🎉 🎉 🎉 Introducing Adaptive Training! 🎉 🎉 🎉

[Nate_Pearson]

@killroy123

The thought of being able to just wake up that day and go, “well I’ve got x time to train, lets see what options I have” and to have the program automatically suggest a few options is amazing.

This is the long term goal, but is not here today. We think we need more data about how you feel and why you stopped/failed workouts.

I suspect there will be an evolution of rules → ML in this regard. I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s a set of rules and when it’s pure ML (or most likely it will be a mix at first).

[Nate_Pearson]

@JAN_LESKO

And if my “pause” is meant to relieve myself?

If you relieve yourself in a “set”, it will probably mark it as a failure.

If you relieve yourself between sets, it will probably mark it as a pass.

IE if you’re in a 2x20, pee in between sets, not at 10 minutes into a 20 minute interval. If you did that, it changes the nature of the workout.

[Nate_Pearson]

@bobw

Features like Plan Builder and the Calendar underwent a similar genesis (sorry for the further unintended film related pun) so it does look like TR’s modus operandi: internal testing; limited user testing; larger beta programme; full release.

Exactly.

We’ve got a lot of eyes on us. There will be bugs in AT for sure.

The internet is not a nice place, and if we have a bug that does something silly, there’s a good chance that someone makes a youtube video about it and tries to attack AT.

There’s also internal load on our system (both on employees and the actual infrastructure). It can feel like a panic if you let in tons and tons of people and you have five mission critical bugs all come in at once.

[Nate_Pearson]

@hubcyclist

What’s clear is a lot of people are really fickle and demanding, and TR is often in a no-win situation where nothing is good enough. For a while people were annoyed at lack of masters plans, or annoyed with lack of options between low-mid-high volume, or whatever. Now that they get their next step revealed, people aren’t satisfied that it isn’t rolling out quickly enough to most users. There’s a guitar builder on youtube who says at the end of videos “if you think you can do better, build it yourself” I think the same needs to be said when people talk about training products

Yes…but…we can do better and we want to do better.

Please have your engineer friends apply at www.trainerroad.com/jobs.

There will also be a plan announcement tomorrow in regards to the volume steps between low-> mid and mid->high.

[mcneese.chad]

@Nate_Pearson

There will also be a plan announcement tomorrow in regards to the volume steps between low-> mid and mid->high.

Looks like this one might just get checked off :

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

[Nate_Pearson]

@gregkogut

And I select a workout that alternates between tempo and sprint efforts. Will it scale the tempo efforts and sprint efforts by two independent scaling factors so that the entire workout works as intended? Or does it just scale the entire workout by one scaling factor so that’s it’s achievable?

Right now, just the tempo part will be scaled.

But…the sprints in those are more like “spin ups” that real all out sprints. A real all out sprint would make the tempo part really hard.

[Nate_Pearson]

@GeorgeAnderson

I can’t understand why they do the last podcast and offer beta access to those that request it and don’t actually take anyone onboard aside from those already on it and those few that were already pre chosen. Its very disappointing. I expect we’ll wait weeks to get access.

The people we added didn’t have access before.

We had a few people in the summer get access too early, then we pulled that.

If you look at my post above, there’s one more issue to go before we let more people in.

[enki42]

@Nate_Pearson

It can feel like a panic if you let in tons and tons of people and you have five mission critical bugs all come in at once.

Panic? You mean it adds to the excitement. The panic is for the person who has to pay the bill to Azure when the developers spun up too many resources to handle the increase in load. You don’t want to pay for the 100 core box?

[Nate_Pearson]

@Flashpoint51

In the YouTube comments just before the podcast started, Nate himself said something along the lines of “if we announced we 'd found a cure for cancer, we’d still have 10% of users asking ‘but what about strokes?’”. I’m just glad they carry on nonetheless!

This is so true, but it’s a good thing! It just means we have an engaged audience who wants us to do better!

And we want to do it all!

Please tell your friends to apply at www.trainerroad.com/jobs.

