Let's See Your XFAI WEEK PROGRESS. 🎯

[ridgerider2]

Post a screenshot of a completed week from your XFAI plan along with comments such as goal/event settings, how you’re feeling, pros/cons, feedback, etc.
Here’s mine for last week. Sunday was a forecast Rest day.

The summary fields I enabled are Hours, XSS/day, Ramp Rate, Focus, TL, Low, High, Peak and Total XSS. If you post a similar screenshot with these fields, it will be easier to compare plans with others.

Program Setup
Target Date: 31 March (8 weeks remaining)
Goal: 10 watt increase in Mixed GC Specialist (8 min) power
Max hours: 13.5
Polarization: 4:1 (default)
Periodization: 4.0% 3 steps to right of default (2.5%)
Recovery Demands: 2 steps to right of default (center)
Starting TL: 54 (first week in Jan)
Current/Target TL: 62/66
Availability: no constraints

XFAI initially felt like a step up intensity-wise from what I’m used to (XATA blank calendar, 120 Day Program). OTOH I would be in Build phase by now if I had started that type of program on Dec 2 which is about when I normally begin a progression for spring fitness in April. This year I held off doing that and started experimenting with XFAI Beta when it came out, flipping back and forth with 120 Day.

The BT on Saturday was a 5 watt/.8 bump in TP/HIE so I’ve also moved closer to my modest Focus Power target.
I got green stickers (what else could we call them?) even though I was a bit short on low and high strain.

This workout gives you an excuse to end short so I took it. See description which mentions 30/30s, but they are 30/20s. I could have done a few more but definitely not ten more.
I was doing them over target watts by the time I stopped, then skipped five and returned to do the final five. Definitely a workout worth doing if you’d like to validate your signature.

Everyone is different (n=1) in how they might use XFAI to target their goals/events.
I won’t max my TL hours until July so I settled for a conservative target Goal for now.
Will set another goal or event progression in May with an August target date.
I also cleared the Availability schedule I was testing earlier and recast. I don’t have schedule constraints with my current plan. Many users don’t have the luxury to do that.

Feedback: When you have a BT during a Goal forecast would it be useful if the report or icon badge indicated you’ve jumped closer to your target goal? Should you be prompted to raise the bar if you achieve the target early?

[ridgerider2]

Interesting results yesterday as I haven’t tried riding two activities in one day on a XFAI plan before. I hadn’t planned to do that but here’s what happened.
While playing around with an expired test account (no XFAI Beta option) I managed to select the default workout (Let the Sparks Fly) which didn’t match my XFAI HIT goal for the day.
I was also testing EBC iOS and the Session Player on an iPad which I do every now and then.
I realized a few intervals in I had the wrong workout, but decided to complete it since it was a HIT workout with some relevance to the goal. When I finished and uploaded, I got a red sticker since I was short on low, high, and peak scores for the day.
To my surprise the recommended list now displayed fill-the-gap workouts which were short ones that I never do. I selected the second entry 13 Minute Workout which looked feasible at first glance.
However, I psyched myself out during the first interval when I looked up under pain and saw I was only halfway through. Bailed on that one but got through the remaining intervals without incident.
As a result, I got what I needed to go green. There is some leeway built into the scoring .

Plus –

Equaled –

At that point the recommended list went into Active Recovery mode as expected.

Nice!!!

[johnnybike (John Hallas)]

@ridgerider2

Goal: 10 watt increase in Mixed GC Specialist (8 min) power

Don’t you think it would be good if you state a target as ‘what can I get my 20 min power to in xx days’ subject to training availability considerations.

That would be my ideal. I don’t have race targets and the only focus I have is to increase TP.

[ridgerider2]

@johnnybike

Don’t you think it would be good if you state a target as ‘what can I get my 20 min power to in xx days’ subject to training availability considerations.

That is essentially what I have entered.
If I go to Program and try to increase Focus Power target by 1 watt, TL needs to go up.
I could raise the target by another 12 watts if I allowed TL to increase to 93.
However, I’m not willing to go there with a target date of 31 March.
I will go to 90+ before August but for now a slow rise until April suits me fine.

[ManofSteele (Scott Steele)]

Okay, I’ll bite! Here’s my week - almost done! Just a long ride tomorrow and a rest day on Sunday to wrap up my week.

I cheated on my ForecastAI training program a bit this week by riding on Monday & Wednesday - rest days were recommended, but I felt okay & I wanted to ride anyways. I kept the rides relatively shorter (for me) and limited the intensity to sub-LTP efforts. After all, Xert will adapt to what I actually did, right?

