Hmmm, As a perceived all rounder I chose GC Specialist as my chosen training focus. Tomorrow Xert suggests “Firestarter 2” as my workout. Now, I’ve always thought that climbing workouts were fairly long, slow grinding sessions. This seems to be working not on strength but HR. Any comments?
The label refers to Focus Duration rather than a traditional hill repeat style workout.
Xert treats the power curve as a continuum with Focus Duration ranges being their closest parallel to traditional zones. The strain ratio accumulated during your workout or ride targets a particular portion of the power curve labeled by athlete type.
Climber (10:00), GC Specialist (8:00), and Rouleur (6:00) fall into the All-Rounders quadrant of the power curve.
Every workout and outdoor ride in Xert is rated by Difficulty, Specificity, and Focus Duration.
Based upon your signature the ending Focus for the Firestarter 2 workout is calculated to be 9:21 which is closest to Climber (10:00 min power).
If I view the same workout with my current signature, I get 8:52 which is closest to GC Specialist (8:00 min power). Had your calculation been 8:59 it would have been labeled GC Specialist as well.
Polar refers to the Specificity rating. IOW where most of the strain occurs during the activity in relation to the focus power.
- Pure – You spent a majority of your time at or near the Focus intensity.
- Polar – You spent a majority of your time at Endurance intensity with efforts above your Focus intensity.
- Mixed – You had a mix of Endurance, Focus intensity and efforts above and below it.
This means you can arrive at the same Focus Duration through a variety of workout interval combinations. For example, here is a Pure Climber workout where the majority of the strain was accumulated at or near Climber Focus. Note the difference in XSS ratio for High strain.
Firestarter 2: 97 (94 | 2.8 | 0.4)
Life in Fast Lane: 94 (87 | 5.5 | .03)
This may be closer to what you expected as a “climber” workout. However, you are not grinding along on hill repeats. You are targeting 10-minute power without riding it for 10 minutes. 
Nothing Else Matters is an example of Mixed Climber –
Most outdoor rides will be classified as Mixed which makes sense because they’ll look like this example section.
In short, a variety of workouts and rides will target a focus/athlete type as quantified by the strain accumulated (watts/duration versus your fitness signature/power curve).
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Firestarter is a fantastic workout and can be challenging on a freshly updated signature. It’s a climber focus due to the majority of time spent doing tempo/sweetspot under fatigue (note the MPA line). Unfortunately there are no specific “strength” or “HR” targets in workouts. They are based on your low, high and peak systems and how they contribute to power production. This one has 94, 2.8, 0.4 so mostly threshold focused due to the long green intervals with a few sharp intervals to generate fatigue making them that much better at increasing fitness … stuff you don’t find on any other system, btw.
The one key thing to remember, especially at the start and middle of those long green intervals is that they will get easier. Keep telling yourself that. Trust the intensity and duration.
Well, @ridgerider2 @xertedbrain I’ve always been an “early user” (marketing term) and with Xert I have a big new learning curve to master. So today its Firestarter 2. 
I like the Remote player if I do shorter eg 60min sessions in particular the targeted cadence/power dials, but for longer workouts its far too faffy if you want to use it in combination with eg youtube. Suggest you have a look at how “IcTrainer” combines their app and player with Chrome browser.
