That’s just not true though. For example, I didn’t ride on Friday at all the entire month of August. Is there a way to turn this “feature” off?
This is another example of how what is being presented isn’t clear. You need to step back and put yourself in a new user’s shoes. The “advice” given here is about as clear as mud. You have to look at what terms the user’s eyes are drawn to and what they would mean to that user. As a new user, I’m telling you what I see and how I interpret it. I’ve shown this to friends and they feel the same way, so I know I’m not alone.
In other words, how would I get from what I see in the screenshot I posted to what you say in your comments? For example, in the screenshot I posted, the user sees this: “Workout Goal: 262 XSS (Optional)”. I read this as the workout is optional but if I choose to do one, the recommended XSS is 262 XSS which is further reinforced by the Recommended Workout being 226 XSS.
I see the Freshness slider as nothing but trouble, at least for me. I have found that I’m a terrible judge of how I feel until I get on the bike. Getting on the bike often involves an hour drive or more. Even when it doesn’t, like when I’m riding indoors on the trainer (again, my only power meter), I often find that I simply cannot accurately assess how I feel until a few intervals into a workout for example. I’m pretty sure this is a fairly common problem.
That’s why I’ve chosen to not mess with the Freshness slider at all, at least for now. I don’t want to muddy the waters any more than they already are.
If it says “Fridays” then you have recent activity/activities on Fridays. If it says “weekdays” then it look at the average activity during the week. Again, this isn’t written in stone. You should almost always choose the time you have available to train that day and pick a workout that fits, deficit or surplus. If you find your surplus is running high, increase the improvement rate. If low, decrease it.
I live in a two story house. Walking up my stairs gives me good feedback on freshness. No spring in my legs on the top step, still tired, legs feel like weights, very tired, did not notice the stairs at all - very fresh
Hopefully I have this right on the training recommendation (new user since July 2021)
Top 4 lines are for your next work out,
5th line is what remains for the rest of the week, compared to the previous weeks effort, ignore this line wrt to next work out unless you want to do more (optional)
6th line is max difficulty of next work out.
Optional is clear.
I think the issue is that you’re expecting it to tell you exactly what to do whereas it just giving you advice with the necessary tools to interpret what you need to do to improve. That’s the real difference. It’s not like other training systems where you do what you’re told and don’t really understand why. Here we give you advice and once you understand some basic principles if follows, it makes perfect sense. In fact, with that knowledge you can then adjust and optimize your own training based on how you feel and what time you have. You can change it at any time too.
This is what distinguishes it from any other training system and with this approach you can reach higher levels than any other way of training because you finally have a tool that helps you see what the intent of the training is and the mechanisms you have available to influence your fitness. That is why it’s called a “Fitness” planner and not a “Training” planner. You can actually map out and see in advance exactly how you will improve.
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Feel free to look at my Activities. As I said, zero on any Friday in the month of August. In September, nothing on the first Friday and, yes, one ride on the second Friday. Today doesn’t count because that screenshot is from before I did my 30 minutes Active Recovery. Going back to July, again, the last Friday of the month no Activity at all. Sure, I occasionally ride on Fridays, but I can assure you that my longest rides generally take place on the weekends.
This is yet another example of the XATA being what I, and I believe most new users, would consider nonsense. Again, how do I get what you are writing here from what the XATA is displaying? If the recommendations are something other than what are displayed, then why is XATA displaying what it is? Isn’t XATA an acronym for “Xert Adaptive Training Advisor”? Doesn’t “Recommended Workout” mean that is what the XATA is “advising” that I do?
What was last week’s Friday ride?
I can appreciate that but the presentation of the information makes that far more difficult than it should be. Yes, Optional is clear, but something like “Working out today is Optional” is clearer.
I actually don’t expect it to tell me what to do but I do expect that if I follow the “advice” given by the XATA, that I would be taking a strongly positive path towards achieving my Goal. I’m not to the point where I’m ready to fine tune or optimize to the degree you may think I am. I was attracted to the “adaptive” nature and flexibility of your system. My gripe is with the presentation of the knowledge you and the system clearly has. Presentation is pretty important, don’t you agree?
