TrainerRoad - Feature Requests of what athletes expect / want in the future

They really can’t invent the magic that will align three different power meters. Someone would have to test each one against each other in some fashion. That job is up to you.

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Why not though? Why can’t I get on the wahoo on the xc bike with the power crank, and have the software analyse the data from the crank and the wahoo and work out what percentage the cranks are running at compared to the wahoo? Then repeat with other bike? We can get people into space…it can’t be that hard surely? There is a consistent curve for the crank and a consistent curve for the wahoo, doesn’t it just need software to analyse how they relate?

disclaimer: I am not a rocket scientist as may soon become apparent :rofl:

Huh. Odd - I’ve never seen that. Not that I cut a lot of rides short, but I do occasionally.

Anything is possible with enough time and resources. It just seems beyond the scope of TR to build this tool and then support it for the 1% of users that would want it. You need to have two power meters installed simultaneously, then you need to record both meters during the test session, and then you need compare the files.

I found this site recently that claims to help with this:

I haven’t used it. Previously I did this manually with golden cheetah, excel and two Garmin head units.

I think it may have been referenced in this thread, but I think it would be neat if there was a year in review - something that summarizes the years training, any highlights or break throughs, or areas that could use improvement. Perhaps there could be an improvement selector that can be toggled for different areas of the power curve and then a plan can be suggested to reach that goal.
There are many companies that do something like from the iphones photos/videos, Strava does a yearly review, I think Ride with GPS does something monthly…

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I don’t agree, or may not have articulated myself clearly. I think the sweet spot training philosophy that TrainerRoad is largely based on generates significant gains to start with, then people plateau because they cannot continue on the same improvement trajectory, then they burn out. I don’t think that pattern is physiology, I think it is the manifestation of a training programme that requires improvement. Progressive overload, properly managed, should not result in burnout.

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Sweet Spot Base (parts 1 & 2 in all three volumes) are not what make up the entirety of TR.

  1. Those are just one of the Base plan options along with Traditional and the more recent Polarized ones (for non-Tri plans at least).

  2. These are also a much smaller part of the total number of training plans that TR offers, with those others feature SS only when appropriate and not even present in some plans.

  3. And once you dig into the actual plans the 2nd parts of SSB LV & MV move to SS workouts as only one of a mix of workouts in the week, so they are hardly SS focused as the name implies (a misleading moniker that I have mentioned more than once WRT SSB2 LV & MV over the years).

Key point being that the common attribution that TR is entirely or even largely SS based is very much not correct. Even with the default for their Base plans using SSB, the deltas above along with the fact that it is only one of the 3 main phases means that SS plays a smaller part in the TR world than many claim.

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Regarding the misleading moniker, we’re close to renaming the SSB plans to avoid this confusion in the future! :tada:

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Much appreciated in advance :+1:

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This is fantastic. Wondering if the team could expand what’s included and insert other activities that generate stress (in addition to group rides/zwift)? For example - I started lifting regularly again (big props to Dialed Health for making engaging plans). I’d love to factor in 2-3 days lifting to recognize the fatigue that creates.

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TR could make the weekend sessions optional and advice going out to do 2-4h rides instead of the prescribed workouts, that would make the plans a lot more polarised but I resisted doing that because Saturday’s are often the worst days (threshold) and I would feel bad skipping them

100%. I can go ride 5 or 6 hours outside just fine. The longest indoor trainer ride I’ve ever completed in my cycling history is around 2:15. And I was miserable every minute past around 90 minutes. I loathe indoor Z2. It’s definitely not a time issue that keeps me from putting up more hours during the winter.

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All of what’s on our roadmap is aimed at improving training and giving athletes more flexibility with their plans to achieve their unique situations while still having AT drive the engine.

