Maybe yes, but not in the context of being a training plan. I believe it only measures what you did, and what TR is trying to implement is an analysis of what you did, to then offer what you should do based on that level of fatigue. If I got it right.
Perfect.
As I said, it appears confusing as well. It’s 2, 3, 4 features all embedded in one (WL2?). Is it small implementations only? I didn’t get it.
I don’t know why they wouldn’t put it out, but I can think of a number of reasons that would give me pause.
What if it fundamentally changes how people interact with the product? For example people use TR because of the great app interaction on their phone during indoor training, but when you see you can do your riding outdoors and get the same benefit? what then?
Imagine a scenario when after they run all this they discover that their programming has been burning people out? Like, put out this product and be nailed to the wall of internet judgment. So instead you shift your training plans create a smooth on-ramp.
We don’t know what they are seeing. We don’t know why they aren’t putting it out. Maybe they see that the product is working excellently for people and they’re worried of changing people’s behavior in a way that derails their consistency? So they are planning for how to approach that.
And they have to make sure their models work properly…and and and. There was a pandemic, which fundamentally changed the way people worked (and trained). who…knows.
Ultimately I believe they’ll put it out when they don’t really have a choice, and I think that time is coming. :D. The Iron as they say is HOT.
I’m still convinced the whole PL thing is the wrong way to go and all these delays seem to prove it.
Do I really need a PL system to know that 3x20 is harder than 2x20??
Also, as mentioned already, the current highest level reached for a workout does not mean one should be hitting the same level of difficulty on a regular basis.
I was a strong believer of TR when I first joined and I’ve learnt a lot since then also thanks to the podcasts and blogs but I’m very sceptical now of what the platform can offer other than the basic tools.
Certainly not, but that is rather black/white and there are many more cases in their library where the ranking is less obvious. Places where stuff like TSS & IF match, but there is a real difference in the impact of work/recovery count and duration.
Experienced people likely can figure that out even with matching values outside of PL, but TR caters to people that don’t have that history. I find value in PL’s to a degree despite my many years here. But I also deviate from them at times when I think the PL and AT prescription is different than what I think I need.
Well, the work/rest matters less than what TR and many others think, at least based on what guys like Kolie and fellow EC coach Rory talk about publicly. Doing the work is more important than ratio of work to rest, and they advise athletes to take as much recovery as they need with interval work.
Maybe, but to reuse Nates old example:
- Is 1x40 the same as 40x1 if you match time and power?
A silly example and maybe the reality matters less once you start talking closer deltas, but I still think there is something to it.
I know I like pushing from the short/short VO2 that TR defaults to out to longer work intervals. Even if the PL, TSS, etc. match, those all feel different to me and may well lead to differences in load and adaptation.
I am going to have to disagree on this. Training your ability to recover and take shorter rests is key to getting faster in endurance events. (Sprint speed and explosive events are different).
Training with Olympic and national level runners, rest was minimal. As you progress in your training and fitness, shorting recovery trains your body to “recover” faster and often why still under stress. Much like you experience when racing.
If you can’t do the work without the added rest… sure I get that. But if you are capable of completing the workout at goal pace then shortening recovery (as you don’t always want to add reps) is the next step in progress.
Training higher volume endurance is how you get better at recovery, not taking shorter rests, at least that’s my understanding from people who know more than I do
Personally I have nothing against PL though I have no use for it. However I still need to be convinced on how PL should progress one’s training, in particular with outdoor rides.
Say one completes a 6 hour endurance ride or a big event and their tempo PLs shoot up to 9 or 10, what then?
I believe some of the issues TR have in implementing the whole thing is linked to this as well (even disregarding the fact that some PLs in the library itself are not always so coherent). I’ll admit PL might work indoor as a guideline when all workouts are fixed and there are no outliers.
My scepticism with the direction taken by TR though is that in order to implement this workout guideline other developments that would make a broader spectrum of users happy (for instance like adapting training similar to Join) are completely disregarded and, as you correctly mentioned a few posts above, the platform has been stuck on this for a very long time.
The only other feature that has been released so far is the AI FTP whose usefulness varies based in the experience of the athlete really (mostly for beginners in this case too IMO).
Guess I’m a noob then, because AIFTPD seems to be working for me better than the tests I did in the past 
I like PL’s too, within reason but I still tweak without specific regard to them at time, just like I also alter my schedule despite what AT sometimes provides. I don’t expect any of this to be perfect or without some level of intervention on my part.
I really don’t care either way since that is all rather different than the core of my posting today (delayed release frustration).
I am sure the biggest issue is anticipating all the different scenarios that TR users will present and testing and modifying to account for those.
I also think there is some truth here. It seems to me that TR thought of itself as a company that specialized in training plans for time crunched athletes who only wanted to train indoors. And that was a great concept. Fit with the technology and probably helped distinguish themselves and build their business. They held onto this mindset when building features and didn’t foresee that at some point a decent size of their user base is going to want these features to work with their outdoor riding and training. And guessing some fundamental decisions they made for their ecosystem don’t adapt very well to rides that don’t look like blue graphs. And designing additional features to account for that is difficult.
WLV2 has reached meme status at this point…
I promise I’ll quit but this is actually another great example of why PL is rather pointless unless you have to follow to the T the prescription of the workout, which is essentially only when you’re indoor as you pick a TR workout, AND you’re in erg mode for what it concerns power target IMO.
Note that this still doesn’t solve the issue of progression if you have a big ride, likely outdoor, that will inflate your PL levels once the new system is ready.
If you’re outdoor you’re certainly not going to go crazy overthinking the exact percentage of ftp to the decimal and you’d have the flexibility to add or cut short intervals on the go (based on your example), unlike with TR workouts.
