🎉 🎉 🎉 Introducing Adaptive Training! 🎉 🎉 🎉

[BCrossen]

I got accepted to the beta last night. Darwin is a Threshold 4.3 workout. Based on your experience, I get the impression that you would have rated this as Very Hard or All Out with the post workout survey. If that’s the case, it likely would give you a progression starting at a lower threshold level than 4.3 and work you up.

If you wanted to try a threshold workout slightly below the 4.3 level, you could try Darwin -4 which is Threshold 3.6 or Darwin +1, which is actually a Threshold 4.1 workout, despite being a longer time commitment.

EDIT: I’ll also note that you mentioned TSS in your post. Nate explicitly said that TSS may not reach the same levels you’re used to week over week, but to not be overly concerned with it. Not all TSS is equal. AT chases improvement in relevant systems for your goals, and if that means your TSS goes down while it builds up those systems for you, that’s still progress.

[tnordberg]

@Dennis

So, at this point AI does what?

It’s probably very hard to say as it is probably tracking and building your progression chart along the way and recommending adaptions based on Success vs Struggle as well as your survey answers for RPE along the way.

If you are worried about your workout being called a fail or Struggle, I suspect your brief breaks shown would not cause the workout to be labelled as such. I think it probably takes more extreme deviation to get there.

However I assume the system will use expected vs user provided RPE to perform adjustments as well?

With the limited information above, if we assume your progression lines up with Darwin (4.3) as the max of your current Threshold ability then it may suggest a lesser workout than Mary Austin -1 (5.2) for your next ride.
Possibly one of the following?

• Warlow (4.7)
• Avalanche Spire +2 (4.8)
• Fang Mountain +2 (4.8)

One curious thing is what the initial progression and historical data mean for anyone just starting with adaptive training. Clearly there haven’t been any surveys in the past, so what level of confidence do we have in the history? Perhaps it adapts so quickly we do not need any confidence?

[Dennis]

You’re absolutely correct. For me personally, this type of workout where it’s a longer sustained interval at close to ftp is much harder than a short interval at even higher levels. Mondays workout (Mills) for example was 9x2 minute at 120% and I completed it without any issues. It wasn’t easy… .but that pattern is easier for me than Darwin. I’d rate Mondays a 7 or 8 RPE and Darwin a 9 or 10 even thought the TSS is about the same.

[Dennis]

These are good points. Now I have to decide if I just go ahead with the training as planned or swap it out.

[Nate_Pearson]

@SaSha1103

Hmmm how does one can “live” without the other.
If you know the level of an upcoming workout, but not you current level. You still don’t know if this is achievable,productive or stretch right? Or am I missing something else?

Yah, you still don’t know. But you do know that one workout is harder/easier than another which is beneficial.

[Nate_Pearson]

@Slowmo

How will manual mid plan FTP increase/decrease be handled? For example if I feel over-unders or VO2Max workouts are getting too easy and bump my FTP by couple percent.

It will make more sense to adjust what you’re doing in the level system, but if you adjust your FTP we will still adapt and keep you progressive.

[SaSha1103]

Still can’t wait to see the first pieces!!! Let’s ggooooooo

[rkoswald]

I’m still a little confused. If/when enrolled in AT, will a ramp test be required, or can you continue using the FTP that you already have? There seem to be conflicting posts up above. (I’m in the middle of a recovery week and have a ramp test coming up but only want to do it once.)

[BCrossen]

I was added to the beta and it is forcing me to take a ramp test for my next workout, so right now, it does require an assessment. I believe this assessment can be the 8-minute or 20-minute test if you prefer, but I never do those ones anymore.

That said, Nate mentioned that FTP prediction is part of the roadmap for AT, which would mean ramp tests would no longer be needed. That functionality is not there yet though.

[bnied]

You can go ahead and still do your scheduled Ramp Test. I messaged @BCrossen about this already, but if you are mid-block we shouldn’t be recommending you a Ramp Test again when you are added to Adaptive Training. We have an engineer looking into why this happened to him.

[roadbiketrevor]

@Nate_Pearson @bnied

It occurred to me that, though I thought I knew all the FAQs, there’s a big question I don’t know the answer to:

Will AT change the actual duration of workouts/time per week? If you’re nailing 1 hr workouts will it replace next week with 1.5 hour workouts or vice versa?

Or is the total weekly hour budget set when you pick the volume, and AT replaces easier or harder within that?

[brenth]

I really dont want any TR emails unless its the invite…just saying…

[mcneese.chad]

You can opt out from marketing info in your account profile:

This will not remove you from the AT list, since that was a separate submission that is not connected.

[tnordberg]

It seems as though AT replaces workouts (i guess suggests adaptions for existing plans is maybe a better term, you have to “accept” or auto-accept those suggestions) with workouts of equal duration.

An aside- as I was time limited I replaced a planned workout manually with an “alternate” (new button that replaces the variations button) that had nearly equal progression to the planned workout but met my time goals (shorter).

[brenth]

Sorry Chad, You took me literally. Sarcasm at times doesn’t work well when written.