Last week’s Friday ride, the only Friday ride in the past 7 weeks, was 3 hours long, about 33 miles, about 3300 feet of climbing, mostly at tempo, on the mountain bike (singlespeed). I tried to match what the XATA recommended by feel since I have no power meter on my MTB.
You’re lucky that you can judge your Freshness accurately. As I stated, I’ve found that historically I’m not very good at it and I know I’m not alone. Once I get on the bike and into my workout, I usually discover pretty quickly and sometimes adjust my workout based on that. Other times I grit my teeth and just do the workout and sometimes succeed and other times fail. Sometimes the former is the best approach and sometimes the latter. That’s where I expect a system advertised as “adaptive” and “advisor” to help out, not the other way around (me providing the advice). I do understand how such a slider could be useful, due to system limitations or even just a desire to fine tune, but it certainly shouldn’t be necessary for basic operation.
Your description of what the lines mean are not at all obvious nor am I sure they are even correct. In fact, you state that you’re not sure either, so, once again, you’re reinforcing my constructive criticism that the XATA information is not clear (and maybe even nonsense in my case).
Appreciate all your feedback. It’s difficult to create something that hits all the right buttons for everyone, especially when the concepts are entirely new so forgive some of the ways it’s doing things if they don’t quite make sense to you at the moment. Your suggestions are always welcome and we weigh every one of them. Some times things need improvement, some times it’s just a better explanation and some times there’s an even better approach yet to be implemented or even discovered. The last point is important to understand since we’re always uncovering new ideas and some of them are waiting in the wings.
The podcasts help a lot so definitely listen to them if you can. It’ll likely clear a lot of the thinking and approaches that we’ve used. Nothing is nonsense. There is nothing the system does that doesn’t rely on your own data and that isn’t understandable.
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It was probably north of 200XSS and so XATA suggested you do the same at a Endurance pace, expecting you to have the same time available but in a tired state.
One improvement that’s been suggested is to look back at workouts and not activities to establish how much training should be recommended at any given point. That’s a good one I think but we would also then have to be able recommend activities and not just workouts so will take a bit of work. Recommending outdoor activities would again be way ahead of anything else out there and is something well within the scope of possiblities with our system.
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I’ve been doing just that. I’m only on the 3rd podcast though.
I do appreciate the discussion and consideration of the criticism. I’m trying to make it constructive with the understanding that the Xert system is unique. The Goal of all these systems is largely the same and making that clear and the least time-consuming possible is another worthy goal.
Speaking of Goals. Has Xert considered more precise Goal criteria? I’ve always thought it would be fantastic to have a system that would let me upload a FIT file as part of a Goal. For example, I want to peak for an Event I’ve done before and improve my performance at the exact same event next year. Perhaps the FIT data would help tailor workouts towards such a Goal more clearly than Athlete Type currently does. Just a thought…
Yes. That’s something we have considered and then use that to help identify how much training is needed. It’ll be more like “Here’s a recommended improvement rate and athlete type for your goal.” Atm, these decisions are in the hands of the athlete. We talk about how to go about it but one step further would be useful.
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That particular ride was 244 XSS according to Xert but, interestingly, only 201 according to Strava. I honestly think the Strava derived metric better reflects the effort. I’m pretty sure they consider elevation in their calculation but I could be entirely wrong. I’m almost certain they don’t consider rolling resistance even though they could make a reasonable guess with all the map data they have in their systems. That could be a nice subtle addition to Xert. I would find a rolling resistance slider for an Activity with Derived metrics more valuable than Freshness for example. That’s just me, the power meter challenged singlespeed mountain biker though.
Yup. Same here. The “stair test” is an easy peasy way to determine what you’ll feel like during your next ride or workout.
Bounding up the stairs two steps at a time means I’m ready for anything. 
Well, not anything but it indicates a good time for a BT workout (if my signature is stale) or I may switch my route to one with more climbs or distance or both.
