It would be easy to do in WO creator. I’m starting to customize planned WO’s now (i.e., I will limit SS intensity to 90%) . Maybe next year for a full custom plan. This is my second year on TR and I really only use it in Feb and March and a bit of April before heading outdoors. I don’t race, training is a pastime, so I get my kicks out of the immediate feedback of completing a WO that was incrementally harder than the last time I did it. The TR plans might increase variables incrementally, but it is not readily apparent.
I think one reason for the variability in the plans is to keep you engaged. If every workout was the same with just X added you would burn out mentally and not be able to do these plans for months or years.
Personally I like the variation even if many workouts target the same systems.
One day might have wavy blocks, one might have equal blocks, another will go up or down every block etc.
Doing (mostly) the same block week after week after week would get dull really fast.
Add in the differences in workout text/drills and there is a whole extra layer of value right there.
Don’t really agree with not knowing if your fitness is progressing either.
You WILL know when sweetspot, treshold or Vo2max start to feel easier, regardless of the specific workouts varying slightly.
I’m doing SSB LV II currently. If I look at the Thursday threshold workouts over the 6 weeks, the IF progression is as follows:
0.82
0.87
0.86
0.89
0.92
Rest week
So generally an upward trend of difficulty. Similar with the VO2max workouts.
So although the power profiles of the workouts vary where it’s not easy to compare them, the IF increases - so I know they are getting harder (I’m not looking forward to Lamarck!)
As a side note, I understand Nate only uses one workout, “Baxter”. 
I had that this morning! Almost bailed… in fact I was going to start a new thread on “knowing when to pull the plug.”
Pick one of the plans and look down the series of workouts that are scheduled for sequential weeks and the same day in a training block (3 weeks for Build / Specialty, 5 weeks for Base, generally). They generally follow one of those progression paths so that later weeks are harder. If you hover over the workout, the popup describing it typically has all of the key variables.
This confuses me on so many levels. Granted quantifying how much is a bit harder, but it should be pretty easy to tell if you are getting fitter. Also, just look at the total TSS of each week in a plan. If you do it as scheduled, you’ll see a ramp up from week 1 through the last working week.
I was wondering how to adapt my training regime and trying to make sense of the various workouts. My particular situation is trying to adapt the 40kTT plans when I am doing TTs up to 100m and possibly longer. Also I am doing a lot of B races for pacing, so don’t need the pacing workouts as much. Once these are removed from mid-vol, and I add in a couple of long TT rides outside, and an anaerobic session (because i feel I am lacking that), then I need a good set of incremental threshold sessions and workouts. Does that make sense? However finding these is a bit of a nightmare/maze with so many variations and no clear incremental logic to follow. (apart from TSS)
What I was trying to do (but found really difficult) was gauge workouts that went (for example)
98% FTP 6x10mins at 4 min rest = 60mins efforts and 20min rest…
then find
6x11 mins with 4 mins rest,
or
6x10 mins with 3 mins rest
etc. so that the intervals are increasing incrementally in difficulty.
The problem I had with some groups of workouts was I kept seeing a +1 or +2 variant, with a larger TSS, but it was actually just an increase in the length of the session afterwards or even the rest period, so it was not really an increase in the intensity of the session’s purpose.
So in searching for similar workouts, I would like to find, incrementally harder sessions, in terms of the intensity of the efforts, (not simply the FTP.
Does that make sense @chad @Nate_Pearson #feature-request
This would be incredibly useful. Also, it would be good to have the functionality to click on specific workout types when searching as I don’t think the interval length does this. for example ‘over-unders’, ‘big gear start intervals’, ‘classic VO2 max interval’, etc
That would potentially be a long list. That need is where I use the primary search filter check boxes, then add a search term in the box to filter more.
The issue is using the precise term or you will not get good results. My trick is to use as short of a term as possible. See the text in the results to identify the exact format, and then use it for future search or further refinement.
All a bit of work, for sure, and I expect there is a better way with enough programming. But this is required for now.
I dont know, Im too much of a novice and I did Bluebell a couple of weeks ago and bashful today and if I was consistent enough to nail my targets exactly there may be a difference. But for me who is consistently inconsistent (+/- 1-3% on each interval) there’s not much difference on the “difference” between these two workouts but I may (and probably am) wrong
Yes, makes perfect sense! I 100% agree with you.
Thanks @Nate_Pearson, If you look at my calendar (I assume you can) you will see what I have done is spend time pulling out a short summary/description of each session and put it in the annotation above the workout, so I can clearly see what what session is, for instance (for others)
- Beacon 6x8m@95-99% 4mR
- Mount Hayes 4x12m@95-99% 6mR
- Mount Baldy+2 5x10m@95-99% 5mR
So I can now clearly see that these three similar workouts (with quite different names) in subsequent weeks, increase from 48 mins, to 50 mins, and the second one has longer recoveries after longer sets, which then drop back for the third week. So it is clear to me there is a sensible progression and what they are trying to achieve (help me achieve).
More importantly, this helps me understand and appreciate that these are natural progressions and so i don’t look at a workout and go “Crap will I be able to do that?”
I had to use a bit of a code (for instance 4 minute recovery = 4mR) so they are visible in the short space available for the visible annotation. However, now done, this makes thinking through my programme, and realising that the 7 & 8th weeks of 40kTT are actually taper weeks, far easier.
I think I am the type who trusts a system more when they understand it, (and the structure of the thinking behind it), but also wants to be able to tweak it sensibly and not accidentally or unwittingly, destroy its meaning and usefulness. I have been fine through Base MV 1 and 2 and Build, but now I am reaching speciality and starting to get into my race season, I want to be much more specific in my training, whilst not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I hope that helps and perhaps inspires some ideas… Maybe even a bit of a podcast…
Keep up the good work
I’ve gone with a more compact system like this:
- Mount Goode 3x15-8 TH
(3 sets of 15-min with 8-min RBI; threshold intervals)
and print out and markup plans to review progressions, for example here is part of sustained build low-volume:
focusing on the Sunday threshold progression:
- 3x15-8 which is 45-min total with 8-min RBI
- 5x10-5 which is 50-min total with 5-min RBI
- 3x20-5 which is 60-min total with 5-min RBI
Anything TR could do to either:
- help us review progressions on our calendar
or - provide a progression wizard to assist
would be highly appreciated!
Doesn’t the IF give you the progression you are looking for?
For the above three workouts, the IF is 0.84, 0.85, 0.86 respectively - providing a clear indication of progression.
@bbarrera - similar with your workouts - eg the Saturday sessions are 0.85, 0.86 and 0.87 in IF.
I think the detail on work interval duration, intensity and rest interval duration is helpful to more accurately describe the workout, but the nice thing about IF is that it’s a single number that captures how hard a workout is.
If is indicative, but not as specific, because I can have an IF for a long continuous ride and one for a set of intervals next to FTP, and they will be the same, for quite different workouts. I can see much more clearly what is happening and why and how the IF is increasing.
As you say the detail of the interval duration and rest is much more helpful.