If more training volume instead of intensity is what you’re after, then it sounds like our Traditional Base, Polarized, or (soon to be released!) Masters plans would be a good fit for you. :slight_smile:

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FWIW its not just planning, it also has to include what happens out on the road. There are some good existing tools that I think you could improve on, for example Strava takes the Performance Management Chart and provides some recommendations on not going too easy or too hard:

While Garmin Connect does the same:

along with some intensity management tools

and

And then there is FasCat’s Optimize app with their take on red light / green light:

And like Optimize, the Athlytic app (iPhone) also considers HRV and sleep data. Here is what I get from Athlytic this morning:

Look at that, my Apple Watch didn’t record a workout while playing 2 hours of pickleball on Friday but somehow Athlytic detected the additional exertion simply from pulling the standard HR data from Health app. Also for Tuesday, it pulled the weight lifting exertion from Health, along with the 35 minute easy warmup ride outside. Garmin doesn’t do that and I’m too lazy to setup RunGap to push that to Garmin.

Out of all the I posted above, the training load guardrails and Athlytic recommendations are really effective but not in the same app. And I absolutely consider the Garmin Load Focus data but also choose to ignore it at times.

FWIW I’ve come to prefer using WKO for analytics, as I can analyze/compare any time period, but it took a year to come up with good charts for that stuff. Not recommending anything like that for TR.

I’d consider resubscribing if you had better analytics than those above, but didn’t dumb them down so I can’t reveal more info. The metrics above have surprisingly served me very well, both with and without a coach.

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We’re in the same boat, I can do a 5 hrs outdoor ride without problems, aside from my wife not allowing me. :rofl:

But 2 hrs indoor… nope, thanks. I’ll try the double journey this year, one yearly in the morning, fasted sometimes, and one at evening.

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Ok Chad, maybe my precise characterisation is incorrect but I think it is fair to say TrainerRoad has a non-traditional training philosophy evidenced by the fact there is both polarised and traditional base plans alongside the others.

I appreciate that a software program can’t take account of my precise individual requirements but the majority of plans have eventually left me burned out and I appear to be far from a lone voice in that respect.

I like the product and I want it to be successful and continue, but if someone asked me honestly would you recommend following the plans to the T, I would say no. They’re a good starting point but if you ‘buy’ an off the shelf plan, adaptive training doesn’t do sufficient tailoring for me.

A yearly/quarterly/monthly review &stats page would be awesome.

Just something to see what I’ve been doing, what’s working well, what’s not working and whatever other stats they pull in.

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  • So they should pick one side of the fence or the other and stick to that?

  • I don’t see how adding options is a problem or sign that they are somehow “non-traditional”. If we took this idea to other apps, services or even coaches… where would that set them?

  • Sure, and tracking along with the changes TR has done since I joined in late 2015, they have tried to address it multiple times in multiple ways. Core changes to the plans and philosophy applied in the times before AT.

  • The addition of AT that was the first incorporated way that TR tried to guide a rider (via plans & workouts altered on a daily or weekly basis) was a huge change over the “Pick a plan & volume and either stick with it or make your own tweaks from our guidance on the podcast & blog” approach that was the norm before AT.

  • Now we see the stuff Nate outlined parallels lots of the requests we’ve seen since AT was the new foundation. Many of those seem even more targeted to seeing the actual work and time by the rider in an effort to make even better suggestions and changes to plans going forward.

All to be seen of course, since we don’t have most of it in hand at the moment, but they clearly are working towards a more unique and individualize approach than TR has offered to this point.

  • The “your mileage may vary…” statement is ever true here. I find that AT (along with AIFTPD) are working very well for me overall. I do make some tweaks that I have learned work better for me. But without a doubt, AT is a better experience for me than the truly canned plans of old before AT.
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We’re prioritizing bringing in other activities and estimating stress for our ML system. I doubt we’ll have a “swim activity” page like we did for running for a while.

These improvements will be for cycling first and then go to triathlon. Tri is like 20% of our athletes so we would never fade it out.

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No, AT handles it. I thought about this a bit though and maybe? Wouldn’t be super hard to do.

No, we don’t have that option.

Good idea.

How difficult the plan is for you. Like how likely you are to finish it.

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