šŸŽ‰šŸŽ‰šŸŽ‰ Announcement: Personalized Custom Training Plans! šŸŽ‰šŸŽ‰šŸŽ‰

Figured if it was related to something in the new features not working, that it made sense to ask it here. Iā€™ll ask support.

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Same here on not being able to switch a workout to outdoor. I had to delete the workout and then re-add it as outdoor.

Itā€™s become a bit quit again. Would be nice if this would be addressed somehowā€¦my main point is that ā€žpersonalized custom plansā€œ 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 thatā€™s why itā€™s called ā€žpersonalizedā€œ and not ā€žindividualizedā€œ. Iā€™m no native speaker so Iā€™ve 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.

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I think youā€™d need to define your terms first.

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 Iā€™m always a multisport athlete I wonā€™t 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.

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The thing is that since AT TR is claiming ā€žto give you the right workout every timeā€œ (https://youtu.be/c15eVK29bj0?si=bCZbZmmDfECRFDsa)

And with personalizes custom training plans to analyze my whole training history and ā€žwhat works best to make you fasterā€œ (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.

Thatā€™s fine and itā€™s nothing wrong with that but what I donā€™t like is that TR just ignores these points/critics and doesnā€™t make it clear when pointed out on the forum here.

With truly individualized I would assume to analyze my whole training history and ā€žwhat works best to make you fasterā€œ (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.

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@John_Barclay! The workouts may seem similar at first due to the training plan meeting you where youā€™re at. Theyā€™ll 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.

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If you quoted the rest of my post you might realise our opinions are not quite so far apart :slightly_smiling_face:

Having worked for one of Silicon Valleyā€™s finest, for whom ā€œpunchy marketing claimsā€ were a way of life, Iā€™m conditioned to cut software businesses plenty of slack in this regard, and donā€™t take claims too literally.

That said, from what Iā€™ve seen so far, the expectation-reality gap with this new ā€œpersonalizedā€ plan builder release seems, err, sizable and sadly Iā€™m very underwhelmed. :thinking:

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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 ā€žPlan builder has gotten a better UI and more customization optionsā€œ and Iā€™d be happy because it really has gotten betterā€¦but all that marketing annoys me so much that even seeing this bar

makes me just think itā€™s a UI gimmick that tries to fool me.

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Feeling pretty burned out after a very hard year.

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 Iā€™m going to lose fitness, but if I have to do another threshold / vo2max session any time soon Iā€™m likely to give up training forever.

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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.

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I wont do anything at all without that schedule tbh. Winters here are horrifically wet / muddy and I just donā€™t have time to endlessly be cleaning the bike / my gear.

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Iā€™m 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 wonā€™t happen.

This is one of the reasons why Iā€™m not a great TR candidate - I donā€™t like being tied to a plan as riding is meant to be a stress relief and not something else in my life that I ā€˜have to doā€™. Sure Iā€™d like to be as fit and fast as possible, but Iā€™m not willing to do the work if it means Iā€™m doing intervals when I donā€™t want to. Weā€™re all approaching riding from different angles!

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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.

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Nothing new specifically to facilitate that.

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 youā€™re 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 youā€™re 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 ā€œtemplatesā€ 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 donā€™t suit your needs.

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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.

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I didnā€™t hear back or see it come across.

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. Itā€™s only giving me build though.

I think weā€™re on a similar page. Iā€™ve a big soft spot for TR: like the people, like the ethos, appreciate a polished product thatā€™s free of cruft etc. I may often appear to be moaning on here, but any criticism ā€œcomes from a place of loveā€ :wink:; if I didnā€™t 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/oā€™s per week format, new ā€œGoalā€ 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 thatā€™s welcome but nothing earth shattering there.

I like RLGLā€™s presence within the Calendar, which although itā€™s often just confirming what I already feel, adds a useful sanity check - another input, and Iā€™ve found this to be beneficial and useful.
But, the RLGL integration weā€™re seeing here in Plan Builder (assuming itā€™s RLGL ā€œgutsā€ which lies behind the volume suggestions, warnings etc), just seems to be a bit ā€œoffā€ in my experience so far. I donā€™t know if thatā€™s because it overweights very recent history vs. medium-to-longer term history, but the default suggestions it gave me, volume-wise, just donā€™t 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 donā€™t hugely impact me - Iā€™m 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 Iā€™m happier with. Iā€™d have preferred a tool that could do most or even all of this for me, automatically, (as seemed to be the claim), but really itā€™s no big deal from my perspective - just carry on as I did previously. :person_shrugging:

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 itā€™s largely working as intended / per the design.

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Hey guys!

Good news! In response to your feedback, we have added the Plan Preview back to the Overview page in Plan Builder v2 :tada: :confetti_ball:.

So before adding your Training Plan to your Calendar, you will get a detailed overview of what the Training Plan involves.

As always, let us know if you have any questions!

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Thanks. This is really helpful.

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.