So in the video about planning and adaptive suggestions, you talk about how if youâre tired you get a suggested endurance activity instead of harder intervals. But what if youâre always tired when train time comes because every day you ride the calendar then marks the next day as tired? Just curious I havenât used it long enough to see how things are changed up.
Also, this is more of a subjective answer depending on the person I suppose, but how do you figure youâre tired? Like I did a race yesterday but it was only 35 minutes. It was hard and all but I donât really feel that tired today. I know I can adjust the freshness setting, but this is more a question of knowing when I should adjust it. I can tell I did the race yesterday so maybe I am tired. I bet I could do a pretty good ride later today though too. So maybe Iâm not that tired⊠just a wee bit tired
There is a BIG difference between saying that âyouâre tiredâ vs. âyou have tired statusâ. Our system only knows the latter and canât possibly know the former from just your power data. Hence, if youâre not really tired and wish the system to give you a more challenging workout, you can move the Freshness Feedback slider over or you could just pick and more challlenging workout. Itâs not uncommon to see several weeks of tired training status if you are apt to do intensity even on days when you should be riding easy. But from the calendar, youâll be able to ascertain that if youâve had many weeks of yellow, youâre starting to play with fire in terms of overtraining and you may want to pay more closer attention to the signs. Taking some recovery time or reducing intensity is something youâll want to do to avoid that.
Yes I totally get that part. I already played with the freshness slider a bit to approximate how I feel.
I was more asking, if suppose I donât play with the freshness slider and the system is marking me as tired every day, would it never suggest hard activities? I think I can actually just go play with this in the planner and see for myself. Iâm just being lazy
Yes thatâs what Iâm seeing. I experimented a bit with the planner and can see the same thing. So my question is, if youâre always yellow you never get the harder interval workouts. Is this just the Xert way of saying to take a day off?
Before I set my freshness level a bit differently, one of my workouts previously turned me yellow a whole week. I thought that was a little extreme so I adjusted the freshness in response. I think at the time my FTP was being estimated too low though. Iâm just coming back from off season and hadnât done much to try hard lately. So this last week I had two breakthrough races now that Iâve started up a bit more seriously. Maybe the long yellow week was a result of the hard effort compared to what the system thought my FTP was at the time.
Anyway, super fun playing with it. Iâll stick with it for a season! Just wanted to make sure I donât get assigned endurance training for the rest of forever đ”âđ«
If you follow XATA recommendations youâll get back to blue since youâll only ride endurance activities, allowing high and peak form to recover⊠after that it would recommend harder activities again (depending on phase, athlete type etc).
It really shouldnât be called tired status though, as itâs not at all suggesting a day off or even a super easy day. Itâs actually the mechanism to polarise your training to prevent getting overly fatigued, rather than saying you already are overly fatiguedâŠ
I think many people might start to realize that they were going too hard, too often as they come to Xert from other platforms. Youâll see this when there are extended periods of yellow training status (yellow for days, weeks, even months for some!). If youâre not allowing your high intensity systems to recover adequately, you may not be getting as much out of a HIIT session as if you wait patiently for a couple of extra days for the freshness to fully return.
Excellent videos.
After unsubbing 5 months ago, watching these has prompted me to sign up to Xert again.
No platform is perfect, but there many features of Xert which I greatly miss.
Most of all is the simple fact that I was definitely at my fitness/strongest while using Xert as opposed to itâs competitors.
Now if I can just get it to sync with Garmin Connect 5 months worth of activities
Are you completing the hard ones at 100% intensity or dialing things down to finish them?
IME the hard ones recommended are doable although some go right to the edge of that cliff.
What is an example workout you struggled with?
Yeah SMART - 4x8 min @ 150XSSR at 100% this morning. Failed but got further than I thought I would after Deadlifts & Squats yesterday.
Definitely pushed me on the edge of that cliff for a long time. Think I would have completed it without fatigue already present.
Enjoyed the small improvements of the Session Player UI since last time I used it.
That is a 3-1/2 diamond workout from the Coach shared folder.
I take it you are at 3 stars status or higher at the moment.
Normally a workout matching your difficulty level should be achievable at 100% but no doubt deadlifts/squats the day before is a contributing factor.
Was it one of the top recommended workouts or something you selected on purpose for the challenge?
Was your form yellow, blue or green?
Yes, just nudged up to 4stars yesterday which is nice.
It was a recommended workout, I only ever select a recommended workout. Tomorrow Iâll be trying SMART - Ready to Start which will be a real challenge. Although Iâm 4 star, that is mostly achieved from my outdoor power. Indoors things to get really really difficult at around 100 Difficulty, when I can do it much easier outdoors.
I just wanted to +1 and say that this video series is great and that they clarify a lot of questions that I had when I joined the platform a month and a half ago. Thanks for the time youâre putting into them Scott. Looking forward to the 3rd of the series!
I think you may enjoy that style of hard workout.
Initially I dreaded the possibility of the Ronnestad workout but then learned I do well with spikey intervals. My nemesis is V02 max efforts longer than 2 minutes. But red spikes in a row with just enough blue in between are my thing. YMMV
With workouts like Ready to Start youâll notice the intervals taper down by the last set (by watts, duration, count or combo) as fatigue sets in and difficulty increases. That is a major benefit of Xertâs curated SMART workouts. Survive the hump and you should do fine with the rest. Plus you can preview expected results in Workout Designer against your current signature. Should you decide to design workouts of your own, the same principals apply. Youâll know if your creation is going to be Frankenstein or not before you ride it.
@ManofSteele Is that really true? In my understanding, if you follow the XATA to the point, whenever your status turns back to blue or green, you will be asked to add intensity (assuming your athlete type is set to >20min). And that will put you back to yellow for that day right after uploading the workout.
So looking retrospectively at the planning calendar that would leed to see yellow only for the whole past.
Now it sounds like that (following XATA 100%) is a bad thing to do?
Or did I get something wrong?
Youâre correct, in a sense. But think of it this way - if using XATA, youâre only going to start HIIT sessions when fresh (though you might not see this is you have your training status âAs Ofâ time set to the end of the day). So although you may see lots of yellow in the calendar, youâre only dipping back into HIIT when youâre recovered and ready to go!
On the other hand, what Iâve seen (in many different usersâ accounts) from users that are racing Zwift races multiple times per week or are doing hard intervals 3+ times per week, theyâre starting many of those HIIT sessions from a yellow status (only pushing them further into the yellow for an even longer period of time). Hopefully that makes sense!
