Thanks, Eddie, totally forgot about this thread. Sorry!
If consistency over time is the best predictor of sustained performance improvement (I believe they’ve referenced this several times on the pod), I’d love to see some sort of consistency rating. A macro-level “here’s you as an athlete” (years long time horizon) + scoring training phases (adherence to the plan).
I had a long private conversation with Nate on this exact same idea - I sent Nate a private unsolicited “suggestion” message, which is what started this conversation. I’m going to paraphrase just what I suggested to Nate, and NOT anything from Nate as this is from a private conversation. Note the below is somewhat disjointed as I’m not including Nate’s questions / comments to me, just what I suggested to Nate.
My Suggestion:
TrainerRoad should implement a customer dashboard that summarizes how I’m doing, how I’ve done. E.g., Ave. # of hours / wk of scheduled rides, Ave. # of hrs / wk of total training, compliance to training plan, compliance to structured rides, change in FTP, performance to event goals, etc.
Thought process:
Currently the TR website makes two very large “promises” to users:
- Get Faster with Adaptive Training
- What Do you Want to Achieve
But how do I as a user understand if TR is working for me? How well is it / isn’t it working for me? And what did I do differently this season vs. last season(s) that changed how well TR is / isn’t working for me (e.g., I was on a LV plan last season, and I decided to do a MV plan this season. Was that a good / bad decision? Am I doing tons of non-structured rides - e.g., not from a plan or TrainNow or custom TR workout - this season compared to last season(s). How is this impacting my overall progress?)
I think having a dashboard - would obviously evolve over time - that cleanly presented how I’m progressing this season, and what I’m doing well (e.g., high plan / workout compliance) or not so well (e.g., lots of long group rides that lead to low workout compliance), would really be beneficial to users and to TR. For TR, this would be the next evolution of Adaptive Training: helping the user understand what they are doing that is either in alignment with their goals or working against their goals.
A compliance score could encourage over training, but if you factored in the Red Light / GreenLight into the compliance score, that would counter-balance pure workout compliance driving over training.
Workout compliance is only one part of what I’m envisioning. I’m thinking something more comprehensive that would help me understand what is it about all the riding I’ve done this year that yielded zero change in fitness vs last year I upped my FTP by 20 watts for example. Is it workout compliance? Overall plan compliance? Overall plan compliance plus higher (or lower) overall volume? The real gold star would be how are unstructured rides / group rides impacting my training?
I’m thinking of a dashboard that would help me figure out what is the right balance for me of total training time, structured vs unstructured riding, and what is the benefit or penalty from group rides.
Using me as an example: group rides are my social time, so I’m not going to give them up. But what is the cost or benefit I get from these? And am I better off pairing my long 3 to 5 hour group ride with a LV plan vs being on a MV plan and substituting my group ride for. A structured workout. Or does my history say I only make gains if my weekly volume is consistently over 10 hours / week?
How I compare to other people is interesting. But I’m interested in what learnings my training history says I should do to improve me
On compliance leading to possible over training: once RLGL is rolled out, maybe a compliance metric that “docks” compliance points if you train on Red days, and maybe if you train on Yellow days.
So more like a compliance to work and recovery combined metric
I agree this isn’t perfect, but I’m thinking about this as a look back feature as opposed to something you’d check daily. That is: as I’m thinking about my 2024 season, how many events to target, what training volume to target, mix of structured TR workouts / plan to unstructured, etc. what can I learn from past? Do I do make the most gains following a low volume plan, and then adding in extra workouts? Or does that lead to lower overall gains than a MV plan, because on the low volume I add in too many extra rides that mean that I under-perform on my key workouts? Do I do better on 3:1 (like the new plans) or 4:1 or 5:1 work to recovery ratio. Etc.
if before training I filled out the “how do I feel” (e.g., fatigued, motivated, not motivated to train, etc.) you could capture more info on whether or not Workout Compliance is being prioritized over Recovery Compliance (you should trademark that ).
My general thought is: What actionable info can you provide to your TR athletes to help them think through what they should do holistically to keep improving season over season. Adaptive Training is “great” day to day, but it doesn’t address the season over season, or even in a season (or week) how do I trade-off just doing structured riding vs. group ride with friends? Or even what is that trade-off? Maybe leading up to my big event I trade-off group rides with friends for more structured training to maximize my performance for my big event. But after my big even I prioritize riding with my buddies, even though I know I won’t improve as much.
I think this is what a lot of us are after, if said differently. A clear space for TR to excel would be in giving insight around what’s worked and what hasn’t. Lot of apps prescribe, but they don’t really give you the why. I wouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good either.
If I asked, ‘what about my training in 2022 made me successful on days X and Y’, I don’t need an ironclad answer - there probably isn’t one - but a menu of possibilities would be really helpful.
I would love to see a rolling TSS for the last 7 days. Starting Monday at “0” stress leaves me feeling like I’m behind.
I’m with you on this. Anything like I proposed would by necessity be rolled out in phases over time, and need to be refined / tweaked. The important part would be to start rolling something out to get feedback / build upon.
I read all these comments and to me they sound like meh I’m good. I may be one of the few that likes TR the way it is. Get in, go to your workout or pick one, slap on something on tv and do the workout. Everything else is just added development cost with very little impact on the training. Everyone has to realize that adding features costs money which is passed on to the consumer. I would be perfectly happy with a 2014 version of TR.
And I understand that most of this stuff is brainstorming. Just want to point out my opinion on this.
That’s called TrainerDay
I like the idea of compliance but I can see it getting complicated rather quickly.
I can imagine a graph of perfect progress compared to what I actually manage, but how does missing a workout affect it compared to me not accepting a different suggested workout adaption.
I can see how a “compliance score” could, for some people, quickly become a turn off, risking further removing the joy that structured training can sometimes bring if not balanced with the funner stuff…
It would need carefully presenting in terms of the UI, so that you could view this compliance level if you sought it out, but not have it dominate the Calendar view, for example, such that those who have a lower plan compliance aren’t getting bo!!ocked every time they look at TR.
I kind of agree with this sentiment. I don’t follow TR plans any more, partly because I don’t enjoy adaptive training. I prefer to see a plan laid out and work towards a specific future goal. I generally don’t like surprises
Just turn off adaptive training or refuse all adaptations.
Some of the plans are fantastic and I still follow.
I would love to have an HRV integration. TR’s AI program sends me red & yellow days often, and I check my HRV & sleep in the morning and I’m good to roll!
Can we please have the ‘workout alternatives’ option work with outdoor rides?
At the moment all my workouts are set to outdoor, so if I want to change them I have to edit them to indoor, then select an alternative, and then put them back to outdoor. Drives me crazy, and even more so when the indoor workout doesnt actually have an outdoor version so nothing bounces to my Fenix7.