On a trail period with XERT, using XFAI goal plan to increase 10min power. Sliders are set to the default, goal is achievable, and 14hrs a week available. But does this seem normal?
4 days an hour each of high intensity, then a rest day, 2 two days of high intensity at 2hrs each.
the first 4 days are,
79XSS
Peak: 0.6
High: 2.3
Low 76
Then the next 2 days after the rest day
153XSS
Peak: 1.2
High: 4.4
Low: 147
The ramp rate 2.6 and hours planned 8.5 are normal. I’m coming off a week that had the same ramp and hours planned.
There are no other weeks that look like this on the planner. I have two weeks ahead of similar ramp and slightly more hours before a rest week.
It’s been 4 weeks since my last breakthrough.
I have 1.5hrs availability M-Thur, 2 hrs Fri, and 3 hrs Sat-Sun
What’s more important than high vs. low intensity days is how much high intensity you get on the high intensity days. Looking at these numbers, they are hardly that much intensity. 2.3/0.6 and 4.4/1.2 high/peak pretty light days in the end. It’s not uncommon to see high intensity workouts / rides above 15/5. Look at these as splitting a bigger high intensity workout into multiple days.
I was speaking to a coach about this and he really likes how this works. He called them “micro-dosing” and uses them to prepare his athletes for bigger high intensity days. Xert does this naturally given how the numbers and progressive overload needs to work. It isn’t able to give you too much high intensity if you’re starting out untrained or need to split them up into multiple days.
Makes sense. I increased my wednesday availability to 3 hours from 1.5 just to see if it changed the plan, but it didn’t. But I will go with the plan and see what happens.
If Availability is restrictive the high/peak dosages of HIT can end up split over several days in the week as @xertedbrain explains.
Xert is unique in how it tracks form and recovery split between your low and high/peak systems.
One thing I do when on an XFAI forecast is divide the XSS total by estimated activity time to approximate the Difficulty. For example, 79/1.5hr = 53 XSS per hour which is a Moderate rating. IOW relatively easy HIT that will push form to red/tired with a quick return to blue/fresh by the next day, ready for more HIT. But if performed over several days red will go to yellow the following day with LIT recommended or remain red with Rest recommended.
This is also tied to your TL status stars count. The higher your TL the higher the difficulty levels and the more high/peak strain you can handle whether in a single dose or distributed.
To see the weekly pattern of low/high/peak over the term of your forecast, view the forecast chart and isolate each key like this.
You can zoom in on particular weeks to review details but keep in mind it is not written in stone. Your forecast will be adapted over time depending on how closely you perform recommended dosages of HIT/LIT/Rest.
You might also change settings and update the plan (recast). Or reshuffle the deck for the coming week by running Adapt Forecast.
There’s more than one way to reach Rome although possible detours narrow as you approach your target date.
So I finished the 4 “intensity days” in a row and exactly like you guys described, it wasn’t actually intense. Sure my legs are tired because it’s actually 6 days in a row/8.5hrs total/5 days labeled as “intense”.
But I’m definitely ready for the weekends “intense” days. I’m really enjoying how xert is programing my plan with xfai. But as a newby to xert seeing the intensity labels stacked up was alarming. Thanks for all the explanations.
