Don’t consider those hours a waste of time. 
That added more base and that is the most important element of the polarized approach.
Xert is a hybrid polarized system based on a 3 zone model –
For those who may not be aware anytime you come across a post in a language you don’t understand, highlight the text, right-click and select ‘Translate selection to …’. 
Yes, very cool stuff. A beginner may not be interested and can simply follow the guidelines to get fit, but the more you learn about Xert that more you realize how powerful and different Xert is from other platforms including their Workout Designer.
@ridgerider2 You’re probably right on that, however a little fatigue seems a bit more usefull.
Think I’ll skip tonight and give it a try for new BT tomorrow 
In your case you are considered fit already at 3 stars (competitive) but likely don’t have enough power history to accurately calculate your signature.
The trial is limited to 90 days of data history but Xert is looking for consistent power data within that activity including points along your power curve that indicate breakthroughs. How well you perform under fatigue is what Xert uses to determine your fitness signature.
IR (improvement rate) controls your TL (training load) investment time (hours/week) but the workout intensity if dependent on your signature values being accurate and what phase you are in.
As suggested in your other post you need to experiment with the breakthrough workouts to dial in your signature especially since you lack enough historical power data at the moment.
Search the workout library for “breakthrough” and pick one. The shorter one is fine for a beginner to see what’s involved. You could do it in AUTO mode to test the waters, but ideally you want to use Slope mode with gear changes and cadence to hit the targets (or exceed them).
For the sprint efforts you want to stand up, spin up, and go 5-7 secs or more if you can handle it before failure.
Since you are midway through Build phase you will start to see intensity in the workouts. Intensity is easy to identify by the chart colors where orange to red spikes should be much harder and very tough if long durations in the red.
If red intervals are not difficult that is another clue your signature isn’t dialed in yet.
For more details see –
Breaking Through the Xert Way! – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
You can share an activity easily by viewing it and enable Public Activity in upper right.
Another thing you can do is generate a workout report for the activity and post that report. To do that look on the left above title and click the small icon that looks like a gauge to generate a report.
If the activity includes a BT (breakthrough) event the gauge will be a BT badge icon instead. It may be bronze, silver, or gold depending on how many changes to your signature occurred. Bronze is one change. Silver is two changes. Gold is all three signature values changed – PP (peak power), HIE (high intensity energy), or TP (threshold power).
Signature values explained: Fitness Signature – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
Had a BT recently? Click that badge icon and you share it here –
Let’s See Some Recent BT’s - General - Xert Community Forum (xertonline.com)
If you have an Android phone you are going to love running Xert EBC (in early access release) indoors and outdoors.
See this thread: https://forum.xertonline.com/t/xert-ebc/
Not to diss the babbelfish, it’s pretty close. But here’s a lose translation of what I tried to say:
I really love the workouts here a lot. It feels amazing when the ERG power backs off right at the moment you start to wonder if you can do this for much longer. It’s easy to change workouts yourself or build your own with a lot more possibilities than in other systems. Just take a look the the suggested workouts in the editor and see what rules they are made of. It always shows you your own power data and reading the description you know what it should accomplish and learn a lot about structured training with scientific methods. But maybe it’s just me who thinks this is totally cool
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That is how I ended up here too. 
Wasn’t quite sure what to make of Xert when I first discovered it so I ran in parallel on a trial but continued to follow “the plan” from you-know-who. 
After that plan ended in burnout during build phase – for the second season in a row – I decided the only way to truly evaluate Xert was to subscribe and go for the full 120 day phased progression cycle to see what happens.
At first I thought it was too easy compared to what I had gotten used to but my FTP results by mid-summer were as high as I had gotten following the canned plans. However, I felt stronger and had experienced no burnout while completing nearly all the recommended workouts at 100%. That was a big change for me and sold me on Xert. Now I am on my third season with Xert at a higher TP than I have ever been and I am only part way through Build. Plus the weird thing is I feel fine.
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So what is Happening here
I cant follow all the explanations, thats too fast for me.
Is that all necessary (the garmin adjustments) if i want to ride indoor with erg mode?
And if i want to Do that oudoors, can you give a link what its all about?
@ManofSteele is demonstrating how you can use Xert’s Connect IQ fields on a Garmin unit when riding outdoors with focus duration as your target.
I think you are getting ahead of yourself.
For now I suggest you stick with learning Xert by riding indoors especially since your outdoor activities are a number of weeks away.
Related post: Xert Data Fields on my Garmin
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If the weather in Austria is anything like in southern Germany at the moment he wants to go outside NOW 
The sun is shining and it’s getting nice and warm outside and will only get better the next few days. Strange as that seems. It’s pretty unusual for this part of the world in February 
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- Subcriber - immediately bought into the ‘adaptive’ component after being dissatisfied with the FTP-approach from TrainerRoad and SufferFest’s kinda weird training plans/features.
- Saris H3 indoor trainer. None of my bikes have a power meter installed directly, but I have a Polar H10 heart rate monitor for any ride that matters
- I’m a young’n, early 30s
- Totally new. Just started in January.
- Recreational.
- Short-term, I want to do segments of the Colorado Trail. Medium-term, I want to do the Tour Divide. And long-term, I want to be healthy well into my old age.
