Maybe I’m confusing myself, but it is 6AM Friday right now for me and the timer says:
that is equivalent to 138 hours from now and…
OR you could just bump your FTP manually.
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I did that a couple of times, but for somebody who never trained with power until a few months ago, it took me a little bit to understand the “signs”.
Now I’m pretty comfortable, after reading several posts on how certain workouts should “feel”, but back in September when I started, the first AI FTP detection was 113W and it was not immediately evident to me that I should have bumped it immediately.
I also signed up for and learned to use intervals.icu fairly and that was an eye-opener.
My thesis remains, as of now AI FTP is not friendly for people ramping into the sport, that experience either newbie gains, have no idea of a ballpark FTP starting point, or both.
At the end of the day, technically the interval for AI FTP detection should be adaptive. Fixing it to a certain interval, I would think, is a stopgap measure while the technology improves.
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Thanks - the countdown clock is a bit misleading in that case. I still think a bit of wriggle room would be no harm!
My $.02 here based off the above 2 comments… if you aren’t comfortable with increasing your FTP manually, you may be doing yourself a disservice by NOT doing an “initial” ramp test at the outset of your training with TR.
yes, the ramp test may have its flaws (and I for one don’t like them and am thankful for AIFTP) if you came into TR in September having only done unstructured riding (my assumption), what FTP did you set your initial 10 workouts at to get that first AIFTP detection value?
Having done a ramp test FIRST may have gotten you MUCH closer to where you SHOULD be for your training. I suspect this would also be TR’s suggestion…
Initial ramp test → starting FTP → 10 structured workouts → 1st AIFTP suggestion.
Again, my $0.02…
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Hi! I actually don’t disagree with you, with some caveats. I agree that with an initial ramp test I would have gotten closer, but…
I’m looking at this from an engineering standpoint and the way I see it is this:
- AI FTP is awesome but cannot handle properly all cases, so a ramp test is indeed a good workaround for the present limitation. But a workaround should be temporary, so I hope that at some point the technology will improve to “really” make ramp tests a thing of the past and not “kind of a thing of the past”.
- More data should always be better than fewer data, if the data is good and used properly, so undersampling the AI FTP every 4 weeks I would guess is needed to filter out some noise in the algorithm and its interaction with the progression level loop.
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6 weeks ago, I joined the TR platform for not having to do hard 20 min tests and still have up to date training plan with workouts aimed at yielding max improvement. Hundreds of my rides have been uploaded with all the data, like HR, power, etc. (with at least three 45 minute efforts in the 310-315W range in 2022) and my FTP was set at some 230W - so far so good? I have to say it is not clear to me on the basis of which data the AI FTP detection works. It’s a trade secret, I get it, but nonetheless it should not go against the accepted standards.
During the first 10 rides I had an effort of 271W NP for 45 minutes, but my AI FTP detected 244W. 4 weeks have then passed and I did another 270+W effort for 45 minutes with a 133 bpm HR average, which is not unimportant when looking at what is achievable (my HR max is in the 165 range, my THR HR at about 153). Today, AI FTP detection resulted in 253W.
I know I can do the ramp test, but I opted for TR in order not to have to do that kind of stuff. As a result of AI FTP all my planned workouts are too low in terms of intensity and I have to adjust manually.
By waiting another 28 days for the next FTP adaptation I am potentially loosing a bunch of progress if I stick with the proposed intensity settings. In normal planning, if one does an effort which yields a higher FTP value, this value transpires in training ranges right away, there is no reason to wait for days/weeks to adapt the training - or I am wrong here?
To put it short - I also think the 28 days interval is too long, especially for people starting with TR and for people coming back to training after longer absence, but both with a solid, years-long training background.
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Why not manually increase your FTP based on these recent efforts?
Have you reached out to TR support? Maybe you don’t have enough of their structured workouts for AIFTP to really dial you in yet?
