stuff going too easy for some of you? try SSB2 HV as was adapted to me after SSB1 lol
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Yup! 
It’s going great for me, if I want to make the plan on my calendar harder I will purposely skip the FTP test to keep my progressive levels high.
AT has made me feel stronger and more confident with my “ FTP”.
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It seems to be going OK for me. I’ll have to boot up the PC and add an annotation for this driver induced injury and see how it adapts around that. It’s improved reasonably and was even good enough for a cycle yesterday as I think my inside thigh hamstring has tightened enough to take the weight off my left glute but I think a interval session would pull it too tight and maybe snap it. So I think I’ll have a break from training for a few days and see how AT handles it.
Whew!
I couldn’t complete even one week on that plan.
I’ve never felt so inadequate with a sport in my entire life. Even getting to play pick up bball with some college guys and pros where I was clearly the worst player there didn’t make me feel as bad as this sport does.
Will you complete this block relatively well? I mean it’s only sweet spot.
Ouch.
I got frustrated with AT and turned it off. I did a Threshold workout on a Saturday, rated at PL 4.0. I struggled, had to pause/backpedal but I did finish. I answered the struggle question honestly and was rewarded with a 1.0 PL for threshold. I’m realizing my fragile ego doesn’t need additional data points to remind me that not only am I a failure, but I’m weak too.
I like it although for example I did an extra interval on a workout last week and it didn’t even notice. So it still has ways to go, but step in a right direction.
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Generally AT has been a positive development for me. I’m in my 50’s and the old plans progressed a little to rapidly for me and I would end up burned out somewhere in the build phase. AT is obviously adapting to my progress and slowing my progression a little which I just have to be patient with as it is probably the right answer. I am finding that each week’s progression is usually “hard” but doable. I don’t feel myself slowly sinking into a fatigued state.
I do look forward to the day that outside rides are fully considered. I do some long 4-6 hour rides on the weekends and AT just doesn’t seem fully factor those in yet whether I do the prescribed workout plus extra time or do a ride and match it to a workout.
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I’ve been very pleased with AT. I came off an 8 week block of DIY traditional base exclusively outdoors (~700 TSS/wk + ancillary training). Completed part of SSBHV2 and just finished Sustained Power Build 1. Naturally, I had to do some manual input to get my PLs to where they should be since AT was missing a lot of data: I felt I had strong sweetspot abilities (and obviously tempo and endurance). So, I just used the alternate tab to schedule a Breakthrough SS workout that looked achievable for me, nailed it, and let AT take the wheel from there. On the other hand, at one point I had a threshold workout scheduled on the very high end of Productive that I didn’t think I’d be able to complete, so I used an easier alternate that was still Productive and was able to do it–I felt like I got roughly the same benefit. I like having confidence that I’ll be able to complete my workouts. For those saying it seems too easy, I’d say that completing 100% of your workouts at 80% of the difficulty is more productive than completing 80% of your workouts at 100% difficulty. The best training plan is the one you can nail. And, you can always do some manual manipulation of the PLs as I did.
I find PLs to be really useful in judging the difficulty of a workout. Before the PLs, picking or replacing a workout could be a little like Russian roulette. Are they perfect? No. But it’s definitely an improvement.
For my money, any adaptive program is an improvement over a static program. Providing consistent feedback in the survey is critical–it’s about how you judge the workout and what each word means (Chad’s guide is useful but may not be the best for everyone). My major gripe is that I’d like to be able to pick and choose the adaptations that occur.
(nb that I am an exercise physiologist and track & field coach so I feel pretty good about my manual input)
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I’ve been using AT as a rough template, I do the sweet spot stuff on Thurs and Sat and have been doing Z2 the other days of the week, around 3ish hrs on Tues and Sun. I started the phase at 8.3 sweet spot so should be at 10 by the end of the phase anyway.
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Maybe @IvyAudrain can answer this, but…aren’t all those 9+ sweet spot workouts indicating that your FTP is set lower than it should be?
Generally I think that one of the key benefits of AT is that it opens up many more workouts than would be available under a ‘standard’ plan. Prior to AT, every time I came back and did SSB, it was the same rotation of workouts, which got stale pretty quickly.
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No, I don’t buy into that assertion. Muscular endurance and all that is good, but for me it’s not indicative of any FTP changes
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For anyone looking for words of wisdom in terms of training advice, burn this quote into your brain. The #1 key to getting faster is consistency.
Consistency, consistency, consistency … ad infinitum
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Redondo is 5x10-minute muscle-endurance efforts that hover at the high end of Sweet Spot and often push slightly into Thresold territory. In doing so, successful completion might indicate that your FTP has risen.
Build your fitness to a point where you can remain this close to your FTP for durations this long and it’s probably time to reassess your FTP or push up your aerobic ceiling with some concentrated VO2max work.
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I just want to make a broad and general statement about AT and our users. Based on the comments related to things not going as planned or expected…
- I hope that you are all reporting these ideas and concerns to support@trainerroad.com.
