Xert badly needs a UI/UX consultant. I gave it the olde college try and found it absolutely incomprehensible. Mind you I’m a bit dumb (I thought it was pronounced Zert for probably a year), but it was a terrible onboarding.
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It’s not zert?
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Pronounced like “exert”.
Dieter Rams was busy so they consulted Clippy the Office Assistant. You can hardly tell.
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Great post (not just the quoted snippet, all of it).
I totally agree with you on fatigue, I think this is what AT v2.0 should look like. I reckon that accounting for fatigue is much more important than seeing some (or any?) improvements in PL. It would also help people who e. g. want to do one mountain bike ride outdoors once a week, be it for fun or because you need to train your bike handling skills as well as your legs.
Another factor that isn’t taken into account is the cumulative effect of some workouts. E. g. if I tack on a 30-minute endurance workout to any hard workout, then I do 1:30 hours of additional endurance work each week. That should allow me to do harder endurance workouts.
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Apparently it’s X-ert. Exert. The incomprehensibility begins with the first letter.
E: I went to their YouTube that Chad posted and happened to notice a series of videos titled Mastering Xert; there’s three series: Episodes P1-3, D1-3, and I1-3. Why is everything a mystery?
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Maybe this has already been said or is part of V2 but it would be nice if Training Peaks “Integration” would also pull/use the athletes TSB and or ATL before recommending over unders when TSB is high due to events outside of Trainer Road.
Thanks
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Maybe tangentially related, I found some new info when previewing my pending workout for tomorrow:
This relates to some discussion in another topic, where we were wanting a way to quickly see our Career Progression Levels in relation to a workout of interest. This seems to be accessible on any workout you view from the catalog (at least in my test on the web right now). Sure a cool helper if people are poking around for a workout and/or looking to step up or down from an assigned one.
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Yes - but also - neither does the sufferfest/system, zwift, or many of the other popular training platforms. In fact, even a coach might not do this unless you were getting meetings daily!
TR understands load by being actively told by the user “I’m too tired and so I have failed / struggled with this workout”. The problem is that the range of adjustments available to it are so small and only relate to one variable. Not being able to complete a 8.0 VO2 max workout on Monday morning the day after an outdoor gravel epic, the system will assume “huh, 8.0 too high, next week let’s go for 7.4”. Next week I might be well rested and 7.4 is now too easy, or it might be that I’m just in the hurt locker.
WLV2 is going to come out and that Sunday epic will now magically give you a 6.0 endurance score. Your Vo2 workout on Monday is not going to automatically scale, change days, change intensity or duration. What’s going to happen is that that you still fail the workout, get offered a 7.5, but now your endurance scale is a bit higher. The closest WLV2 might get to fixing this is if you go out and do VO2 max repeats on that gravel epic and get a 8.5 outdoor PL - WLV2 will probably scale Monday’s workout up to 9. Great, strap on the pain pants and burnout here…we…go!
The problem is that the plan structure is an optimisation of the problem “How many weekday length compatible workouts can this person fit in”, rather than an optimisation of the problem “How much TSS and intensity can this person handle at this point in time to progress”.
TR2.0 is a ML solution machine for the second problem. If this were the case, your 4 hour gravel epic would tell TR that your TSS for the week was now 600 when it has data to show you can only progress in PL’s if you keep TSS in the 400-450 range. It would then, smartly, reduce the next week’s TSS so that your ramp rate remains in the right place over time and you can stay consistent.
This is why so many people choose LV+Z2 rather than MV or HV. Intuitively, you’d expect MV to be the optimal answer to the problem “What if I can handle 500TSS/Week”, but actually it’s “What if I can ride after work 5 times per week which workouts would you put in there”?
Why is this all the case?
Because training companies only make money when you pay them money, so their interest is in keeping you on the platform not riding your bike outside. “What should I do with the time in-between my job and looking after my family” is the question a consumer asks. TR provides. “How should I optimise my capacity to undergo 600TSS of weekly training load” is the question an athlete asks, and TR doesn’t have an answer because it’s a business, not a competitive sports team.
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I get your point and it makes sense.
However it should be in TR’s interest to provide a more comprehensive solution as to how one should adapt their training based on time / tss capacity. Otherwise they will likely see people leaving and subscribing maybe only through the winter period simply to control the trainer for instance (although there are cheaper alternatives for that as well that just do the same thing).
Legacy pricing is a genius idea after all. At least in my case and for the use I make of the platform I remain subscribed through the year.
However, If I had to pay full price I wouldn’t remain subscribed the whole year based on the value I see in their plans.
I remain curious to see everyone’s reaction once these PL2 come out. 
Do you know that to be fact? Not trying to be argumentative, honest question. I had not expected what you are saying to be the case.
This is a really compelling and thoughtful answer and I found myself nodding along and thinking “ahh…that’s right!” a few times.
