Hi Everyone! You’ll now find that Xert can/will recommend Virtual (indoor) activities, as well as outdoor rides as part of your XATA recommendations, on top of structured Workouts & Sessions! You’ll see that the outdoor & virtual rides are recommended based on their training suitability, as well as your trainings status, Focus, XSS surplus/deficit, etc.
You’ll be able to view recommended activities by type (Workouts, Sessions, Outdoor, & Virtual) from the Training tab:
This means that you can improve your fitness and reach your training goals without committing only to structured workouts/intervals! Those that do most of their training outdoors or virtually will likely find this a handy new feature - identify which routes or virtual rides are a complementary part of your training!
We’re very excited about this innovate new feature - no other training platform can analyze your unstructured activities in the way that Xert can, let alone recommend them as part of your training program!
This looks very cool and appreciate the continuous innovation. As I’m preparing for longer rides I find some of the long endurance workouts to get tedious and like to mix it up, this is going to preserve my sanity.
Only looked at the suggestions for tomorrow and the variety is all over the board. The XSS ranges from 30 to the 160s. Is this due to limited outdoor activities that are recent to choose from, or because they don’t use power and are interpreted? It also seems to be suggesting non-cycling activities? Runs and walks? Is there a reason why the indoor and virtual workouts XSS would differ so greatly? Once I understand the differences in the suggested activities this feature is going to be amazing, especially as outdoor season approaches.
Were there other changes to the suggestion algorithm? Now it seems to recommend me quite a lot more XSS than before. It used to be in the range of ~50-80 XSS, now the recommendation is over 130 XSS per day until the suggestion to rest & recover.
Just wondered why there are different XSS recommendations for inside & outside rides?
Great feature by the way. Might be the thing that just pushes me over the edge to drop TR
I think this is how many people will leverage the feature… this offers the ability to mix in standard activities as part of your training, especially in place of longer (typically more boring) endurance workouts.
Xert looks at the median XSS for different activity types over the last 3 months for each activity type (e.g. Workout, Outdoor activities, & Virtual rides) and uses that as part of the recommendation. We did this since many Xerters might not ever do a 3 hour, 180 XSS workout, but a 3.5 hr, 180 XSS outdoor ride might be much easier to achieve (and since the recommendation is based on your last ~3 months of activity, you should have the time for it, in theory).
Perhaps I’ll let @xertedbrain provide more insight into the specifics of the new feature
We’re trying to preserve each user’s training preferences based on indoor/outdoor, workout/ride since they aren’t always the same duration or have the same XSS. Many won’t bother getting all dressed up for a winter outdoor ride for 60XSS but that might be all they’ll do on a Zwift ride. So we look a back at your training history on that day and take some averages of what you typically do, and then scale it up for improvement. It should work well unless you decide to make a radical change (like going from bigger outdoor rides to shorter indoor rides exclusively) then you might need to make up for the change on other rides to maintain improvement. Either that you settle for less improvement than what you’d normally expect. (That’ll probably more realistic is this specific case which is similar to when athletes move indoors for winter).
That looks great! I have a half dozen or so routes I normally do from my house. There are a lot of times where I want to ride but I’m not really motiviated to pick a route I’ve done before. Having the computer make that choice for me is great. Sometimes it’s the mental fatigue of picking something is the biggest hurdle to overcome.
Thanks. Could I make a suggestion? If on the next update it would be great if you could put the date of the particular outdoor ride so it would be easy to find and use to put the particular route on your cycling computer.
It’s a great idea suggesting previous outdoor rides.
For now, if you click on a particular recommended Outdoor Activity, it will open the activity details page. You can view the date, route, etc. from there.
Nice tweak to the Activities tab to include sig values (PP, HIE, TP).
Between that and the stats to the right you can do some interesting comparisons.
For example, search for “diamonds - 90” (in quotes) and you’ll get a list of past Lucy in the Sky - 90 entries in chronological order. You can see what your signature was at the time along with differences in avg/max HR and power.
The thumbnail chart also indicates if you faltered or lowered intensity on any high intensity workouts in the past. Kinda like reviewing outdoor segment performances.
One suggestion for outdoor activities. When viewing details include a play icon like there is for Strava segments. While you can drag the pointer across the chart to see how you rode a course, a play button would make it easy (tap).
I have a number of loop rides or lollipops that are ridden clockwise or counterclockwise to different effect. Some include long gradual climbs in one direction with a quick descent while the reverse is a short steep climb and long gradual descent.
Not that it matters much but the recommendations that Xert gives do not “work” for me. Xert choses my Derived Errandonneuring rides (Outdoor). That is when I go to the shopping center, gym or similar.
The advice part is not why I use Xert. I am interested in the Progression Graph and the IQ apps. The Fields MPA, Power and BT ‘messages’ (doesn’t matter if they show Fake after uploaded). The Fields are a great asset when doing Fartlek and/or Pacing exercises.
Maybe if you ‘deleted’ Derived from the Selection Plate, the Recommendations would make sense for me. But then others who do lots of No Power metered rides would feel
discriminated against?
You can Load More and pick something with power or use the filter to select durations that better reflect what you’re able to do for training. The current algorithm looks at your patterns and applies progressive overload based on them so for most it will work ideally. For others like youself, you may need to do some filtering or choosing your own. Regardless, you get a recommendation and you can apply it however you see fit - workouts, outdoor ride, virtual, etc.
is it possible to include if a ride was optimal focus(or near) or not in the post ride report on xert, it would be helpful to see if my training ride is on target or not
I am riding (and doing other sports) in multiple locations (at home and at vacation homes). It would be great if one could easily filter the outdoor activities based on location/city. Also, filter them based on the sport.
Now it suggests I do a Nordic ski activity at my cabin even if it is a multi-hour drive to the location and it is the wrong season… In my list, only three out of eight are relevant because the rest are in the wrong location.
Would also be nice to add a quick way of selecting longer durations than >2 hours, as a two hour ride is not that long.
like there is for Strava segments. While you can drag the pointer across the chart to see how you rode a course, a play button would make it easy (tap).