My problems with progression levels

TrainerRoad Software
21

Endurance is probably the least useful of progression levels. Dont overthink it. Do easier workouts if you feel like it, do higher endurance if you feel like it. Any cyclist with training is likely at least a 7 or 8 endurance wise

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22

I feel like I am taking crazy pills. I am doing the opposite of complaining about my PLs not being high enough. I argued that I actually like having lower PLs in some cases.

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23

See below:

Then pick an easier workout!

24

  • This will probably take an official TR rep who knows the hidden details, but I just don’t see someone typically stepping in with a 10 in Endurance (just for one example).

  • For reference, this is what TR has at the 10 Endurance level. I suspect some riders could knock that out at whatever their current FTP is, but I think it would be hard to a stretch for some.

  • That said, there are other related discussions specifically about Endurance levels. I don’t think it is the best or most representative zone to look at with issues like this. It seems rather unlikely that any one would come in with 10 PL on zones, considering what we see from TR.

25

You can, to some extent, “game” the system.

Conceptually AT has an expected response, so a workout like Pettit would be Easy or Moderate. If you classify it as “Hard” or “Very Hard” then AT will think “Whoa! Better dial things back a bit” so you get adaptations down.

26

I think you’re right there.

I did some research on different kinds of 4x4 (and slightly different durations) intervals in vo2max for another online discussion. I was at vo2max 5.5 at the time and those we’re getting hard. vo2max with those kinds of intervals on 8 and above seemed just undoable without so much specialized training for those specific durations, much more training that I would ever do in vo2max in one block or period.

27

That is literally what I said I did in my post. Again, I am discussing the marketing of PLs, not the functionality of the system.

28

Level 10 is not the point.

Let me give another example. Suppose TR just started everyone at 100 FTP without testing. Then, at my first ramp test 6 weeks in My new ftp is 220. Did I improve or not? Well, if my FTP was 240 to start then no; I didn’t. Saying I am fitter because my FTP went from 100-220 is incorrect.

Same with levels. If my vo2 max is 5 and I go from 3 to 4, then I did not improve.

29

You don’t need to always be working beyond your levels to benefit from workouts

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30

Well, I would think almost anyone would realize in either of those situations that their workouts are too easy and substitute harder work outs.

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31

What everyone recognizes is that for PLs to work they need to be tuned in to your levels. Only then can you see the completion of an harder workout as an increase of your limit.

When you are starting again it takes a few rides for PLs to tune in. You can speed it up by manually selecting harder workouts. But until the PLs are tuned in to your level, you can not see the changes as an improvement.

It just takes time to find the exact workout level that is at your limit, after you had a break.

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32

Lots of semantics here, but yes, you are correct, not all PL increases are indicative of an improvement in fitness. But in general, everything else being equal, PLs do give an indication of your progress in the specific zone each PL pertains to.

Good enough?

There’s a reason there used to be tons of threads here about “VO2Max (or SS, or threshold, or whatever) workouts increase in difficulty too fast (or too slow), can you recommend an easier (harder) progression?”, and that those threads have mostly disappeared. That is what AT does though PLs.

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33

OK, I get that. But again, I return to the reality that the scenario you mention should be short lived. True, the initial part could be inconclusive to misleading, but it seems the typical process will lead to more realistic and useful info in about 2 weeks (at least for workouts of given training zones within that time).

There is a “hole” in the system as I covered depending on the history someone brings to TR. If that is nothing, or a bunch of stuff that is not recognized by PL, that means there will be some unknowns for a while. But that will all change in the coming weeks and become something more worthwhile and useful.

For an experienced rider, they can do the manual substitution (with relation to the workouts and experience they have while reviewing TR workouts) and kick up PL’s that first week.

For a new rider, it’s not likely wise to let them pick their PL’s because they may have absolutely no reference.

Two use cases and I think TR has them covered, even if one is taking a bit more effort (experiences with manual subs) to get to a quicker start point. Whether that person manually set to 4.7 or did a workout there vs the 1.0 from lack of imported data, I don’t think makes much functional difference.

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34

My (relatively limited, a few months’ worth) experience so far is that I get adaptations for one workout type at a time. AT wants to increase or decrease my VO2Max progression, or my threshold progression, or my SS progression. Never (yet) seen a case where multiple progressions were changed at the same time, putting me in the “I want this, but not that” dilemma. If I do get there, I’ll refuse the adaptations, and see where that gets me.

35

The existence of PLs make the effort a ton easier than before. Asking “Alexa, I’d like an easier version of this workout” was pretty convoluted before. Alternates and PLs have simplified this.

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36

Yeah. To be clear, I can dig into it and share, but I came back in early Dec with about 6 weeks of little to no training. My PLs were 1.0 across the board. I knew my Ramp test result was a tad low on top of that.

So I made a couple of manual swaps with the Alternates, as well as adding manual Endurance rides to the open Sundays on my Low Vol plan in the first week. I was in great shape by week two and have been having great training along the way and now midway through SSB2.

I see his point, but it’s pretty easy to handle for experienced riders. And for new ones, I think the default progression is the safe way to roll.

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37

Yes, agreed. And in that sense it works great. Again, I feel like most people just completely missed me saying I like AT. I have an Instagram page documenting all of my workouts and progress. Other than the one thing with my endurance PL I used as an example (and was really easy to fix by choosing an easier workout - which I mentioned), it has worked great.

However, the reason I decided to post this is because someone recently had a thread about too much intensity after a breakthrough vo2 max workout. In that sense, I would argue that just because one can do a level 5 doesn’t mean that’s what one should have for their PL. Case in point is that thread. The reason why I think people do breakthroughs and reach too high of a level is because TR has marketed them as a measure of fitness.

38

The PL mechanism is indeed simplistic in its nature. It effectively states the highest PL workout you’ve done in that category, with the (not-so-great) decay kicking in after 2 weeks. So indeed, if someone picks a monster workout and somehow manages to complete it, that skews the system badly. And that’s going to be more of a problem once outside rides get recognized into the system, as more cases like yours (endurance getting pushed to 8 by a long outdoor ride) will happen. Not sure how the devs are handling that.

You will also notice most threads that start with “AT ain’t working for me” will, after a couple of back-and-forth, uncover that the OP is not following a plan, or switching a high PL workout in there, or whatever.

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39

If it were up to me, I would get rid of all PLs below Threshold. PLs in the lower intensity levels are simply what you have done, not what you can do. Assigning PLs to the lower intensities gives the false impression that the goal is to move those higher, when often (not always) the goal is just to ride at an appropriate level of intensity in those zones.

And I have said this before, the range is too large. Someone who can barely complete a 1.0 threshold workout has nowhere near the same FTP as someone who can complete a 9. They should be rescaled a bit.

40

There is still a thread about SS progression visible not too far from the top of this forum. That’s a good indicator that progressions have a place in SS as well, which makes sense as there’s an evolution of the TTE in that range.