Program setup

• Target Date: Arbitrarily selected 06 July (~20 weeks remaining)
• Goal: 10 min power from 309 W → 345 W (+36 W)
• Specificity: Polar (e.g. More Threshold)
• Max hours: 16.1 hrs, estimated (in late June)
• Polarization: 80:20 (Default)
• Periodization: None (Moved fully to the left from default value)
• Recovery Demands: 3 ticks to left of center (e.g. slightly less recovery required)
• Starting TL: 66 (65 | 1.3 | 0.2)
• Target TL: 126 (120 | 4.6 | 0.9)
• Availability: Unavailable/Rest Day every Sunday.

[xertedbrain (Armando Mastracci)]

MIddle week’s green circles from forecast hacking where I pinned planned activities and then ran Adapt Forecast. Luckily I managed to repeat the outdoor activity that I had scheduled myself to do.

We need a fix for the manually planned activity matching. They don’t yet match all of the time as shown by the open 14xss circles. These are days I go to the gym. I need to account for them since they leave me yellow and I had to eventually back off this week. Felt extra tired Tuesday after 3 weeks of solid training.

Goal is an event and training camp in April. Polar Rouleur since the camp’s in Girona’s mountains and can’t rely on HIE anaerobic power as much as I do here on flatter/rolling terrain.

[scoobmw2 (Scoob 439)]

@johnnybike

Don’t you think it would be good if you state a target as ‘what can I get my 20 min power to in xx days’ subject to training availability considerations.

Late in replying …. this is exactly what I’d like to see as an easy to use feature.

[Garrick (Garrick Taylor)]

First week trying to follow the AI training plan. It’s mad at me Sat and Sun because it wanted me to do another 125 XSS of low intensity. Problem is I’m pretty pooped. I’m hopeful it will all workout. Happy that Zert is willing to use my outdoor activities as I’m hoping to mostly ditch the trainer once it warms up. I have power meter pedals on my short term wish list.

[chronakis (Yiannis Chronakis)]

Is there any way to get the planner to show the effort graphic instead of the map?

[chronakis (Yiannis Chronakis)]

This was week 1 of a 17 week plan with the following settings:

• Target date: 31st May (17 weeks)
• Breakaway specialist (5min) 30 watts increase
• Max hours: 9
• Specificity: mixed
• Recovery demands: three notches to the right
• All the rest at default

[Edit:]
I had a race on Thursday, which should have been green, but a warm up activity is marked as the main one. It turns green if I select summarise the day in the settings.

Low intensity workouts have improved dramatically after getting some advice in this thread.

High intensity workouts are a real struggle and I am not sure I can keep up with this plan. Yesterday, I had 16x1 minute intervals and I only managed 12, with increased breaks and cut some to 45 seconds.

My conundrum is that after lowering my TP to what looks realistic and increasing the PP and HIE the high intensity workouts feel too much. I considered lowering all my metrics but then I will get a breakthrough and get them bumped up again.

Maybe I should consider something with more volume and less intensity.

[ridgerider2]

Here’s the past two weeks –

I skipped the HIT forecast on Sunday prior and took the day off instead. That triggered a red dot for Monday. Adapt Forecast changed the scheduled Monday LIT to HIT. The new HIT workout was tough. Ugh! Don’t think I ever ride that hard outdoors on purpose. I don’t race or try to hang in on drop group rides anymore. I cracked on the third set but muddled through to get the points required for green stickers.

My point is you don’t need to complete a workout at 100% compliance to meet your strain goal for the day. Ditto on the recommended HIT workout later in the week. You can see where I skipped an interval in the first three sets below but completed the last set which was easier.

Next up is this week’s BT from a recommended workout that supposed to generate one –

I got through 20 micro’s before giving in. That earned a minor bump in TP but it’s significant because I have now reached my March 31 Goal (10 watt increase in 8-minute power). This my second BT since starting my XFAI plan.

What do you think should happen when TL increases during your plan, or a BT especially, cause your target Goal to be reached prematurely? I still have 5+ weeks to go.
Should a notification appear prompting you to re-evaluate your Program settings?
What else would be of benefit?

At this point my plan looks to be easing up and tapering although I’m below max hours I configured (13.5 hours/week) with a TL of 66. At 72 TL I’m already above the original target, most likely due to riding LIT on Rest days.

[ridgerider2]

You can further reduce intensity by lowering the Polarization Level and recast your plan.

• Increasing polarity will result in harder workouts on a less frequent basis
• Decreasing polarity will result in easier workouts more frequently

Breakaway Specialist and any shorter duration point with Mixed specificity will increase high/peak strain for recommended HIT workouts. You can alternately reduce intensity by changing Athlete Type and Specificity. For example, Polar Climber or GC Specialist.
If you continue to feel it’s too much to handle you should experiment with your settings and watch what happens to the plan. See if the HIT workout recommendations look more reasonable to you.

Keep in mind you don’t need to complete all HIT workouts at 100% compliance to achieve the strain goal for the day (and trigger adaptations). Do the best you can. If struggling with certain workouts, try switching to Slope mode where you can more easily control the efforts (work and rest intervals).

