I’ve been using Xert for a year and enjoying it. I’m starting base fitness now for the upcoming year. Its been about a month since I had a breakthrough and its saying my signature is stale. I’ve tried twice in the past week via Zwift and outside for a KOM with no luck. I’ve gotten “Near Breakthroughs”, but no actual breakthrough. My next step may be to try a breakthrough workout. I did a ramp test and my Garmin also matches my threshold power on Xert, so I think my signature is correct. Should I keep trying or just ignore it during the base phase?
Can’t hurt to try a BT workout on your trainer to confirm things are dialed in.
Actually it should hurt. 
:
I suggest Version 2 in slope/resistance mode with the rainbow gauge up so you can watch MPA drop into BT range and then hammer some more to make things happen.
Or try Version 3 in Auto mode. There’s an odd 20 min cooldown in the middle but the assumption is you wasted yourself to get there. 
If you are already at 3 stars status with plenty of base you could even try tackling a Ronnestad workout. That will definitely take all the joy out of training. 
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I thought this was a friendly forum! 
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Thanks. I’ll do a few days of base and try again as a present to my self. I’m at 2 stars, made it 2 and snippet of 3 at one point. I’ve yet to try a Ronnestad at all, maybe at the next stale notification after this breakthrough.
If it’s just about a BT you can just do one set of Ronnestad and go all out (no trainer control) for each micro. Difficulty score won’t get that high, so tough but doable (and over quickly, so psychologically actually not bad). If you look at the workout chart, it’s the repeated sets that really ramp up difficulty. You can just free ride / endurance after that if you need more XSS
Not sure if you’ve already set signature decay to ‘no decay’, but worth doing if you really prefer to do a long period with no all out efforts. If you have, no real need for BT efforts (as indicated by your near breakthroughs)
Exactly. I did a Ronnestad a few weeks ago, went too hard and failed after the first block. Yet, Xert gave me a new TP of about 15W more.
Last week I did another Ronnestad, succeeded, and… Xert removed about 5W from my TP ! So…
(Finally, yesterday I did a " Xert Fitness Test for Breakthroughs - Under Pressure", and got a Gold medal, with a 18W improvement 
Though I think that that workout is too generous for me, because I’m used to doing Ronnestad’s… Now I need to work on the Seiler 4x8 because those are my nemesis).
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Know the feeling. Actually find fhe XSSR based ‘hard start’ intervals are more tolerable e.g. 4x8 @ 150XSSR (you can make a copy and adjust if you want it easier). Recall some studies suggest those are very effective… the Closer workouts are similar but based on 5x5 instead
I’m going for one month of “Front Load Periodization”, planning to do with Seiler’s… I think (well, I’m pretty sure) that I will need to lower the intensity to be able to do 5 of these during the first week !
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Have seen that. Sounds brutal and curious how you get on - good luck!
I’ve progressed on only one high intensity session a week, so may first try upping to two sessions if I have the time and training load… then maybe the front load idea if that leads to a plateau that I’m not happy with 
I tried it during the 2018-19 Winter 'cause I had a crash in July 18 : spent 2 weeks in the coma, needed a few months of recovery, so I tried FLP to get my watts back, and as far as I remember, it gave me about 20 watts/month (but starting from very low, so it was “easy” to re-gain some watts).
I got a breakthrough using the Xert Fitness Test version 3 workout! However it was only a bronze on the second part of the test. My FTP dropped by 2 points, HIE up by .5, and PP with no change. I probably could have had it on the first one, but I thought the pink line below my power output was a breakthrough (no it’s the purple dial). Next using auto for test was a mistake, I had to switch to slope on the second half to get it. Thanks for the help and I’ll just keep working to get stronger.
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It’s a learning experience! I think as people start to get a better understanding as to how to generate a BT, there will be less thoughts on using an exact BT “workout”, and more simply driving MPA down as much/long as you can!
Cheers!