I’ve been training with Xert for a few months now and am very satisfied. However, I’ve noticed that Xert keeps telling me I need to train more and more. Sure, if I want to improve, the load has to go up, but that can also be achieved—at least in part—through intensity. I set my availability to 7 hours, which is the absolute maximum for me. Initially, Xert told me I needed to train 6.5 hours to improve at the same rate; now it’s up to 8.5 hours, even though I’ve only selected “Moderate-1.” Should I switch to “Slow” and eventually to “Maintenance”? I find it hard to believe that, at my current fitness level (TP 175), it’s impossible to keep improving on just 7 hours a week.
Try changing IR to Slow and see if the Unachievable notice clears.
When Improvement Rate is >0 XATA will always tell you to ride more over time.
The higher the IR value the faster the rate of TL increase.
Eventually what goes up must come down. 
Changing improvement rate with XATA –
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When you reach max hours and want to level off, switch to Taper, purposely scale back to hours you’re comfortable with, then change to Maintenance.
At that point you can continue to improve by varying Focus Duration (FD) stimulus and ride blocks for X weeks at a time.
E.g. if you’ve been targeting GC Specialist (8-minute power), you might change to Puncheur (4-minute power) for 2-3 weeks. Then take a breather (rest week set to Off-Season) and change FD again.
During a Maintenance phase you can also deliberately pick the hardest workout amongst recommended workouts on HIT days. Or strive to higher Challenge Levels when using Magic Buckets. I.e. same FD target but you are condensing the time required to fill the buckets. That raises the Difficulty Score.
Thank you for the very detailed and valuable information.
I’ll try it this way.
You can also change your “XSS per hour preference” per setting. That should make your workouts more time-efficient, but harder.
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Where can I do that?
Home/Profile Settings/General/Program settings
Found thank you. I activated “based on trainingload” there. And if I understand correctly, it automatically adjusts that when I ride less or more.
I actually don’t understand what auto adjust does. I read and reread the KB description and I am sitll confused. It says:
“Additionally, users have the option to ‘Auto-adjust using Training Load,’ which dynamically scales the program difficulty based on the athlete’s training load/status. As training load increases or decreases, XSSR Preference will adjust accordingly.”
So if my trening load increases, what happens to XSS per hour? It increases or decreases?
The slider primarily affects HIT days when Focus is not set to Endurance.
This can result in harder workouts you may fail under ERG control at 100% intensity.
That can’t happen with Magic Buckets since you control what CL (Challenge Level) you’re capable of handling on any particular day.
Details at: XSS Per Hour Preference – Knowledgebase
As training load increases, the recommended XSS per hour will increase (more time efficient, but harder trainings). When training load is lower, it also lowers your XSS per hour (makes training less time-efficient in terms of XSS, which may not be optimal for time constrained athletes).
In my personal opinion, it’s best left at the default setting of 100 which is a nice balance of time-efficiency and not overly challenging.
But at the end of the day this setting only determines how much XSS Xert can fit into your available time. You can choose any workout to achieve the recommendations - some might be shorter and harder, others might be a bit easier and longer. Of course, you can also use Magic Buckets as @ridgerider2 mentioned
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Thanks to your recommendations @ridgerider2, I managed to cut my hours down to a level I can sustain—around 6.2 hours. After that, I switched to a maintenance improvement rate, but now the number of hours required is rising again. How is that possible?
Maintenance IR is a float stage under your control.
Takes a week+ for XATA to recognize the new pattern as the Training Pacer is a 7-day rolling average XSS that also reflects what you did on same day of week in recent past.