I would tend to agree UNLESS TR could come back and say, ‘actually, according to oodles of athletes across a range of cohorts, the older, more intense plans are just more effective.’ I would be surprised, but mabye it’s true. All I can take from what they’ve said and done around this release is that by implication you should be older or less robust to use the Masters plan, then the non-Masters, in their opinion, must be more effective.
You say “for everyone”, but we have lots of posts above with people complaining that they are not hard enough and they need to understand why they can’t stick to the old plan. One would assume that if they’re saying that, they feel they were just fine with doing those old plans over and over.
And I’ll be honest, I feel like the new plans, for me, are too much intensity and not enough volume for a Masters plan. So, if some think it’s not enough intensity, and others think it’s too much intensity, it’s not great “for everyone”.
My point being that everyone is looking for the plan that works best for them personally, so I understand why people who had great success with the old plans want to understand why they changed them. Tbh - even if they get the answer, I think a lot will still challenge it, but I understand why they are reluctant to accept the change if they had great success doing things “the old way”.
I have the same issue. I can move days around but there is no dropdown for duration. Did you ever receive a response or find a solution?
Not to pivot the discussion too much, but what are others’ thoughts re: best “Build” plan after completing the Master’s Base? I’ll be wrapping the HV plan just before 2024 and tossed a General Build MV into my calendar, but it’s a very big jump in intensity for the hard rides - I think the MB tops out around .74IF whereas GB would have me going up to .91 within a week or so of the plan launching.
MB has been a great fit for me based on my age and recovery needs - should I just run it back instead of moving to GB? Per the discussion above, if I can be 100% compliant w/ MB is that more beneficial than, say, 75% compliant w/ GB?
Broadly speaking, if you are using a Masters Base I would think sticking with a Master Build would be most appropriate. What you see with more intensity in the non-Masters plan is expected since Masters sticks to 2 harder workouts vs 3 in non-Masters.
Why are you seemingly jumping up to a non-Masters plan when planning your Build?
Also keep in mind that Adaptive Training only edits workouts within the current phase. I would expect the actual Build phase (master or not) to be tweaked by AT once you actually get to that point. It won’t negate the delta between the main plans mentioned above, but will likely show differently based upon your Progression Levels at that time.
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Are you doing all 3 General Base blocks? The IF will also depend on your PLs. Looking ahead at my Base 2 and 3 I see IF’s of near 0.90 for Threshold and vo2 workouts.
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[quote=“mcneese.chad, post:356, topic:87874”]
Why are you seemingly jumping up to a non-Masters plan when planning your Build?
Because I’m an idiot and didn’t realize Masters Build plans were available…didn’t scroll down far enough 
Thanks for the prompt response!
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Three weeks into masters general base high volume 1, and a couple early thoughts.
I just came off the better part of a year of doing 12-15h a week working with a coach training for a large event. Took 2+ weeks completely off after, then ended up doing maybe 6 weeks of whatever. This involved running maybe an hour a week, weightlifting once or twice a week, rowing maybe an hour a week, and biking 4-5h a week. So somewhat active still. I have nothing big on the horizon but just want to keep riding and doing some small events next year.
As a result, didn’t feel the need to work with the coach or keep doing higher volume. Just wanted some sort of plan to roughly follow and aim for only 8-10h/wk as a nice break.
Coming back to the trainer and starting this plan, AI FTP gave me 300w for an FTP, which seemed maybe a bit generous, but whatever. I’ve never found actual FTP tests done in the first few weeks of coming back to training to be super helpful, as you’re not used to going hard yet, and you make a lot of gains rapidly over those first few weeks just being back on the bike.
This did mean my PLs were all very low though. This ended up being somewhat problematic as I’d be given a like 1.2 level workout, rate it easy… and then with the lower ramp rate I guess built into these plans, the next workout I’d be prescribed would be like a 1.4. So I’ve needed to manually go in and pick a workout that I thought would be more appropriate - say a 3.0 or something.
TR also still seems to do it’s default thing where it progressively makes all the endurance rides closer and closer to tempo. Which is annoying as this I find builds up a lot of unproductive training fatigue because you end up doing like 4 basically tempo rides a week. I’d rather have say 1 or 2 of the endurance workouts move up in intensity per week, while the others are kept lower at the bottom of z2 and have negligible ramp rate, but that may just be me.
All in all so far it’s not perfect, but seems to be working mostly well as a template to start with and then tweak a bit each week, which works for me.
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Is that not partly the available time selected though?
Maybe?
Regardless though, you don’t need to increase the power target for all your z2 work every week.
There should never be a situation where all your z2 workouts are being done close to 0.75, even if you can’t make them longer. Some need to stay low. Especially with a masters plan where the whole point is fatigue management. Progress 1 or 2 of the z2 workout up in intensity each week, sure. But keep the remaining ones low regardless - ie: they don’t ramp, or at least ramp much slower than the other ones.
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Thought it sounded like a good idea so switched to Masters. It is too low-level for me with too much emphasis on low impact endurance. I tried to switch back again, but without any luck…it just kept defaulting to Masters phases. Had to delete my current plan and start again
A bit late to the party, but I’ve been manually switching out one workout for endurance anyway, so this is perfect for this young parent with two kids under 3 (sleep is a myth).
And the length change feature is great! My endurance workout is 2 hours and my weekend high intensity ride 90 minutes. No need to fiddle with “alternate workouts” anymore!
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just tried to set up my custom plan for this winter.
Is there an option to make a 4-day per week plan now? I see where I can change duration and where to move them, but not where I can add/remove days. 
Like the look of the new masters plans. On some weekends I can’t get 2hours on either day. Would it be best to do a tempo ride if I can only get 90mins a day. Or is two 90 min endurance on sat Sunday of benefit
The old plans had Sweetspot on Saturday because there were many folks like you who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do long rides on weekends.
No options for a 4 day plan without some level of tweaking once the plan is on your calendar…
- Choose a LV plan and ADD a ride via train now (likely a better option for PL purposes) or choose your own from the library
- Choose a MV plan and delete a session or add a time off annotation for one session each week
EDIT: the above is within the scope of plans created via plan builder, which is what i’ve used throughout my TR history and what I assume you are adding as well… there MAY be options with the single block options that others may be able to speak to!
But will Train Now take the Masters plan into consideration or recommend a 3rd hard workout. Might better to select an endurance ride at your current progression level.
That’s actually a fine question! My experience with TN is if i’ve done an interval session within the last 48 hours, it pretty much ALWAYS selects an endurance session as recommended, but i’ve not used TN since the masters plans were introduced, so not sure what would happen.
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Yes, your first option has been what I’ve been doing (to some degree).
With the ability to vary time/week, you’d think it’d be logical to be able to vary the number of days as well, but alas. Maybe next plan builder update.
Working great for me - don’t think I’ve ever hit 7 sessions in a row and on time before, and I’ve been using TR since 2012 
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