That flexibility is there! You can drag, drop, cancel, or modify workouts at will. You can manually adjust or use plan builder.
Even if you had a team of coaches planning your every workout, you’d still have to assume SOME responsibility for adjusting a plan to your schedule, injuries, and even the “I feel great/horrible” days.
If TR isn’t for you, then by all means find something that suits you better. Personally, I haven’t found anything else that can consistently deliver workouts hard enough to challenge me without overcoming me or burning me out. I’m consistently standing on podiums and am faster than I was before, so I have real world results.
It seems like you already understand this particular issue, though. And unless you are paying for daily monitoring (which is very expensive), even a personal coach is not going to see that you did a “higher than planned” weekend and adjust your plan.
Only if you opted to change it. Subscribers who were paying the original, lower rate always had the option to keep that pricing.
It did sound like you were using the even a couch won’t do that, to imply that software can’t, I can think I three App’s that do, so I’m not sure that the “even a personal couch is not going to”, is a fair dismissal
Isn’t on the rider to be the coach? If you are not going to follow the plan (doing big weekend rides or hard group rides) then isn’t it on the rider to pass on the next workout or push it out to the future after recovery?
TR is just a tool and despite having AI in the marketing literature, it’s not all knowing, all seeing, all predicting.
What you’re describing here is what we’ve addressed in the first part of our response:
“It sounds like one recurring concern is how TR isn’t capturing training outside of the plan. This has been and still is a priority for us to improve on. Our ultimate goal is to be able to feed any activity into Adaptive Training to improve on-the-fly adaptations of your plan.We hear your concerns regarding that point – and although it’s taking us longer than initially planned, we’d like to reiterate that we have a dedicated team completely focused on this project, and it remains our top overall priority as a company. ”
In part, we’re referring to Workout Levels v2. Adaptive Training can, however, currently capture the additional TSS by how successfully you are able to complete subsequent TR schedule workouts and provide adaptations in response.
We recommend adding unstructured training as the athlete sees fit, being mindful of how it would affect subsequent scheduled workouts. If you are feeling fatigued and need more recovery time, you can always skip the workout, move it to a different day, or choose a Workout Alternate that has a more Achievable-Productive Difficulty Level so you’re still working the correct energy systems for that day, just at a lower intensity.
As far as the grandfather price goes, this was an opt-out, as we are truly grateful for the support our Legacy athletes have given us through the years. There is more info from our CEO here.
I didn’t mention in my response, but I heard a long while back Jonathan talking about a red light / green light system that - I think - suggest dialling down the recommended workout based on recent fatigue, so it clearly is doable in software. The absence of any references to this made me think this concept or goal has been dropped.
I always just moved the rides between days of the week in the TrainerRoad calendar to fit my availabilities. It never really created me any issues. I also synched the TrainerRoad calendar with my personal Outlook calendar so I could easily see things side by side and manage what was coming up.
I’m kind of in the same boat. It’s pretty annoying that I can’t just tell Plan Builder which days I can train and how much time I have to train, which leaves me building my own plans and just using TR for the calendar feature and workout library. It doesn’t make sense to me that I can’t tell Plan Builder that I have 2 hours every Tues & Thurs and 4 hours every Sat. Sure I can use workout alternates, but it seems that if my time available was built in to the system my training could be further optimized.
In regards to the workout library, I’m also finding it increasingly frustrating to find workouts that suit my Progression Levels as well as the limitations that I face with terrain/roads in my area. Why can’t I filter by interval length? Having to comb through just about every workout to find one with interval lengths that match the hills/roads in my area is pretty cumbersome, so I’d love to be able to just have the option of filtering for a specific interval length for my VO2 and Threshold days. Maybe that’s asking too much.
I’m considering making the switch to FasCat and their Optimize app, or maybe just getting a Training Peaks account and building my own plan.
19.95 a month. No of course not. I always intended on coming back a stating you pay a premium for that coached service. Cheaper coaches you dont get weekly adjusted plans.
Equally though, I can think of 5 plaforms, 3 that say they use ai that automatically adjust your plan if you do more, so the point is still valid. And all of them charge at least 25% less. Sadly TR has fallen behind, but so what, many businesses/companies do. It is still a great platform for many, possibility most. And I agree most of the people that complain are outliers.
The thing is when TR started, like all great businesses, spotted a gap in the market, they were miles ahead, unique, however now everyone and there dog is trying to cash in and at least doing an equal job (and that is being kind.)
Fair enough. I have tried some of the other platforms and their interface and usability (in my opinion) is still lacking in those apps. So for me ($15.75 as I am on an annual plan) is worth it.
But I am over-the-hill and do this for fun (I enjoy the ride and being in shape for the ride). If I ride outside I don’t need AI to tell me what to do, though I appreciate that there are those that do. Personally I feel the value of TR is in the workout catalog and user interface that allows me to get in a good workout in my garage whenever I can. For some it is in the training plan. For others adaptive training. I get that (we are just different).
I have no horse in this race but the announcements and complaining that they are leaving is getting old… (for me anyways).
I agree with you %
I was just pointing out that you can go from leader to mid or back of the back unfortunately (very quickly.) Happened to the business I work for, took 5 yrs to get on par (maybe a slight lead.) Having said that in the TR space it should be much quicker if you know where you need to go.
Yeah, I think we all are. I typically look at the next few days and move activities around if I have a day where I cannot train. I will do two hard sessions in a row and then I will recover in the day I am not available.
But it is still an improvement potential if Trainerroad wants to deliver an adaptive training plan.
I am in the same boat as most of the people posting. As I matured in my training knowledge and on bike capabilities I am looking for a platform that looks at more then my FTP to build my plan. In addition to this, having to add in my own weight training. core, etc workouts and self manage the plan is not what I believe is ‘value for money’.
TR is a good tool for the first few years of structured training but they have not expanded the platform from FTP based training. AI sounds cool but I think they have chased the wrong goal and have not evolved as they could have by taking a step back and doing an honest re-evaluation of their clients needs.
I am giving another platform a go this winter and will see if my ‘theories’ are correct or not.
%