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I too think AI FTP needs to be available more frequently for various reasons, but, and I mean this in the kindest possible way, stop being stubborn and manually increase your FTP. You have the experience to know TR should be setting it higher, and you feel like the low FTP is sabotaging your training, so use that knowledge and apply the simple fix. This way you will get the targeted training you’re after, and you will help teach AI FTP to improve. There’s no reason to leave it low just to prove your point.
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Hey there! It looks like the reason your AI FTP Detection is lower than it seems it should be is that your initial FTP was entered as 234W when you created your account in January.
When you set up your TR account, it is important to make sure your FTP is entered into our system as accurately as possible. If you already know your FTP, you can change it manually on your Rider Information page.
If you don’t already have a good idea of what your current FTP is, we’d recommend taking a Ramp Test before relying on AI FTP Detection to set your first benchmark.
AI FTP Detection looks at your training data and your FTP history, which means that it functions using the ride data you upload to TR and your previous FTP values as entered into TR.
Since you already have a bunch of your training uploaded to TR and you already have a decent idea of where your FTP may be at currently, we would recommend that you manually update your FTP so you can get the most accurate AI FTP Detections possible in the future.
Hopefully that clears things up! Let me know if you have any other questions.
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Thank you all for your honest opinions and suggestions. @Pbase, you’re totally right about me being stubborn, I always have been and that is why I want to understand how things work. If I am to invest my 550 hrs a year into following a plan, then I have to be somewhat sure it works at producing desired outcome. And the first step of getting the FTP about right by extracting some data points from a large pool of data in order to get to the power/duration curve is very simple. This was not done and it just begs the question why the upload of all the data was necessary.
The second step is harder and it involves working out an effective and targeted training plan that gets you where you want to be in say six months. I wanted to be sure that there is some solid logic behind this tool and that I will not get in a situation where my workouts feel completely off the mark I have to adjust them myself - I am not talking about a single workout here and there, I am talking about workouts in general. Because that is where I was before TR and I wanted to try something I can rely on - hence AI FTP detection, adaptive training and so forth.
On your suggestions I will manually reset my FTP and see how it goes from this point on, the experiment continues 
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I recently did an AI FTP detection. Started my training plan and after the first block another Ramp test was scheduled at the beginning of the second block. This was 27 odd days after my previous AI detection, so the system did not allow it. What would be the best to do in such a situation? I just did the ramp test anyway, but it would have been nice to have the opportunity to do AI detection and do a normal workout.
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I think you could have done a normal workout
(train now) that day and pressed AI FTP detection the day after when it was 28 days.
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I just got into this issue… I liked before that when pressed AI ftp detection, some times it just gave you the same number and then gives you a training. I mean, the idea of using a platform like tr is to have the system work for you automatically adjusting your workouts… Having to change manually on the training block does not make sense to me. Probably if you are on a predefined block and the ftp is included there but 28 days have not passed, just put a message when clicking AI detection to indicate that and then automatically change the workout instead of the test.
We are working on an update that will solve this issue! In the future, you’ll have the option to have your Ramp Tests replaced with AI FTP Detection + a workout by default.
When we release that update, even if it hasn’t been 28 days since your last AI FTP Detection (thus locking you out from using it), a workout will still take the place of where the Ramp Test currently gets added to your plan. That means no more manual adjustments!
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Hi @ZackeryWeimer, sorry to go back to this. It is now Wednesday 4 pm Central European Time and the software tells me that I need to wait 8 hours for the detection to be available, that is, until Thursday. So for me, the interval seems to be 29 days. What am I missing?
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Hey there! Sorry for the trouble – I brought this case up with our developers and they’re taking a look into what seems to be a bug in this instance. You should have already been able to use AI FTP Detection again by now, so we ran a refresh on your account that will allow you to use it.
Let me know if you need a hand with anything else!
Perfect! Just did the detection and all looks good including the timer for next time. Thank you!
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