Various comments and discussions in this forum are great, but NOTHING beats sending these types of issues directly to TR. I worry a bit that people are not doing this in many cases, and just sharing comments here. TR watches this forum with some frequency, but there is so much traffic here that I can guarantee some of it slips through the cracks.
That is why a direct email is superior. Once done, it is logged in the TR system and will be addressed, period. There may be a solution, work around, or admission that something can’t be fixed, but it will be handled.
Please… please make sure to send any of these issues to them via the email above, even if you share them on the forum.
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I’m aware of all this, my experience says otherwise
Ooosh 
Good question, but nope! The workouts that will increase your PLs to that degree have a higher Workout Level due to the duration of the whole workout, number of intervals, rest between them, etc (not necessarily from a higher intensity). 
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Really liking it, went through a full Plan Builder last year (May-September) and after a few weeks off am in week 10 of my next plan now (going into Build soon). TR user since 2016.
I used to end up doing SSB 1+2 on repeat a lot as there used to be a couple of steps in Build which would wipe me out.
I wouldn’t say the workouts are easier or harder. I am pretty sure I am getting harder Sweetspot workouts than I remember (just in terms of interval length/% FTP), but I always used to find those quite easy so it makes sense to me that I’m getting harder ones prescribed now on AT. My Threshold is pretty low at the moment so those definitely look easy, but I keep swapping the longer weekend Threshold workout out for outside riding (F500 etc…) so that makes sense to me too. That’ll fix itself.
I find missing/subbing/altering workouts a lot less stressful now as I know AT will adapt the future workouts sensibly. But I’ve actually got better plan compliance overall, probably because I am more confident that the upcoming workouts will be doable.
I would still prefer the ability to force Plan Builder to consider specified weeks as recovery weeks, and build the plan around that, if I could change one thing. And accounting for outside rides obviously, but everyone else wants that too.
Yeah agreed, it is so much easier if I have more or less time available on a given day to pick a sensible alternative - used to be quite a bit of guesswork involved, looking at TSS/IF and interval structure etc… I used to default to the same workouts a lot just because I remembered the names.
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I was accepted back in March but at the time was just deciding to defer my 70.3 so ended up not really getting into it until the first week of May. Changed my plan to rolling road (not sure why I chose that) to just do a bike focus year (swimming 3 days a week no running) with an end date of end of the year and let her rip. So I’ve gone through a few blocks and just started another this week, back into MV half tri plan.
Pros:
- FTP up since I started (not yet back to my best, but up… 6.5% down for those curious)
- My start rate is significantly up from years past, motivation is way up knowing that if it is suggesting it I can probably do it. Workouts I would not even have tried in the past I am realizing I rate easy or just moderate.
- My bailed rate is 0 which I credit to the mental boost that it saying achievable or productive. I have had some failed surveys from long pauses, but from what I recall I have completed every workout I started.
- Have not yet felt burned out. Jan 2015 I hit my peak FTP and have come close but not yet reached it again. Every time I have come close in the past I usually burned out a week or 2 later.
- While not having burned out I have had work stress that has caused some missed chunks and having it adjust my workouts made getting back into it easier. Example missed some midweek threshold /SS but did endurance on weekends not completely off the bike, coming back to do threshold/SS physically and mentally easier since it adapted down to compensate.
Cons/things I find odd:
- Have had some dumb adaptations. Example; Endurance PL degraded due to them not being scheduled (say from a 6 down to 4). Have had scheduled mid week recovery rides of 1.1-1.3 on there for weeks. Do a weekend endurance ride at a 5 that triggers an increase in the PL. AT attempts to bump those midweek recovery rides to 5+ rides. (sent this one to support)
- The suggested adaptations when you load up a ramp test at the start of a new block. I understand that AT just sees new block and triggers an adaptation but it is going to adapt again if you have a change in FTP after the test so having you look at/assess 2 adaptations within an hour seems foolish. This time after I completed my Sunday endurance ride it wanted to adapt my entirely new plan that had not even started yet, first time I saw that.
Mids/suggestions:
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I think there was/is too much confusion about the surveys. It took me about 2 blocks to get consistent in how I answered them. Maybe in ride reminder to think about your answer at the start of the recovery period would help here. But it took me a while to realize I needed to think about how I felt during/right after the intervals not after the 5+ minutes of lazy spinning down. Not sure how you force people to understand it better but I think something needs to be done to help make it work correctly faster.
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No clue how to implement it but I think AT needs some sort of equivalent to low mid high volume, but with intensity ramp rate. This might help with some of the issues with people thinking old plans were too hard and AT is too easy. Basically allow you to ramp up the adaptations at different rates that work for you. If you had a SS every Tuesday and week 1 it is 3 then week 2 it is 3.1 and week 3 it is 3.2 normally there should be some way to ramp it up by that standard or possibly allow you to try and push it to +.3 every week something like that.
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Hi Ivy,
I thought I heard it said more than once in the Pod that very high PLs was the key, but I’m wondering if I misunderstood the message now… How do we know when to FTP Test if not by looking at the PLs?