I was doing Jobs -1 today as today is my hard effort day in the polarized training model. I noticed that while I was doing my last interval today, I felt really strong (no big deal, i’m pretty amazing generally). Like, could do another round or three of the intervals for the day before calling it quits. However, since the workout is set and prescribed, the only variable that I can change interactively is the intensity. Also, since I was on the last interval, upping intensity would only go so far in the final minutes. Further, I would have had to load another jobs -1 again and maybe forward it to the intervals to keep going. This would be too much time and I think I’d have cooled down to the point of not wanting to keep the effort going.
Today had me feeling like I wish I had a way to keep the effort going without trying to find a set workout before hand that guesses how I’ll do for the day.
This got me thinking…what if TR offered an endless interactive interval mode?
Here’s the idea. This would be a mode where you could interactively set your warmup, the next high intensity interval you want to do and the next cool down. It would be endless; after each interval, TR would ask you the RPE and then what interval you would want to do next. You could keep going until you decide to call it quits or you can’t keep the interval quality up (like when the ramp test quits out and says you’re done). You can then save the effort to your custom workouts and repeat if you like it.
I think this could solve is 2 issues that I have noticed I run in to when doing higher intensity efforts especially in erg mode. 1) Upping intensity during the effort is difficult to do 2) Gives a bit more baked in flexibility to keep going if you feel you can (or quit if you need to).
Part of me also thinks this could be a good way to also push for a more updated version of the workout creator as well. That is, you could create your own interval workout in the app to try when on the bike and then adjust on the fly.
I know that this may have issues or problems but I think it might be something interesting to have. Would love to hear what others think as well so lets get a discussion going :).
We have considered giving you the option to add an additional round of intervals to your given workout, but we decided against it for one reason: we don’t think it helps you get faster.
We feel that the best way to get faster is by following your training plan to the letter. This may mean that you have some gas left in the tank at the end of some workouts, but that’s okay. A good training plan keeps you doing just the right amount of work. No more, no less.
Hi Bryce
Gotta agree with Killroy123.
I have used TR for a couple of years now. and in real life you do not always fit into the training plan.
Sometimes I have more or less time to complete my training.
So one day I might have 15 min more to workout and the next day maybe 15 min less.
I think I would be great to have an option to add an extra interval - just like we can extend the cool down period - instead of having to scroll through the workouts and chose a +1 workout before starting.
Another thing that would be great would be to make an tailor made version of the training plan.
That could be by indicating how much time I have available on the given days where I can train and then the software could change the workouts for me automatically.
Just a thought…
If you’d like an additional interval after the original workout, couldn’t you just extend the cooldown period but up the intensity to match the previous interval?
I believe there are even keyboard bindings to do that but I don’t know them by heart.
Just a suggestion based on what is available in current builds of TR.
Adding extra work to the end of the workout isn’t too bad. You can extend the cooldown indefinitely, and either switch to resistance mode, or bump your workout intensity way up to hit whatever your target is. I’ll do this a lot for extra Z2 at the end of a ride, but you could easily add another work interval as well.
What I really, really want to see, is an option to extend the current interval. I’d much prefer to go longer than harder most of the time. If I’m feeling strong on a workout, and I want more, I don’t always want to simply raise intensity. I usually want to extend out the intervals, but then it cuts into my rest, which really limits how much I can extend duration while still being rested enough for the next.
The only good workaround I have for that is to basically run a headunit in parallel with TR, maintain the work interval through some/all of the rest interval, pause TR, actually do my rest while it’s still getting recorded on my headunit, and then resume TR for the next interval. It’s clunky, and I’d MUCH prefer TR to be my source of truth.
Not a horrible idea but it will throw off numbers like Normalized Power and TSS for your ride because you essentially didn’t record that data in TR. If you did that for every work interval and did the rests on the head unit with TR paused it would look to TR at the end of the workout that you did the entire workout at intensity with no recovery.
You’d have to use the numbers from the ride on your headunit and delete the TR workout. The point was that the headunit would have all of the workout data, because TR isn’t able to capture all of the work you did.
Once you delete the TR ride and import the headunit data, all the ride data should be intact. Your ride history won’t have the blue TR bars on it anymore, but that probably doesn’t matter much.
Thanks for responding. I totally understand this perspective. It’s nice to hear that you have had an internal debate about this.
Part of me does think, however, if an interval mode was something external to formal plans, it might be an interesting addition to the TR app generally. I know that theres a really robust discussion of polarized training on the forum. Part of me thinks that this type of feature would work well for them and would allow a bit more flexibility in how training is approached on the TR platform.
