That’s interesting and I appreciate the response. If your experiences are the general consensus then it looks like, at the moment, there has to be some proactive ‘tweaking’ to ensure progression. Maybe positive results from ramp testing regularly would, at least for the same or higher intensity levels, give some assurance that you are getting fitter.
I know the easiest solution would be to use plan builder but that doesn’t fit for me at the moment.
Maybe someone else will chime in…
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That’s very interesting. The progression on the plans, even the new ones, feels too much for me. It might be a TrainNow ‘plan’ I need.
Thanks @SeanHurley for the reply straight from TR, and @gcarver for the specifics that inform his well-considered guess.
Knowing that TrainNow wants me to get not just comfy but also fitter – “albeit in a less progressive or focused way than a training plan” (Sean) – has helped me decide to stay with it for now rather than move over to a plan, even with the AT Beta invitation. I don’t need super progressive or super focussed, just reassurance that it won’t actively sabotage my tweaks and may even cooperate if I try to progress at my own pace on my own days. Thanks @gcarver for some further evidence that it does cooperate if/when our tweaks are realistic. I thought so too, but didn’t want to be kidding myself.
I hope I’m correct in assuming from @bbarrera that it’s in the AT Beta that TR workouts done outside are not getting included in the fine-tuning as well as originally hoped, and that they are at least “seen” by TrainNow in its own less focused and progressive deliberations. What I’m trying to do is 1-2 high intensity workouts indoor per week and the rest outdoors, with the weather or another obligation determining exactly which days. If all those outdoor workouts are not even being seen by TN, then it doesn’t surprise me if it thinks I need more Endurance in my life, even though that’s what I do most of. 
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I am not in the beta.
I mentioned it getting stuck. Let me explain that more clearly. I open up TR and let’s say the recommended workout is endurance. If I hit the refresh, it will change the workouts, but not the recommendation. BUT, if I change the duration, it will auto refresh the recommendation and workout. For example, I just opened up TR. Recommendation was 60min endurance. Hit refresh and the result was still endurance but a diff workout. I changed the time from 60 to 90 and the recommendation became climbing.
As for the levels, I haven’t been paying attention since I haven’t been doing TR workouts for quite some time, but I think the endurance and climbing have all been in the 1-2 range while attacking is always ~5.
As for changing recommendation (i.e., endurance, climbing, attacking), it does seem to react to my previous day. If I have a day off or do an easy hour of Zwift, the next day recommendation will be climbing. If I do something like 2x20 @90% on climbing day, it will recommend endurance the following day. In both cases, it doesn’t matter if I’m doing indoor or outdoor rides, the recommended type will change accordingly. Of note, I have not seen an attacking recommendation yet. It’s always endurance or climbing.
Curious if I actually do the recommended workout, if the level will go up 
I guess I’ll try the recommended workout for a few days and see what happens going forward.
Anyway, it seems like a great feature w/potential, but maybe it’s not completely baked yet.
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Different experience with recommendations, and I too open up TR beta app, navigate to Workouts>TrainNow, and hit refresh on the 60-minute workouts, then switch to 120-minute duration and hit refresh. Sometimes I’ll change duration to 90-minutes. Lets say I open the app and the recommendation is Endurance, 5+ refreshes and switching duration has no impact and it stays Endurance. In rare cases I’ll see Climbing or Attacking recommendation. And all my levels are 1-2, with the exception of last week when I briefly saw some 4-6 levels.
That’s interesting that you see attacking WO’s on occasion. I’ve never seen one recommended and was wondering if anyone had.
All I ever get is endurance or climbing. I’m keen to bump up my threshold levels on TN to see if that makes a difference.
Alas, it’ll have to wait until next week as I’ve officially got my wife’s flu. TN needs another recommendation for that. The “Don’t even think about it, idiot” recommendation.
My mid season break was prompted by waking Saturday to the flu. We’ve got some graduations this weekend so I even went and got a (negative) COVID test yesterday.
Can’t say for certain about having seen an attacking workout. Definitely endurance and I can count on one hand the climbing recommends. My FTP is a really high % of vo2max so attacking/vo2max is really what I need, soon, but I have no idea if the ML algorithms can suss that out.
Interesting. If I ever see one I’ll make sure to capture the moment with a screenshot.
TN would be pretty impressive if it could recommend VO2 in your situation. I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum and really need to hit some threshold work to get my FTP numbers back up after a month or so of barely structured training. It’ll work as is for me.
I guess knowing that you could do with some VO2 work is the perfect time to step in and override the recommended workout.
I’ve seen all three at the end of my rest week.
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I get Attacking WO recommendations regularly. Climbing as well. TN nicely reacts to hard days by recommending an Endurance WO for the next day. Levels seem appropriate for me. I do 3 WO/week, not on a plan, try to do 1xSS, 1xthreshold and 1xVO2 per week. So I never do back to back days and the Endurance recommendation changes to Attacking or Climbing after a day off.
