I’ve been doing a combination of riding per the advisor and a few free rides. My impression is that XERT is getting better at gauging my tiredness but still not great. However… I have a basic question. None of the advisor-suggested rides will (by design I guess) lead to a breakthrough. Presumably I’m getting stronger, but not ratcheting my ride profile. I’ve had a couple of breakthroughs by intentionally going off plan and can see that I’m improving in that way. In fact, I’m planning for another try at the RAMPS FOR BREAKTHROUGHS workout tomorrow or Friday in order to ‘manually’ reset my profile. So, how is this supposed to work? Should I see XERT suggestions as more of a way to ramp smoothly between checkpoints (which I’ll have to set and do manually)?
Hi David, the training advisor’s priority is on progressive, systematic, periodized (if a target event date is selected) improvement, but what separates Xert from other platforms is that it can ‘make sense of’ unstructured training (like a weekend club ride outside or a ‘free’ ride in Zwift) and fit those into your ‘plan’. The Advisor doesn’t automatically suggest workouts that will/could result in a breakthrough because we know that riders do a mix of activities, including structured and unstructured, and have different goals at different times of the year. Periodically (every 2-3 weeks) it’s not a bad idea to do a breakthrough activity to detect any changes in your fitness, but if you don’t, the default ‘decay’ rate of your Fitness Signature will follow your Training Load i.e. if you increase your training, it will climb, and vis versa. The best time to do these breakthrough-type workouts is when you’re Fresh or Very Fresh.