So it seems like an issue, but maybe it’s just that I don’t understand what AT’s supposed to do. I completed Daniels -2 (Sweet spot 2.9), and marked the survey with “Moderate”. AT then suggested adaptations which lowered the level of the next several sweet spot workouts by almost a point. The screenshot below is for one, but the next one was also adapted down by a similar amount. I declined the adaptations, but after today’s workout it made the same suggestions, so I accepted because it also suggested increases in the VO2 workouts, as expected after rating Taylor +2 as hard.
Why would AT lower SS levels after a successful workout?
It looks like these are the Sunday SS workouts? These are often at a lower level than your current PLs. They seem to be more about consolidating your base without stretching you too much.
For example if I look at Week Two of SSBMV1 with a SS PL of 5.6 I see workouts of SS 5.7 and SS 6.1 during the week, but SS 3.7 on Sunday.
So the 3.7 is well below where I would be at by that day, but it makes sense in the way the overall plan is structured.
Best protocol for specifics on AT and your Progression Levels is always to check in with the support team.
They have the best visibility to the full scope of your workouts, FTP changes, adaptations, Progression Levels, and why AT may be behaving the way it is (or fix it if something is amiss!).
Feel free to write support@trainerroad.com so they can provide some insight and make any changes if needed.
I’m not sure that explains it though. In this case those Sunday workouts would have already been scheduled at a lower PL than the one OP is at, so there wouldn’t be a need to downgrade them.
I think it’s a good point that every single workout shouldn’t be harder than the one before it, as that’s a recipe for overtraining and burnout. And as users we shouldn’t be rejecting adaptations every time they’re not up. But it still doesn’t make sense that it downgrades a successive workout after a moderate rating. Unless for some reason the ML expected him to have an ‘easy’ time with Daniel’s, and because it wasn’t…then it needed to make the future ones easier. Maybe that’s the answer?
Here’s another way of putting it. The Sunday SS workouts are meant to be moderate. He rated that one as moderate. Therefore, future Sunday workouts have adapted to be similar.
I’d be interested to know if any mid-week SS workouts also adapted down because that would seem strange to me.
After a few back-and-forth emails with support, it summarizes to this quote from TR Support:
The significant decrease in your workout level after successfully completing your first SweetSpot workout is because Adaptive Training is designed to not recommend harder SweetSpot workouts during the build phase.
I asked why AT didn’t just schedule the correct level from the beginning, thinking that it would then adapt if my performance didn’t align with expectations.
As for the reason that the levels weren’t set when you initially scheduled your training plan, this is because Adaptive Training isn’t able to predict your SweetSpot level in the future. When you initially scheduled your training plan, it gives a possible SweetSpot level that you could be at but will then increase or decrease the workout levels depending on where your SweetSpot progression level is actually at. =)
So, there you have it. For now, I’m just going to roll with whatever AT dishes out until I’ve been on the program for a while. Then i may tinker with it.
