Recovering from Knee Injury & Adaptive Training

Hi,

Unfortunately, I twisted my knee (suspect straining ligaments & aggravation of previous ACL reconstruction) trying to manual. Anyway, my physio is saying it will probably take me 12 – 16 weeks after accident to get back to previous fitness / robustness of knee. So at the moment I have just started doing easy workouts on TrainerRoad to get the knee moving. I’m progressing the duration of the workout and have manually dialled down the target wattage so I am basically just doing a wattage that is comfortable on the knee. I have a stages LH side power meter and fortunately this is the damaged knee so I’m getting accurate power readings from the damaged knee side.

I previously performed the ramp test quite frequently but a cardiologist told me in January that perhaps it is not best to keep push myself so hard on bike given my age (50 in July), some minor underlying issues (that we are addressing) and a more serious family history of heart disease. His suggestion was that I continue biking as its good for health & heart but perhaps I dial things down a bit on the biking side as I am “not a pro and being paid to ride bike” (his words). FYI: I was still racing cat 2-3 crits until Covid and I was pushing heart rate up to 187 etc. on ramp tests and sprints at the end of races.

I plan to have a further chat with the cardiologist at my next appointment to get his view on what heart rates zones and duration at heart rate zones I should be doing for best long term heart health. I will then find the appropriate trainer road plan and workouts.

However, given the above background and the fact I am in the adaptive training programme, I am wondering if the AI will take account of the fact I am coming back from injury and perhaps adjust FTP workouts accordingly without having to doing ramp tests? I remember in a TrainerRoad podcast Nate mentioned that they were looking at this feature.

Obviously I don’t expect any medical advice from TrainerRoad but I’d be interested to know if / how the adaptive training system will respond to fact I have dialled back training as I’m recovering from knee injury and any other advice / pointers about setting up adaptive training and TrainerRoad when coming back from injury without doing ramp tests.

Best Regards
Neil

PS
I’ve found the podcasts and customer support at TrainerRoad to be top class so keep up the good work and thanks for a great system.