Adaptive Training is giving me a sweet SSB1 LV phase which consists of Truchas and Redondo variations only on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 5 weeks straight.
Intuitively I wonder if a little more variation in stimulus would be better. This just seems like a whole lot of the same, in some cases the same workout 2 workouts in a row… There are thousands of workouts available, it seems a little unnecessary but when I go to check the alternatives, guess what comes up
Is this a common thing, has anyone else noticed this?
Your Sweet Spot workout PLs are all in the 9s. I think they need to be reset with a ramp test or AI FTP Detection. If you’ve adjusted your FTP recently, reach out to support to take a look at your plan.
I’m on a plan builder plan with only 1 event on it December 28th this year. Plan builder filled up the year with SSB1, BUILD, SSB2, BUILD and repeat cycle finishing with an XC Marathon Specialty. What you see in the plan right now is after having FTP Detection adjust my FTP after finishing last week of a build phase. Sweet spot levels did go down after AI raised my FTP from 252 to 258 after build but SS levels are still at 8+ I tried manually bumping my FTP to 260 but it didn’t change much.
Without your training history we are left guessing a bit here and I will start of by echoing mtbjones suggestion to reach out to suport for more official guidance.
But I can give you my two cents on the way. You seem to have too big of a difference between SS and threshold PL coming out of a build phase. It might be because of being too conservative when rating threshold work resulting in AT not progressing you enough. Or rating SS too low resulting in too high PLs and you doing threshold efforts in your SS workouts.
Either way it seems counter intuitive to go from build to SS with your current PL numbers, but again something support is more suited to clarify.
I changed the SSB1 to SSB2 in the plan builder which gave me a VO2 workout on the tuesdays, so now there’s at least some variation in there. The sweetspot workouts are still all Truchas and Redondo. For some reason with my sweetspot levels as they are and SSB1 it will only give me Redondo and Truchas workouts, even after deleting my plan and replanning it in there.
I’d hate to waste support time on this, unless anyone thinks it may be some kind of glitchy situation and it would help refine AT further.
There was a quote I read a while back, I don’t remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of, “the big difference between pros and amateurs is the ability to do the same boring workouts over and over with consistency.”
That’s obviously simplifying things but basically, pros can do the same “boring” workouts over and over, whereas amateurs need to change things up to escape the monotony. They have a handful of workouts they’ll do all year and really only change the interval length (a generalization for sure, periodization and peaking and such). And I remember coach Chad saying once that a lot of the workout differences are to combat boring rather than change the adaptations. Now, obviously there’s more to being a pro than that, but from what I’ve read, no you don’t need to change things up for the sake of changing. I just finished a sweet spot block that was literally intervals of 90%, the only thing changing was interval length. Yes, the longer 30/40/60 min intervals get boring, but in my eyes there’s no reason to change that. So if you look at the block, you’d probably think, they’re all the same, there’s no variation. And to me, that’s the point. Keep it simple.
Now on the other hand, if variation keeps you consistent, then go for it. Consistency is the goal. So if you need more variation, do what keeps you consistent.
Thank you! This adresses the exact concerns i had. I was worried it would impact the desired adaptations, but if that’s not the case I don’t mind the monotony. I do my weekday workouts indoors anyway, and i follow my plans like a religion. The variation can be achieved by music or video, so if performance won’t suffer I concider this case closed.
I would still advise you to do an evaluation of why you have gotten to this point. If you are not training specifically to get very good at SS I’m tempted to say you are not where you should be coming out of a Build block.
Seing that you are using both AT and FTP Detection this might be caused by one or both of them not working optimal for you. In my view this is far from wasting supports time. Feedback like this is neccesary to improve the product.
I think it may have to do with there being only one event on my calendar which is a long way away (end of the year). It’s a 200 kilometer (approx 125 mile) MTB Marathon (Drenthe 200) mostly off road in the conditions only the gods know beforehand. (last time it was a lot of ankle deep mud which resulted in forced hike a bike).
Plan builder makes you enter a time and intensity level, I entered 12 hours, last time I did it in 14. So I can imagine why plan builder is going for the sustained power route. I’ll contact support and ask what they think. Maybe ataptive training is a little bit too laser focused on just sustained power.
Since your only event is so far away it’s likely that AT is slowly ramping things up as there’s no point in getting you to a peak of fitness now. This is why your plan is just repeats of SSB2 and Build until the last few weeks of Speciality.
@Mark_Huigen your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on the ‘Alternates’ button at least twice during the next week & contemplate the possibilities.
One of the best features on TrainerRoad, in my opinion, is the ‘Alternates’ button.
It’s different for me. North Twin, Mount Major, Roan High. So TR must generate a list of alternates that is suited to the individual athlete. Interesting. What about if you pull down the stretch?
Actually, probably what’s going on here is that you haven’t changed your FTP for a while. So your sweetspot progression level is very high. Once you get to the top of the level there aren’t very many workouts to choose from.
I wonder what would happen if you set your FTP two watts higher & checked the calendar again?
I changed my FTP using AI Estimation yesterday, after doing that Adaptive Training came up with the screenshot i put into the first post. I tried raising my FTP 2 watts as well and it does’nt make a difference. The only way to get alternative recommendations is to choose a different workout duration.
The only way to get different workouts was to change SSB1 into SSB2 which has VO2 workouts on the tuesdays on the low volume plan. The sweetspot workouts are still the same ones as before. But like @CaptainThunderpants mentioned with coach Chad’s quote, it’s not a bad thing to do the same workout multiple times as long as the duration or intensity varies.
Is that true even if you change to achievable instead of productive? I imagine you’re out of space for a stretch workout, but maybe you could get some variation that way.
AT wants me to do different versions of Chicoma now, but at least I seem to have escaped Venado variants (with a sprinkling of Truchas variants).
Yep, productive and stretch just give me different variations like +3 and so on. Only if I choose breakthrough it will come up with different workouts altogether.
Can you afford to spend more time on the trainer on those days? I think you’ve maxed out the 1 hour sweet spot workouts. If you could extend the sessions to 75 or 90 minute sessions you’d open up a fair few more options.