My wondering: it seems like you are assuming some type of nefarious, profit-seeking intent that will mean TR’s interests never align with that of the user (e.g., TR will want us to drain indoors…whereas we’ll want to train both indoors + outdoors). That might be true…but I think it might also be painting with too broad a brush / making an assumption. I think it’s perhaps as likely that the reason TR might (key word: I don’t know enough to be sure) be focusing on giving us the right individual workout might have more to do with what’s technically feasible / what can be done quickly or other factors besides, “ahh…here’s a way to make more $ off people.” I could be naive…but I think the team DOES want us to be long-term and in every way better athletes…and will do what they can to provide a service that helps us get there!
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Here’s something Chad that would probably be easy for TR to address, but they are not. You just posted a workout where all of the intervals are done in the anaerobic zone as defined by TR. It’s a V02 workout, apparently. Your new anaerobic level is now a whopping 1.1. This means that your next anaerobic workout (if you go with their recommendation) will be a waste of time, and maybe the one after that. For those of us on low volume, we don’t have time to throw away what is supposed to be a productive training session on “Osceola.”
For these V02 workouts that are done in the anaerobic zone, they should run them through the V02 AND anaerobic PL algorithms. Should be a relatively simple fix.
They should at least give these small wins to us, rather than throwing everything into the WL V2 project. This means that we may never see it, but we sure will get to hear from TR podcast employees about how great it is.
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On a related note, I’ve been look at this new levels preview for workouts and wondering why anaerobic/sprint efforts in lower zone workouts don’t have any impact. For instance, I recently did Passadumkeag, a sweetspot workout that actually started with 3 sprint/anaerobic efforts. However, there’s no improvement in those zones. I wouldn’t expect it to be much since it’s only 3 and only 10 seconds, but I might expect a little. Similarly, I know that there are some endurance workouts that include efforts in anaerobic/sprint zone.
It is possible for all I know (which isn’t much) that those really don’t have any noticeable affect on anaerobic/sprint zones, but I am curious.
It’s not nefarious - but suggesting TR’s choices aren’t guided by profit (or growth, or whatever business metric) is like suggesting Tadej Pogacar just likes riding his bike really fucking fast up hills - this winning thing is a totally unintentional afterthought.
Ok - it’s an LLC, not a PLC - so nobody is pandering to shareholder profits, all I’m saying is that if I owned a training company, I would be scrambling like a chipmunk on mdma to drop a software update that would keep people in my key markets (sorry bogans) from unsubscribing from my training services during the summer.
AT not managing or even really comprehending TSS progression over time is the elephant in the room here. PLs are a red herring (115% of 300w vs 120% of 287W… it’s the same workout - you’re just being tricked into thinking magic is occurring).
This is why I refer to TR v2 vs WLv2. WLv2 will be nice and all, but I want TR v2™.
That said, if @Nate_Pearson wants to come in and tell us that WLV2 will change our Monday Vo2 session to a rest day because of the unexpected gravel epic I’m listening carefully and will eat my words, but if we hear nothing from God; I posit he does not exist.
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This is nice, but it also shows that most secondary progression levels are currently very low. So unless v2 will be very different, then most unstructured rides, even if hard, will also result in low progression levels.
However, if you do structured tempo, threshold or VO2 intervals outside, then trainerroad should be able to assign a decent progression level based on the data it sees.
Furthermore, I think it would be nice if the progression levels for indoor workouts where assigned based on watts produced, so that you would get a higher value if you increased the intensity or less if you reduced the intensity, backpedaled or quit earlier. I guess it will have to be this way, otherwise indoor (trainerroad) and outdoor activities will be rated using different methods.
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- Yup, that is part of the puzzle that TR says they aim to address with WLV2. That and likely more change is why Nate & Jon have mentioned that they are really talking more about Adaptive Training 2.0 because it is more far reaching than just workout rating. What that means is anybody’s guess, and we still have to wait to see what they release.
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And Garmin suggested workouts
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I’ve wondered similar things regarding the use of PL’s -vs- data coming from power meters and HRMs. Were PL’s needed as a proxy to make version one of AT work within TR workouts?.
Coaches that prescribe open, group or ‘unstructured’ rides (for fun, race-craft, pacing, etc) tend to look at time in zone, TSS, KJs, VAM to determine what to adjust down the line.
And, let’s not forget the most unstructured rides of all—races. 
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I finally gave up my legacy pricing and canceled. I held on way too long hoping for these impending updates. As someone mentioned above, this has been years of teasing V2 of AT. As a triathlete the updates pushed really did not help me. Running imports came but are mostly pointless. No swimming updates. No meaningful changes to the triathlon plans. I guess I finally accepted that TR is for cyclists and I moved on. I hope workout levels V2 comes soon and is amazing!
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