Red Light Green Light: Request for "burned out" athletes!

@Nate_Pearson

  1. Regarding UI, shading the entire day’s Calendar box with yellow (warning) or red (don’t do it) is very clear & visually unmissable, so I’d retain this method of signalling to the user rather than trying to work in some green/yellow/red symbol instead that might be overlooked. Keep it simple.

  2. Despite there being no green visual signal (keeps the UI cleaner by avoiding a signal for the default/majority state) , the RLGL functionality is clearly a type of “traffic light for training readiness”. Garmin has already claimed training readiness, so that’s out. Since we refer to traffic lights for vehicles as simply “traffic lights”, it makes sense to simplify this traffic light for training functionality down to just “Training Light”. Keeping it simple again.

5 Likes

Just an FYI. When I ride I just grab my phone and open the app on an apple phone. The screen is black.
It may be different depending on what you use to do your workout.

Despite the few examples by Nate above being on the web, I sure expect this feature to have access & visibility within the TR apps (mobile and desktop). Just a matter of consistency for one but also this being what seems to be a core feature moving forward.

3 Likes

I remember discussing on the forum a time when I felt I was close to burning out or more specifically feeling over trained. @Nate_Pearson You commented on the post and combed through my data at the time. I just can’t remember exactly when that was or how to find the thread.

If I could find that then I’ll sign up for y’all.

Also how would this differ to say intervals where it shows you when you’ve dipped into the red? Like the pic below.

3 Likes

Haven’t felt specifically burned out in years, but also haven’t strictly followed a TR plan. I use them as a skeleton upon which I build my training. Modifying up or down as I perceive my needs

I’d enjoy seeing my training reviewed through the lense of this feature to see how it understands my training and when it thinks I’ve over trained

In particular Jan 2022-Jun 2023 would be a very consistent period of high volume and, to my interpretation of it, compliance

This past seven months (July 2023 to present) has been severely disrupted by travel so might make an amusing follow up review on how (not) to train after time off

Woop

(Trust me, I took a business law class over a decade ago)

This is accurate! Nice work :-D.

7 Likes

I think you’re looking at it wrong. There is an issue with people picking higher volumes than the can handle. This will help, but we want to build this earlier into plan builder to prevent someone from even starting something too high for them.

The issue is that virtually no cyclists do the plan exactly as prescribed. They switch stuff around, ride outside, race, take days/weeks off, go on runs, ride on zwift, etc.

You add those things to a well structured plan, well suddenly the plan isn’t so well structured because it has extra stuff in it.

Kind of like throwing nails into the cake mix and blaming the recipe (which didn’t include nails).

If you follow our plans exactly, you won’t trigger red days on low volume no matter what, and you won’t trigger red days on mid or high volume if you’ve got the training history to back up what you’ve picked.

So to say all these plans just need to be adapted to something more sustainable is silly.

The question is “how do I fit in my training plan with the rest of my fitness life?”. That’s one really good use of RLGL.

The other one is that this works without any TR at all! You can just ride outside and have it warn you if you’re starting to cook yourself.

24 Likes

This is the most common scenario. They’ll do a mid volume plan, then replace sunday rides with an intense 3.5 hour outdoor ride.

Do that for a few weeks in a row, then they fail a VO2 max workout on tuesday and say it’s because the plans are bad. :man_shrugging:

9 Likes

From what I see, it’s the addition of big long weekend rides of 3-5 hours is where people burn themselves out.

It’s not because they added an extra intensity day.

I think most people can handle 3 “hard” days per week that are within reason. Older athletes can have 2 of them (that’s why we did masters plans).

When you add a big outdoor ride to your week, that’s a “hard” day, and you need to drop something else.

Heck, you could just look at TSS.

There’s a case on this forum where someone said that our high volume polarized plan was too hard. They started to fail their intense days.

Here’s the basic weekly TSS of the polarized build HV plan.

Polarized Build - High Volume
Week 1 - 279
Week 2 - 353
Week 3 - 414
Total TSS - 1046

Here’s what the athlete was doing when he said that the plan was too hard.
Week 1 - 605
Week 2 - 524
Week 3 - 445
Total TSS - 1574 (50% more than prescribed!)

It doesn’t matter if they got all the extra TSS through endurance riding, doing 50% more TSS is going to impact the hard days.

10 Likes

Yes, it’s on the roadmap.

Here you go!

17 Likes

“Hole-O-Meter” :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I think you were burning up in Dec/Jan before the Feb race. You look pretty chill between Feb and March.

