I’ve been in the Beta for a few weeks now and I just wanted to say kudos to the TR team as I’m really enjoying the more tailored training experience. Certainly there a few little bugs and some progression levels I don’t entirely agree with (Emerson +2, for example), but on the whole I’m loving it. I should note that I only TR workouts indoors on the trainer as I like my outdoor rides to be fun and unstructured, so I’m probably an easier use case.
Here are my progressions at a 361 FTP:
The only zones I really care about a Sweet Spot, Threshold and VO2max. So yeah, I could get Endurance and Tempo much higher, but there’s really no reason to for me.
There’s a known issue in the adaptations that when you get to 10 at SS (and presumably other zones), the AT doesn’t really know what to do with it. I figure I’ll just manually nudge up my FTP by 5W after my next rest week. I don’t bother with the ramp test. If I did the ramp test I would get something like 330, which would really make my SS level look ridiculous. I think AT is already diminishing the relevance of FTP.
It’s been great to have a much more sensible progression through VO2max for me.
I also love planning the time off. Figuring out what to do after a vacation or being sick has always been tricky.
Hey y’all, here’s a question. I just got added in to Adapative Training (nice!) and I’m unsure of the best way forward.
Context - I’m primarily a swimmer, but I do 2x bike workouts a week (Mon & Fri). I have no cycling events I’m working towards, I just enjoy building my fitness on the trainer on days when it’s not easy to get to the pool. I was going to just use ‘TrainNow’ to choose the workout each time I jump on the bike. But Adapative Training recommended I use Plan Builder - so I did - but there is no option to choose 2 days a week (the minimum I could choose was 3 days a week).
So what should I do - should I choose a 3 day a week plan using Plan Builder but just do my 2x planned rides (ignoring 1 ride a week) and allow it to adapt for a missed workout every week? Or should I just use TrainNow? And now that I’m a part of Adaptive Training, is there even a difference?
Thanks in advance! Apologies if this has been answered before but, you know… hard to go back and read the first 3558 messages!
Hey all,
I was recently added to the beta for AT and I’m excited to move forward. In my TR app (both mobile and desktop) it says adaptations are pending (it has for a few days now). When I click on my workouts it brings up a menu asking if I want to adapt my workouts.
AT is suggesting I start with all easier workouts since my progression levels are all at 1.0 (since I haven’t seen or worked with levels at all). But I like the harder versions better considering my A race is only a few weeks away and I’m finishing preparing.
Does anyone know what happens if I click “don’t adapt my plan”? I dont’ want to permanently remove AT or the progression, but I don’t want to start at such relatively easy workouts either. Let me know what you think I should do to move forward without crashing the matrix. Cheers!
Choosing “Don’t adapt…” will just skip that action for now, until you complete a workout or make some other significant change to your Plan Builder (by adding, changing or removing events, or adding defined time off via annotation). It is not a permanent switch, so don’t worry.
Do the workout you want, it will adjust your Progression Levels upon completion, which usually leads to another trigger for AT to look for and suggest adaptations.
If you chose not to adapt your plan, and you do your threshold workout @5.1, it will adjust your progression up and will ask again to adapt your plan showing recommendations for the other workouts on different energy levels, you can deny the recommendations again if you want to work at the level originally prescribed.
Other way is to accept adaptations and then each time you can chosee to do an alternate workout with a higher level.
Thanks Chad! I will click don’t adapt and go through my week next week to see how it goes. I had to drop my FTP after my vaccine shots, so at a lower FTP I know those harder workouts are doable. Cheers!
I like the look of the non adapted workouts, so I will try those. But I will keep in mind the alternates if I do accept a lower progression level in the future. Thanks!
Did you feel the workouts harder after getting vaccinated? today will be my first workout after getting my first shot on Wednesday.
I do not feel any more tired or weak.
I’m a bit of an outlier when it comes to the vax (check the vaccine and training thread )
I had my first one in April and second one in May. After the first one I was exhausted for a week and then developed a full-body rash that lasted a week. My workout numbers were low from the first one and through the second shot.
Workouts were really, really difficult and instead of feeling ready to tackle them, they were a chore, hence my FTP reduction in the short term. Only last week did I really feel as though the fatigue was gone, but then I was at the end of a block (which included the shot) and moving towards a recovery week, so I was tired again. This week is a recovery week and I’m taking three days off to fully reset.
But to answer your question-yes, it impacted my workouts for about six weeks total
Not to derail the thread, but after the first one, I was basically 100%. I felt more dehydrated than usual for the week after, but was able to carry on with training as planned. The second shot, however, really knocked me out. I skipped a full day of training to lounge on the couch and rest up. No changes to my training after that day though. For reference, I had Pfizer.
@John_Barclay how are you handling your custom workouts? I do the same thing with making a more gradual warmup (15-min ramp from 55-75% in 3-min / 5% increments) and cooldown (5-min ramp from 75-45%). I usually bump up intensity of the recovery intervals depending on how I’m feeling, duration, energy system being worked, etc.
If you delete the planned workout and replace it with your custom workout, then I’m fairly certain that PB and AT ignore it and, therefore, will not adapt it.
Prior to AT I would use PB to make my plan, then delete and replace each of the TR workouts with my customized variants. Now I’m just leaving the plan as-is with the default TR workouts and adding my custom workout just to the next day. Once I’ve completed it I’ll review / accept adaptations and then delete the default TR workout.
Hmm…I don’t really do much in the way of custom workouts, and I haven’t at all since I’ve bee in the AT beta. Thinking you may have directed the question to the wrong guy.
Maybe I’m missing something, but what’s the point of trying to get AT to adapt your custom workout? Wouldn’t a custom one presumably already be tailored to you add not need to be adapted?
Despite that, completing custom workouts AFAIK will impact progression levels leading to adaptations of Plan Builder workouts. So while it may not get adapted, it would still be providing credit to your PLs.
@BCrossen I’ve always customized my workouts since the first time I ever used TR. The customization is largely based on my experiences from the very first structured training plan I followed.
I need about 15 minutes to properly warmup. Often the TR warmups are much shorter to fit the overall workout into a set time period (i.e. 1 hour, 1:30, etc).
Likewise, I need about 5 minutes to cool down and get my HR below 120 bpm (my personal cutoff before getting off of the bike).
Since I primarily ride fondos and centuries, I never pedal around at 40% for prolonged periods of time and typically raise the recovery interval intensities to 60-70% depending on the energy system being worked, my fatigue level, duration of recovery, etc to better simulate my actual rides.
Gotcha. My understanding is that if AT were to adapt your custom workouts, it would likely serve you a TR workout using the warm-up and cooldown of the workout as well as the recovery valley power targets of that TR workout. It won’t actually adjust the targets of the custom workout itself, or at least that’s my understanding of it. Perhaps @IvyAudrain can provide any further details.
If what I said above is correct, then I wouldn’t worry about having them adapted in your use case. More important is having them change your Progression Levels based on your performance of those workouts. Also, for what it is worth, you can extend the warm-up and cool down of TR workouts now with the app and leave the rest of the workout in tact. Adjusting recovery valleys would require a more manual adjustment of the intensity slider, but can also be done without making a custom workout each time.
Woof. Have been away for an event week and AT has dropped my endurance significantly for some reason (6.5 down to 4.5). For comparison, I’ve not done VO2max in a month and that’s only dropped by a single point. Odd, because if anything Endurance would hang on the longest out of all the zones. I wonder if it had to do with taper week too? Other zones seem unchanged.
I guess not a big issue as I’ll be doing a recovery week and then a ramp test, but surprising all the same, especially as I was cycling over multiple days so it’s not like I’ve been doing nothing.
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