Love, almost Hate relationship with Xert

[johnnybike (John Hallas)]

I have used Xert for maybe 5-6 years now.
When I say used I mean subscribed.

I rarely follow the workouts
I rarely use the EBC to run a workout.
I do go for BT efforts , both through the BT workouts and other external efforts.

So in many ways I do not really get the benefits of Xert. So why do I subscribe?

I find the TP value that Xert provides tracks very well with FTP value generated from traditional tests and from my own estimation. It hasn’t changed a lot over a few years and I can recognise when it needs a BT effort to match Xert to what I think I can do.

The main catch of Xert to me is the data tracking and the in-ride feedback based on MPA and the new data buckets screen.

I also love the technical discussions that seem to explain how Xert works, sometimes to a level above my head but always both informative and engaging. That being is why I like following this forum.

[eeney (Ian Haigh)]

To be honest, I also rarely do the Xert prescribed workouts, I can’ treally expain why. Perhaps becaus I free ride outdoors, do Zwift group rides or Zwift based workouts (sometimes but rarely with Xert exported workout files).

However, with the new Forecast AI with daily power XSS by zone targets I’ve been using Xert training advice more and more. I have been using the dailing training advice in my free riding, choosing of Zwift goup rides and workouts. So for me, on top of the use analytics, the new Forecast AI, with daily generalised targets, has added an extra layer of usefulness that I use incorporate into my daily riding, and to plan my group or free rides.

[DangerDirt (Joe Shackleton)]

Yeah I’m going through the same thing here.

I find it frustrating that no matter how many times I enter my maximum available hours per week it will always tell me to do more and then tells me I’m behind.

Consequently, because the number of hours are lower than it wants, it seems to increase the difficulty of prescribed workouts to the point where, if I actually followed them, I’d be doing some intense intervals each day, and would burn out.

However, the LTP number calculated was pretty spot on this last weekend for my fondo. The threshold and peak power numbers generally seem good.

So, yeah, I’m also in a bit of a love hate relationship in the sense that I like the numbers it provides as a guide, but dislike the constant push for more time or more intensity. The training prescription doesn’t come off as very ‘smart’.

*Edit: just thought I’d add I do all my rides outside. 1 hour lunch rides during the week and a 2 hour ride on Sunday. Saturdays are for the family.

[MadTuna]

@DangerDirt

Consequently, because the number of hours are lower than it wants, it seems to increase the difficulty of prescribed workouts to the point where, if I actually followed them, I’d be doing some intense intervals each day, and would burn out.

You might want to consider to change your progression rate to slow or maintenance.

You can also play with the feedback slider.

[DangerDirt (Joe Shackleton)]

What I’ve done to combat this is:

• turned progression to maintenance or taper
• dialed the feedback to negative
• increased the polarizing so it should only give me intensity 1 every 5 days or whatever
• increased the amount of readiness required {or more durability I think it’s called}

It will still spit out hardness tests back to back or high-intensity intervals all week.

So I usually switch it to some lower intensity workouts depending how I feel that day.

My fitness always ends up being the best with xert but there’s always an aspect of it that feels like I’m fighting against it or it is set up to not listen to me. The main one being the hours per week.

I have a full-time job and 3 young kids. My hours are rigid and no matter how many times I’ve set the hours xert falls into the same spiral of pushing more hours then pushing more intensity.

It isn’t the end of the world but it is a nuisance.

[MadTuna]

@DangerDirt

turned progression to maintenance

Not doubting you, my understanding is that maintenance would do just that. Good to know.

[DangerDirt (Joe Shackleton)]

I did see in another forum post that you shouldn’t include anything other than cycling in your activities.

I have, in the past, included runs, hikes, and that one weightlifting workout, which would increase my overall hours per week. Which I suppose xert would view the time for those activities better spent cycling.

So, Ive decided going forward to exclude those activities from xert and only sync cycling to see if it stops pushing my hours/intensity up.

[ManofSteele (Scott Steele)]

@DangerDirt

I find it frustrating that no matter how many times I enter my maximum available hours per week it will always tell me to do more and then tells me I’m behind.

If you don’t mind sharing, I’d be curious to see your XPMC chart for the last ~6-12 months. It’d be interesting to see the change(s) in your training load over that time.