Without valid power data there isn’t a way to confirm how accurate either estimate is.
XSS (Xert Strain Score) is not the same as TSS (Training Stress Score). .
The main difference between XSS and stress scores that use power normalization methods, such as a 30 second moving average, is three fold:
1. XSS does not accumulate during periods of rest. XSS is based on actual work performed. If no work is being performed, no additional strain is accumulated.
2. XSS increases the closer you reach your limits. XSS is based on Xert’s strain. The closer you are to your limit, the greater the strain and the greater your XSS.
3. XSS accounts for very short efforts. Whereas 30 second power averaging may ignore strain caused by short, bursty efforts, XSS takes all work performed into account in determining your score.
Also note TP (around one hour power) is not FTP (40-70 min power) although many cyclists report similar values between the different testing protocols.
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Some advice from someone who is definitely not a Xert Evangelist, yet still a user. Xert has strong points and IMO…not so strong points… Some very weak points in fact. The interface (the presentation) can be extremely confusing, but after a while, you start to understand it. Give it a chance, don’t evaluate the entire program in one fell swoop. Look at the pieces and features on an individual basis. Breakthroughs are ingenious. You do need a power meter IMO to fully use it , but the ability to compete with yourself, to look for improvement in ways other than Strava segments, that’s a big selling point for me. I hate FTP tests. With Xert, I have the ability to test myself on every single ride. I’ve discovered a segment of gravel that works great in eliciting a breakthrough…if I am worthy! I used to use a watch to gauge improvement, but that’s hard to do, as the quality of the trail changes from week to week. After Ida, a ton of loose gravel was added. It affects my times over the course, but with a power meter and Xert’s help, I can still get rewarded at the end with a breakthrough, if my fitness has improved. I find I also need to use a bit of technique, like not coasting ever, as that allows MPA to drift up. Anyway, Xert makes riding outdoors a lot of fun. As for Xata, I only use it as a guide. I haven’t decided yet whether it is useful me. Some here religiously follow it’s advice and have good results. I prefer to judge my freshness from my experience. I use Xert to keep an eye on my ramp rate, and I select workouts based on what I think is best for me. So…I understand your frustration. I reacted similarly to you in the beginning. I think half of the people here have me on mute lol. How XATA recommends workouts on what you’ve done in the past on a given day, I think that’s kind of dumb, but now that you understand how it thinks, you can look past it. If you think Xert is going to be the all-to-end-all, the perfect program to hold your hand…you’ll probably need to go elsewhere. I was grandfathered in on Trainerroad…paying peanuts for the subscription, waiting for Adaptive Training to come out. I was in the closed beta. I cancelled my subscription last week. Xert is a lot more fun to use. Trial it for a while and maybe you’ll find it valuable and that it adds fun to your training.
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I think a lot of the ‘confusion’ could be helped with just one little and probably easy to implement setting: “look at previous activities on a given week day for recommendations”. People without a weekly pattern get lots of seemingly “dumb” and very hard to understand advise with this feature on and it might be worth looking into making it an option for those people.
If you do have a weekly pattern it helps to distribute the XSS in a way that works for you. But only one big ride on one Friday leading to the suggestion to do it again even if there already is a surplus seems stupid advise to me as well.
Without this bias toward a weekly pattern XATA might be easier to understand. It might tell you to do longer workouts during the week than you might have time for but people could easily understand that and know that they could let the needle drop a bit and pull it back up on the weekend with some longer rides if they have more time then. People know their changing schedule on any given week, XATA does not.
Another thing I’m not sure is optimal is the word “tired” for the yellow state. It’s technically about high intensity systems being maxed out and thus you should do endurance workouts instead. But the English word “tired” means “needing sleep” or at the least “needing rest” not “don’t do intervals” or “stick to blue and green workouts”. Once you know what it actually tries to tell you XATA is easier to understand.
The red state as in all systems maxed out is actually “needing rest” so only do active recovery or read a good book.
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