Oh! That’s a good idea. I like it. How do you tell it you’re doing a 4 hour 4 RPE ride like that?
If you go to a day, you can “Plan Ride” and add it there. Can’t setup a repeat, so need to do each week, but quick to do (I add these as “C” rides)
Yep, that’s where I am too. It gives me an incentive to do a bit more than “just ride”, and keeps track of it as well.
It’s a bit of a different mindset than following a TR plan.
I’ve just completed full 8 weeks with Join and feel I can share a few comments. While it allows for great flexibility, it seems to be really useful for targeting specific target goals. I would say even more so than TR does. At first, it was really tough for my data nerd brain to get over the awful UI and the lack of transparency behind the numbers, no planning ahead etc. But that approach seems to be working and the underlying training principles are very sound.
Here’s the progress so far after 8 weeks:
At the beginning of the season I’ve been having thoughts about my 3 year plateau and came to the conclusion that all the talk about effectiveness of low volume plans etc really brainwashed me to the point I did try to blindly follow the advice.
Join just keeps on slowly adding on more and more volume whenever I have time, it definitely doesn’t stick to the one size fits all approach. I’m now training/riding an average 14 hours a week and seeing more progress in 8 weeks than in the past 5 years.
Pure FTP change doesn’t tell the full story - I have a 6 day MTB stage race in a month, selected it as a goal and my 8 week build was mostly focused around endurance and repeatability with some hard efforts sprinkled in. Results are promising so far - I recently finished 2nd at a really hot 275km gravel race - wasn’t the fastest or the strongest but went from 19th to 2nd place in the last 75km, just steadily reeled everyone in. Last weekend was a three day trip - everyday I felt stronger and faster, broke a bunch of my climbing PRs from 2017 and that was on the last day. I feel my general endurance have gone up enormously, I don’t think I will be able to keep riding this much in the winter but it’s good to see some solid progress at last.
Long story short - some of us are Low/Mid Volume non-responders and need the time in the saddle. The flexibility of the Join system means it allows for that stretch which may or may not be an advantage, depending on where on the volume and time availability spectrum you are.
Good for you, congrats on your breakthrough. Question, is the 316 a new FTP PR or have you been at that level previously with TR? What was your volume and plans with TR previously? Also, how old are you?
That’s a lot of info to unpack so I’ll be short 
- previous best FTP was 334W @71kg, I was 38 back then
- I’m 44 now
- best TR FTP was achieved after two years of training with a coach, then a crash that forced me to use a trainer for 5 months where I switched to TR and just grinded my way through high volume plans
- I’ve had a Nate Pearson type life changing event soon after and have not been able to even come close to my peak ever since - I was following (or trying to follow) mid volume plans between 2019-2022
- I feel I’m getting much stronger now and even though my FTP is 5% lower I can now repeat the effort after 5-6 hours of racing, a feat I’ve never been very good at before
- I built the base this year on high volume polarized TR plans and only switched to join 8 weeks ago so that also has to be taken into account
Right on, thanks for that great and detailed reply.
I’m curious myself on trying a different program or even giving actual coaching a try. I think it’s pretty damn good that you are within 5% of you all time PR, becuase at over 40 - this isn’t getting any easier. I think 38 was my peak as well as that’s when I had a power meter and started recording my data. I’m on the TR mid volume polarized right now and about 7 weeks away from completing it. I’ll have more insight into how this works for me once that’s done and I’ll figure out the next steps after that, but the join app is looking appealing although, I do enjoy the TR app and tools.
I’m using JOIN with TR, can get into TR via a free trainingpeaks account and use the TR workout player and other tools. Then result back into JOIN via strava/Garmin. Bit of a chimera, but want the player on my computer so not tried the new join player (used to use Zwift, but would rather either have focused player or stick on erg with a film now).
Ok, so I’m a dumb a$$. I was reading the previous 20 or so posts and tried looking at what other workouts JOIN would give me if I changed plans. I clicked right through the warning about losing progress and … lost all my progress. Now, it was only a week, so not that big of a deal, but JOIN isn’t maximizing the amount of time I can actually train so it can build me up to those hours. I wish 1) it would show us a general overview of the plan, even though it will be tailored (eg like TR does) and 2) it would let you back date the plan or otherwise tell it that you already have a base level of fitness.
Yes and yes! The Fascat app does that too. You have to apply the plan to your calendar before you can preview it. I lost my progress today (but thankfully only had 3 or 4 workouts logged)
It would also be nice to have some workout filters like TR has instead of scrolling through dozens of available workouts.
Yeah, that’s definitely true. TR is still way, way ahead of the competition in terms of UX.
If you want to do more hours, just do. You don’t have to stick to what Join has planned for you.
I do agree though, it would be nice if Join took your current progress into account, instead of assuming you are starting well rested from scratch every time.
I agree that Join UX is infuriating at times and you kinda have to take a leap of faith with it. TR is just way better at this.
But based on my experience Join figures out pretty quickly what your base fitness level is - especially if you mix in some bigger rides (events/races) outside of the plan.
It may warn you that you’re overtraining but if you plan those in, complete and then successfully do a couple of workouts it will adapt to the training volume it thinks you can absorb.
There’s zero explanation of how it works exactly but they must have some sort of CTL equivalent calculation under the hood. There’s also probably a lot more going into the Join Score than just one number. I still haven’t figured out what it means exactly - but it does seem to affect types and lengtht of workouts considerably.
Do you mean “level”? It’s a mix of CTL and FTP apparently. Someone has done some reverse engineering on it, think it’s post #30 in this thread.
Yes I mean “level”! Confusing, it’s called level in the app but I also listen to the podcast in Dutch where they call it “score”. It’s definitely a mix of FTP and CTL of sorts, it looks at relative W/kg by the way because it changes when you update your weight.
Yes, W/kg…I didn’t actually look up Janhein’s post earlier, but he’s said:
It’s worth reading the post and looking at the diagramms!
Out of interest, did you test your new predicted FTP? I find that Join thinks my FTP has improved, but I can’t actually test at that power (ie, my tested FTP has not improved much).
Thank you for linking that, fascinating read. I’ve not gone this far down the rabbit hole but great someone else did so I don’t have to!
And to your question - no, I haven’t tested the FTP and don’t intend to. RPE seems to be matching the new zones and I can complete all the workouts - I just use the FTP to anchor my power zones and pace my efforts and I’m a big proponent of accidental FTP testing. I’ll be riding out in proper mountains soon so we’ll see in practice!