For what it concerns the progression of the intervals, I’d assume many would have a base plan to then adjust at least a few hours prior to starting the workout? I wouldn’t want to find out at 6am AT assigned me a 5x5 when it had initial planned a 2x5 on that day.
What gets me is the talk of the data but we rarely ever see the data.
So why doesnt TR show us the data on the failure rate before the change to a masters plan and the new masters plans. Just pick week 3 workouts and what the compliance rate was and what the success rate was.
We could see data of FTP gains on old plan with say 80% compliance and new plan with same level of compliance. I pick a lower number as I just dont know how many follow a plan to the letter. Real life should impact what workout you choose to do.
I understand some of this data may not be the best to release but there is lots of data they have that would help my perception of where I fit. I really would like to see data of those over 60 segmented by age. Is there a trend of those that age and decline less? I keep pushing my VO2 work. Is this key? They have data that may help shed some light on this. etc
I do the same. I am tweak a lot. I pick alternates. I sometimes change the power level down a bit. I know what I can do and cant do. It works. AIFTPD just seems to get me where I need to be. I just had a bump today. It was expected by me as everything felt easier. I have learned at times to go with it though. Doing a VO2 workout at a PL of 8.0 seemed high too me but it was able to be completed. Not sure I would of picked it without TRs plan.
The item that I find goes sideways is some think the plan has to be followed to the T and some like to adjust for what works for themselves. V2 for me wont change anything as my outside rides would give me an endurance PL of say 7.0 which will never be completed inside for me. I really do prefer to ride for enjoyment outside and train indoors. I am addicted though to the training and the blue bars have a hold on me.
Count me jaded after being in tech for a long time, but if you buy on the promise of future features you’ve accepted a fools bargain. Buy / use based on what’s available today
I’ve been a long time TR off and oner, over the the last 10 or so years (I’ve gone through several user names WombleHunter, PedalMonkey) and stopped listerning to the pod cast a LONG time ago as it simply annoyed me, so listerning to this one … thanks for the link)
I’m going to start off topic and then come back, promise
In the pod cast Nate asked people to recommend to a friend as they don’t run advertising campaigns or sponsor pro teams, but prefer to sink that money back into new features, first of I would argue that the pod cast is advertising, but that’s not how advertising works, the idea is to increase visibility so that more people subscribe, so your revenue increases, and you have more money to invest
Right the actual point, TR has spent 4 years on WLV2 (3 years since it was first mentioned, and PL wasn’t a response to Dylan Johnson, I think it’s safe to assume they were working on it for a year before), so if you have two senior developers working on it, which seems like a safe assumption as it was for a long time “the highest priority to our development team”, you have to be taking $500,0000+ and that is a very conservative estimate not taking into account other costs
And then making empty promises in your pod casts seems like a very odd way to run a company, but I really shouldn’t be judging as I’ve not made a international company employing people, but I would suggest that if you are relying on one of mouth to allow you o spend money on features that won’t increase revenue (no way is WLV2 going to bring in that amount of extra profit), to not alienate your user base by dangling carrots to them
At the end of the day
is 100% correct, you should only pay for what you get,
I don’t think this is natural at all.
It becomes useful for selecting workouts with more subtle differences in difficulty. When I am awake at 4:30, 5 am and want to select a slightly easier/harder workout, I don’t want to peruse the library and look for a workout that looks similar to the one I offered, but with slightly easier intervals or longer rest times. Plus, it makes it easier to gauge the difference between e. g. a workout where I do 4 x 9 minutes at 102 % vs. 4 x 8 minutes at 105 %. Or varying rest times. PLs have really made it easier for me to select the right workout (e. g. when overriding AT by selecting an Alternate). If the difference is >= 1.0, I know I need to be very sure about what I do.
Yup. Decreasing rest time is certainly one way to ramp up the difficulty in certain workouts and for certain workouts (e. g. over-unders) it can translate to better performance in specific situations in races.
I get that e. g. having to increase rest to finish a workout isn’t going to “destroy” your workout. But being able to finish a workout with shorter rest intervals does say something about your fitness.
As I understand it, endurance rides stimulate adaptations that enable your body to recover more quickly. But you still need to train for it, even if what you train is spending time in the hurt locker.
How do you know what makes a “broader spectrum of users happy”? I’m not writing this to invalidate your arguments, just that we should be careful not to project our own wishes and wants onto a bigger audience. Moreover, I see nothing wrong that TR caters to a different audience than Zwift or Join.
Admittedly, I haven’t tried Join. However, TR seems to be unique in how it develops its features. E. g. according to Frank Overton his xFTP feature was validated with about 100 workouts from 6 athletes. If you know anything about statistics and machine learning (if ML was used), you know that this is an insufficient data set to develop, much less validate a concept. TR could have published some version of PL v2 a while ago, but if it wasn’t much better than a random number generator, the data would not be of much use.
In addition there are features which are “easy to implement”, but where the issue is, hmm, how users will react. A ranking of TR athletes is such a thing: personally, I think this would be a horrible thing for a segment of users, because it shifts your attention from improving yourself to comparing yourself to others. No matter how fit you are, there are always people faster than you.
If memory serves, @Nate_Pearson said during the announcement of AT that they have been toying with ML for > 3 years at that point. So that’s easily 6+ years of experience.
When planning a project like that, it’s easy to imagine “the work” as the initial implementation. It’s harder to picture the testing, validation, debugging, and the unintended consequences on the rest of the system, that usually makes up the bulk of the work, so that doesn’t get considered. Sometimes, when it comes to actually implementing an idea, you find aspects that require redesign.
The aphorism “that last 10% is 90% of the work” likely comes from an initial over-estimation of how much of the project work is done with the initial implementation.