TrainNow has recently been recommending workouts way above my current progression levels. Has anyone else experienced this?
My current anaerobic is a level 1.0, and the other day the suggested workout was Osceola, a 9.5 anaerobic level. When I refreshed the suggested workouts, it would bounce between workouts of a level 9-10, and occasionally a workout of 1.5 would show up.
When I reached out to support, their response was that TrainNow was working as intended, and that I should just give it a try. But these arenāt āstretchā workouts, they are actually marked as āNot Recommendedā.
Today, it is suggesting either Paniau (1.5), or dāAujour (7.6) on refresh. Assuming that I can actually complete the harder workout, why would it suggest two completely different workout levels for the same day? Can anyone explain the logic behind this?
I think something has recently changed w/ TrainNow. My wife has been seeing some similar options. It used to offer mostly achievable or productive options and now thereās a lot of stretch or higher.
I got a recommendation that was Breakthrough (though that was NOT apparent during the selection process) and it ended in failure. I knew I was in trouble after the first of three sets, and upon research during the recovery, discovered this was essentially a monster hiding in plain sight.
There is some discussion about this aspect and other changes in another TN topic that I donāt have time to find right now. But from that, TR suggested giving the TN offerings a shot so I took it as assigned.
Based on that mess, I will no longer trust TN without first diving deeperā¦ which partly defeats the purpose of the tool and makes it even less appealing than the other changes that were covered. As of now, I am manually picking workouts until they fix the previously handy TN tool.
Mine has started to do similar. I believe it was working as intended until today or very recently.
It isnāt offering wildly different workouts but huge PL jumps.
Something seriously wrong - particularly the āattackingā suggestions for it seems. I have an anaerobic PL of 1.0, and it will go from suggesting a workout with PL 6.5, down to a PL of 1.5 and then back up again when I hit refreshā¦ both canāt be right.
Iām also getting random suggestions for Attacking - I suspect based on the above and my own TrainNow that it is making a stab at what you might be able to achieve in zones where your PL is currently 1.0 or otherwise v low (so reasonable to suppose you can probably do a bit better than that) - but it does seem a big jump, I am seeing 6.7 Anaerobic and stuff.
My VO2 PL is currently at 4.8 so it is a good bet that I can do better than 1.0 (or 1.5 or whatever it would start you at otherwise) in Anaerobic, but if it were me Iād have started at PL 3 or 4, not 6 or 7ā¦ which is higher than my VO2 PL or any future VO2 workouts in my current plan phaseā¦ Seems a bit like going off the deep end!
For zones where my PLs are better dialled in (i.e., the ones I am currently training), the recommendations look more sensible/achievable - although I am still getting a Stretch climbing sweetspot one, potentially as I did a hard Zwift race yesterday and it doesnāt want to give me a Threshold one, and my Sweetspot PL is a bit low w.r.t. my Threshold as I havenāt been doing Sweetspot workouts.
I, for one, am actually happy with those āwildā suggestions. To me it feels it now considers individual per zone base PL that I can start from without progressing first into it.
For example: from past experience I already know it doesnāt matter where my current VO2max or anaerobic PLs are, I can directly jump to VO2max PL5.2 or anaerobic PL7.0 workouts to feel challenged. Anything below that is simply waste of time trying to convince Adaptive Training engine.
I mean so am I in general, I donāt think there is much point doing a PL 1.5 Anaerobic workout when my Anaerobic PL is 1.0 just because I havenāt trained it recently (and my VO2 is 5 or something).
But thereās a difference between suggesting a PL that it thinks might be achievable based on your other zones and jumping right to the top end - if my VO2 PL is 5 and my Anaerobic is 1.0, I think based on logic going in with 3 or 4 is pretty sensible. I would definitely not choose one at 7 or 8!
Itās literally recommending workouts that are marked ānot recommendedā in the library for me.
To expand example above: letās say my anaerobic PL is 1.0 and I plan to spend 3 weeks improving it, 2 hard workouts per week i.e. total 6 anaerobic workouts. If I keep doing only āproductiveā or āstretchā workouts, every time answering āmoderateā to survey, I end up with anaerobic PL ~ 7-9. Problem is, due my individual abilities, only 2 of those 6 workouts will be actually productive, 4 first ones are wasted convincing AT.
Now, if TN actually suggests immediately PL7.0 workout (again, personal floor PL for me), then I can actually have all those workouts in productive range, no matter what current PL says.
EDIT: I am not saying TN isnāt buggy right now. Instead, I am hoping that this is new feature that considers personal power curve when suggesting stuff outside your current PL.
I donāt think doing that (jumping right in at PL7-8) is going to be achievable for most people unless their other PLs are also in that kind of range - in which case I do think TrainNow could be making an educated guess at what your PL should/could be in that zone - i.e., if your threshold and VO2 PLs are both like 8.0 then itās probably reasonable that you might start Anaerobic at 6 or 7.
Which I guess is what you are saying really - Iāve no problem with TN recommending stuff at higher PLs if it thinks those might be achievable based on your other PLs.
The thing here is that doesnāt seem to be the case - i.e., my current VO2 PL is 4.8 (to be precise) and it is recommending me Anaerobic workouts at PL 7.0 (Walden at 7.0 just came up for example) - I donāt think thereās anything in my training history to suggest that might be achievable for me and looking at it, I can see immediately that I would fail it. And to your edit on power curves - sprint and anaerobic has always been a weak spot of mine so I donāt think that supports it either (the power curve comparisons on intervals.icu for example clearly show that I am weaker at the top end).
Which chimes with the other experiences above from e.g., Chad - the workouts itās suggesting are not just optimistic, they seem to be coming out of thin air.
Then sometimes it is bouncing between anaerobic PL1.5 and anaerobic PL7.0 when I refresh it, which makes even less sense.
True, I canāt argue one way or another. It might be coincidental that TN has buggy suggestions that happen to be in same range I consider āchallenging but doableā but it might be not the case for somebody else.
Iām glad Iām not the only one thinking this behavior is odd. Itās unfortunate that I can no longer trust this feature. I might be willing to give one of the max level suggestions a try, even if it looks obviously above my capabilities. But there is still no explanation as to why it would suggest an easy level, and max-hard level, on the same day. Which one am I meant to choose?
Iām also really disappointed in support, as they refuse to answer that question, and just keep copy-pasting the same generic reply that āeverything is working correctlyā.
Oddly, TN behaves apparently correct in my case, as in that it proposes very reasonable workouts.
It is actually a key difference to wahooās Systm where you have to browse through the whole library manually.
Hope they figure it out quickly for those affected.
Iāve been seeing this as well. I seem to ONLY get recommend ānot-recommendedā workouts.
I reached out to TR support who says this is expected but it feels insane. Thereās just no way I can complete any of the workouts Iāve been recommended and donāt really want to waste time failing them
If this is āexpected behaviourā then it feels like it undermines the whole Train Now feature in my viewā¦ if I can get a recommended anaerobic workout of PL 6.5, refresh, and then see instead an anaerobic workout of PL 1.5, I just donāt see how both of these can be āselections {are} automatically chosen just for you, based on your recent training historyā as the blurb at the top of the pages alleges.
For #1, thereās an issue with the shuffle button that weāre looking into. Thanks for reporting this ā Iāll report back when weāre back in action.
For #2, we updated TrainNow to use a machine-learning model to recommend workouts. Probably best to reference Nateās post for details (linked above), but the TLDR is TrainNow is using a new machine-learning workout recommendation engine that the data shows will more accurately predict workouts that youāre capable of, regardless of your current PL.
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