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Just started using TrainNow. I think it’s going to be a good solution for me as I have no events and was manually following SSB and Build but taking many more weeks to complete since I only ride 3 time per week ( 2 of which are outside group rides). Now I can just use Train Now to choose my session which is great. Quick question though. I sometimes look at the app even when I am not due to ride. Just out of interest to see what it would recommend. I’ve noticed that if I look later in the same day (I haven’t refreshed the workouts but just reopened the app) the suggested workouts change. It is recommending the same energy system but all 3 workouts are different with slightly different workout levels. Just wondering what the rationale is for this since I haven’t done a workout since last launching the app so in theory nothing has changed other than a few more hours have elapsed since the previous days ride. Is TN sophisticated enough to recognise I have had a few hours of recovery and therefore changed the workout cycles. I would have thought that TN would have chosen the same workouts on the basis that nothing has really changed since I last looked at the app. Perhaps @SeanHurley can shed some light on this?
@IvyAudrain responded above to the question about POL (and great that her response and that below is the same:)) plans, but to close the loop on my post above, here is a clip from support’s response to my email. Interestingly, the first comment after congratulating me on being in the beta was to point me back to this thead:)
As for your first question, though, unfortunately, Adaptive Training does not currently work with the experimental polarized plans. This being the case, you should schedule a Plan Builder plan to get the full benefits of Adaptive Training. [POL plan question}
With the second and third question, we currently have a few unresolved issues with outdoor workouts, but TrainerRoad workouts that are automatically sent to a Garmin head unit are supposed to be accounted for with Adaptive Training as long as the entire ride is recorded in the workout profile, and it’s not ended before your ride is complete. For “free rides,” if they are completed and imported to TrainerRoad through Strava, they should be accounted for as well. However, both of these aren’t currently being accounted for correctly, but once we resolve these issues, they should be accounted for. [using TR workouts push to Garmin for outdoors and how free rides outdoors are handled]
For your final question of the top questions that are being asked about Adaptive Training, there are many questions, but the one that tends to surprise athletes the most would be after an FTP change, your progression levels may change as well, which is normal. [My question was about the top questions support is receiving so I can benefit from those]
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Reopening the app after a while shuffles the recommendations, but they’re all coming from the list of workouts that TrainNow considers appropriate for you each day. It’s effectively the same as hitting the refresh button on TrainNow. The levels from workout to workout may be (as you noticed) slightly different from workout to workout, but that’s also by design– TrainNow recommends workouts from within a fairly narrow range relative to your abilities; they should all be achievable but challenging and productive.
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Hi @SeanHurley - support didn’t respond to my clarification question. Will TrainNow ‘see’ outdoor workouts if I sync a TrainerRoad workout onto my Garmin and record that? And if yes, can it be a custom workout?
As a coached athlete my Garmin is loading/recording a TrainingPeaks workout. It appears on my TR calendar, for example:
and the Garmin is loading/recording the TP version. And that definitely prevents TrainNow from seeing the workout.
If the answer to the first two questions is yes, I could delete and replace the above workout with an equivalent like this (or one created in WorkoutCreator):
and that would feed TrainNow with workouts to update levels, until 3rd party structured workouts are supported.
David from TR said somewhere in one of these threads that TN takes account of outdoor riding 
Under what circumstances? Because TN is definitely not taking into account my outdoor riding, and a support rep confirmed it.
I don’t think he specifically said but the inference was it was all outdoor rides. That doesn’t seem to be the case though 
I’ll try and find the post and check but it would help if I could remember his 2nd name 
@SeanHurley I had an email problem, and the support rep did follow up yesterday:
“As for what workouts TrainNow can use, all of the TrainerRoad workout library inside or outside can be used. However, for outside workouts, they need to be exported to the head unit through Ride Sync; then, once it’s completed and synced back to our servers, the workout will be included in how TrainNow recommends workouts.”
Although I’m not certain that includes custom workouts via WorkoutCreator.
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From my post above here’s what the TR support folks told me this morning (bolding added for emphasis):
"we currently have a few unresolved issues with outdoor workouts, but TrainerRoad workouts that are automatically sent to a Garmin head unit are supposed to be accounted for with Adaptive Training as long as the entire ride is recorded in the workout profile, and it’s not ended before your ride is complete. For “free rides,” if they are completed and imported to TrainerRoad through Strava, they should be accounted for as well. However, both of these aren’t currently being accounted for correctly, but once we resolve these issues, they should be accounted for.
So what I read is that things aren’t working consistently yet in AT; I don’t know how the technology is being applied in TrainNow and whether the issues are the same. I’ll likely look at what’s recommended in TN vs adaptations recommended in AT and see what I can infer.
PS. Have a follow up question on free rides not in Strava and what the plan is for those.
Edited: PPS: this is where an FAQ would be really helpful. Pretty challenging (frustrating) to have to read through all the forum comments and see where different posters get from TR support different information, partial information, or information the posters interpret differently @IvyAudrain , can you tell us about any plans for FAQs/user guide for both TN and AT?
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It was @david.riddlebarger 9 days ago in this thread.
“TrainNow’s “recommended” workout on a given day DOES take into account your non-TR rides. Part of the updated TrainNow logic looks at several different ride metrics (not ones specific to adaptive training!) in making its determination.”
Is that only non TR indoors and not outdoors non-TR