Coming up to speed using Adaptive AI for training plan, been using for a few weeks. Uploaded about two years worth of training data which is all I had to offer. I have been racing Masters’ competitively for about 20 years consistently training 12-20 hrs per week.
Adaptive AI has scheduled relatively conservative weekly training hours all the way out to April 11th, my first “Event” race. I set weekly available training hours between 20-25 hrs with little change in program hours. I’ve been adding LSD ride time which gives me red XSS for the day. How does Adaptive AI recognize that I can handle more low intensity volume? Does getting red XSS change the plan going forward? Are the Adaptive AI algorithms optimized for time crunched cyclists and derived from their data?
I had a High Intensity day scheduled for Jan 1 and Endurance day for Jan 2. Wanting to switch the days around I used Autogen to produce an appropriate VO2 Max workout for Jan 1 then scheduled it for Jan 2 and added an endurance ride to Jan 1. When I tried to push the VO2 Max workout to my Garmin this morning, Jan 2, I clicked on the workout and got a screen that said the workout does not exist even though it’s on my calendar in Planner. Well, at least an image of the workout. Does Adaptive AI not allow the user to move workouts around to during the week?
To get around this I targeted the low/High/Peak XSS and completed what I could recall the gist of the workout.
Can some explain the “Suitability” criteria when searching for an appropriate workout?
There is a “dot” that can be green, yellow or red with a check, ! or x. And then descriptions like Good, Productive, Optimal Focus, Near Focus and Out of Focus. Because most if not all of my riding is out doors, I live in California, most of the suggested rides are WAY too complicated to do on the road, seemingly designed for trainer. It would be great if there were more simple workouts that are out door friendly.
If you would prefer to ramp up more hours/TL before the event, I find Goal better suited for this purpose. In my testing Event options don’t always work as expected when you you manipulate Readiness versus Max weekly hours for an Event. However, first try disabling Automatic Readiness for the Event under Modify Program and see if you can lower the number into the 1.x range with the increase in TL you want. Then Run Forecast.
If you can’t get the TL you want try switching to the Goal option entering whatever Focus/Specificity you saw listed at top under your Event. Then manipulate watt increase for that Focus Power against the Max hours slider while watching the TL table to acheive the TL you prefer to reach by your first event.
In both scenarios you are also watching Achievability to note where green text (“will likely”) switches to yellow (“may not”). You can forecast with the “may not” warning and review what the forecast looks like before deciding.
1.x Readiness means well prepared for the event day with less recovery needed afterwards.
See details here: Assessing Readiness to Train – Xert
By default Xert operates with a hybrid polarized approach but you can manipulate that through the choices you make on LIT days. For example, more tempo/SS versus longer easy/Z2 rides.
What that boils down to is XSS per hour where tempo/SS packs more into an hour and the endurance ride is rated Moderate difficulty versus a longer ride around LTP rated Easy.
A swap days option for the Planner has been asked for by others. In the meantime you can simply elect to swap one day for another through the choices you make and wait to see if the red dot warning remains after those days have elapsed. A red dot warning doesn’t mean you must Adapt Forecast but indicates broken contraints somewhere in your current forecast. You can find the broken constraint by viewing the forecast chart under the Training page and hover over or tap any magenta outlined entries to read the warning text. Sometimes it’s minor which you may decide to ignore. Otherwise Adapt Forecast will shuffle the week ahead to rebalance the plan.
For Suitability see this article: Training Suitability – Xert
There are always alternates that match suitability for the forecast.
If you want a suitable workout pushed to Garmin automatically each day, you can try out that function by enabling it under Sync, Garmin Connect (Send Scheduled Workouts) and under Planner, Settings (Automatically Schedule). I believe this will only select a recommended workout (after midnight each day) that is within the 50 step Garmin workout limit.
Autogen can also be run to create a simpler workout that meets the strain goals for the day. That workout can be pushed to your Garmin on-demand using the Send icon (paper airplane).
In either case you need to run Garmin Connect on your phone afterwards to sync that workout to your Edge device.
You mention pushing a workout to your Garmin - have you tried the Xert Connect IQ dashboard and buckets fields? These show you targets for low / high / peak and dynamically graph your current ride against the targets. You can use this to adjust intervals and your ride to allow you to exactly meet your targets for the day. For me at least, these fields have really added a lot to Xert and made it much easier to use outdoor workouts to meet the training plan.
For training outdoors, if you have a Garmin device definitely check out the Xert Bucket Data field that you can add to your device as mentioned by @Garrick. It’s a game changer for outdoor training.
Once you have the data field installed and connected to your Xert account, it’s a matter of scheduling your training on the web then syncing the data field on your Garmin, ride and try to “fill” the buckets with the appropriate low/high/peak as you ride.
Thanks Ridgerider2!
Scott Steele suggested I manually adjust Readiness Score under Event so took it down to 1.7, the lowest amount that still gave an achievable training plan. Also set Recovery slider to least recovery, far left, leaving everything else in the default amounts. This generated “achievable” plan still has a lower amount of LSD volume than I wanted to gain so hope some added LSD will not upset the plan too much. I will play around with the Goal settings to see what I can generate.