- Early January.
- 2.5 stars
- Currently ‘time triallist’ but my rider profile is ‘power sprinter’
- Aggressive-1
- I was in post-event for a while but i set June 5th recently to see if that would change things
Anyway - here’s my original post question, but to recap, I’m not sure the best way to get started on Xert. My initial plan was to set the IR to Aggressive-1 and just follow the training advisor every day. My fitness numbers were going down, which spooked me. I read that setting the decay rate to “no decay” is ideal for a base phase, so I changed that up and recalculated, but that dropped my fitness even more!
Yesterday, I did a Puncheur workout that was supposed to be really hard, and it was easy for me. So I switched to Level mode and just held as much power as possible, which gave me a nice breakthrough. Based on the advice I’m reading in the forum, I’ll probably do something similar tomorrow.
The default configuration on the app seems ideal for experienced users and folks that have a lot of data in the system. It seems less good for beginners. This may be veering more into a feature request or suggestion, but perhaps new users should have an “onboarding program” that it runs through? I know the app advertises itself as “No need to ever do an FTP test again!” but it’s probably useful to establish a baseline of fitness for a week or two to see how the user adapts into training.
Tomorrow or on sunday about 15 degrees Celsius.
Thanks to our (Most hated) Wind " Föhn".
But, im still preparing for my “Event”.
Kematen - Kühtai
You definitely don’t want to ride “as long and hard as possible” to get fit. 
That will likely lead to burnout and recovery weeks required versus a gradual TL (training load) progression that minimizes the need for rest days.
In your 30s you have much better recovery capabilities than us old folks but you want to avoid trashing your legs when possible.
Now that you have moved your TED (target event date) you are in Base phase which will be endurance level workouts (slow and steady builds your base). Since you have set type to Time Trialist the intervals will be much longer than say a Climber. GC Specialist is often the recommended type to start with but in base it’s all endurance regardless. You can jump around if you get bored. 
BTW: In pre-base or post-event there is no specific guidance used for the focus of your training and the advisor simply offers a wider variety of workouts near your Athlete Type. XATA comes into play once you enter Base phase with higher intensity workouts appearing in the mix at some point during Build.
Many of us are converts from other platforms and have months or even years of data to import into Xert. I agree you are at disadvantage without historical power data to load into Xert. No doubt the algorithms are struggling to determine an accurate signature, but a few BT (breakthrough) workouts will help dial that in. It is maximal efforts that Xert is looking for to determine your signature values. IE, how well you perform while fatigued.
The best time to tackle a BT workout is when you are feeling especially fresh such as after a rest day following low intensity rides. Doing them successively is not recommended since when done properly you likely can’t match your performance from the day prior. Try them in Slope mode using gears and cadence to hit targets and exceed them if up to the challenge. The most important section is the wind up to the sprint effort as MPA is drawn down. Right before you are about to collapse, stand and spin to high rpm and try to go all out for 5-7secs or longer.
Ideally you are going to want a power meter for your bike so start thinking about those options. Indoor power recording is different from outdoors due to the stop and go nature of riding outdoors and constant terrain changes. You want all workouts/rides recorded to best utilize XATA. That’s not to say you can’t ride without power but those rides won’t contribute to your training load stats and that will adversely affect XATA.
Hopefully you gleaned some tips in my long winded reply to Wolfgang at the beginning of this thread and it was not TL;DR.
My intent was to encourage newbies to experiment and consider the suggestions as lessons. There are some new learning options due out soon for both newbies and advanced users. Stay tuned…
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I use iPhone. But I will check it out. Did I read somewhere that the iPhone version has some feature/s missing? Cyclemeter is a very good app
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No outdoor ride support with the iOS app –
Best way to record outdoor ride on ios? - General - Xert Community Forum (xertonline.com)
I used Cyclemeter on my Pixel 2 phone for a time before moving to the Xert Mobile app and now Xert EBC on a small Android phone.
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Same for me. Will try ebc now on an old Android phone. If it’s really nice might ghet a cheap second phone for the bike ;). Cyclemeter was my pick for iphone too, but of course no xert datafields or rainbow thing
@SecretSquirrel makes some very important points in their post. Worth reading twice.
In case it helps someone decide between the trial and starting a subscription –
Differences between 30 day trial versus a subscription:
- 90 days is the limit for historical data import. Once you subscribe you can load as much data as you want. More than a year is not necessary but you may want to see how Xert interprets the old data. Data without power is of minimal value to load.
- The trial includes a subset of workouts from the library with a wide variety of focus, duration, and intensities. Recommended workouts will be drawn from that subset.
- You can test the Workout Designer to see how it works, but not create any custom/coach workouts.
As I have mentioned elsewhere if you set a TED (target event date) that puts you in pre-base or post-event phase there is no specific guidance used for the focus of your training and the advisor (XATA) simply offers a wider variety of workouts near your Athlete Type.
Reference: Compare Plans – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
Used ebc for an outdoor ride today. Works like a charm! Battery left was around 73% after 2 hours, but expect it to last longer when playing a bit less with the toy 
Wondering a little hoe to interpret/use the pink line around de rainbow. Ideas welcome 
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