Newbie with questions

General
1

Firstly thank you all, for any advice offered.

I am new to xert, and a little confused, I am not new to cycling or indoor training. I ride in and out door, but only my indoor work is done with power data. Outdoors is HRM and cadence. Previous rides imported from Garmin.

Q1} Subscribed a few weeks ago, and the workouts prescribed have all been endurance resulting a much lower estimation of my threshold; and easy work outs. Is this because I’m in the base phase? But surely I still need my zones to be accurate.

Q2} The work outs prescribed are often longer than the time I have available. I.e 3 hr workout when I only have 2 hours.
If I do the prescribed workout, but jump off after 2hrs; is that ok? Or will the system think I’ve failed the workout?

3} This past week training advisor told Me I am very tired and advised a rest week? How is this calculated when I’m only 3 weeks into the training?

Very much enjoying xert and the concept behind it, but do find it leaves me with more questions than answers. As you can probably tell.

2

1 Yes, with regards to type of workouts. You need to do a hard ride to acheive a breakthrough and have Xert recalculate your threshold power.
2 Learn about improvement rate. Improvement Rate – Xert
3 Probably related to incorrect fitness signature and need to do a hard ride.

3

Thanks @dixonbruce from chiming in as well! I’ll also answer your questions briefly below…

  1. Xert will never directly recommend a Breakthrough workout. Instead, you may see a little notification when it’s been a few weeks since your last BT. If you think the signature is low/underestimated, then you might consider pushing hard for a BT on one of your rides - could be a hard group ride, Zwift race, Strava segment PR/KOM attempt, or just an all-out effort during your workout intervals. We have a blog post on achieving BT’s here: Breaking Through the Xert Way! – Xert

  2. You can (should) always use the workout filters when you’re looking at workout recommendations. There are a variety of different filter options, but you should definitely take advantage of the duration filter, which will limit the workout recommendations to a specified duration:

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Improvement rate will influence the overall amount of training to be done in a given week, while the duration filter simply affects the workout recommendations for a particular day.

  1. If Xert doesn’t have a ton of data on you, it’s possible that your training load is underestimated. Can you possibly share a picture of your XPMC chart? You can use the Freshness Feedback Slider to adjust Xert’s calculation of your training status for now.
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4

Thank you both.

I have been doing the recommended workouts, thinking the system is following a structure. Didn’t want to go rogue, and start doing my own thing.

Sounds like I may need to do a ramp test or a maximal effort next time I’m on the trainer. No power meter outside, so these rides don’t return accurate data.

And also I will shorten the workouts with the selector. Once again I was relying on the automatically selected work out, and jumping off early. Now I will try find one that fits my requirements.

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5

Xert differs from other platforms including a three level strain model (not 5/7 zones), a populated calendar is not required (no cookie-cutter weekly plan to follow), plus you’re in control of focus, intensity, and ramp rate. You decide what direction to take things based on your day-to-day selections and changeable settings. You don’t set it and strictly follow a pre-cast plan. You set it, note the daily guidelines, and decide what to do. You always have choices available and XATA adapts to whatever you decide.
“Automatic” randomly selects from the top four entries but you can always recast the list with filters and make a different choice.
There is structure operating in background in regard to form, intensity, and ramp rate. This is especially true when you set a TED (target event date) and follow a phased progression (base, build, peak, taper, event).

You can ride a variety of indoor workouts scaled to your fitness signature (not limited to %FTP blocks) or free ride outdoors with a “focus duration point” in mind.
Outdoor rides (with power) are rated by strain ratio, difficulty, and specificity. May sound complex but it’s actually simpler than old-school training anchored on %FTP zones.
The how-much-to-train-today recommendation reflects what you have done in recent past on same day of the week. You should adjust the time to fit your changing schedule. If you normally ride long on Thursdays but can only squeeze in one hour this week, use Filter to shorten duration and recast the recommended list. Again, XATA will adapt to whatever you decide to do including ad-hoc activities such as an “unplanned” group ride.

Power is king when it comes to data analysis so consider making that investment for your outdoor bike. Indoor versus outdoor power will differ somewhat so it’s best if you have both sets of data to work with.
In the meantime, once you have enough power data onboard and your fitness signature is dialed in, you can enable HRDM (heart rate derived metrics) to fill in XSS blanks for rides without power. HR with cadence is better than HR alone for this calculation.

Rather than a ramp test, consider riding one of the BT (breakthrough) workouts from the library. Search for “breakthrough”, pick one, and ride it in slope mode, exceeding targets if able, and ride to designated failure points at maximal effort. Much easier than a standard ramp test. :wink:

Complete academy series videos –

Watching the series (in order) will ensure you have a well-rounded knowledge of how Xert works and why.

Lots of newbie tips in this thread if you haven’t seen it – Beginner questions

Welcome aboard. :slight_smile:

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6

As always, @ridgerider2 is spot on with his comments :slight_smile:

As already highlighted above, the system does have some underlying structure to the recommendations (especially if you’re using a Target Event Date program), but it’s designed to be flexible! We understand many people like being more social & adding group rides (IRL or virtual) or races (ITT’s, Zwift Races, or simulated races/smash fests with your local cycling club) into their training.

Doing a rigid program often means that you have to miss out or pass on those social events to do solo workouts, which is perfectly okay for some cyclists. This is because those programs aren’t able to accurate assess activities that are performed outside the planned workouts, short of working directly with a coach.

7

Only other comment is that if you are not doing regular breakthroughs, set your decay method to ‘no decay’… will prevent one of the earlier issues of signature getting too low

8

Once again thank you all, very helpful and most insightful.

I do wear a HRM when training outdoors, and have invested in cadence sensor to enhance the data.

I clearly misunderstood and will pick my workouts, rather than letting the system pick for me.

I am very much enjoying xert, and it’s complexity. Hopefully get some breakthroughs once my training starts in Ernest over the winter.

Thank you

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9

Hi there, sorry to restart this thread again.

The weather has been good for us recently so plenty of out door rides. I use garmin 320 paired with HRM and cadence.
But my cadence and the estimated power never appears in post ride analysis.
I read some where that cadence + HRM can return quite accurate data, would this be beneficial?

So any idea why my cadence data isn’t available, despite definitely being recorded and there to see on Strava and garmin connect.

Thank you again
SD

10

Is HRDM enabled under Accounting Settings, Profile?
You can let XATA auto-estimate values for resting and max HR. If you don’t agree change them to what you want.

When you enable HRDM the XO server runs through your historical data to calculate XSS and Focus for the associated activities. If you change resting and max HR later the values are recalculated.

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