Itās become a bit quit again. Would be nice if this would be addressed somehowā¦my main point is that āpersonalized custom plansā just means predefined TR plans tweaked a bit to your preference but NOT truly individualized plans (why no plan with 1 intense session per week as example).
Maybe thatās why itās called āpersonalizedā and not āindividualizedā. Iām no native speaker so Iāve no idea if this is a deliberate marketing nuance.
Other points not really addressed is some better explanation and distinction between these goals
As hinted by some members here who played with that setting, I guess in the background is just a mapping from goal to specialty phase. If so that could be made clearer and save us some guesswork.
It totally makes sense to me that TR would implement their philosophy on training in TR plans and not just play back what people do anyway.
As Iām always a multisport athlete I wonāt be able to see what interpretation is laid properly until the Tri plans come out, but I am expecting;
Key workouts when I tend to get key workouts done, eg for the last four years I always run in a Tuesday evening so a personalised tri plan would put a base or tempo run in there
What moved the needle? Will it see that my FTP went up when I do x plan and not y plan?
Will it assess overall volume better than when we select high med low? I expect so.
And with personalizes custom training plans to analyze my whole training history and āwhat works best to make you fasterā (https://youtu.be/P7QDKwLLyGs?si=7V_ZGn-Fh6YLWPNo). I will note that in the promo video TR explicitly states that you get 2 or 3 days of intensity.
And so it might become clear that much of the AT talk is just good marketing for tweaking predefined TR plans a bit to your preference and not what many might imply as truly individualized.
Thatās fine and itās nothing wrong with that but what I donāt like is that TR just ignores these points/critics and doesnāt make it clear when pointed out on the forum here.
With truly individualized I would assume to analyze my whole training history and āwhat works best to make you fasterā (just as the TR claim but) without the constraints of any plans. Sure there should be TR users with less than 2 intense days and volume/z2 focus that make them faster. Yet these people will get served TR plans along minimum of 2 intense days which might not make them faster.
@John_Barclay! The workouts may seem similar at first due to the training plan meeting you where youāre at. Theyāll become more specific over time.
In terms of how we uniquely address those goals, we focus on the energy systems used in that type of riding, and we focus on the context specific nature of it (ie: sustained vs. repeated, muscular endurance vs. aerobic capacity, etc.).
@kosmo886, great feedback! For now, yes, building FTP would likely be better.
Having worked for one of Silicon Valleyās finest, for whom āpunchy marketing claimsā were a way of life, Iām conditioned to cut software businesses plenty of slack in this regard, and donāt take claims too literally.
That said, from what Iāve seen so far, the expectation-reality gap with this new āpersonalizedā plan builder release seems, err, sizable and sadly Iām very underwhelmed.
I have had so much sympathy for TR and still have (but it has taken a hit) and like it as a tool but this marketing really annoys meā¦it overpromises and underdelivers.
And it should be the other way round!
TR should have just called it āPlan builder has gotten a better UI and more customization optionsā and Iād be happy because it really has gotten betterā¦but all that marketing annoys me so much that even seeing this bar
Is there any way to use these plans to come up with a mostly base / zone 2 setup for the rest of the year? I appreciate Iām going to lose fitness, but if I have to do another threshold / vo2max session any time soon Iām likely to give up training forever.
Why not just ride your bike without a plan and maintain volume if you want? Sometimes I find having a schedule gives me anxiety and what I did the last few months was just ride on days I could. Felt good to get away from a schedule for a little while.
I wont do anything at all without that schedule tbh. Winters here are horrifically wet / muddy and I just donāt have time to endlessly be cleaning the bike / my gear.
Iām very much like you, but I know from riding with others over the decades, that some just need a plan and a schedule, or like the OP said, it just wonāt happen.
This is one of the reasons why Iām not a great TR candidate - I donāt like being tied to a plan as riding is meant to be a stress relief and not something else in my life that I āhave to doā. Sure Iād like to be as fit and fast as possible, but Iām not willing to do the work if it means Iām doing intervals when I donāt want to. Weāre all approaching riding from different angles!
