Relatable!
Today I want to train. Maybe. I mean… I know I need to and it will be good for me and I’ll feel better afterward, so… ugh, where are my bibs? I guess that means “I’ll train.” But that’s probably equal to 
for me, so the emoji proposal works out.
I strongly suspect that when I want to do my training outdoors my answers will more often be in the smiley-face (want to / can’t wait to train) categories. Y’all planning to control for that?
Out of those options, what’s the one I select for my normal everyday feeling. I don’t feel giddy to ride but it’s part of my daily routine, I feel normal, so let’s ride? As a qualitative guy, I don’t think this covers the spectrum enough on the Likert Scale.
I really like this idea. Reading the comments here, I guess some people’s feelings about training vary less than mine, but I’ve felt every one of those emojis before workouts in the past month or so. I’m more likely to fail a workout because of “stress or motivation” than I am to fail because I’m just incapable of completing the efforts as prescribed. (And I know, I’m leaving gains on the table by not pushing through, but I don’t train just to make my numbers get bigger.)
I hope something like this helps the models perform better and survives the testing. The 5 point scale, whether it be colors, emojis, numbers, or colored number emojis work for me.
Nice.
Here’s mine:
Other:
I get these emojis on my Garmin post workout review.
I almost never use 1 or 5.
If I felt like , I wouldn’t be getting on the bike at all.
I am always uncertain between 2, 3 and 4 because 3 looks like moody rather than okay. Feels like 4 should be 3, reflecting ‘happy to train’, not excited and not over the moon.
So I’d suggest;
1 
I don’t wanna do this
2 
Not on my game
3 
Up for it
4 
Keen to workout
5 
Overexcited/manic/watching the Tour de France
I’m concerned that assessing motivation is going to be confounded by the phenomenon of dread of BBOD/ apprehension / performance anxiety that comes up on days when an especially tough work out is scheduled and you know you are going to suffer and worry you may not succeed. this feeling may be active in the absence of burn out or overtraining and mediated just by the anticipated degree of challenge of the work out on that given day. different persons with different physiologies will find different work out types their toughest too. how will you control for this confounder if we are trying to use motivation as the proxy for risk of overreaching predicting impending overtraining? Me for example may dread a certain workout and put it off for hours (when possible) but then once im out there it goes well and im pleased… I’d have to probably answer low on the motivation scale in advance on these days but its more performance anxiety and not overtraining - it could be terrible in my example, if future AI used this in my case to lower difficulty of future work outs
how people come up with 1 = don’t want to do this, is beyond me. If I don’t want to do intervals I just ride my bike or do something else entirely. Do you get paid to ride or what’s wrong with you 
I like the emoji approach and don’t necessarily need a text next to them. But I agree it would add more clarity. And if you want to draw conclusions from such a survey I think everyone should try to answer to the same scale. Emojis leave room for interpretation as the feedback already posted in this thread shows. I added my interpretation in your quote above.
My motivation sometimes changes during a ride where I’m not motivated in the beginning but nail the intervals and get motivated trough that or they are simply too hard and I have to dial back and get discouraged from that so 
I like the idea and am curious what kind of conclusion you draw from that pre-workout survey.
I’m not convinced how motivated I am is the right, or perhaps rather not the only, and not the most important question.
I’m pretty much always at the high end of motivation to train, oftentimes even when I should probably know better (injury niggles, fatigue, etc.). Isn’t the latter a more informative thing to collect data on - i.e. how ready do I think I am to train?
My first reaction was “reduce it to 3”.
One more vote for three.
Great idea Nate
I’m curious how this will be implemented, mainly because there are certain workouts I enjoy doing, and certain workouts I dread, no matter how good I feel. So for those workouts, I might put 
, even if I feel good.
This is why I try not to look at todays workout until I’m on the trainer and then it’s too late to whine.
Personally I would like an option to opt out of the pre-workout survey / mute it / never get it shown.
I understand what you try to do and believe the data may be useful indeed.
However, just for my N=1: I ride at 5am in the week and rarely ever feel motivated to get out of bed (let alone train) on weekdays. I had to work a long time to disconnect training from motivation, and teach myself to get on the bike anyway. Still, getting on the bike remains my hardest interval of every ride 
I get by by ruthlessly removing any decisions / obstacles on my way to the bike. I basically try to ignore anything my brain is screaming at me (which is usually some variation of “Just stay in bed today, because X”), and get on the bike as fast as I can. I believe having to explicitly contemplate my motivation state, and then reinforce it by recording it would run exactly opposite to my intention here.
And that may apply to more people too: do we really want to encourage people to reinforce their assessment of motivation and nudge them to give more focus to it?
In my opinion motivation is very rarely a long term ally, and you really need to learn to wield it carefully, deliberately and constructively. Otherwise you overdo things when you are feeling motivated only to flame out when you don’t.
I feel very strongly about the subject because it took me a handful of years riding the motivation rodeo to learn this Sorry, rant over 
Why don’t you update the model to consider TSS undergone, and the ramp rate an athlete has evidenced that they can handle.
Eg Athlete A seems to progress PLs at a steady pace if they do not ramp TSS by more than 50/week, with a total TSS of no more than 400 at point Y.
However, A just did a 600TSS outdoor week. The model predicts that the athlete will struggle for the next X days. AT either cancels, reduces or adjusts the following workouts to enable consistency.
Objective data > Subjective feel.
If you included this you wouldn’t be doing this to me, ruining my week:
Straight after a 1200 TSS training camp, despite me nearly failing the first vo2 you scheduled, and telling you I nearly failed it.
My motivation is low because the software is lazy.
I don’t think it’s the right question. I’m up at 4am everyday, I’d probably always rate my motivation as high. If you asked how my energy level feels, that would be a different question and a different answer. Maybe just directly ask the question: Rate your fatigue: 1 low to 5 high
I’m not sure I like the emojis. I’d prefer a coloured scale, 1 to 5 or 1 to 10.
As others have said, I think you also need to capture the why. This morning I am tired - poor nights sleep due to a cr@p day at work yesterday - so let’s say, tired, work related stress. Despite that, and a lack of motivation, I increased the level of the planned sweet spot session as I thought the one served up looked too easy and I nailed it 
I also have a lot of empathy with what @dmalanda said. I also tend to get up at a daft hour of the morning, typically fighting the urge to stay in bed for another hour or so!! Asking me how I feel might not be productive!!
I think the real trick would be to link training to hrv.
My own experience with HRV has been it doesnt tell me anything I don’t know. Resting heart rate gives me the best indication if I am overdoing it.
I agree. I’ve yet to find much use for HRV, but RHR is valuable.
