There’s three problems with the workout search interface.
- When looking at the interface the “hard start” option isn’t shown until after checking the box for either threshold or SST. It’s a low discoverability design that makes the features that are there easy to miss / hard to know they are present.
- The same concept (intervals that start much harder than the rest of the interval) is called “hard start” if it’s a threshold or SST workout but it’s called “attacks” if it’s VO2 or sprint workout.
- If I search for “hard start” in the search box I get 112 workouts but if I search using the filters like you showed then I get 345 workouts. If I search for a word that the workout is already tagged with for filtering, it absolutely should find works with that tag. At a minimum I should get 345 workouts by typing “hard start”. In fact I should probably also get attack workouts too.
Love it every time Alex Larson is on the podcast. Seems to be an excellent discussion this week!
When they actually do drop the update, they should 100% hide it in an episode of reader questions and not mention it in the title.
it’s getting boring now. I can’t understand why Eddie trolls us about it.
I’m by no means trying to troll you about anything. There’s only so much I can say about what’s going on behind the scenes here, so I should probably just say less. 
Not like it’s just you. @Jonathan started the hype train months ago.
A fun response, I like it 
And then I thought..
- It doesn’t specify which Xmas this is…
- Maybe Wham’s Last Christmas is going to be the next response?
- Maybe Eddie’s writing a list, he’s checking it twice, he’s gonna find out who’s been inconsistent or nice?
We appreciate the support and the “sneak peak” of potential roll outs and improvements! Keep up the good work.
I feel the same way. Even though I really like the platform and the calendar, I think TrainerRoad is becoming way too complicated for its own good. There are so many workouts—why? Simplicity and consistency are what really matter.
But if I want to plan my own structured progression with sweet spot, VO₂, and so on, it’s almost impossible to find the right workouts because there are just too many. TrainerRoad should offer an option to schedule a recurring weekly workout with built-in progression. That way you could just click the workout and select “import next progression for next Tuesday” or whatever day. That would be a fantastic feature.
There are hundreds of messages where people complain about getting the same workout. So for some the variety matters. There is super long thread about the same workout being assigned.
To choose the right workout for you. Honest question: why do you care how many there are? Aren’t you using e. g. Adaptive Training or TrainNow to have TR select the workout for you? It also suggests suitable alternatives as Alternates.
For Sweet Spot progressions, use TR’s “Teams” feature (LHS main menu) to join the “More Sweet Spot!” Team, which provides a compact library of progressions at 90% of FTP. This is an excellent resource that I (& various others) make extensive use of…
NB if you’ve only joined TR fairly recently, you won’t have access to this stuff. Baffling, I know!
Yeah it would be good if there was an “add AI workout” button where you could just pick the type of workout you want to do like “sweetspot intervals”, “sweetspot sustained power”, “traditional VO2 max”, “Threshold over unders” etc and when you place that on you calender AI then picks the right workout.
And if you added the same type of workout in the future it would sort out the progression for you.
Because if I want to progress from let’s say 3x8m sweetspot at 88% I would like to it with either more intensity or more sets at 8m or 3x9m - finding alternates among progress level you’ll find a lot of variations.
Having too many workout options seems like an odd complaint. I program my own blocks on TR and it’s pretty easy to do progression based on the progression levels. But even if you don’t like PL’s, you can pretty easily program using TSS, length of workout, IF, and type. Sometimes I will jump from one week to the next too far in PL and it’ll be a little too hard. Then I’m happy there are so many workouts to find something in between what felt doable and what felt too difficult. It allows big or small jumps.
In regard to progression I’ve had good luck looking for the “+1.” Workouts like Seneca Rocks keep it 3 x 15 but increase intensity. Round Bald progresses with adding time in zone. Antelope keeps the interval duration the same but adds more reps.
Automatically populating the calendar or a pop up asking it you want to add in the +1 next week would be cool though!
But that would just be replicating what other platforms do.
Aka good training principles.
100%. Fancy intervals with lots of little adjustments in power are mostly for entertainment. No need for them from a physiological standpoint.