Does anyone else find the adaptations tiresome? The idea is GREAT. The implementation is slowly getting more and more on my nerves. Every time I log in, I need to deal with adaptations.
I often do endurance instead of the Sunday Sweetspot. I get that it wants to continually adapt those down because I skip them, but I probably wouldn’t struggle with them if I’m also completing similar or tougher threshold work just fine
If I choose to skip adaptations, I’m going to get them proposed again after my next workout. Argh.
Some of the adaptations are months away. (e.g. July 26th). I don’t care about these, and they surely will be adapted again before then.
With the current system…
I wish the skips were “stickier”. If I choose to skip an adaptation, make that skip last longer than the next login or the next training session. I get that you want to adapt my Sunday sweet spot down to the dirt because I’m riding something different. I promise I could do it, even if I haven’t lately. Trust me and leave me alone. I could re-plan all of those workouts in my calendar but it’s not worth the effort.
I wish I could selectively skip based on energy system based as requested in the thread linked above.
But talking through it, what I really want is…
a setting that only adapts based on workout completion. The after workout adaptations are great, and I always agree with them. My mind is in the right context, and I just failed or crushed a workout. It’s obvious. If I fail a workout or rate it all out, yes please adapt down. If complete a breakthrough alternate, yes, please adapt up.
The adaptations due to skipped workouts usually only annoy me. If I miss, skip, or replace a workout with a race or unstructured ride, leave me alone and trust that during the next workout I’ll pick an alternate if I need to. If I don’t and fail that workout, help me adapt.
Its interesting. Last ride was Saturday. No adaptations needed. Then moved yesterdays ride to today as I was busy yesterday. I opened the program today and then there was an update to the software. Let it update and restarted and when it came up adaptions needed. Not sure if it is because I moved a ride or was it because the secret sauce changed.
The “real” solution is for TR to truly embrace Adaptive Training and rebuild plans to remove specific workout and replace the specific workout with the workout parameters:
Duration
Zone
Difficulty
And then a day or so the workout parameter gets replaced with a specific workout. This would greatly reduce the churn, as the only time an adaption would be needed is if the difficulty was being changed.
I agree with your general premise, and I would bet that the average user here on the forum does too. We’re probably better educated and maybe even more experienced than the average person using TR. However, I would guess we’re a very small subset of the general population of TR users, many of whom probably take a “I don’t want to think about it, just tell me what ride to do and I’ll do it” approach. If they haven’t done a VO2 workout in 6 months and their PL doesn’t decay, they’re going to get a VO2 workout at 5.5 and never even consider if that workout is appropriate or doable. Then they crash and burn and tell everyone “TR says it’s adaptive, and that it will always give you the right workout at the right time, but all it does is give me workouts that I fail”.
Agreed that there are definitely two categories of users. I thought about that too and wonder the breakdown. There are 24,000 users on the forum, if most or even half of those people feel the same I think there’d be a case.
I work in software development and usually roll my eyes at propositions for new settings to make a small group of users happy. Settings bloat the software and can make things feel complicated.
At the same time, it’s important for software to cater to both new and experienced users. If all experienced users have the same annoyance, it usually makes sense to find a way to serve both without ruining the experience for the other.
Is it really adapting those down? In my experience, if you skip a workout it will just replace next week’s workout with the one you just skipped, which seems completely reasonable.
Have you skipped so many Sweet Spot workouts that your PL has decayed?
There may be 24K users subscribed to the forum, but it feels like there are about 100 active posters. Maybe less. I’m sure there are tons of lurkers, but I doubt it’s anywhere near 24K. Would definitely be interesting to know!
You could be right. The chain reaction of adaptations makes it too overwhelming to pay attention to. Skipping one Sunday will probably cause adaptations for the next 5 Sundays. Skipping an endurance ride might lead to even more adaptations because they’re found during the week and also during recovery weeks.
I would think from a performance perspective having a weekly check for adaptations as an option would be a win-win for TR and many athletes. It seems like the current system is checking for adaptations 20+ times a week for because it triggers every time I check on the schedule in the morning on my phone, then when I send it to my garmin or load it on my trainer, after completion, then finally when I go to the website to analyze the workout. With however many athletes TR has on the system that has to be a lot of excess computing power.
Maybe it’s just me, but I just accept them all and move on with life. Why wouldn’t I trust the system?
Sometimes is adapts down, sometimes it adapts up. Worrying about levels more than a week or two out doesn’t seem productive to me. Crushing today’s workout is all I can control.
Ditto. I accept them (after a quick look) 99% of the time. I agree it might just be as easy for TR to only adapt the current week (or 7-10 day period?), but if TR skipped the following weeks in the current training phase, they’d likely get the opposite questions about why AT is NOT changing the stuff further out. We already see that for people looking at pending phases that aren’t altered.
Not sure there is a perfect solution here and I don’t see a huge problem in the current offering.
For those that always accept, do you ever skip workouts?
Typically I want to accept Threshold or VO2 suggestions.
Typically I don’t want to accept endurance or sweetspot downward adjustments. I usually just skipped a workout or did a non trainerroad replacement; I don’t really need the downward adjustment.
I can’t selectively accept, so I skip until I am so tired of the suggestion that I cave in, accept, and try to remember my old Sweet Spot or Endurance workout so I can choose it the next time.
I’m doing Low Vol as a rule these days, so no Sunday swap for me. I add them manually instead.
But if I was on Mid Vol and doing what you mentioned, I’d potentially skip that adaptation if it was a drop vs a repeat.
In any event, I always evaluate each workout on the day I do it and will use Alternates and pick up or down to suit my state on that day. Meaning that I always leave the door to change open, so I don’t consider the Adaptations or skips as concrete.
No, it definitely adjusts the sweet spot level for sundays down after swapping the sunday ride. I did exactly that.
This past week, i hit the tues and thurs sweet spot ride of SSB1, and progression levels increased like 0.3. Then I did a 3hr endurance ride instead of the sweet spot workout sunday, and the next months worth of sunday sweet spot rides got bumped down.
And suddenly, I’m much more self conscious about some of my dumber posts.
Re: the actual topic, they did slowly annoy me so I eventually turned it off. For essentially the reasons stated. The workout levels are kind of neat, though I’m not sure how useful I find it. The gamification is fun; motivated me to ride Bandeira at one point (when it was endurance 10).
That said, I’m usually in the ‘more complexity is not always better’ camp.
If I skip a workout, I generally want the plan to adjust. I skipped it for a reason.
If I replaced a workout, I usually find a similar workout to pair it with. Or just leave the ride one it’s own, unpaired and take the hit. But my weekend rides are usually longer/harder than planned, so…? I dunno. It generally gives my 90 min workouts and I often do 2-4 hours.
