I’m new to Xert and have been playing around with the Forecast AI Beta. I chose a goal date 6 weeks in the future, with a goal of improving my 5 minute power. However, Xert itself seems to be a bit confused about how much I can realistically improve. In the screenshot below, you can see that it seems to think that improving my 5 minute power by 11w is achievable, but it is unable to find a training plan to achieve this. I’ve been changing my weekly hours, program difficulty, improvement rate and the other settings, but Xert doesn’t seem to ever increase my total hours trained per week beyond 4, even though I’ve set the maximum weekly hours to 11. Basically, I think I should be fine with a higher training load than what Forecast AI suggests, and I can’t figure out how to have it auto-generate a more challenging training plan. What am I missing?
Hi @tommying, Welcome to Xert! Good question!
Notice that some of the XSS matchsticks in your forecast chart are outlined in Magenta, which indicates there’s something wrong with the training on that day. Looks like from where you are now (in the system), that this program would have a bit too much intensity… For example, Xert shows on this day that you might not be able to recover from the recommended high-intensity sessions within the ~4 day period of the default 80:20 periodization:
If you use the same Target Date (~6 weeks) and overall improvement (+11 W) but switch the Focus to something with a slightly longer focus duration, such as GC Specialist (8 min power), Xert should be able to create a program that gets you there:
Very cool, thanks - I had not experimented with the focus duration, your suggestion worked 
Its pretty novel - Xert looks not just at your total training load, but your training load on each energy system & calculates whether the improvements are achievable or not based on your current versus target TL and the amount of time you have to achieve the desired increase.
For example, most of my riding is longer endurance efforts, so I have a relatively low High (2.2) & Peak
(0.3) training load. If I were to try and max out my 2 min focus power, Xert might not be able to transition me into a sprint focus in just 6 week… it would take more time to develop my Peak training load. Perhaps we can provide a way to make this more apparent to users when setting up a training program.
We try to visualize this a bit in the Wizard setup screen… This is from my account, trying to set up a program for a Road Sprinter (2 min power) focus. Xert is telling me that this program wouldn’t be possible since I can’t go from 0.3 to 4.8 TL (~1500% increase) in just 6 weeks:
