Yeah, it’s an odd phenomenon that when someone starts a post like yours, TR looks into it, and it turns out they weren’t nearly as consistent as they said, dozens of people will “like” the post where the person gets corrected. OTOH, when someone like you shows that they did exactly as told without the expected improvement, everyone comes in to say, “ahh, no big deal, just look for some other metric that went up”.
For what it’s worth (not much), my opinion is that your FTP was probably inflated at the beginning, but not so much that you couldn’t complete the plan. This resulted in you working your way up toward the previous prediction, which is awesome, but a disappointment when you start a plan with the expectation that your FTP will rise because it feels like you ended up flat, even though the program actually helped you improve.
The more I read into this on various posts, the more I ponder if it is related to a greater focus by TR (deliberate or ML induced?) to drive toward TTE rather than system FTP numeric value imcreases.
If every time you jump up FTP your progression levels reduce, then maybe the system was swaying too much in favour of those with better short power than endurance. So the efforts kept going up in power rather than endurance. Whereas now they are holding you in place and forcing an increase in PL instead.
Increasing TTE is certainly part of the equation, and would be a significant part of the goal for many of the plan types. But it wouldn’t make sense to deny you an ftp bump for that, it should be progressing, too. Logically, if you get an ftp bump your TTE intervals usually shouldn’t reset back to square 1, but might go back a couple steps in the interval progression sequence, depending on how much the ftp jumped.
I’m not really disappointed. I know i have gained. I also didnt just start high and grew into that number. I have been training since early November with 100% commitment working through the base I, II and III programs (with significant gains, while ramping up TSS), then going to custom plan builder, aggressive for the last 2 months (even more TSS that im still recovering from), and I’m suddenly the gain trajectory totally stopped and is even going backwards (although only very slightly) according to AIFTP. I’m still not convinced there isnt something going on with the custom plan builder and AIFTP. Ill start doing some ramp tests/FTP tests to guide the progression, but i was hoping to avoid those.
Here is a rough overview (i took 3 weeks off the bike at end of season before start of base 1, this messes with the 6w TSS on the first 2 data points). Plan compliance was there.
Date …FTP method…Value…6w TSS… Plan
Nov 14… Ramp…253…172…Traditional Base I
Nov 22…AI…255…129…Traditional Base 2
Dec 19…AI…262…333…Traditional Base 3
Jan 16…AI…268…378…XCO Marathon agressive PB (base)
Feb 10…A…269…421…XCO Marathon agressive PB (base)
March 13…AI…268… 462…XCO Marathon agressive PB (base)
Looks like you gained 6% on your FTP in 2 months of base work and then plateaued with a bunch more base. Probably time to change up the stimulus and do a build phase.
I can understand the OP and others in this thread being a bit disappointed in their FTP improvement (or lack thereof). But underlying this frustration is an assumption that TR (or anyone really) can produce a training plan that says if you do A + B + C, then your FTP will increase by X in Y amount of time. It is actually pretty easy to do with newbie gains, but once you get well beyond newbie gains, predicting X and Y becomes increasingly more difficult.
The thing is that I havent plateaued, my heartrate is starting to fall into lower HR zone ranges. The workouts are easier, yet the AIFTP is going down, thats the big mistery. I know its only a little, but how can TR say im getting less fit… Anyway I have made my case, ill guess ill let it rest and figure out how to go from here.
However TR keeps ramping up progression, then there are 2 outcomes. One adapts and keeps progressing. Or one doesnt adapt and cant/struggles to complete workouts. When one adapts and keeps doing progressively harder workouts without struggling and reduced RPE, how can the AIFTP go down. Thats the question.
Correct RPE, and heartrate are major ones. Producing the same power at lower HR and RPE is a strong indication of a higher FTP. Altohugh there are alot of other determinants of fitness, not many are used by TR. It largely goes off completing the FTP guided workout and RPE is my understanding. If there are others, I would be very curious to know what it is recording, and informing the AI about. My setup is pretty dumb, i feed it power (its going up), I feed it HR (going down) and I feed it RPE, trainerroad gets nothing else from me.
Youre fitness isnt plateauing, your FTP is. This is a really important distinction. You’re only going to gain so much, if anything depending how trained you are, from doing base work. At a certain point you need to change things up to continue to raise your FTP which is why after base you would usually move to build, which theoretically will “build” your FTP. And of course, there are genetic limitations.
Also, your FTP is not “going down.” One watt is literally nothing.
We are going around in circles, there is no way my fitness or FTP went down.
The only thing that I can think of is that at the end of traditional base there is some VO2 (a pre build) phase. After I moved to custom plan builder i went back to a true base with no VO2. Since i havent done VO2 for a while in the progression levels my VO2 has reduced. I wonder if the AI thinks thats why my FTP should be going down, there are probably large data trends of reducing VO2 progression levels and declining FTP. These may led to incorrect predictions . I basically jumped plans (full traditional base., then custom, which put me back in base) and probably have some atypical data thats its feeding. The interesting part is that TR plan builder picked that trajectory. So if its time for VO2, it should have done that.
I didnt say your fitness went down. Its going UP as far as HR and TTE etc, which is great and really the purpose of a base phase.
Once again – a single watt absolutely does not mean your FTP is “going down.”
There is no mystery here with AI or anything else. You need to move to build with new/different stimulus via Vo2 workouts to change things up and start raising your FTP.
Also, I can only imagine the deluge of threads if custom plan builder started people off with a build phase, whether theyve been doing base before that or not. Thats not how plan builder works in the grand scheme of things.
My point is around the machine learning algorithm, it trends to less fitness. I know its insignificant from a physological perspective, but from a modeling perspective it isnt.
@gally24 Plan builder is touted as something that takes all your previous training in account, so I don’t agree with your assessment on how plan builder is not supposed to work. They specifically advertise it as a tool that bridges from current training to a goal event.
Build is coming in April, so we will see how that goes. I guess we have a different opinion on this all, which is fine.
A lot of people have tried to help and explain things to you, but you just keep repeating the same thing (even though no one told you your fitness has gone down).
So maybe it is time to suck it up and do a 20 min FTP test. I’m sure we’d all like to see the results.
No need to get snarky. You keep spouting the same info too, thinking you answer the question while you are not. You assume the aiftp is right, i have reasons to believe it isnt and you preach right over it without providing actual specific insights, again the aiftp shows a decline. All good but lets keep it respectful.
That wasn’t snark…that was an honest suggestion. If you really think your AIFTP is wrong, then do a FTP test. If you want to get the most out of your training, then having an accurate FTP is an important component.
Take control of your training and try to maximize it. So if you think it is wrong, test it and find out.