I haven’t looked too deeply into how the AI generated plan increases load over time with the Polarized setting at default setting 80/20, something I would like to parse out so to know where I’m going. Dr. Stephen Sieler advocates 80/20 as distribution of workouts and concedes that time in zone is more like 90/10. Being early in the season historically I need to ramp up power and time in zone incrementally. Sieler’s classic 3 sets of 4x8 min @ 108% FTP would be an absolute killer for me tight now and most undoubtedly would fail. The AI generated VO2 Max workouts seem manageble so will do those for a few weeks before tackling Sieler’s classic. Maybe even starting on the conservative side with 4x4s. Note: I have not seen anything in the workout library similar to Sieler’s classic yet.
Must admit there is still much I have to learn to become familiar with Xert but feel like I’m on the right track.
Garrick,
I have Xert Dashboard and Buckets data fields loaded and really like them. When I had an issue moving the Autogen workout to the next day I used the buckets to hit the XSS targets of that workout so there was really no lost training, very cool.
I am experimenting with a true Polarized plan for 2025 which is all new to me, used Pyramidal model in the past. Don’t know if Xert has a breakdown of training in all zones and shows your time in zone thus training model type like Intervals.icu, a resource I also use to also track and analyze training data. Currently Intervals.icu has me more in the Pyramidal power distribution so need to get out of Zone 2 and really go easier on my easier days, i.e. stay below LT1.
Seiler’s classic study demonstrated improvement with all three workouts tested. However, the 4x8 showed the fastest rate of improvement during the test period.
My thought, however, is who’s to say your magic number isn’t 4x7.5 or perhaps a declining set? Xert approaches that question through the design of their SMART workouts which scale to an individual’s fitness signature.
I think the main takeaway from Seiler is 80/20 is proven to work well for endurance athletes when applied as easy/easy and hard/hard. I believe he recently said pyramidal works fine too and 80/20 plans may end up as pyramidal when results are tabulated.
As I mentioned before you can strictly adhere to 80/20 with easy/easy, hard/hard through the selections you make as you proceed through a forecast plan or progression in Xert.
Personally I’m not fond of long straight block intervals when it comes to HIT and tempo workouts but I’m not that tough of a rider.
I prefer a level of variation and Xert provides some interesting workouts which scale to your fitness signature that aren’t based on %FTP blocks. As a result you should be able to complete most workouts at 100% compliance whenever your status stars count matches a workout difficulty diamond count. That’s not to say you can’t tackle a 3 diamond workout when you’re at 2 stars, but be advised it’s above your pay grade at the moment. You may not earn the promotion.
Seiler’s Classic 4x8 is quantified by Xert as Pure Climber with 4+ diamond difficulty. As you can see from the chart viewed in Workout Designer the last two intervals will be very tough as difficulty rises (shaded portion) and MPA drops to predicted failure points. You want to be blue/fresh for this one.
If I search the Library by the same Specificity and Focus Power here is the range of options.
If the image doesn’t support zoom in/out try the search filter on the Library to create the list.
Click on titles to see details and note the various interval types in use.
Thank you for such a detailed addition to this thread! Becoming proficient in Xert is taking time and feel I’ve just scratched the surface. The Xert 4x7.5 workout is for all intents and purposes identical to Seiler’s 4x8 as you mentioned. Finding the Adaptive AI scheduling not as consistent as past training so starting to layer in workouts into schedule with a familiar rhythm of past years. Searching for workouts as you described will help me choose from library.
I don’t see this is being an issue unless you’re doing so much LSD that you’re too tired to complete your other training sessions. But sure, if you have more time on a weekend to train, then go for it & adapt your forecast afterwards!
Xert would generally align with this. Using the default 80:20 (4:1) polarization setting, 1 high-intensity session is followed by 4 days of low intensity endurance (or rest/recovery days). Similarly, the XSS proportion of Low to High/Peak is also likely near 90:10. You can view this as ‘Intensity Ratio’ in the Fitness Planner options. Looking at mine, it was 96:4 for me.
No, Xert doesn’t do “time in zones”… Xert is a totally new approach to data analysis. Xert tracks strain across 3 dimensions of your fitness (Low, High, & Peak) in each second of your power data & uses that to track how each aspect of your fitness trains & recovers. We interpret the ratios of Low:High:Peak as Focus and Specificity. Lots to unpack, but lots of resources available and plenty of helpful people around
In the meantime you can simply elect to swap one day for another through the choices you make and wait to see if the red dot warning remains after those days have elapsed. A red dot warning doesn’t mean you must Adapt Forecast but indicates broken contraints somewhere in your current forecast. You can find the broken constraint by viewing the forecast chart under the Training page and hover over or tap any magenta outlined entries to read the warning text. Sometimes it’s minor which you may decide to ignore. Otherwise 
Xert approaches that question through the design of their 
