Feature Request: Training Plan +1, -1 Variations (Low-Mid, Mid-High)

I would love this. I find myself between mid and high volume plans. I usually go with the high volume plan and delete a ride out every week.

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Great thread indeed. Just to throw another idea into the mix: instead of discrete plans, offer a few “knobs” e.g.:

  • Frequency: Days per week
  • Volume: Average hours per week
  • Effort: Starting TSS per (non-recovery) week
  • Ramp: TSS increase each (non-recovery) week

Choose focus/style (sprint, century, rolling hills, big climbs, etc.), then adjust the knobs. Current low/mid/high could be offered as convenient initial knob settings you can then tweak as you like. TR plan wizard does the work of picking workouts, +/- workout versions, etc. to get within 5-10% of the requested values. Recovery weeks match the frequency and volume settings but with recovery TSS levels. The resulting plan is completely editable (of course) to adjust to taste or as life happens.

Some folks enjoy the process of optimizing their plans, but others want more of an assist and won’t have the skill or patience to figure out which ride(s) to swap or modify in any given week. Turning a few knobs to adjust a week or an entire plan might be useful.

Just an idea…

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Thanks for suggesting this! I think I’m understanding correctly that within the Plan Builder, after selecting a low/mid/high volume plan, you’d like some options to toggle the number of workouts, hours per week, and TSS levels between a given range.
I think this is a great way to more easily personalize Plan Builder to each athlete’s specific needs, without having to do the legwork of manually adding individual rides or edit the intensity on specific workouts.

From an organizational standpoint, there are likely a lot of moving pieces to create different tiers within each plan and, I’m not sure if its something TrainerRoad has the ability to accommodate. Nonetheless, I’ve passed it along to our feature suggestion team so that it’s on their radar, should they have the ability to implement this!

Thanks again for your thoughts and input. Its athletes and discussions like this that help TrainerRoad constantly improve! :metal:

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Thanks for the enthusiastic response :slight_smile: Yes, I think you understand correctly.

Maybe think of it this way: at one end of the spectrum are completely hand-crafted training plans that can only be changed workout by workout, at the other end an auto-magic plan generator that takes a few simple inputs (style, frequency, volume, effort/intensity, ramp) and outputs a fully formed plan that can be adjusted at any time by tweaking the inputs. In between those two extremes, one option is hand-crafted plans that are then auto-magically adjustable within a certain range – 15% more volume, 5% slower ramp, etc. And those adjustments could be applied to the plan as a whole, or just a selected week or date range.

I’d guess this dovetails with the idea of adaptive plans, where the ability to do the volume/effort or keep up with the ramp triggers adjustments to subsequent workouts. Nailing everything? Crank up the intensity. Struggling? Ease off, or slow down the ramp. The core ability to algorithmically adjust plans could serve both purposes, plan creation and adaptive tuning.

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I’ve memory of making a feature request along the lines of the +1/-1 idea for the training plans/plan builder. Maybe did it three or four months ago.

One idea for plan builder might be to add another step to the data input: number of days you have available each week, possibly allowing for non-TR rides at the weekend. I know the second step “Volume” mentions the number of days in the plans but being able to say: “I want to do four TR workouts per week” then have Plan Builder sort things out.

At the moment that part of the process is forcing you to the current Low, Mid, High volume separation which is really saying - “these are your options” regardless of what fits your schedule/lifestyle. I understand why the initial version of PB is doing that and the adjustments to each individual plan are made “longitudinally” as it were over the length of the training season. What now needs to be looked at are “lateral” adjustments across the breadth of each week.

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Yes! Thank you so much for that suggestion, we have heard from a few athletes that would like more variations within Plan Builder to specify things like TSS, hours per week, and specifically, number of workouts per week!
The more we hear requests for features, the more likely we are to implement them, so keep 'em coming! And thanks for working to make TrainerRoad better! :star2:

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The more input and flexibility there is to allow it to be an actual Plan Builder and not what’s basically a Plan “Loader” at this point will improve usability by leaps and bounds IMO. :+1:

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An option for specify duration of workouts on week days would be super helpful. I know I usually don’t have time for longer than 1 hr rides during the week. But I could do 3-4 hours on the weekend.

