Red Light Green Light is Available in Early Access! 🎉 🎉 🎉🎉 🎉 🎉🎉 🎉

[jnatiw]

Aw, yeah. Now to confirm how stupid I’ve been at times! And, just maybe, how smart I’m being this year so far. Very excited for this one! Thanks!

EDIT:
Wow. This is a very graphic depiction of how stupid I can actually be. In cross referencing the “red days” with comments posted in my personal journal it becomes obvious I just don’t listen to my own reason. Quick note: I’m very happy with the “No Green” in the calendar. IMO the calendar would become too cluttered and not draw attention to caution. Everything would just be colorful.

Case in point (full disclosure, I was upping my volume this particular week):

February 1 - Yellow - Did an hour endurance as scheduled. Comment in journal “Gave a brief thought about shortening this on up. But sent it. Ride was easy, but felt my gas tank going empty.”
February 2 - Yellow - Did a two hour threshold as scheduled. Journal comment included “legs are trashed”.
February 3 - Red - Did a two and a half hour endurance as scheduled. Couple of comments in my journal included “had to keep digging till it was over” and “this was a grind”.
February 4 - Red - TR had adapted me to a slightly easier ride today, but I bailed and did an easy 30 minutes.
February 5 - Yellow (assuming I got out of the red due to reducing yesterday’s ride) - First ride of recovery week, 90 minutes endurance as planned.
February 6 - Yellow - No riding.
February 7 - Green. Easy 45 minutes as planned.

This seemed to reset me to yellow for two days, during which I did only one easy endurance ride and was back to green.

Bottom line for me so far is that it seems like the algorithm is smarter than me (which isn’t saying much) and that should help make better decisions if even only a day earlier. Which could ostensibly save my season.

Am wondering if I’ll be able to finally translate some of the feelings/comments I have after various workouts. In the past, I’ve done a poor job of using them to alter my plan going forward (see example above).

Finally, I believe it will be an important tool when attempting to alter the volume of my plan. Had I listened to the algorithm during this week of increasing volume I would have definitely been better off.

Will continue to monitor closely and give relevant feedback when warranted. So far, I’m super excited about this new feature! Thanks!

[BrianSpang]

They say it’s not (strictly) TSS based. But for simplicity here let’s assume it is. Just because you train on a red or yellow day doesn’t automatically mean the next day should also be yellow or red. It would depend on how much TSS (we’re assuming here) your ride was on that preceeding yellow or red day. Even though you trained, if it was light enough, you still shed enough fatigue to be green the next day.

[mcneese.chad]

That sure seems like a Copy/Paste error with source material from the AIFTPD FAQ

[Pbase]

I agree, but then red does not mean stop, and if that’s the case, then I don’t see the point in the whole system.

[TheHunted]

This was my big take away from using a Whoop for a year (didn’t renew) I stuggle with to much intensity, but I can handle a lot more volume than in a standard TR plan

[BrianSpang]

I think people are treating RLGL like it’s a tachometer in a car. It’s not. If you’re in the red with your engine, the risk is acute, catastrophic failure, i.e. a connecting rod instantly lets go. RLGL isn’t like that. If you are training in the red, the risk of “engine” failure is more chronic in nature, i.e. if you keep on doing this for some period of time, your engine may (will?) fail.

As for yellow … I welcome it. It means I’m pushing. But I am not likely to do intensity on a yellow day … but then again … maybe I will. Especially if it’s an outdoor ride with my buddies and I don’t want to miss out.

[Nate_Pearson]

@Olly

Great work on getting this out. I think this will be really useful. One question that i can not see that in the above. I am assuming this only takes into effect any cycling you I have done. Where my runs are also being uploaded to the calendar, i am presuming these are not taking into consideration?

Runs are considered and we’re working on swims.

[patricksudol]

Oh,. I read that as RLGL will also recommend rest days/endurance rides for FTP tests that land on a yellow or red day.

[Nate_Pearson]

@gu3st

I’ve enabled the Early Access and quite excited to try it out. As a new father myself - @Nate_Pearson youve mentioned a few times that this feature will be useful for new parents or people with other outside stress. I’m just interested to know how that works given that TR only uses the training history.

As an example, if my training volume stays the same but I suddenly become a new parent, how will RLGL know to give me a red light?

Or is it working under the assumption that this event will reduce my training, and then RLGL will adapt from this new volume of training?

