.

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But you’d still have the same exact variability: FTP occurs roughly at lactate threshold 2 (or you could define it as such, I guess), so your FTP is going to determine where sweet spot is.

What you are proposing is to base your estimate of FTP on the lower range of the relation between MAP-to-FTP (apparently around 72 %). You could do that. But then the workouts would be too easy for the majority of users. And while for sweet spot it doesn’t matter whether you are at 88 % or 92 %, it matters a great deal for over/unders. These would become under/unders for the average person, and you’d miss the adaptations you are after.

I think the easier solution is to educate athletes about these variabilities (which are frequently mentioned), and to use your own discretion. If you know that the ramp tests “overestimates your FTP” (i. e. you are closer to 72 % MAP than 75 %), you learn that fact about yourself, swallow your pride and correct your FTP afterwards.

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You can say the same about equivalents to 4D power, it’d be cool to know that about yourself. As a geek, I’d like to know! When asked @Nate_Pearson has stated (on the podcast and in the forum) that with the current technology they have 4D power tests have no actionable additional information to a ramp test.

You could interpret that as saying that their training plans do not accommodate for that, but I think it is more complicated than that. You’d also have to set your goals accordingly, and if you are a triathlete, you probably don’t care that your sprint is shite, so you don’t actually want more sprint workouts sprinkled in, you are doing just fine as-is. The whole weakness vs. limiter story.

And yes, even if you could tell the TR app “I want to improve my 1-minute power”, the training plans aren’t flexible enough. Once you push into this territory, you find that TR isn’t a replacement for a real, experienced coach.

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I’d just like to offer that the discussion of testing protocols seems to be getting a bit i to the minutia of things that cause issues with the training plans.

Sure a test that gives values for multiple durations/energy systems would be an improvement…but do people really think that is the issue? Because if the issue is that the ramp test inflates certain systems, the opposite must also be true for individuals. I dont see a lot of people complaining about workouts being too easy.

Of course…rereading…that is probably a nature of the interwebz sort of issue lol…

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A good handful of them exist…mostly re: “30/30”-style VO2max workouts and long rest interval SS workouts.

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30/30s at 120% is pants on head idiotic.

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Personally…I think the issue is that those are just easy workouts. And people like to find things to complain about.

Maybe I’m wrong. I HAVE noticed the same thing. I was always able to do those short duration V02s, while it took me quite a while to wrap my head around 3 min at 120%. BUT i dont think there is any question that the 3 min intervals are expected to be more demanding, correct?

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I would disagree. We all have different constraints - time, age, genetic potential, stage in training, etc. It isn’t possible to come up with a single training plan that will be “optimal” for everyone. Instead, TR has come up with several plans, with several stages in each plan, so that users can choose the plan that will work for them. The plan they choose might not be the optimal plan to improve their cycling, but it works given the constraints they have. To complain that the TR HV plan doesn’t make sense because it is only doable for the minority is missing the fact that there are other plans to choose from. If TR were to omit or modify the HV plans then they would be doing a disservice to those who like, and benefit from them. Also, TR is very, very clear in their notes on the plans, in plan builder, on the forum, and on their podcast that the HV plans are only suitable for a minority.

Bruce

Is there such a thing as a “somebody” in the cycling world? Offhand I can think of Ferrari, Carmichael…Brailsford. Fuentes? Lim?