sorry if this is old. i typically don’t use erg mode on the trainer, and very often i’ll overshoot power targets on shorter efforts and recovery, ending up with higher TSS and IF at the end of vo2 and above sessions. so when i answer how hard did that feel, its likely to be very hard or all out, thus prompting the AI to think that i struggled through the intended session., when i overshot. will AI kind of restrict my PL’s due to this mismatch of actual vs intended feel?
As far as I’ve understood it, it will look at what you actually did. But I’d try to not overshoot. 
EDIT: Never mind, I had gotten this completely wrong.
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Not a direct answer, but a related TR article that gives some guidance.
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thats a perfect answer chad.
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If you’re overshooting the target power and answering Very Hard/All Out on the surveys, you may not get an ideal progression in that workout’s zone. Basically, you may be making a workout at a given level harder than it is intended to be, then giving Adaptive Training feedback that it was Very Hard/All Out, and getting your Progression Levels bumped down to an easier workout as a result – even if you actually successfully completed the workout at above what was originally prescribed.
The article @mcneese.chad linked is useful here – it mentions:
- Keep in mind that significantly higher/lower power compared to the prescribed target power of a workout may move the workout outside its originally intended power zone. Adaptive Training does not currently recognize when this occurs, but we plan to address this with future product updates.
With how Adaptive Training works at this time, we’d recommend focusing on getting your effort dialed in as close to the target power as you can – that way, you’ll be using Adaptive Training to the best of its current abilities.
Remember that if your workouts feel “Easy” if you don’t overshoot your power targets and you reflect that in your post-workout surveys, AT will get you dialed into more appropriate workouts for your current fitness!
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So I apperently got this all wrong… I’ve been trying to figure out what tricked me into this and the only thing I can come up with is the podcast crew always saying “just answer how it felt”.
@Jonathan or @IvyAudrain, maybe you could clearify this on future episodes? (Because I’m sure you’ll have to answer this for newer users/listners in the future)
Answering how you felt during the workout is how we do want athletes to respond to the surveys!
From a TR Support perspective, we try to hop into threads like this that are more of an edge case (in this example: where the target power was overshot rather than strictly adhered to) to help guide athletes into getting the most out of Adaptive Training with how it currently works.
With how AT currently functions, we’d advise athletes to follow the advice you posted in your first comment of this thread: try not to overshoot your power targets.
This is a bit of a confusing response @ZackeryWeimer . It basically says “answer based on the work you did, not the work that was prescribed…but know that that may break the AT adaptation”. If AT doesn’t give you credit for the extra output and the recommendation is to stick to the prescription, not go over, shouldn’t the recommendation then be to respond based on the assigned workout and not based on what you actually did?
To keep things super simple: we want you to respond to the surveys based on how you felt during the workout as it was prescribed.
Think of it this way: if you were on a great day with monster legs and you were smashing all of your intervals and decided to bump up the target power just to feel appropriately challenged, that workout probably would have felt relatively “Easy.”
On the other hand, if you were feeling fatigued and had to drop the target power down and do a few backpedals just to “survive” the workout, that probably would have felt “All Out.”
We advise athletes to think of post-workout surveys based more on how you felt during the effort, and to remember that over/undershooting the target power of a workout may push the workout outside of its intended training zone, which is why we also advise sticking to the prescribed work as closely as possible.
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again, to clear up my original point. i typically don’t use ERG mode, so when doing efforts 60+ watts above ftp its hard to hit a target, so it tends to over or under shoot, sometimes by enough, to add extra IF and tss on. there are many sessions where it is about going full gas for the effort and the watts fall where they fall, so i’ll reply to the workout intent as of now.
Yeah, I’m confused by Zach’s reply. My guess is that the key words are “To keep things super simple”. As someone who worked in IT for a few decades, I get that and understand why they would take that approach to an official response.
Apologies for adding to the confusion – it sounds like you’re asking if you should respond based on the assigned workout. Is that right?
If so, that’s correct – we want athletes to respond to post-workout surveys based on how they felt during a given workout as prescribed.
I can see where one of my responses had some confusing info regarding how surveys are valuable in our ongoing work toward releasing Workout Levels V2, but since that info isn’t relevant to how Adaptive Training works at this time, I’ll go ahead and edit it out so we can hopefully avoid further confusion!
Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions. 