I got the e-mail that FTP AI is now generally available. Awesome. It is now available also from the ACCOUNT page on our TR Profile.
Is that new? Can we run that anytime, or only every 24 days? Why not run that weekly? If we are actually demonstrating new levels of strength, we could accept an increase. But say we are in a recovery week or had some temporary issue that caused us to miss or not do well on a workout, we could decline an FTP reduction.
Weekly would be bonkers!!
Why? Just a tap of a button. No effort. But if you’ve demonstrated from recent riding that your FTP should be +5W… why not? Why stick with sub-optimal workout levels for 5 more weeks?
Because there’s no way you’re making significant physiological changes in a week. 5W (for example) is likely within the margin of error of your powermeter.
If you’re using adaptive training, your workouts shouldn’t be sub-optimal. As your fitness builds you will be given ever more challenging workouts. So, you might start with an hour sweet spot workout like Ericsson -1 (4x8 minute spin-up intervals, level 1.7) and progress up to something like Redondo (level 6.1, 5x10 minute intervals with only 30 second recoveries). If you update your FTP too often, you won’t get the chance to really develop the muscular endurance side of things. You might be able to keep doing love workout level sessions at increasing FTPs, but you’ll struggle to adapt to the harder sessions, as you won’t have built up to them
Because within TR there are also Progression Levels that will work to keep you improving. Assuming you are using the surveys and getting appropriate PL changes and the AT changes to your calendar, you will most likely NOT be sub-optimal.
FTP is just one way to look at and set workouts for your adaptation goals. PL’s are the other tool TR employees in tandem with the AIFTPD, and it works quite well to put us on track for gains even if FTP is a bit “off”.
oh no, suboptimal training levels, it’s all gonna fall apart 
Got it. Makes total sense! Thanks
Thanks! Got it! Got to remember that the single metric of just FTP is just one part of the elephant. 
Not sure what this comment is meant to achieve? Seems like dismissive snark to me.
There are solid answers above so I don’t get the point of what appears to be a rather negative post with no benefit to the OP or others.
it is snarky, i’m sorry, but I guess the broader point is we’ve gotten so hand-wringy with FTP and Progression Levels, that I think a lot of users are letting perfection become the enemy of the good.
Right, that is a good point, specifically the same one that I and others already touched on above.
I am all for adding feedback from anyone here, to help others gain perspective. We all need that at times, but please keep it kind if you plan to post or don’t bother. Nobody deserves that negative tone.
i don’t look at any of my training numbers and go almost purely by vibes and i’m doing fine. Hope this helps! 
All depends though on your personal circumstances. For example, if you’re returning from illness or injury, you are likely to see relatively rapid improvements in fitness. In those circumstances, I think updating FTP more often makes sense. Plus, sometimes doing it more often can be good if it provides a nice little mental boost
There are still the options to manually adjust (for those that have a good read of there values), as well as the option to run any FTP test as preferred. From what TR say when the gates of AIFTPD were open, that more loose access looked to be leading people in directions that were not beneficial vs sticking with a 14-28 day range of evaluation.
Interesting. I also imagine that the actual computation of FTP takes a significant amount of computing resources so they put up the tighter access to spare their AWS bills.
