It occurs to me that when you have a breakthrough and you TP is increased, you now need to do more kJ of work to keep the same ramp rate of training load… Is this correct? But also… with the new fitness signature, all the Xert workouts are going to have higher intensity. Isn’t it a little dangerous to try to keep the same ramp rate after a big jump in TP? By that I mean that you should keep in mind how much you increase your kJ per week as well as strain increase from week to week. right? or wrong? IDK if i’m even making sense…
I should say… if you are going steady at an aggressive ramp rate… and you have a big breakthrough… perhaps it is a bad idea to keep going at the same ramp rate? Beyond that… if you find you don’t feel tired and you are keeping up with an agressive ramp rate, that seems like a very sure sign that you need to push for a breakthrough?
Correct, you need more KJ of work (as well as XSS, which is Xert’s way of normalizing your work). It’s quite intuitive, based on your logic above that the fitter you become, the more kJ of work you need to perform per XSS point.
Incorrect. Because we normalize everything to your fitness signature, the absolute intensity increases, but it stays at the same relative intensity. Take the Closer 200 workout… whether you’re mostly de-trained, or the fittest you’ve ever been, the main intervals are still done at 200 XSS/hr. When you’re highly fit, this means a higher absolute power target. But since your body is already capable of absorbing that work, it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) feel any harder than the same workout when you’re in a less fit state (despite it being at a lower absolute intensity).
One of the core principles behind Xert (and training in general) is the principle of progressive overload. To get better, you need to do more than you have been… either volume or intensity.
Most athletes will have a challenging time staying at anything above Aggressive 1 for extended periods of time…the change in volume over time is just too much for most people to handle for weeks at a time. Moderate 2 is likely the highest sustainable Improvement Rate over extended periods of time.