Hi all, I’m the same theboycooper who posted on r/trainerroad about the recent AI FTP changes, and I wanted to share my full experience here so TR staff can see it in one place.
Context:
I’m in a key training block with important rides in April, May and June, so I can’t really afford to waste 3–4 weeks or even longer as it learns on under‑powered workouts while a new model “learns” me. Recently:
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My last Zwift ramp test (the day after the new TR update) gave me an FTP 249 (243 W at the time I posted on reddit).
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Intervals.icu had my eFTP 238 W.
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Old TR detection was 235 W.
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The new AI FTP detection suddenly dropped me to 212 W.
So all of my external and historical data pointed to me being 240watts ish, and yet the new AI put me at 212 W and then built all my workouts around that.
The Core Problem I Ran Into
The issue isn’t just a “my FTP is wrong by X watts” complaint, i’m 42 and past bragging about such things, it’s how that wrong number propagates through the whole platform and how hard it is to correct without turning off the very AI features i’m paying for.
At 212 W, my workout levels were coming in around 3,4,5, when I know I should be around level 7–8 or even 9 for the 212 metric.
When I override FTP manually to something sensible, AI‑driven features (AI FTP detection and adaptive workout selection) effectively stop working or are degraded.
I did a proper FTP test on Zwift the day after the update and got 249 W, but the TR AI did not react or adjust based on that effort.
Even when I completed harder workouts, the system did not immediately “snap” to a more realistic FTP, instead it appears locked into a 28‑day AI detection cycle and sub par difficulty suggested workouts
Practically, that means, accept an obviously wrong FTP and spend weeks on too‑easy workouts, or fix FTP manually and lose most of the AI value TR is now built around.
I’m having to Hack this.
I’ve found a hacky workaround that at least stops me wasting a month, but it really shouldn’t be necessary.
What I’m doing now:
I accepted the low AI FTP so the system would “believe” its own number and keep the AI features active.
For each scheduled workout, I manually bump it to around level 7.x and will be higher over the next 2 weeks in the appropriate zone.
I then complete those sessions and mark them as “easy” or “moderate/comfortable,” which they genuinely are for me at my real fitness level.
Over days, the system has started very slowly nudging future workouts upwards, but nowhere near fast enough to reflect a 30 W difficulty discrepancy.
This at least lets me avoid weeks of sub‑par training, but it turns me into the tuning mechanism for the ML model rather than the model working for me.
How This Feels As a Paying User
From my side, a few things are frustrating:
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The new model seems to have pulled many of us towards the middle of a bell curve and then expects us to climb back out via a sequence of artificially easy workouts, making it look like we’re progressing because the system is slowly increasing difficulty.
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When AI FTP is plainly wrong, the tools to correct it (tests, hard workouts, external data) either aren’t recognised or are heavily throttled by the 28‑day detection window.
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If you do the “sensible” thing and put in a manual FTP you actually believe to adjust workout value, you lose the main AI features you’re subscribing for.
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It feels like we’re alpha‑testing the new machine‑learning model on our limited training time, without clear documentation on how to work around obvious mis‑estimations.
I’m not anti‑TR or anti‑AI far from it. I want this to work, and I’ve stayed on the platform because the structure and library are valuable. But this update doesn’t feel baked from a user experience standpoint, especially for people in an important training window.
What I’d Love From TR
I’d really appreciate if TR could:
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Provide clearer documentation on how AI FTP detection interacts with:
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manual FTP changes
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non‑TR tests (ramp/20‑min efforts on Zwift, etc.)
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completion of very high‑level (9.x) workouts in different zones.
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Offer a supported, explicit “my AI FTP is clearly wrong” recovery path that:
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allows a one‑off re‑calculation sooner than 28 days, or
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allows a manual override without turning off AI adaptation entirely.
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Communicate more openly that the model may significantly under‑ or over‑estimate some profiles at launch, and what those athletes should do right now.
In the meantime, I’ll keep using the level 7.x workaround so I don’t waste the next month of training, but I’d prefer to rely on the system as designed rather than hand‑tuning every workout.
Keen to hear if others have found better solutions or if TR staff can clarify the intended behaviour and best practices for cases like this.