[chronakis (Yiannis Chronakis)]

Thank you for the suggestions. I reduced the polarity and I will give it a go. I selected breakaway specialist because I am keen on training my weakness, which is the 2-5 minutes power. Seems that my real power (not xert’s estimated signature) has a valley starting from 2-5 minutes but it’s pretty OK after 10. I hope that that breakaway specialist focuses on improving that part and I did not misunderstood it.

Last week, my signature made the blue and even green segments a pleasure to ride. Demanding but pleasant. But two days ago I got a breakthrough that raised my TP by 22 watts so I am worried that now they may become difficult.

My view is trying to do as much of the interval as I can and sometimes introduce a bit of extra rest instead of abandoning. My workout yesterday was “Hardness test level 6”. True to my power curve, maintaining those 3 minute intervals was simply impossible. The 1 minute were doable and the 30 second pleasant (in a twisted way).

The image below shows what I ended up doing. 75-90 second instead of three plus extra rest. I cut short the workout because I have a broken toe and it started hurting, otherwise I would have probably manage most of it.

My naive (because I haven’t spent time looking at other people’s data) conclusion is that I am very weak after one minute and hence I am suffering on that particular duration. Or I am mentally weak to sustain the pain for 3-4 minutes

[wescaine (Wesley Caine)]

@chronakis

My view is trying to do as much of the interval as I can and sometimes introduce a bit of extra rest instead of abandoning

I think you really shouldn’t be struggling that much to complete workouts. To me suggests either

1. an issue with your fitness signature (easiest to email support to have a look, otherwise there are some resources you can check). Also, if your last BT had data errors it could explain difficulty
2. an issue with XFAI for some reason recommending workouts that are too hard relative you training load (which is possible as it’s beta, and I’ve seen a few people suggesting workouts from XFAI are harder than the ‘old’ Xert, even @ridgerider2 i think!).
3. an issue with recovery / fatigue (which is not being picked up by XFAI)

Also, you mention coming back from injury (or still being injured?) so may need to do more base training before getting back to high intensity. Or said another way, maybe the goals you’ve put into XFAI are too ambitious or too short term / not allowing enough time for base training

Just some thoughts which hopefully help - not possible from here to figure out which of the above is your issue, but again, if you’re failing workouts then something is probably not right

[scoobmw2 (Scoob 439)]

@ridgerider2

Post a screenshot of a completed week from your XFAI plan along with comments such as goal/event settings, how you’re feeling, pros/cons, feedback, etc.
Here’s mine for last week. Sunday was a forecast Rest day.

Don’t have a screenshot handy, but as to the rest …
goal/event settings kind of broke for me midweek when I thought I’d set my available time to 12hours, which would see a projected increase of 2W in 20min capability, over a six week period.
I instantly ended up with a 18.6 week plan and it all got a bit confusing as I was thrown two rest days and 8 further hours of low intensity riding.
Feeling - was feeling fine. After today I’m sore but then I do have a physical issue which gets sore from time to time … especially doing gym stuff, so that’s normal.
Tomorrow really is rest day. Don’t typically ride Sundays as prefer family activities

Did I miss the option to always exclude a specific day(or days) in the tool somewhere I wonder ….

[Nipheon (Alexander Joscht)]

In the planner, at the bottom of any future day, click the “clock” icon, set as “unavailable” and flip the switch to “default for …”, then save.

This will mark this weekday as unavailable for the future. You can change specific days back to “available” later.

[scoobmw2 (Scoob 439)]

@Nipheon

click the “clock” icon, set as “unavailable” and flip the switch to “default for …”, then save.

Nice one. Will apply that when next at a PC. Ta.

[ridgerider2]

To evaluate further would require knowing some more settings.

Program –
Target Date: April 6?
Specificity:
Focus: Sprint Time Triallist (20:00)
Target Type:
Current TL:
Ending TL:

Program Settings –
Readiness (if Event is Target Type):
Max hours: 12
Polarization Level (4:1 is default):
Periodization Level (2.5% is default):
Recover Demands (middle is default):

To make Sunday a fixed rest day select clock icon (Availability) on this week’s Sunday, select Unavailable, enable Default for Sundays, Apply, then recast the plan.

[scoobmw2 (Scoob 439)]

@ridgerider2

To evaluate further would require knowing some more settings.

Makes sense. Was just joining the thread really as I test using the platform. I’ll try again ahead of Monday to see if I can get everything aligned as I expect.

[xertedbrain (Armando Mastracci)]

This is excellent advice.

Wrt point 2, to clarify, the issue is they technically aren’t too hard but more that they are too much. This is something we are actively looking into with the upcoming update. Interestingly it can depend on the ahtlete as some can do more than others, even at the same training status. We are looking to make how much will be prescribed something the user can control.