Hi
After a few months of riding with an aggressive -1 IR and an increased TP I now find myself with a few weeks of no time to ride because of working long shifts and holidays. My question is do I switch to Off Season with no decay or leave my TP to decline with optimal decay until I’m ready to ride again in a few weeks? Obviously I’ll have to smash myself when I’m back on it to kickstart my signature with the latter
Depends on whether you’re doing workouts or not. If you’re just riding outside without doing interval work, you should be ok either way. Going with Small Decay should work fine too since you won’t see much of a difference if you’ve had a recent breakthrough. You can experiment to see what kind of effect it might have by creating a manual planned activity into the future, opening it and reviewing the signature. You can also see the effects using the Weekly Summary on the Fitness Planner.
Great tip, thank you!
Quick question here form a newbie. How did you raise your TP? Did you just follow the recommended workouts? My power TP keeps dropping even when I try for a BT 
Thanks
Lots of newbie tips are posted in this thread –
Beginner questions - Support - Xert Community Forum (xertonline.com)
There is an 11 pt questionnaire there you are welcome to post answers to here. That will help us understand what your goals are and steer you in the right direction.
I suggest you watch the new academy videos if you haven’t already to quickly learn the key concepts –
TP (and all signature values) will rise and fall over time dependent upon your TL (training load) and intensity (distribution of strain ratio) plus how well you recover from training blocks.
Consider your week-to-week and month-to-month trendlines shown under Progression, XPMC chart. Don’t focus on TP alone which is going to vary and decline whenever TL isn’t sufficient to maintain or raise it. TP is a range rather than a distinct value. Xert recalculates your signature after every activity or lack of activity over time (decay).
While you can setup Xert parameters and follow the guidelines, you are in charge of what direction to take things and when to adjust and modify your settings.
Here’s my example of following a progression to term within the guidelines –
Pre-Base to TED; 120+ days; 100% recommended workouts completed at 100% difficulty - General - Xert Community Forum (xertonline.com)
Your experience will vary based on where you are starting from, what your goals are, plus the time you can invest in training.
This year I am varying IR (improvement rate) during my progression to a TED (target event date) in mid-April. I started with a higher TP than in years past, so I don’t expect the same level of improvement but plan to peak in July/August.
Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride.
Hey, thanks for sending me this information. I am learning as I go. I did find the 11 questions and they do provide a lot more detail of who I am and where I want to be. Thank you
Are you running the 30 day trial or are you a subscriber?
I subscribed 3 weeks ago
What equipment do you have for training indoors and outdoors? Include meter type, trainer type, bike type, bike computer (if you have one), and phone (Android or iOS).
I have a Wahoo Kicker V5 and my bike is a Cervélo S3. I run the IOS app on my phone with all Wahoo sensors.
Are you young (20-30s), older (60+), or in the middle? 
(no need for exact age)
I use to be young . I am currently 37.
How experienced are you with training by power? (newbie or X years using another platform).
I been training with power for 2 years.
Are you a recreational rider or competitive racer?
I am your average recreational rider.
I don’t race and i only do a few group rides. (Family obligations)
What are your goals? (example, special event in 3 months or best fitness for riding this summer)
My goals are to be as fast as I can be to smash some KOMs in my area. I also have two small kids that keep me active. My long term goal would be to have about 3 stars here and a TP of 300. I have to figure out how to achieve that because this app is the only thing I use until the summer (then a lot of outdoor rides)
How many weeks or months of recent power data have you loaded into Xert?
I took a 7 month break from cycling because I had ankle reconstruction surgery. When I was younger I got hit by a car and now I am on my 5th surgery. When life gives you lemons you make lemonade 
. So basically I started over with my data.
What is your current star status? (example, 2 stars)
About 2 stars. My goal is 3 or more stars.
What Athlete type did you select? (determines focus duration target) I selected GC specialist because I thought that was a good all around profile. When I used to be apart of Sufferfest it told me my type was Pursuiter.
Which Improvement Rate (IR) did you select? (hours/week training load & ramp rate)
I picked slow as I am just getting back on the bike. I have 5-7ish hours a week to train.
What TED (target event date) did you enter? (determines what phase are you in)
I don’t have any target events as I am not a competitive cyclist. I just want to be fast for summer so I can KOM hunt.
I do follow the recommended workouts but have had the better TP increases with Zwift on the ZRL
XATA will recommend workouts to meet your training goals but not necessarily BT workouts designed to drive you to failure. For that you would manually select a BT workout from the library and ride it in slope mode to intended points of failure. That is why you see more BT’s on ZRL because those rides drive MPA down similar to riding a BT workout in slope mode.
GC Specialist is a good selection.
If you set a TED (target event date) then XATA will follow a progression cycle. In my case I use an imaginary target event day in April each year. A pattern of focus type changes will occur starting with endurance during Base phase and zeroing in on the selected target athlete as you reach Peak phase for the “event”. See the chart in this article --|
Program Phases – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
If you use Continuous you will get a variety of recommended workouts around the currently selected athlete type (focus duration). You are in charge of selections so you can vary that if you want. You can also change athlete type either on-the-fly using Filter, or you might switch between focus types under Goals week to week and note the differences. Keep in mind types roughly fall into quadrants so pick something in a different quadrant for more variety.
Both programs allow you to make selections to vary your course, but TED steers you along a path on the power curve.
All recommendations will contribute to your progression with the single most important factor being an increase in TL (training load) over time based on your IR (improvement rate).
If you find things too easy you can dial up IR, then drop it back down to maintenance when you reach max/hours you can spend per week or taper if you want to lower commitment for a bit then return to Slow when you have more time.
If your hourly commitment is limited, you can also vary the intensity by the selections you make. For example, you might deliberately step outside your comfort zone using Filter to select a higher difficulty workout. Otherwise XATA will try to match your current star count with diamond count and predicted form. That ensures recommended workouts can be completed at 100% intensity but if you want to challenge yourself on occasion, go for it. 
Thank you so much!
