Then explain all the people who have put a plan on and their ftp went down.
People who have been using TR, saw gains and then by using the TR tool saw if they kept doing the TR plans they see a reduction in ftp. Some have then cancelled their membership.
How is that possibly just a marketing tool when it’s driving customers away?
You are the one saying it isn’t two things at once. I never said it wasn’t a marketing tool, I just explained why it isn’t only a marketing tool and why it is for fitness as well
Main reasons for ny post where: Give feedback, AI FTP is in Beta, there is probably something that should be fixed. Or it’s correct and I need to change something in my workout execution. I understand the workouts and the ftp projection are different models in Trainerroad, but I do think orange and red days use TSS, which is based on FTP and this might be impacting my training.
I’m guessing it takes a little while to learn (more) about how you respond. I suppose it has all of the back history…..in my case back to 2013 and month 1 went down after not following the plan, looking for a big increase in a couple of weeks here in month 2 and actually hitting my workouts (no less….and maybe more importantly, no more). Just spitballing here!
That’s the expectation, but clearly is not what’s happening.
Last block may be a bit wonky because of the Zwift Races. They’re hard to characterize, and I’m sure didn’t contribute as much to the training stimulus as a proper workout on those days would have.
This block, however, I’ve done every workout except one (I’m usually very consistent) and rated them within the expected range. Only one was very hard, and that was a medium percentage prediction. So, missing one I can see taking some off the prediction, but not as much as it did.
It also gave me a stupid easy “threshold” workout as my last hard one in the block. A threshold 0.9, when my level is 3.3, and the threshold part of the interval is solid tempo, not even sweet spot. And the prediction was a high percentage moderate, with equal parts easy and hard on either side. I’m not doing something that easy as 50% of my work for the week (I have 2 “work” days/week), especially on the last one of the block. So I substituted a 3.0 in the same hard starts section. I checked the FTP prediction for funsies, and it took another 2W, and now has me -1W for the block.
This feature is clearly not ready for prime time. I’ll leave it off until it comes out of beta.
How does the output compare to the target levels? Are you consistently below the target power?
I’ve only found the prediction has gone down a little if I’m under the intended target on one workout. If I’m then on target the next time, it doesn’t drop.
This is an interesting one. In my last 30 day window, it predicted me 5% increase, and I did all the work, but I also did more on some days, and had more yellow and red days because of it. Felt really good, but detection ended up with my FTP going down by a watt.
I think an unintended consequence of lowering your training approach (I was on ‘balanced’ vs. ‘demanding’) is that it can make your workouts easier when it sees fatigue and pop more yellow and red days. So, while following a balanced plan pretty closely can be as effective as following a demanding plan, but you won’t have same leeway to err on the side of more training load.
My theory of what happened for me was that in spite of me nailing workouts and rating them generally easier than expected, I also did more training than expected, and maybe the total TSS, or my ramp rates, or the number of yellow/red days being higher than expected, told the AI that I wasn’t absorbing training as expected.
Go look at the very first workout of that block, Lion Rock +3. It looks like you didn’t get full credit (1.0 vs 1.3). And then you missed your next workout because you were sick.
So, you’re already two steps off the path. And, of course, the earlier you go off course, the further you’re likely to be from your destination at the end.
I’m totally mystified as to why it gave me so little credit for that workout (I started a different thread on that one by itself). I felt I nailed the workout, rated it hard but it didn’t give me full credit. I was in erg mode, and the averages for the threshold intervals were a bit low, but not particularly bad. No pauses, or other inconsistencies in the workout.
I rarely miss targets, and not at all this block. I run in erg mode for everything below VO2Max, or longer than a minute or so, and so I’m on target within the erg error which is usually a couple of watts +/-.
There may be something to this for me as well. Historically I’ve had 3 hard days/week, but TR has been insistent that older riders should recover more, and since I’m in that category (57), I figured I’d give it a whirl. I’m “that close” to going back to 3 hard days. 2 hard days just isn’t satisfying either mentally or, apparently, physically. I did game out the more demanding scenarios in plan builder, and it claimed a slightly lower FTP result, but at this rate I don’t see how.
Yesterday, I substituted the 0.9 threshold with a 3.2 Threshold. For reasons unrelated to the workout, i had to stop after the first interval. I got one interval in and it gave me a 1.0 threshold level (?). I got things sorted, but figured it wasn’t worth resuming the workout, so did an endurance workout that matched what was scheduled for today, rated it easy. Now I’m plugging in another hard starts threshold (Whiteleaf +1, PL 2.8). I checked the FTP prediction, and now it has me at a net LOSS of 4W for the block! This makes no sense whatsoever.
So my plea to Trainer Road is to explain the rationale behind the FTP predictions! Tell us why the number changes, in either direction. Numbers without context are noise, not information. We’ve been trained for a very long time to use FTP as a measure (proxy perhaps) for our fitness, and that isn’t going to change just because the new algorithm doesn’t use it when generating our plans. We’re still being given this number so we can track our progress over time and it’s so noisy it’s no longer useful. I understand that this isn’t universal, and other users are having no issues, but there are enough complaints that its obvious this feature needs significant work before exiting beta.
Unfortunately, there are no other metrics we can use in its place right now. PLs change every block, and power records are just that -records, not a measure of overall fitness. Absent a reliable FTP we have to just trust the AI. Without the ability to verify, that trust is … difficult.
Update: I completed Whiteleaf+1, rated it hard (56.7% predicted response) and got full credit for all zones. Now my FTP prediction is 305 (+1 for the block). Why? Shouldn’t the pre-ride prediction have assumed I completed it with the most expected response (hard), and hit the target zones, giving me the same prediction?
I’ve noticed my predicted FTP drops when I do a harder workout than recommended. Not by much. 1-2 watts.
Also, it seems to take HR and RPE into account. I did an over-under workout yesterday that felt harder than it should have (and my HR response showed) given poor sleep the night before. I rated the workout as very hard and my predicted FTP dropped by 4W. I went back and changed by RPE rating to Hard, and my predicted FTP went back up by the 4 watts.
These of course are examples of me trying to reverse engineer the AI FTP logic based on observations.
I think TR should augment their AI FTP detection engine with an AI chat agent that you can ask questions to about what it’s making the decisions it does. That would be a great feature IMO.
To clarify, I’m not complaining about the predicted AI changes. I have a pretty good idea of what I’m capable of doing and generally TR gets the workouts close. I like seeing how the AI engine changes my calendar and predicted FTP in response to the workouts I do and how I rate them. I think there’s a lot of insight to be gleaned from that - I only wish TR would create the aforementioned AI chat agent to help me interpret vs me guessing for myself.
yeah, that’s interesting. I’ve seen the same, where I expected prediction to stay the same, maybe even go up, and it dropped. I wondered if it was either HR response, or plateauing at a higher HR for the effort than expected.
Like you, if that were the case, I’m not complaining. That would be really cool.
. Workout was hard but borderline moderate so who knows…