I have not lost faith in the new plans. I don’t yet have confidence in them and AT. That is an entirely different situation
I do wonder how large the slient community of “These plans are fine - I don’t find them too hard, and if they are hard I apply rule 5.” was? I was certainly a member. I used the LV and MV plans and added extra outside workouts. they worked for me.
The big recent piece for me was seeing how the old plans had roughly a progression of 0.4 to 0.5 in level of a workout from week to week. Mostly I did those. If I had a bad (did not hit the workout fully) session I would go back and repeat it a few days or a week later so I cracked it, and felt I could move on. If that pushed a week so be it.
The catch I have is that the new plans are plans, until AT changes them for you… Assuming AT applies, which means you have to have created your plan using plan Builder and not moved things around. That is very limiting, even when AT eventually gets wider release.
I am struggling to find a suitable plan for my events and race plans (Long Time Trials) and where I am. Plan Builder is not helping. So am resorting to picking a LV one from the Training plans and adding to that, as I have done in previous years.
I have a minor question: Why is Chad Timmerman so quiet recently? I trust him and his plan design. he seems to have taken a massive back step.
I remember hearing on the podcast or seeing on Instagram that Coach Chad had moved to Washington and that Nate had bought Coach Chad’s house for himself and that Coach Chad had a sweet man cave in what is now Nate’s house.
This is n-2 or n-3 or something. N-1 didn’t look like that.
The good news is, with a bit of url dredging, the “I want my old plans back” thing is closed. You can have your old plan, your old-old plan, and even your old-old-old plan back.
I am loving the new plans! I’m 56 year old female training TT MV and I really like the new blend of endurance amongst the harder stuff. I sprinkle in outdoor rides and events as I feel.
A, with ungimped plans, as you’ve inferred is the best route for TR to follow, so it does not answer the question as to why people are assuming the plans are gimped.
Well, you agreed that it makes the most sense for TR to have the best plan (and have AT tweak it), rather than a poor plan (and have AT tweak it), so does it not add up then that that is what TR would do?
So I have something to add, and apologies if this has been mentioned, but it’s a long thread. I think we’re likely seeing a little bit of mismatch on workout levels in SOME cases that will take AT or some manual adjustment for a little bit as the whole workout library evolves. Here’s why I have that suspicion: these workout levels are put in place by a combination of user data and expected difficulty based on the intervals. Some of them haven’t really been tested as much in the grand scheme. With those workouts, the workout level could need adjustment as time goes on. I also think the relevance of the levels will be much more significant as AT is rolled out to everyone. I agree it can feel like it’s a weird and maybe suboptimal place to be with the product, but I do think the intention was, and still is, to get the product out and get it working on athletes. Of course there are some hurdles and imperfections, but I think they’ll smooth and improve pretty rapidly in the scheme of things. Speaking from experience as someone who overtrained more than once because I generally love the difficult training AND volume, I would much rather feel like I’m easily nailing everything than have the “I don’t know if I can keep doing this” thought creeping in weekly.
I think it’s also worth noting that just like in the gym, feeling blown up, sore, or otherwise devastated regularly is not necessarily the only indicator that you’re getting positive adaptations. The patient and longer, slower term bumps in fitness are often more lasting, more fun, and ultimately result in better performance over the long run than the 6 week pain fest and following crash (or even drop of fun and motivation) that a higher intensity plan or build/specialty blocks often bring.
I’m not saying that I agree with the intensity criticisms, just stating that the criticisms (both here and elsewhere with the DJ video and other online forums) was too many days of intensity in the MV/HV plans. The workouts themselves were tough but doable compared to others in the TR catalogue, and many had great results from following those plans.
Perhaps what would’ve been a better solution would’ve been to add an intensity breakout to each volume level- e.g. LV-low stress or LV high stress. The low stress could be the new plans introduced, and the high stress be the old plans (with maybe a couple tweaks in the workouts to not have such big jumps in progression level). Then AT could still work off giving shorter workouts/fewer intervals in low intensity plans, vs more in the high intensity iterations.
That doesn’t solve the lack of specificity in the build plans though- that is a big problem and probably why I will never use the new build plans even with AT (as someone who focuses on sustained power). The LV and MV SSB II plans are much better build plans than the actual build plans themselves!
The below is exactly most peoples concerns that in the original announcement of the new plan was. Then in the podcast following the new plan launch the squad was unable to articulate this because it would require they admit the current plans may be undertraining.
I do agree with the compliance argument. For now I am going to plan to follow the Base Plan but when I get to Build I may need to take the route of manually using TrainNow.
