Suggestion for those who find progressions too intense

The problem is that then you wake up the next Tuesday and feel amazing/terrible, and the workout is too hard/too easy because you rated the one on the previous Tuesday as “go harder/go easier”

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We already have that now, as well as with my proposal. Future state is hopeful, but always open to change since nothing is certain.

TR is leveraging the current survey result and the main outcome is whether it triggers AT to:

  • Increase the difficulty of the pending workouts in the current training zone.
  • Leave pending workouts in the current training zone unchanged.
  • Decrease the difficulty of the pending workouts in the current training zone.

That may be overly simplified, but that is the outcome I have seen in the range of Easy to All Out ratings I’ve applied over the year+ with AT. I am suggesting that they “cut out the middle man” by allowing us to more directly get to that outcome vs the veiled approach that is in place now.

How we handle that next workout when we get there is no different than today. We can always use the Alternates function to kick up or down the effort, or make a complete substitution via TrainNow or manual methods.

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I get your point. I’m just saying I’d rather have a system that solves the problem than one that changes the wording but keeps the problem.

“Expectation” may work too, but it still seems a bit behind the curve vs the more “what’s coming next” aspect that seems to be the most important aspect of AT and when it makes changes, or not.

ETA: This is specifically in light of the “The right workout. Every time.” marketing tagline seems most relevant to the pending / day of workout assignment.

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Do you have a proposal on solving the “today’s workout” problem before starting it?

ETA: The wildly unknown “Red Light / Green Light” that Nate has mentioned might be something aimed at the “today” problem. But that is speculation on minimal info and who knows what it will actually be if/when we get it.

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It means you are ready to create your own progressions, or hire a coach.

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I like this a lot.

Right now, I do a calculation after every ride: What does TR expect this to be? (My guess is that it’s, endurance is easy, sweet spot is easy or moderate, threshold is moderate or hard, and VO2/anaerobic is hard.) Then I pick that intensity if I think the workout was about right for me. I pick a lower one if I think it was easier than I would like, and I pick a higher one if I was dying. Skipping the mental gymnastics of guessing what TR wants me to think of the workout would be wonderful.

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Why not just use the “Chad chart”? Far easier.

  • Not the way I see it. If you have a legit 2.0 Endurance PL, and either chose or are served a Stretch or Breakthrough workout, “Easy” is not necessarily likely.
  • Conversely, if you end up doing a low level VO2 or Anaerobic workout vs your current PL, it’s entirely possible and even appropriate if it gets an “Easy” rating.

The idea that the ratings correspond with zones is flawed and leads to problems.

The point of the Progression Levels, Workout Levels and Difficulty Levels is to handle the broad range of workouts in ANY Zone and the fact that some will feel different depending on your current training state and the specific workout performed.

Seems you are adding that with your method vs the “How did this effort feel?” approach that is meant to be more direct to the moment, not intention, expectation or future consequences.

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Yes, your way is probably more logical. But yea this is the issue I had struggled with…which was essentially not knowing that the system was not dialing back the difficulty ramp rate based on my responses.

Like I said, I like your wording, I just think you still end up with the same problem and the same posts and endless discussion.

Make the next workout:
Easier
the same
harder than this one

is definitely clearer and easier to answer than

was today’s workout:
low
moderate
high
or really f’n hard for you?

However, people will answer “Make the next workout harder” then do it and still say “it was too easy/hard…why didn’t you adjust it the amount harder or easier that i envisioned”, so while the reply was easier, we didn’t really address the root of the problem.

In fact, now that I’ve written it out, I don’t think it IS fixable. There will always be days when a 4.9 feels easy/hard/just right for a million reasons. So yeah, I was wrong. Change the wording. Something is better than nothing.

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Right, the problem of using a current state to forecast an effort to a future time is always flawed. But at least by going “direct”, it sort of removes one level of confusion that we see in the current survey.

Handling the moment when you go to perform that next workout is a piece of the puzzle as well. For now it relies on the athlete to think about whether they are as ready as they need to be in a simple sense, but specifically for the workout ahead. Stuff like the Difficulty Level, Workout Level and general workout text can hopefully help with that, but are clearly not a cure all either.

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Tangential, but I don’t think I’ve ever been assigned an endurance ride I consider anything but easy, physically. (Psychologically, I think anything more than 60 minutes of endurance on an indoor trainer should qualify as torture.)

I’ve definitely rated VO2 and anaerobic as “easy” before (even if they weren’t technically “easy”) to get the ramp rate where I wanted it.

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  • This was easier than intended, make the next one harder
  • Continue the progression as is
  • I barely completed this one, keep the next one at the same PL
  • This was too hard, make the next one easier

or in less words:

  • Too Easy, give me something tougher
  • No adaptations needed
  • On the edge, ease off the progression
  • Too hard, give me a break
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I’ve had days when Endurance rides were tough. If I do a hard Threshold or VO2 ride and then follow it with a high or long Endurance ride, I can definitely suffer a bit.

Sure, and broadly speaking it may not be common. But there are places like the POL plans that start stretching duration on Endurance to levels that likely extend beyond Easy ratings. These were potentially more common in the old days, when TR used to offer long Endurance vs the shorter SS as of now.

I happen to do my own manually added Endurance workouts onto a Low Vol plan. These usually run from 6-8PL and duration from 2.5-3.5 hours. Sometimes I rate them Easy, but most are Moderate and I’ve done a Hard on occasion.

Then we have people taking these types of rides outside and stretching 3-6 hours (I am one of them). These are often not “Easy” either.

That may not be the type of thing TR assigns, but it is totally something that can be done and would need something more than Easy as a rating… assuming TR aims to leverage that info for any use.

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Yea that was always my gripe. 'Easy or hard, no matter who you ask, is going to be a relative thing.

Easy relative to a race? To the previous workout? Relative to VO2 work? Hard relative to Leadville?

Just ask what I want the software to do…

Use the “Chad chart”

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With respect to the Feeling vs Consequences aspect, I wrote this years ago when this whole survey situation was in it’s first pass of confusion. It was my hypothesis and NOT necessarily what TR actually did/does. This also assumes there was some existing progression applied to the pending workouts on the calendar:

(+) for increase
(=) for same
(-) for decrease

To be honest, I have basically kept this in the back of my mind and considered these if/when the 4 lines in my current chart didn’t seem to offer what I thought was clear/right in the moment. The one above is flawed, because the PL side is not really adjusted, more the pending Workout Level / Difficulty.

Agreed. But sometimes you look at the next workout and you imperially know it’s gonna be a stretch when it’s labeled as productive. Case in point above.

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