Select the Program dialog box and start playing with the numbers by watching the Target Training Load entries in lower right (low, high, peak strain).
For example, change the Specificity between Polar, Mixed, and Pure and wait a second for the recalculation to occur.
If a Goal, you can also watch the TTL changes when you switch Focus type or raise/lower the Focus Power number.
If an Event, watch changes when you raise/lower the XSS value.
IOW an exercise demonstrating how low, high, peak strain distribution changes depending on target.
I’m not sure watts/kg is a viable target option since that’s a combination of power curve improvements and weight loss.
Check out my Onboarding post if you haven’t already.
I consider the Setup Guide as a Beta wizard that populates the Program dialog box where you can further tweak the settings and experiment.
I’m going to disagree with this statement pretty strongly. I’m an engineer; I passed pretty advanced math and statistics and after studying Xert, doing quite a bit of reading, and watching most of the videos I can find, I think I understand enough to get started. I’m a data geek and actually love all of the detail, all the buttons, etc.
At work we use analysis software from multiple vendors to perform pretty complex analysis. One software we use is written by a German company. It’s complex, it has options for everything you can think of and while it takes a while to learn, it has a high level of capability. When we were creating a tool for a more general population of users to collect data, we created a stripped down tool to make it easy for them to use and even then some of them complain it is too complicated. The tool collects data in a format that we can then use to do deeper analysis but we tried to make initial use as simple as possible.
Xert reminds me of the German software. Engineers, scientists, and data geeks will love all that complexity. It almost needs an “easy” button that strips all of that complexity down to its simplest terms and makes things simpler to use. Have options to dig into all that data for people that want more detail. With the current setup my guess is it turns off a lot of the potential user base before they can get the hang of it.
I did my first xert workout tonight (Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds - it was surprisingly tough for a low intensity workout). I dual recorded it with my Garmin just in case it didn’t push over to Garmin and I’m glad I did. I have my account turned on to push to Garmin and Strava but it never pushed over. It showed up in Xert multiple times as the Xert workout, the activity I recorded on my Garmin, and the copy Garmin pushed to Strava (the Garmin and Strava versions show zero miles instead of the 25.5 miles from Xert). I’ll eventually figure it out but it isn’t intuitive.
There are multiple great videos that explain the how and why the Xert algorithm works but not a really great video (at least not that I found) that explains how to start a workout, work through it, save it, and then push it to Garmin and Strava. A series of 5 minute how-to videos would be helpful to a bunch of your potential user base. Like the ones Man-of-Steele did a couple of years ago but “dumbed down” a couple of notches.
Sorry for the long post and don’t intend to come off as negative - so far I think this is a great tool in need of simplification if it is to be adopted by a wider user base.
Garmin Connect is a walled garden. They don’t allow third-parties to push rides/activities there unlike Strava. They’ve implemented connectivity for some but it’s not an open API.
We’ve been hearing since we started that the system needs to be dumbed-down. While that may seem obvious to do, the execution of it on a large scale would require a massive investment. Xert disrupts the the entire endurance fitness analytics space. We’ve decided to keep our budget small rather than take on the risk of trying to shoot the elephant. Whereas you can learn about FTP and Zones from thousands of articles and videos, written/produced by hundreds of authors, your source for Xert knowledge is here written by a few folks with help from our user community, some like @ridgerider2 that bring a invaluable help to everyone. We have a great community and our prospects for what is possible far exceeds what we can even imagine. Once there’s enough scale, expect things to get simpler, information to spread more broadly and the general know-how more widely understood.
Luckily we’ve grown enough now to start sponsoring research, something that I saw an important stage in our evolution. Our new concepts and methods are being copied by the other players and that’s a good sign that we’ve been right all along. We have more market disrupting additions to make to our system and from there we see a path to mainstream adoption.
With all that said, we certainly could benefit by creating how-to videos. We have made them in the past only to have them becoming obsolete when we add/change them with new features. We don’t have a video production staff that can keep up with all the additions and changes we make to the software.
I figured out i needed to view the workout afterward and then push the “view in Strava” button to push it over there. Sounds like i will need to dual record or use the Garmin Edge player to get the activities into the Garmin “walled garden”. If i play it using the Garmin Edge player, can i simultaneously view the workout on the Android app and/or my laptop?
I do guess i will eventually want to become profecient running it off of the Edge for outdoor workouts. The ability to track and make more use of outdoor work is to me another appealing feature of Xert. Most other training apps are setup to pretty much focus only on indoor training. Who wants to ride a trainer indoors on a nice day?
Hours + Ramp = Predicted watts at end of period. If I fall behind on either hours or ramp rate, the predicted End Watts would fall. (Watts per 8 minutes or whatever)
This is more or less what Continuous Improvement has already been doing for a few years now, minus weekly hours. But you could get a similar effect if you were to utilize the duration filters when selecting your recommended training each day.
Yes, but you will not see the forecast items on your calendar and see the projection of the training load, fitness signature++. And it will not handle availability constrains.
I get what you are describing is the old XATA function. I’m asking if it’s possible to develop the capability that I am describing where you essentially get the best of both worlds, a projection for the week/month but an adjustment to the end prediction if you don’t meet what you set out to do. The other way around just gets me a planner full of magenta days.
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