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Yeah, that’s a big one for a lot people and where the stock plans often fail to provide a good fit.

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I think another thing to consider is outdoor training: whether you are mountain biking and want to work on your bike handling skills or road riding and want to improve your pace-line skills, you need to ride (and train) outdoors sometimes. I know that the current strategy is “replace a weekend ride with an outdoor ride”, but typically outdoor rides are longer and have higher TSS. The ideas with the four knobs would allow us to take that into account quite nicely, I think.

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While I like all the ideas pitched here, I am a big fan of KISS. Keep it short and simple.

Personally, especially when starting with structured training, I would have been overwhelmed if I would have been allowed to adjust TSS, hours per week, the number of workouts, time per workout, etc (heck I would still be lost now). I mean isn’t the purpose of a well-structured training plan that someone with a lot of experience made it in the best possible way (regarding workout times, zones, intensity etc). And for people who have a deeper understanding I think there is no problem in adjusting plans to their needs.

My solution (and as I saw in the forum, I’m not the only one): Low volume plan Mon, Wed, Fri, and an additional outdoor free ride on the weekend. For me, that’s the best of the two worlds. I get my time-crunched structured training in during the week (with Wed being the hard day - so I’m rested for that workout and also not totalled after the Fri workout). Long Z2 / bike handling skill gravel ride on the weekend.

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Thanks for your input! I definitely agree that the ability to adjust specific facets of Plan Builder would be well utilized if offered an option, but the traditional Plan Builder method is great for a lot of our athletes. Your perspective is appreciated, for sure! :raised_hands:

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To my point of view, the solution wouldn’t be to add more plans… Instead what I think would be great would be to be able to save a block of workout as a custom plan… I this way someone could either build from scratch or from existing plans and tweak to their liking (shorter WO during the week, longer on the weekend, minus WO version here, plus plus WO version there, more intensity on Friday, Blocks of 5 Weeks instead of 6, etc.) then save it for repeating the plan on the following month/year or re-use than plan to tweak the things that didn’t work in the previous training plan… Being able to go more granular with Plan Builder would be great also…

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Thanks for the suggestion! Definitely passed this one on to our development team. There may be a lot of moving pieces that make it difficult to put on our roadmap, but nonetheless, I’ve passed the suggestion on to them! :v:

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This has been a thought of mine for awhile as well, especially since the calendar came about. Being able to save custom training plans would not only help with the training plan you end up using, but would also help just in the initial planning of a season or block to allow you to save a plan/block loaded into your calendar and restart fresh with another plan/block to compare against how it would work without having to competely start from fresh again if you wanted to go back.

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There is an old Feature Request for Custom Plan Templates:

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This suggestion is a combination of the “make a second workout auto-load after a first one is complete” feature request and the extend cooldown method of increasing volume. I would love to be able to plan for the increased volume of extending cooldowns, by adding the time to the workout on the calendar, ahead of time. @IvyAudrain, looks like these feature ideas are on your radar, so looking your way. :slight_smile: Thanks!!!

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Noted! This would be nice for things like Outside Workouts as well, where if you know the route you’ll do will add an extra 45-60 minutes for example, to be able to manually adjust your workout prior, and recalculate weekly TSS. Makes sense! Thanks for the suggestion, passing along to the team!

*** UPDATE @lkoehler, you can do this in Workout Creator by cloning the assigned workout and adding warmup / cooldown time, it takes a bit of time but it would definitely fit the description of what you’re looking for!

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I would like to add my voice to the request for +1 and -1 plans. I know that this has been beaten to death, but it is important to me. My years of training suggest that I can handle between 300 and 375 TSS per week. That is smack in the middle of Low and Mid. Low for me always calculates out to 250-275ish and mid is 415-500ish. I know that I can adjust manually and either add to the low or subtract a workout from mid, but I wish I could just pick a low/mid plan. I don’t like just adding “filler” to the low or choosing +1 workouts since I’m not sure which is best. And when I subtract, I’m not sure which is best to make a - 1 workout. I also want a plan with 4 workouts per week. Low is 3 and mid is 5. 4 workouts is best for me. Again, I know I can do all this manually and I will continue to do so if necessary. Thanks for a great product!

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This may just happen tomorrow!

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