Just put a Baxter variant on the calendar for the days of the week you want to ride and then use the make repeating button to schedule that for as many weeks as you want.
Some might say that will be a bit boring, but there are enough power and cadence changes in the Baxter rides to make it palatable imo.
Easiest way may be just to schedule a Base block directly. Perhaps choose a Masters plan for fewer intensity days: Masters Base Phase
But these Base blocks include Threshold workouts each week, so depending on the volume youāre targeting, one option to consider would be to choose a higher volume plan then delete (or simply ignore) the harder workout(s) each week leaving just the easier stuff. eg. choose a Masters Mid Vol, then delete/ignore the Threshold w/o each week: Masters General Base Mid Volume
Maybe you could do the Sweet Spot w/o if youāre up for it, or maybe just use it as a placeholder in the Calendar which you then replace with something easier on the day, whether chosen manually or using TrainNow for suggestions. Or just drop the Sweet Spot entirely - up to you.
With this approach to using the Base plans as ātemplatesā you get yourself a plan structure, scheduled within the Calendar , and with only a little bit of effort you get to tweak it more to your specific requirements. Can do this with other phases too, if the standard ones donāt suit your needs.
I would plug in traditional base 1 mid volume or whatever volume you are looking for. Then when you want to hit intervals either progress through traditional base or build a plan.
I understand some people need a schedule, I personally like feeling free of that sometimes.
Is there a way to steer towards more base training? I did base I-III over summer and would like to continue base after a short off season break. Itās only giving me build though.
I think weāre on a similar page. Iāve a big soft spot for TR: like the people, like the ethos, appreciate a polished product thatās free of cruft etc. I may often appear to be moaning on here, but any criticism ācomes from a place of loveā ; if I didnāt care I would be bothering!
From the outside looking in, ie. based on my experience experimenting with a bit, there seem to be two primary aspects to this plan builder update, both of which amount to modest iterations of the existing plan building toolkit:
a new wizard, with new scheduling options vs the previous fixed 3/5/6 w/oās per week format, new āGoalā selection to help direct people to the appropriate plan
some RLGL integration behind the scenes to help people choose (or be steered to) an appropriate volume plan.
The wizard updates seem to be a modest improvement, so thatās welcome but nothing earth shattering there.
I like RLGLās presence within the Calendar, which although itās often just confirming what I already feel, adds a useful sanity check - another input, and Iāve found this to be beneficial and useful.
But, the RLGL integration weāre seeing here in Plan Builder (assuming itās RLGL āgutsā which lies behind the volume suggestions, warnings etc), just seems to be a bit āoffā in my experience so far. I donāt know if thatās because it overweights very recent history vs. medium-to-longer term history, but the default suggestions it gave me, volume-wise, just donāt seem particularly well informed at all (see my earlier posts for details). It seems to be calibrated towards erring very much in favour of lower volumes, which would make sense as a default behaviour if you had no history data to inform the decision, but seems distinctly off in light of the history it has access to.
No matter. These limitations donāt hugely impact me - Iām happy to intervene manually, tweak settings, adjust durations, add my own workouts, and so on, in order to knock any generated plan into a shape Iām happier with. Iād have preferred a tool that could do most or even all of this for me, automatically, (as seemed to be the claim), but really itās no big deal from my perspective - just carry on as I did previously.
Disappointing, though. Perhaps this will improve in time, although maybe it requires a move away from the current underlying plan structure (which these newer features here all sit atop of) before we see what better passes for real personalized custom plansā¦?
Regarding lack of TR response to points raised by you, I take that to mean itās largely working as intended / per the design.
I built a test plan, and the progression looks wonky from the outside ā see the below screenshot. The wonkiness to me is that as the plan progresses between phases, the max TSS / week goes down. This is really counter intuitive.