What happens to recovery weeks in adaptive training?
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Just a guess from me, but I imagine if you’re following a plan they’ll be much the same as they are now, except based on your performance and feedback you could get slightly different/easier workouts. That would make sense to me.
If you’re just going along following TrainNow I suspect you’d probably need to cater for that yourself. But maybe a TR rep will chime in with something more definitive.
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Yes, not sure if they hit on this during the announcement, but I assume timing of recovery week will be a “feature” they explore within cohorts. You could imagine 2 on/ 1 off, or 3 on/ 1 off being selected based on age and other performance metrics. I find my heart rate can trends up for a given power during a block, and ML could potentially identify those patterns and dynamically recommend a rest week.
On the main AT thread @Nate_Pearson just explained that this is something that they will look at in time, but will require them to gather RPE data so that it can help determine if you need rest or have just been postponing workouts etc. for other reasons.
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Muscle biopsy, probably.
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You’re exactly right. AT currently won’t dynamically change the periodization of your training plan, but it will make sure that the easy rides during your recovery week are more appropriately tuned to your endurance Progression Level. Another thing that can be easily overlooked is that even during tougher weeks in a training plan, Adaptive Training rarely recommends the hardest workout it can for you. Within every training week there are some easier and some tougher workouts, so many workouts AT recommends during a training plan will be in the “Achievable” category. In the end, Adaptive Training means your workouts from day to day will be more appropriate for your abilities, whether they’re meant to be hard workouts or just easier spins.
And as you’ve surmised, TrainNow does not consider periodization- so if you are on your plan’s assigned rest week but open TrainNow, you’ll still see workouts from the endurance, climbing, and attacking categories. Use with caution 
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Very cool. Thanks for the explanation.
Any chance that in future development TrainNow could be synced to follow a large periodization cycle independent of plan builder? Just curious
I wouldn’t rule out any future improvement, especially as the algorithm gets smarter. But for now TrainNow is purposely meant to help the large contingent of TR athletes that like to pick and choose workouts as they go find more productive workouts. In the past, many of these athletes have often just chosen the first workouts that show up alphabetically in the workout list!
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Thanks for replying. Tbh, I’m kinda one of those in that I focus on general amount of days of intensity rather than hitting the plan every time.
Tbh, I think a great suggestion for this would be to adapt the train now to be linked with people who would like to cycle to lose weight. You know, “I’ve got 1 hour to train, what workout could I do to burn x calories” Have the TrainNow then make sure people hit x calories without getting too intense over the week. Would be good to check newbies from overtraining themselves.
Just a thought.
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Very cool suggestion. I’ll relay it to the product team.
Thanks Sean. Is it fair to assume that if one is in Build Phase (for example), while Adaptive Training will prescribe achievable workouts based on recent performance vs plan, it will still maintain the same mix of Threshold, Vo2, Sweet Spot and Endurance rides that occur during a Build Phase week albeit make them easier or harder. In other words, Adaptive Training will not drop the Threshold workout for the week and replace it with an Endurance ride; instead, it would make the Threshold workout that week easier.
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That’s exactly how it works.
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