Our Training Plans are Improving

For Spanish needle, skip an interval in the middle of a set, that still keeps aerobic uptake high and you’ll be more likely to finish.

Just watch this thread, I’ll also post more in the forum about future updates.

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Well that is an interesting assertion! I’m intrigued…is this just your impression from looking at data, or is it something TR has explicitly said? I find the assertion intriguing because I would not draw that conclusion from looking at data…but my dataset is cobbled together. Also, my impression is TR want users to be able to complete workouts. You know, hard but doable.

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@Nate_Pearson Does this also work the other way round?

So is there something like a too high compliance rate for a workout or you detect that it seems too easy to accomplish (for example heart rate too low or because intensity was raised too often) and then replace it by some harder workout?

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I was curious about this too.

I think TR indicated early in the post that they have ways of weeding those issues out to some degree.
I don’t know, but If Rider A is hitting all the targets, not backpedaling, not ‘turning down’ the workout but stops early, and Rider B is doing all those things, that would be an indication of Rider A running out of time and not failing the workout.

I don’t think I’m explaining myself well.

There are people who will email is and ask why one plan weeks TSS is 350 and next week is 350. They think that the next week has to have a particular ramp rate to get faster.

Or how speciality has lower TSS than some base plans.

That’s what I’m getting at, if two workouts in a week each lose 2-3 TSS don’t worry about it.

For me, I’ve handled 400 for a solid chunk and then a week of 700 will make me sick.

I’m only trying to get across the point that TSS isn’t everything, but it’s still relevant.

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The only workouts that I’ve seen that are highly compliant are the aerobic short ones like Pettit.

Those should be pretty easy to nail though :slight_smile:.

I haven’t looked deep into that data yet though.

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would be handy to have a button to quick switch into and out of erg mode

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I would also appreciate the on screen instructions to be audible, don’t like having to read when I’m trying to deal with the pain!

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No, that is a question, not an assertion, based on your statement that there are a lot of riders that hit all their workouts between their first two ramp tests – and that this is either sandbagging or people not knowing how to do the ramp test. I apologize if I misunderstood what you were trying to say. Maybe you could clarify?

Thanks for responding. Could you clarify your typo? Your response says, “It’s not find to find that point though.” Did you mean not hard to find that point, or not important to find that point?

Could you explain what you mean by sandbagging a workout? I really don’t know what that means. And how would heart rate show it? If someone’s heart rate did not get super elevated, would that indicate they were “sandbagging” a workout? Or do you mean if the heart rate trend does not follow the variation in power/cadence during the workout?

I think this makes sense, but in my opinion you have to be careful not to over-fit your ML model. You don’t want to optimize for compliance of the workouts only, as this will result in “weaker” workouts in the end. The final goal is to make people faster (I guess that those people who are getting faster are those who are “completing” more workouts than the rest) by allowing/helping them to complete more workouts.

I don’t have the data, but I guess that the reasons for >90% of “failed” workouts originate from outside the training plans such as injury, motivation, stress, insufficient recovery, nutrition, sleep, just testing, being short on time, medication etc…

As you don’t have this information it would be hard to model something meaningful with this noisy data.

Don’t get my wrong, I like the idea that all of you are trying to improve the plans, but I think you really have to be really really careful not to see things which are not there.

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I love all that you do but it’s still really hard as a coach to use TrainerRoad. I like many of your workouts, but I also prefer to create my own workouts for individual athletes. There is still not an easy way to get a workout into TR for my athletes. It’s a multi-step process.

I understand you guys are pushing your own training plans and workouts but locking out coaches from making full use of your platform doesn’t seem like a good strategy. Especially when the core experience is still just numbers on a screen with a blue graph.

It’s easier to get my athlete’s workouts into Zwift with TP integration. And for most of my athletes they’re far more engaged with the visuals of Zwift. It’s win-win for me as a coach.

I’m not really feeling the love from TR in this regard. I think you guys have a better platform for ERG workouts (power match is so much better in TR than Zwift). The experience around training is great (calendar, logging, metrics tracking, etc) on the athlete side; it’s a little more user-friendly than even Training Peaks. And I’m a big fan of the people who run TR, I love the drive you all have… but come on! Give coaches some tools! I want to keep using TR and encouraging my athletes to do the same but it’s so tedious to be a coach using TR…

See our TR team Human Power Performance… I assume you guys can go in and look at team workouts and members…

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There are also likely a lot of riders for whom the ramp test isn’t optimal - I tend to wuss out on it for whatever reason.

The last time I took the ramp test, I ended up using an FTP 25 watts higher for SSBMV1 and completed every workout. YMMV.

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There is an open enhancement request for this. We have mentioned it in a couple of threads in the recent past.

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Glad to hear TR is continuing to work on improving their current product. My personal experience is the training plans are too hard for me. I can get through 1-2 weeks and then I become derailed. I typically drop 1 of the 4 hard workouts and replace it with easy endurance and that seems to help me. Of course I’m over 40 and not a stud athlete so that plays a role in my thinking the plans are overall too hard. Still love the product though. I would love to see a polarized training plan at some point in the future.

@jasonaytes, you may want to consider adjusting the training plan in the following way. It shortens the time between recovery weeks and may help you hit the workouts as intended.

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Are you taking the type of trainer and mode used into account when you look at why a failure occurs? I ask this because it took me two years of using TR and occasionally contacting Tech Support before I figured out that my Kick’r Snap was part of my issue with some workouts, especially short V02max efforts (but also with others where a high intensity burst was needed). The trainer almost always bound up and so while I supposed to hit, say 350 watts or something (my FTP is 234 ) the trainer would bog down and I’d be up to over 600 watts and suddenly be unable to pedal. It was often very difficult to restart the session after that because the behavior would repeat and I’d give up. I learned that I needed to be in a very small gear all the time to avoid what a member of your (very helpful) support crew called clench. But I also figured out very late in the game that switching out of ERG mode made such intervals much easier to complete because the trainer didn’t bind up. I guess my point is that a few of my failures seem due to equipment issues rather than leg failures, since after a bit of fighting with the trainer I’d give up. So if you have a way to correlate the type of trainer/mode in use with the workouts where there are a lot of failures, that might tell you something too. Or it might not. Just wanted to suggest it as something to consider (if there is something can be done about it).

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