[NickL]

I got my beta invite last night. Here are a few initial impressions - TR staff can judge my level of confusion, and others on the waiting list can get a taste of what they are waiting for.

My profile looks like this. As stated, it only gets affected by completed TR workouts. For example, you can’t tell I have been doing a lot of sprinting for the past 2 months because I did all those workouts with free ride and custom workouts. In fact I have done quite a few endurance rides on zwift, and made a few custom VO2 max workouts as well, so SS is probably biased because most of the named TR workouts I do are SS.

The AI has assessed all my historical rides and categorized them. I believe I am correct in saying the category indicates how hard that workout should have been at the time, based on my condition at the time. All workouts up to and including the one I haven’t done yet today are categorized, but future workouts are not. Obviously I did not go back and rate how hard all the historic workouts were, so I guess the contribution to the progression rankings is all based on completion/HR data…

Here’s one from last weekend that was “productive”, and I completed it, so my SS got a little bump:

And there are a whole bunch of “Achievable” ones like this:

Here is a stretch :

And there are a few like this - would have been a breakthrough if I had completed it, but 0 points for this effort. (Maybe I should have used a plan instead of sticking random VO2 workouts onto the calendar!)

So I used the AT setup wizard to make a full 6 month plan and tweaked it a bit (I started again on SSBHV1 a week ago). I swapped out Friday’s easy workout (I think it was Pettit or Andrews) for a sprint workout (Haku) just to get a ranking

Also it got warm here today so I did today’s workout outside with my Garmin 520.

The AI already has suggestions for me - it wants me to do higher rated SS workouts, which end up being significantly more TSS tomorrow and then quite a bit less at the weekend.

It wants me to go from 90mins to 2 hours on Thursday, and from 2 hours to 90mins on Sunday…

I have not accepted the adaptations so far, I don’t want to go harder tomorrow especially after I went a bit longer than planned today…

Thats it so far, we’ll see what the AI commands me to do tomorrow!

[ColoradoJames]

Great share!!

[roadbiketrevor]

This is AMAZING. Thank you so much for this in-depth info.

[tnordberg]

Good example. I also got my invite yesterday and took it for a spin.

My Progression
My progression chart started a little weaker -

I’ll admit to usually feeling like I must have overperformed on the Ramp test as most of the workouts that were in the plan, especially Build, seemed near impossible. I happened to also have done a new test last week with a few % improvement, perhaps pushing my levels further down. I never do Sprint workouts.

After getting added I saw my Threshold was 3.7 and I had a higher workout in the plan. I didn’t have time for it, so I adjusted from 1:15 to 45 minutes with a similar Threshold Score (4.4). I completed the workout (with a single 15 second break even) and note my Threshold bumped instantly to 4.4 (shown above), fun.

I’m surprised that I have done some workouts in the higher progressions in the last few weeks / month and they don’t seem to reflect on the progression chart, I assume my Ramp test result (+3% or so) may have caused them all to knock down a little.

For example in the last month I completed Endurance 5.4, Threshold 6.4 and VO2 Max 7.6 successfully.

I also had an Outdoor TR Ride last weekend, but as we know those aren’t applying yet so no effect there on progressions.

I’m a little interested in picking a workout of every zone in the next few weeks and trying to bump all my numbers but think that’d be a bit of a bad idea!

Adaption / AI Hunting
The first handful of times I visited my Career / Calendar on the App and Web it seemed like the AI was going a little crazy though. I didn’t pay enough attention, but feel like it kept pushing 2 specific workouts around (and they are possibly a month out on the plan?). I wish I would have noted it clearly but it was a bit weird as it adapted, then adapted again and again. I have tried to visit several more times since last night and feel like it’s now happy with my future though.

I had enabled Auto Accept, but am not clear if that was occurring. I also couldn’t tell how to accept an adaption one at a time, maybe it was my settings. For now I turned off Auto and plan to see if I can manually review adaptions in the future and accept one-by-one.

New “Alternates” Filter / Search
I totally dig the “Alternates” button and search ability over the old “Variations” button (screenshot from web for Mount Baldy +1):

But wish it was somehow more obvious what workout I was varying from and/or my current progression. I found myself going back and forth trying to remember and line up my progression vs the current workout vs finding an adequate variation when I wanted a shorter workout with similar rating.

History Review - Success, Struggle, Cut Short
Looking back at my history I just finished Build and really felt I struggled through some of the workouts including some total failures.

I can see a few I think I failed, but they are noted as Success, but there are also some that it properly noted my problems

Here’s a Success with a few breaks and turning it down:

A “Cut Short” that I just didn’t have it:

And a Struggle…

Anyway, will try to run it through my typical usages and contribute to discussions as I am able.

Thanks!

[Nate_Pearson]

@rkoswald

I’m still a little confused. If/when enrolled in AT, will a ramp test be required , or can you continue using the FTP that you already have? There seem to be conflicting posts up above. (I’m in the middle of a recovery week and have a ramp test coming up but only want to do it once.)

You can continue to use the FTP you have, ramp test is not required. It is recommended though.