I’ve mentioned this in a few threads, but it deserves its own post.
The new AI doesn’t actually know anything about FTP or workout levels.
It only sees raw power and heart rate, then figures out the next best wattage for you. After that, we translate those watts back into FTP and workout levels so they’re easy for athletes to understand and use.
We did consider dropping FTP entirely and making TrainerRoad a pure watt-based app, but that felt like too big of a mental model shift right now.
Here’s the important part:
When you get your first AI FTP Detection or AI FTP Prediction, your FTP might be different from what you’re used to. But the actual wattage of your workouts will be similar and will continue to progress normally. You should not see a massive, sudden jump in workout difficulty.
What we’re doing is finding the right watts for you first, then adjusting FTP so your progression levels land in the right place and you can continue progressing.
Example:
An athlete goes from 330 → 351 FTP.
They already have high progression levels:
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Sweet Spot: 7.9
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VO2 Max: 6.4
They’re worried the AI won’t be able to raise their FTP given the limited time they have to train.
Here’s what they’ve recently completed without issues:
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3x22 @ 310 W with 3:30 recoveries
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5x5 @ 356 W with 4:30 recoveries, plus extended endurance afterward
With a new FTP of 351, their first threshold workout would look something like:
- 3x10 @ 333 W with 5:00 recoveries
Even though the FTP change looks big, the actual wattage progression is still incremental and appropriate based on their progression levels.
Here’s the cool part:
What I see on their calendar is that they’re essentially maxing out what they can do within their available training time at an FTP of 330. That’s what’s driving the concern.
By raising FTP to 351, we create room to keep progressing at the right wattages instead of forcing increasingly dense workouts into limited time.
And that’s how you keep progressing and GET FASTER!
Here’s a forum-only secret: If you don’t like where you start off and want higher PLs, lower your FTP a bit. If you lower it too much and we can’t give you good workouts, we’ll let you know.
Our issue is we have a lot of people on vacation, so we might go Monday if we have a critical issue and don’t have enough engineers to fix. Hopefully we can at least get all the beta people in today/tomorrow.