But here’s Dec 22 - Jan23

Here are the issues I see:

  • Dec 3-5 | Stacking intense days (VO2 , sweet spot, VO2)
  • Dec 10-11 | Missing recovery after big outside ride

  • Dec 17-18 | Missing recovery after big outside ride

  • Dec 30-Jan 8th | Missing recovery after big outside rides



The crazy thing is you won’t always get red days from big rides. All depends on your history and performance.

We looked at a TdF athlete’s calendar and they never had a red day for the entire tour!! They only had yellow a few days and that included the rest days! :exploding_head:

This shows how well they were prepared for the tour!

15 Likes

Who would do that??? :dotted_line_face:

Would you be able to better self regulate longer weekend rides with RLGL? I’m think of pushing a two hour ride to three hours, see if that triggers a yellow day, then figure out the “sweet spot” for longer rides on the weekend

@Nate_Pearson I send in the form and am really interested to see what it shows. I’m posting this also here in the forum. Might be easier for discussions.

In August 2023 my second child was born. Sleep since then very poor. A lot of work in business and with the kids. Managed to go on with training for some time. Started to struggle in Sep /Oct 2023 as I moved to speciality I think because have been on MV Polarized before and that have been only 2 days of intensity. Switched plans a couple of times, even switched to the standard low volume. Masters plans have not been available back then. Some time in October I got sick for 6 weeks. Maybe due to that.

Second: Now I’m on MV build at the moment. Have a big race coming in april in mallorca and a week before that for riding there. I know bad choice because I’ll add a lot of fatigue during that week instead of doing a taper. But I’m not that often on the island to miss the opportunity to ride some of my favorite climbs.
I’m adding some volume on top of MV Masters to hopefully withstand the amount of riding end of april a bit better. Some easy running, riding to work, doing longer mountain rides in rouvy instead of a short endurance ride. Also doing strength training 2 times per week for 3 weeks now (Dialed health 30 day beginner course). I feel the fatigue building up and get some symptoms of getting sick. (Might not be trainerroad related, my bigger child is in daycare and everyone seems to get sick right now). But I’m wondering if that shows in rlgl.

Thx

1 Like

This is pretty much what I already do using a combo of RPE and Garmin recovery advisor. Will be interesting to see how RLGL compares.

The sweetspot I’m aiming for on a weekend ride is ~48 hour recovery time from garmin, with legs and RPE to match. That normally leaves me able to do a decent ride the next day (garmin advice is to “train normally” once recovery is down to 24 hours). For me, I can hit that sweetspot with a pretty disciplined 3-4 hour ride done mostly in z2, or up to about 2.5 hours riding with a lot of tempo and low end sweetspot but starting mostly under threshold. Anything over 2 hours with a lot of work at Threshold and higher (hitting the hills hard or an unstructured group ride that hits all the zones) tends to push recovery out beyond 48 hours, at which point the next day is either a rest day or a very easy active recovery ride. Similar once I get beyond 4 hours, even if it’s stayed disciplined that tends to push recovery advisor out.

It’s all about context. I ride ~12 hours/week so a 2-3 hour ride isn’t that taxing unless it’s a hard ride. Assume for pros riding 20+ hours/week then a 4-5 hour ride is no big deal unless there’s a lot of efforts in there.

1 Like

Thanks for sharing these @Nate_Pearson

I find it a little confusing that people are doing rides on the red days and then the following day is yellow and not red again. I think the team needs to work on the messaging to explain that well. Otherwise, it feels like you’re almost encouraging us to go ahead and ride on red days.

Another thought is that you’re mentioning that people burn out because they do volume that their training history doesn’t support. I’m sure this is true, but on the other hand, how do you get to a point where your training history DOES support the higher volume if you don’t push up beyond your current boundaries. How do you use RLGL to guide this ramp up without overcooking yourself? And that kind of comes back to riding on red days, which makes me wonder if I misunderstand what a red day means in the first place. I would think red means DONT RIDE TODAY, but if I ignore that advice and the next day is yellow, then it all gets confusing.

2 Likes

If next day (red) intensity is low enough, you still recover enough either to move to ‘yellow’ or even back to normal. For example, according to Garmin, after hard day, 2h at 60% does not add any recovery time for me, while for somebody with less continuous volume off day is truly needed.

2 Likes

Man thanks really cool to see. I was trying to add the extra volume for the 50 mile MTN Bike race, which is fine but I needed to follow that up with a rest or light recovery spin the next day, instead of doing the next scheduled workout.

Can’t wait for this to roll out. Currently training for Unbound 100 after getting a Lottery pick! Super excited.

I understand that, but that doesn’t change that RLGL told you it was a Red day, you still rode, and apparently, that was a good thing. It’s the messaging on what Red means that I’m recommending needs clarification.

Said differently, I think Red means STOP, not go slow or think before you cross. To me, that’s what Yellow means.

1 Like