One of the foundations of general fitness (and of Xert) is that to increase your fitness, you need to do more than what you have done historically- (i.e. the basic principle of progressive overload. Xert monitors your progressive overload for all 3 energy systems: Low (TP), High (HIE), & Peak (PP).

Eventually we all reach some point of how much training can actually be achieved within the constraints of time each week - work, family, social life, etc. For myself, I’ve found that ~95-100 TL, or just shy of 4-star status, is about the max that I’ve been able to achieve. And assuming my endurance pace is ~60 XSS/hr, this usually equates to somewhere near ~10.5 hrs of pedaling each week (probably closer to ~15 hrs/wk when you factor in the cafe stops ). However, I personally know several Xert users who consistently hover at 5+ star rating, riding ~20+ hrs/wk. But even they ultimately can’t give any more time to riding… at that point, they can try to add in more intensity, which will increase the XSS/hr they can achieve! However, even this only works to some limit because you need to be able to recover from that intensity in time for the next training. So at some point, the amount of XSS you can achieve on a daily/weekly basis simply can’t increase anymore.

If you’re finding that you’re struggling to achieve the XSS needed, you can either try decreasing your Improvement Rate or try selecting an Athlete Type with a relatively lower focus (like 3-5 min power), which will focus more on building your HIE & PP. Since XSS can be accumulated at a faster rate during high intensity trainings, you might find that it might actually be a bit ‘easier’ to achieve your desired Improvement Rate without increasing your weekly training time too much.

Sorry for the textbook response - hope some of this is interesting/helpful!

[DangerDirt (Joe Shackleton)]

I appreciate the response and I’m sure there is something I could be doing better.

What I was doing with the running, hiking, and weight lifting was hoping that the more information I feed it the better the calculations would be.

To be clear: i’m not looking for more progression. As mentioned, I’m older (39!), have a full-time job, and have 3 young kids. So my goals are more about extracting the most amount of fitness out of the limited time I have each week which is the following:

• 6 hours of cycling (Weekday lunch rides of an hour and one weekend ride of 2 hours)
• 1 hour of running (Weekday run once a week to crosstrain for old age)
• 1 hour of hiking with kids (Saturday mornings to give them some exercise and some experience)
• Squats 2 or 3 times a week (Varies depending on a few factors but really just wanted to work on some raw strength)

Of course every couple of weeks I get the opportunity to go out on an evening group ride that is usually 2 to 3 hours. So I’m sure this messes things up with the advice.

I think the issue is that Xert totals all this time, sees the running, hiking, and weight-lifting as very low stress/exertion, then increases the intensity of the cycling to compensate. I think this makes sense, and maybe from Xert’s training perspective I should be cycling during those times if the goal is to progress.

I think where I get frustrated is if I choose to do an actual plan or goal it tells me I need to do 15 hours a week, though I’ve set my time limits. So I don’t use the plan features. But I’ve found that even on the Maintenance setting with my max set to 7 hours, it tells me I need ~8 hours to maintain my fitness. Then, when I ask it to pick a workout for the day (for my lunch rides) I find it will recommend hardness tests 3 days in a row then a sweet spot for the 4th day or something to that effect. The max hours setting doesn’t appear to do anything.

It isn’t a big deal to me because, as I mentioned above, my fitness always ends up highest with Xert. I also really appreciate the Garmin Apps and the concept of MPA, etc. The feeling of fighting against the prescribed intensity is an overall minor inconvenience, but the reality is if I’m picking the workouts then I’m not using the system I’m paying for.

Here are my screenshots of my XPMC charts. I have, at some points, started to get over 4 stars, but generally I’m around 3.5 to 4 stars.

1 year:

6 months:

For whatever reason there is a huge gap in my data about a year ago because garmin wont let xert have it:

Overall I’m happy with Xert and I’ve tried almost every other system but I seem to always come back. I recognize it is more complicated than most in terms of understanding the information it creates. So, it is probably something I’m doing wrong, but I’m busy and don’t always have the energy to take the time to learn more about it. I’m currently learning how to build a video game with my kids which is sucking my brain power haha!

[ManofSteele (Scott Steele)]

It sounds like you’re using the ‘Continuous Improvement’ setting at the moment, right? The ‘Max Weekly Hours’ setting isn’t currently used by XATA programs (Continuous Improvement, 120 day Ted, Challenge). The ‘estimated weekly hours’ is mostly determined by your Improvement Rate (and your usual activity XSS/hr). We have some neat updates coming for XATA that will likely be a very welcome improvement for user’s like yourself, including the ability to set daily availabilities

@DangerDirt

Here are my screenshots of my XPMC charts. I have, at some points, started to get over 4 stars, but generally I’m around 3.5 to 4 stars.

