Sorry Pbase, I was just listing out the name, TSS, and IF for each workout. My formatting was rubbish so it probably didn’t make much sense.
Ha! No worries. I’m slow, but I got there eventually. 
Came just in time for me, thanks. I was scheduled to start SS mid-volume block 2 next week. Just deleted the one (after making sure the old one really was meaner) and replaced it with the new one.
How do you control for a different kind of rider joining and being non-compliant because of that without knowing their history for a long period of time?
It seems TR is rounding a corner and growing quickly, indoor training is growing, being time crunched is growing…I’d think you’ll naturally gravitate toward the masses vs early joiners being truly race driven with their goals and coming into the program with a racing background to begin with?
Wouldn’t it be more personalized if the software just suggested a lower FTP for individuals not being compliant?
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I was thinking the exact same thing right as I was reading Nate’s post.
What kind of users are making workouts highly compliant/non-compliant?
If a workout is only 50% but the 50% which fail are on the left of the TR bell curve…
What is the compliancy level at each level of FTP?
And what about longevity of users in compliancy calculations? If someone fails a workout on the back of free 1-month referral and never uses TR again…should their single-point attempt be counted?
Maybe not suggest a lower FTP for a non-compliant user, but have a set of workouts for lower FTP user so that they can be compliant. Likewise, have workouts designed to challenge users with higher FTPs,
TR seems to be at a crossroads – appeal to the mass market, get a lot of customers and grow the business, but perhaps never grow great cyclists…or two prong it – have a mass market sector and a high end sector… Time will tell.
(sorry for the hijack!)
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There’s two different things here. We’re not “nerfing” TR and making it easy so that non-cyclists can complete workouts. We’re not doing that at all.
What we’re doing is adjusting outliers. If there’s one with an obviously different failure rate (sometimes 2-3x higher than similar workouts) that one needs to be looked at. And as I said earlier, sometimes you can make small tweaks that doesn’t change the nature of the workout but cuts the failure rate in half.
And lowering the FTP wouldn’t be good either, because that would make all the other workouts too easy.
To put it in another way, let’s say we had a great plan but one workout in the plan was 2x20 @ 120%. That would obviously be too hard. We would want to adjust that workout rather than change FTPs.
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@Nate_Pearson and here lies the problem with being so transparent, everyone gets to second guess your decisions.
If Nate would have simply said “we’re tweaking the plans to make you a faster cyclist. Our extensive, exhaustive and undisputed reasearch showed that a few workouts/plans could be improved upon so you can crush your competition!”
The masses would unite and thank TrainerRoad for being the fitness gods and passing down thou holy knowledge. Instead we get “you’re making me fat and slow now”
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Yeah, but no. Remember the audience here. OCD people who worry about grams and solitary watts left in a single 1 minute interval. You know… crazy people. 
Point being. Stated out by loud by TR or not, people would notice changes.
In fact, people did notice some of the early changes before any were really announced. The Mary Austin thread and another identified specific workout and plan changes before any public announcement.
They were questioned immediately by users and those questions, along with the parallel request for more background info, are what actually lead to these more detailed posts about the overall changes.
So, people did and do want to know. Attempting to side step the review (and possible criticism) would be a mistake, IMHO.
Sharing the info is a natural thing in the TR Universe, and I expect they planned to cover it in some detail already. But the eagle-eyed users here were on the spot.
Change always leads to questions, and this will be no different. What helps is teaching so people understand WHY they happen and WHAT they stand to benefit from them.
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I resemble that comment.
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I don’t understand the noise about the changes. @chad did a great job building the plans and workouts originally but you also learn things after the fact. Making changes shows that they are looking at their past work and looking to improve. That’s a benefit to all.
Demanding/asking for justification for the changes is silly. While its nice to know, simply stating “we were wrong before and correcting it” should also be sufficient. They aren’t trying to hoodwink anyone with the changes
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I’m going through this new SSBII VO2 progression now… and it’s awful. Borderline useless. Really don’t want to build/pick all my own VO2 workouts.
Which volume (low, mid, high)?
Mid, Taylor -2 and Bluebell intervals are simply too short and the recoveries too long to get into VO2.
https://www.trainerroad.com/career/epvanhouten/rides/53488742-taylor-2
https://www.trainerroad.com/career/epvanhouten/rides/53885796-bluebell
On Taylor I had to go to a 10% intensity bump. Which is insane. It was still just barely getting me huffing.
On Bluebell I only did a 3% bump, but mostly because I had given up on getting much value out of it.
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Had the same experience my first time through SSB2MV, and may adjust workouts this next time through. Maybe start with Bluebell, then move to Mills and then Dade -1 before Spencer +2 and finish with a Baird or Kaiser or something along those lines. Agree that Taylor +2 and Bluebell were essentially just opportunities to work at higher power but never got me near VO2max levels from a cardiovascular standpoint.
Bluebell and Taylor -2 were so non-impactful I’d consider cutting out the warmup and doing them after the ramp test. YMMV.
From earlier in this thread:
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Or this. 