I train in the gym 3 times a week, with legs only once on Wednesdays. I chose the low volume masters plan (2 hard days, 1 endurance) despite being in my 30s due to being a recent dad and to accommodate for the strength training.
After my Tuesday hard ride, it is giving me a yellow day for my gym day. And then a red day after gym day for my endurance ride on Thursday. So far I feel totally fine to train, especially an endurance ride, so I’ve been skipping the adaptation asking to rest entirely.
My question: There’s a chance the model and/or algorithm is right and it is indeed too much, but it doesn’t feel like it at the moment. Will the model eventually learn that this baseline stress is fine for me if I keep skipping adaptations while doing well? Note that I haven’t logged strength training in the past but have been training this way for at least 10-15 years, this might be part of the problem.
I feel like I post this too often, but it was such a big learning for me that I feel like others might not know…
When strength training was added, TR shared that you should only be logging the number of sets you take to near failure. So, if you’re doing 4 sets of squats, but only taking 1 or 2 of those to near failure, you should only record the 1 or 2, not all 4. Over the course of an hour long workout, this makes a massive difference.
That’s good to know! In my case most sets besides warm ups (which I don’t log) are near failure. Actually. toying around, even the presence of 1 set of legs would trigger a red day at the moment.
That said, I did take a look at your Calendar and training history, and the reason you may be getting so many Yellow/Red Days is that there isn’t much training history for the system to base how much training you can handle initially and as you mentioned there is no logged strength training. Plus, after what looks to be a month off any training, the system is likely easing you into it.
As you keep feeding the system data, you will see that the Yellow/Red Days will naturally go down or even show you a consistent pattern on where you could be adjusting your training days so you get proper recovery in between.
In your case, since we know you have been doing these 3 gym sessions per week for a long time now, I’d say it’s safe to make the call to deny the adaptations on Thursdays to your Endurance rides. But since you just started structured training + strength training, I would just be cautious when denying adaptations, as you want to ease into training load even if you’re feeling fine 2 weeks in (fatigue still creeps in without feeling it at first, especially with a newborn ).
Interesting! I don’t really do this - I record all sets - but as with workout RPE ratings, so long as you’re consistent in how you record things it probably won’t matter. If recording all sets like me, then while you may get more yellow or red days flagged to begin with, I’m guessing🤔 that once it’s got a few weeks or so(?) of your data to work off, either approach will work OK if consistently applied.
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