Good stuff! Very consistent and plenty of Breakthroughs - do you participate in any racing, or do you push yourself to the limit during solo/group rides?

@DangerDirt

For whatever reason there is a huge gap in my data about a year ago because garmin wont let xert have it:

If you’re on Strava, you can back-sync from there. Strava makes requesting your own data quite a bit easier than Garmin. YMMV.

[DangerDirt (Joe Shackleton)]

Correct about the Continuous Improvement, but with the Maintenance rate. If the ‘Max Weekly Hours’ setting isn’t currently used, then is there a way to opt out of all training programs so it is used? There doesn’t seem to be a way to do it.

Looking forward to the updates. As I said, after trying a variety of other programs I always come back to Xert.

I do group rides about every 2 to 3 weeks in the summer. I usually pick the hard ones where I get spanked. I always want to do some road races but just don’t have the time to do them. I think it is a big ask on the wife to watch the kids for the day while I go get my ass kicked. I do some local cx races in the fall. I go for a breakthrough every couple of weeks. This could be on a solo ride with the MPA data field or on a group ride where it happens more eau natural.

I’ll give the strava thing a shot. I don’t think it really matters that much at this point.

At the end of the day, I seem to get the best results from Xert. There are certainly periods where the prescribed workouts seem to match with my current feelings, and abilitiy, then I just go with what it suggests. However, It just always seems to trend towards more hours, more intensity, and then I kind of burnout so I start manually changing the workouts. At this point I start adjusting the dials in the Training Program Setting to tone it down but it feels like I’m working against the system.

Either way, not a big deal, but given the topic, I thought I’d voice my thoughts in unity with the OP.

[eeney (Ian Haigh)]

A few things I’ve changed with how I use Xert since the Forecast AI was released, not sure if they’ll resonate. I’ve changed these things because I ride a lot, but don’t have the discipline to follow a plan or often don’t like the prescribed workouts:

• I only Sync cycling/bike and running activities from Strava. I did stop syncing running for a while because my Garmin watch was including power, but I’ve learnt how to disable running power on garmin, just runs just have HR
• I manually add weight training activities using a precreated workout in Xert. Xert then sees the high intensity intervals and stress from the workout. I copied this approach and created my own workouts Weight Training "Workout". I normall do squat/deadlifts, in 5x5 or 10x10 workouts, so I created Xert workouts to represent the effort similar to in the link.
• I use the new forecast AI, I use it to get my forecasted low/high/peak XSS targets, then I do a ride or chooose a workout somewhere else that matches or does more XSS than required. To be honest I rarely use Xert workouts these days, I’ll include the XSS in an outdoor workout, choose a zwift course, group ride or workout, etc… but the forecasted XSS in the buckets tells me what I need to complete and focus on.
• No idea why but I don’t use the Xert progression charts. I like the TP and breakthroughs, I also like the training status stars and the cloured status bar in the planner. However, for other fitness tracking I tend to use Interals.icu, I just find it simpler to read, with easy comparing of rides and recent performances. (sorry Xert)

[Beutelfuchs (Joerg Schlegel)]

@DangerDirt

I’ll give the strava thing a shot. I don’t think it really matters that much at this point.

You can request from garmin to export all your data which includes all past activities. It takes them few days to send you a download link. Then you can import missing activities to xert while taking care that you don´t accidently import activities xert already has.
While this will/should not change anything regarding your current training or fitness signature given that it´s data from a year ago, I personally like to have a consistent view on my training history.

Regarding xata requesting you to do more, well, that´s his job I guess
I also maxed out my available training time and also recovery ability just shy of 4 stars.
I set xata to “maintenance”, but I don´t use it´s recommendations anyways, as it´s basing it´s prescriptions on my past weeks behavior. but I ride according to my short term planning, weather etc and not what I did a week ago. So that´s of little use to me.
Therefore, I just see that I Hit my 600…700 weekly low xss. You can toggle the planner view to show those:

High XSS I am trying to increase for now.

E.g., looking at the current week I see I still have around 200 low and 15 high xss to do.
Easiest and super flexible training planning ever…