I am totally fine with it. Granted, I’m brand new to TR as of mid-May 2024. But the list of features you included are the primary reasons I joined up. If it costs an extra $2/mo to enjoy such game-changing features and allows the company to continue to innovate, I’m all in.
FWIW, I think the level of customer-intimacy on display in creating this post in the first place speaks VOLUMES about the values and transparency of the company. Such upfront honesty and justification only ingratiates me more as a user/customer.
$2 a month is nothing if you find value in the product. I gave up my $119/yr grandfathered pricing long ago but if I was new to training and ready to pay $20 a month, another $2 wouldn’t be a deal breaker.
The trouble after a few years becomes you learn what your body likes as far as training and suddenly none of the plans give you what you want, nor does adaptive training, and TrainNow also gave me workouts I never wanted to do. Last few months I was only using AiFTP and just throwing my own workouts into Zwift and intervals.icu gave me an eFTP for free so there was no point paying for a service that didn’t give me value anymore
The trouble is, salaries haven’t kept up with inflation.
I think this would likely be the straw that breaks the camels back for me staying subscribed over summer. I’m not seeing the value over summer when I don’t find I’m getting much from workout levels / adaptive training and my available training time is competing with things like holidays, chain gangs, TTs and group rides.
I’ve long considered competing platforms to see if they suit my summer activity profiles better.
If, as I suspect none of them do work better, I’d likely still subscribe over winter, but my annual spend would go down.
I’ll keep my subscription. With a busy family, being able to select “workout times” each day of the week has been a game changer. I know that I’ll keep my fitness moving in the right direction even if I only have 60 minutes to train on my weekday rides.
Outside workouts also give me easy direction of what to do during my limited weekday times. I think I’ve only been on the trainer once in the last 3 months… Easy to pick up my garmin and already have my workout loaded and just leave from the house. I always have a “fun ride” planned each week so I can still do a longer fun ride, sometimes I use train now to fill that day if I want to add some specific training stress.
On average, wages have risen faster than prices since the onset of the pandemic, and lower-paid workers have seen the steepest gains even while facing the highest cost burdens.
We’re doing this because we think it’s a bit too complex to enter in every single exercise, but you do need to know how hard you hit legs because that impacts RLGL more than if you did just upper body work.
Other sport types that aren’t listed above will also be uploaded. That’s a very small percent of total though; like less than .5%.
@Nate_Pearson, curious where the implementation of the additional activities into the RLGL assessment falls in the roadmap?
Around here there is a pizza place (Pizza my Heart for those in Northern California) where you can get a slice and shirt for $7. Per their website they have over 3 million shirts out there. Probably cheaper advertisement than paying for commercials.
Nate,
This just my two cents as no one cares and my thoughts.
Bottomline, for me, TR has provided a value added product.
The Eco system is pretty good AACC podcast, this forum and of course the TR structured program.
Yes, AACC and Forum are free and anyone can take advantage of them cost free or is there a maintence cost?
Additionally, combined with the TR structured training this ECO system for me has been great. I can suppliment it with reading books(yes some of us still do that ) and the myriad of podcasts and avoid paying for a coach… One could say TR is augmented self coaching on the inexpensive side for those that have the disclipne for structured training and don’t want to shell out cash for a coach. I suspect a coach would cost more than my annual TR addiction.
So in the words of Siskel and Ebert
Just a thought: Maybe you can grow the subcriptions in a similar fashion that global compnies use for employee compensation based on the country. For example, the payscale is different for those living in the US, UK, France vs Romania,China, or Costa Rica. Even if they hold the same position and do the same work. Don’t know if this is feasible as more subscribers also generate a cost for services and product maintenance.
For me TR provides the structure and psuedo coaching I need to complete my cycling, and lifespan objectives. I was around pre calendar so I have seen more than few enhancements that live up to what TR has NEVER gotten away from and this is to Make You a Faster Cyclist. Not all companies CEOs, founders can say this, sometimes they lose their way and stray from the mission statment
So in the theme of Jerry Maguire you had me at Make You a Faster Cyclist via structured training…
I’m in the same boat, only I did end up dropping it. It was a tough call as like you, there felt like a connection and sort of good will with the company. I enjoyed the podcasts and those early days of COVID in 2020 where they had Beers with Chad. Those were super enjoyable and highlight to end on the week on for me.
Now I don’t expect things to always stay a certain way forever but at a point, the changes and new developments just weren’t working for me. The best way I can describe it is that TR used to feel like a cycling company using technology. Now they are a tech company that centers on cycling.
I’ve been writing my own workouts again since canceling and it’s been going well.
Not to mention after a few years you learn enough and have done enough workouts to know how to structure a workout and a week and that progressive overload over the course of a plan, without the burnout that many TR plans give. It’s really not hard to ride endurance and throw in a few interval sessions, progressively increasing the time and/or intensity of intervals and shortening/reducing breaks between.
TR definitely worked for me as a newbie but as time went on I gained less and less fitness each year and it just wasn’t worth it. I’ve been off it for 2 years now and my fitness has still slowly increased over that time without the pressure to follow a plan
I’m down with it. I don’t use plans as much as I used to, but it’s so nice to have the option to get a quick suggested workout. Most often, I pick what I need for my training from the library of workouts with many options for each energy system/zone.
Found this interesting. I have used TR in the past, first time for a few years, until life forced me to leave it for a while, After that the price went up when I came back, and since then I’ve tried it and left on a few occasions. Firstly it was because the plans stopped working for me, got very tired on a diet of threshold and VO2 workouts plus my time trials, the old 40km TT plan was brutal, but then after the Covid lockdowns I gave up racing and focused more on things like audax and bikepacking, still like to train, but found TR wasn’t really good at helping with these disciplines due to not taking what I did outside into account.
Like quite a few others who’ve commented, I now effectively self coach and prefer that to following a rigid plan, I do use other sites to guide me, but they are a fraction of the price of TR. I would probably have used TR more if there was a decent web based workout builder, as I find quite a lot of the TR workouts quite frustrating in how they’re structured, recovery intervals that are too long or three sweetspot intervals of different intensities, which makes comparison impossible.
I know it’s not going to happen, but a cheaper option of the calender, workout player and library, without any of the AI stuff and RLGL or plans would tempt me, but as the current price is too little value for me, I can’t see myself trying TR again if it gets more expensive.
It’s your choice. $2 ain’t much and it probably won’t hurt things too much.
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But at this point 5 years on from that massive previous bump your new memberships must have really tanked I’m guessing? So what levers do you now pull?
Competition must be fierce for new users.
If you want to slowly dwindle away into being unsustainable then just keep raising the price and hope for some killer new feature that revolutionises things.
As others have said - I really think you should offer a basic tier. Calendar, plan builder and workout library. (If you’re looking to grow)
) and the myriad of podcasts and avoid paying for a coach… One could say TR is augmented self coaching on the inexpensive side for those that have the disclipne for structured training and don’t want to shell out cash for a coach. I suspect a coach would cost more than my annual TR addiction.