[Nate_Pearson]

@roadbiketrevor

Interesting! Thank you for the info! This bolsters my hypothesis that if you hit 100% on almost all your workouts without a lot of skips/fails/turning down the intensity, the AT experience will actually be minimally different

Maybe. Also if your survey data is correct. There will probably be one person who is in the exact middle of the bell curve with no life changes and they won’t notice any difference at all.

In our experience, everyone gets lots of changes very quickly.

[Nate_Pearson]

@carbking

How will pee breaks factor into the adaptive training? Will their be an option to tell the system that I’m not tired, I just have a small bladder?

Yes, we trained the model with “pee breaks”.

Just don’t stop to pee in the middle of a set that would change the nature of a workout.

If you stop to pee in an endurance/tempo workout you should be good.

I might pee 2x during Baxter and it still says it’s a pass.

[kajet]

@hurdle

Multisport is really complicated to program for, let alone periodize.

Without question.
I’m not sore about the fact that TR is rolling adaptive training for cycling only.

I’m just noting that it’s pretty much a big meh for triathletes. Perhaps more importantly though, adaptive training has probably sucked up the company’s limited resources, preventing TR from implementing such long-awaited features as run training import. Again - just stating facts, aka speculation.

[ColoradoJames]

Sounds like I may need to invest in the TravelJohn/TravelJane company with all the pee talk.

[Nate_Pearson]

@enki42

For detecting overtraining can’t you see heart rate response during the training to the workout load? The way Garmin does at the start of workouts. Maybe keep recording heart rate after a workout to see it at rest?

It’s not that simple or standard across people. This is why we want the qualitative data to combine it with this sort of data.

[enki42]

@Nate_Pearson

Please tell your friends to apply at www.trainerroad.com/jobs.

When there is only one type of engineer you’re currently looking for… But ok. Guess you’ll keep it on file

[PWeber]

Great - I do Phoenix variations regularly.

Will Tempo workouts ever be recommended in TrainNow under Endurance, if you have maxed out the Endurance Progressions for a timeframe or as a Progressive recommendation?

[killroy123]

@Nate_Pearson

This is the long term goal, but is not here today. We think we need more data about how you feel and why you stopped/failed workouts.

I suspect there will be an evolution of rules → ML in this regard. I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s a set of rules and when it’s pure ML (or most likely it will be a mix at first).

Fantastic. I don’t expect 100% tailored at the beginning but the idea of having a range of options suggested and then things tailored over time just sounds amazing.

Would I be wrong to assume that a future direction for TR is to sink more data into the program from other programs and devices to refine suggestions?

Love all of the work and super happy to see you and your team working hard to keep us happy.

[Nate_Pearson]

@patrickhill

Also, shorter V02 intervals seem like an entirely different energy system than long V02 intervals. I can complete just about any TR V02 workout at 90s or less, but I fail pretty much all of them at 3min or more. I’m just concerned that it will have trouble progressing someone like me. Any perspective here?

You are correct. In a plan, you’ll be in the same workout profile so you would stick with short shorts or traditional.

In Train Now, you might swap between the two.

This is one of the things the ML team is looking at. We suspect we’ll need finer grain control between workout profiles in energy systems.

We need a bit more data coming in to find out what the appropriate approach will be. I think this will be a learned thing to the individual.

This will probably only live in the backend and not be show to the user.

[Nate_Pearson]

@patrickhill

Of workouts commonly found in TR plans, which ones have the highest failure rates (I have my guesses here)?

The ones with the highest level have the highest failure rates.

To put it another way, the bigger the delta between your progression level and your workout, the more likely your failure rate is.

So if you’re a level 1 threshold, and you do a level 5 threshold, you have a higher failure rate than if you’re a level 8 threshold and do a level 9 threshold.

[mattonabike]

One more for you @Nate_Pearson. Can you share what non TR data skynet currently consumes without giving away the secret sauce. I dont generally feed garmin with weight data today, but if the model can use it its trivial to do so. If i wear a garmin watch to bed, does the machine see that data? Calorie data makes it from myfitnesspal into garmin if you want, will it get used? I know its a dangerous place to give away to much, so just looking to know what data many of us could easily make visible to TR that would actually be consumed.