Does TrainerRoad AI analyze strength workouts in determining Red/Yellow days?
Should I wear a heart rate monitor to help?
Should I load a TSS value I can get from Training Peaks based on HR?
Background. I’ve returned to TR after a few years away with a private coach. At 67 years young being a health human prioritized over going fast but want to make the young guns worry. I’m also returning from a concussion in early May while in Bentonville. I’m finally healthy enough to train again. I just couldn’t pull the trigger on cost of a private coach vs TR and program my own strength workouts, lifted most of my life.
I’m looking to most effectively use AI to keep me progressing back to my pre crash fitness and beyond. I use TR to build a schedule a few weeks ago to see if I could train again without concussion fatigue I experienced. I’m planning on an extended base phase in Oct, 3 structured rides with 1 intensity day, 2 multi joint strength workouts and 1 core workout each week. I should be able to build 2 rest days in there.
I never enter my resistance training into TR. I find TR way too conservative as far as curbing my bike training when it sees my lifting workouts. But I also never take my lifting to absolute failure. I always leave at least 1 rep in the tank. I’m 53 so I can’t speak to how that might be different at 67 but you don’t seem to have a ton of lifting volume and might not need to incorporate the lifting into TR. If you do though, as I understand it, when you tell TR that you did, say 3 sets… you are telling it that you did 3 sets TO FAILURE. So be aware of that when you enter your lifting workouts.
I know in the past they have said “to failure” but often they said or close to, but most importantly don’t include warmups etc. So if you do 3 hard sets, you can enter 3.
Most everywhere on TR in the pop-up menu and in the blog tutorial (it states it twice and states to failure or within 1-2reps… but then elsewhere in the bullet item “to failure”) it states it as to Failure or within 1-2 reps. Main take away is that it should be hard sets - Bit tricky if doing say curls or leg press… often 1st set might be 9 reps - with the intent that after 1.5-2min you can do hopefully 8-9 again (that set likely will be within a rep or two of failure) and then the last of 3 sets might only get to 7 reps. Now i’ve seen if you fade like that, it just means you need more recovery time (“try 3min…or 4”…), no thanks I don’t want to be sitting there for 15minutes to just do a set of curls!! lol
BTW - a work around for the working sets, TSS and it effecting cycling training plans - you can go back the previous couple months and increase the sets and TSS of workouts to what you actually did (ignore the warning about ‘too many sets’), in theory… should then make it look like you have a more significant base of strength fitness, making current strength work seem ‘normal’.
I also never log my weight training days. My thought is if I never log them, but do them consistently, my performance on the bike should be somewhat consistent for the AI to measure. My baseline fatigue is just the baseline, and it will continue to recommend workouts based on how I perform.
Ya that’s a good way of thinking about it. I suppose I do the same thing. I don’t log walking around or gardening or any other activities in my life even though technically they contribute to fatigue. I just consider lifting as part of life. It’s always there and so my performance always naturally accounts for it.
Yeah if you are consistent and have a long history of it or the know how to adjust future workouts – the thing is most/many people are not an don’t, so it is a neat feature to have. Guard rails to failure essentially and a decent guide to future consistency & success
When I decide to take up doing leg presses again a couple times in a week mid-block… i want it to say… "whoa whoa whoa… whats you think you are doing here?! "
More to the point, if you’ve been doing them without logging them for a while, there’s not really a good way to start logging them without tripping up RLGL.