We’re going to add the ability to be more conservative in your training progression.

basically have three options:

• Conservative
• Balanced
• Aggressive

If you want to really stretch yourself and you think you can prioritize recovery, you can hit aggressive.

If you’re a new parent, then maybe its time to take a more conservative approach.

[Nate_Pearson]

@Macy

Well @Nate_Pearson for all the bs talk about burnout, following the plans doesn’t seem to have put me in the red too many times from my first look!

My Raid Alpine adventure on the other hand, red after day 1 and only another 5 days to go! Really stands out on the calendar!

Yes, PLEASE ask anyone who says they burned out to show their career. We looked at 35 people who started threads “TR burned me out” and 34 of them were adding tons of outdoor volume on top of the plan (and training hard on red/yellow days).

The other person was going fine, failed a threshold workout, then said we burned them out. Not sure what happened there.

[Nate_Pearson]

OMG, how long did it take to recover after that?!?!

[Nate_Pearson]

@ohjelm

@Nate_Pearson I don’t see this fully answered. Very excited to test this, but the question above would be useful in that regards. Like this week for me I’m pushing “a bit too far” on purpose as I have a vacation comming up and “life” messed up last week. I still want the “normal” AT to work, but if RLGL adapts my upcomming threshold wo I’m not going to listen to it

it’s the same adaptation right now. We are open to changing it based on feedback.

I hear you on that vacation scenario.

[huges84]

@mcneese.chad

Sort of, since the origin is a South Korean television series made famous on Netflix which is where/why Nate referenced it years ago:

Except it’s a game I played as a kid 35 years ago?

[Nate_Pearson]

@JoeX

Turned it on, every day amber.

I assume that’s a bad thing.

No reds or greens.

“Red Light Green Light uses more than just TSB to determine your fatigue”

Not sure how my bank is contacted, but interesting that we’re including financial stress now

Joe, you don’t have every day yellow, and you have lots of red days. And you have lots of green days.

[JoeX]

@mcneese.chad

@JoeX

Red Light Green Light game must be a US thing.

Sort of, since the origin is a South Korean television series made famous on Netflix which is where/why Nate referenced it years ago:

• How Does Red Light, Green Light Work in Squid Game: The Challenge? - Netflix Tudum

Squid Game took it from a children’s game though right?

“In order to create a safe environment for 456 players to play the classic childhood game, the set had to be huge. ” - from your link

I was not aware of it until Squid Game. In the UK we played similar games for centuries but no red light references iirc.

[BrianSpang]

Thanks @Nate_Pearson. I think it would be great if we could see when an an adaptation was based on RLGL (as @ohjelm mentioned). I often push fairly hard when I know I’ll be off the bike for a while right after. That’s a typical “time crunched athlete” scenario.

[Nate_Pearson]

@neilb

Strength training
I’ve scanned over the trainer road forum posts on this previously and the arguments for/against recording a TSS for strength training. I’m currently not recording a TSS with strength training

Is there a recommended way to input this to work with rlgl? For example last week I did two days of strength workouts which definitely added fatigue but I believe will be treated as rest days?

There isn’t right now. I want to add strength training into RLGL and the product in general. It’s still a bit out though.

@neilb

Life / Sleep / stress
I’ve noted there are a few comments and replies on this already in particular that sleep doesn’t effect RLGL. I was wondering if the workout scoring or motivation scoring would effect it though? For example if my RPE is higher due to these factors I might rate a workout that is usually Moderate as Hard - would/could this effect RLGL?

Yes, sleep and HRV are on the list to pull in to a different ML model.

[JoeX]

@Nate_Pearson

Joe, you don’t have every day yellow, and you have lots of red days. And you have lots of green days.

Yes, you’re right - I didn’t realise initially it was back dating at all, so I was only looking at this week (the iPhone rendering only shows days). This week Mon, tue, Wed are yellow but you’re quite right, I’ll need to explore more.

[Nate_Pearson]

@theflyingduttman

Hi guys - I may have missed the idea here… but is RLGL supposed to tell you if TODAY is a good day to train? Or is it just tracking what is done and then will work with AT?

RLGL is apart of adaptive training. And it will give you a workout when you are supposed to train, like yours shows.

[mcneese.chad]

Yeah, the real origin certainly goes further back but within the TR universe, IIRC it was linked closely with the show. Then related but perhaps a bit separate is the the simple correlation to traffic lights (RYG) that are present in most countries that have auto traffic. Correlation to actions for driving are meant for at least some parallel to training actions.