Hi All,
Just finished a 334 XSS ride, have met the hours and XSS for the week. But the advisor shows this:
It SHOULD be suggesting a Recovery Ride. What is going on?
Freshness feedback = 9 – I need to do this, otherwise it shows me tired for the next 7-10 days. Seems like Xert doesn’t get my training yet, despite having weeks of data.
Thanks
I just ignore the workout goal, before or after a workout. I have the time to train when I have the the time.
Of course I will ignore, because it doesn’t make any sense. However, It doesn’t inspire trust in the process and It would be nice to understand what’s going on.
I’m reading it a bit differently from you.
I read that you achieved the recommended training (zero hours requires). Nevertheless if you want to do an extra workout (253 xss training surplus) you can and the recommendation is as follow…
You are in Moderate-2, which is a high level of progression IMO. If you change the settings to slow or moderate-1, I’ll guess the advice will be different and more in-line with your expectations.
Keep in mind that Xert will never tell you to stop and rest. It will always offer an advice based on your TL and settings. You are the one to manage fatigue.
Why would I even consider doing that if I’m doing ok and the hours and XSS match my expectations?
This is what I’m questioning. Why would it even suggest a that kind of work?. It would break the progression and create disruptive strain. I would understand it if I was behind in XSS.
I was suggesting it as an experiment to see the difference in XATA advice. Not for you to change your planning.
Exactly. That’s why Xert is telling you that you need zero hours of training to keep the progression and everything else is a surplus. Back to my 3rd paragraph, you are the one telling Xert that you can pile-up strain in that amount (moderate-2)
You won’t see a recovery ride recommendation if your status isn’t red (“Very Tired”), even if you’re ahead of plan. You won’t get a recommendation to do a workout with 1 or 2 XSS. You’ll get a recommendation to do a workout that would be similar to what you normally would do on that day.
As mentioned, you should ride what you can on any given day. The recommendation is based on what you had done on that day in the past. If you don’t have time to ride, wait until tomorrow (or the next day) to continue training. The system assumes that, if you’re going to get all kitted up and your bike ready, you’ll likely do something similar to what you normally do on that day-of–the-week. Hence the “nutty” advice to do a ride like you most frequently do. 
I get this. But why is the system ignoring the ride I finished a few hours ago. Yes, I do a big ride on Saturdays, but if I just finished that big ride, how can It make sense to recommend another one for the same day?
Because if you can do another workout, then do another workout. If you wanted to do another workout, should it say “No, don’t do it?” or “Just do a 2XSS workout”. What should it recommend you do if you wanted to do a workout?
If the needle is pointing right of center, training is optional. Isn’t that enough guidance on what to do?
Don’t expect it to tell you when to train and how much. It’s a bit different and this may appear counterintuitive. When you train and the amount of time you train is up to you in the end.
On of the things I like about Xert is that a lot of the pieces make intuitive sense in terms of how people train….Except this.
It should recommend something that takes into account the 335 XSS that I already clocked for the day. It could be anything from a recovery ride, to some short light endurance workout. Given that is not my pattern to do 2 a day or to accumulate 600 TSS in one day.
Not a bad suggestion but it wouldn’t be a recovery ride unless you had tipped into red status (you’d likely be red status for a bit but it wouldn’t last long if your training load is high). If you rode easy the whole time, then you should be able to keep riding. If not, you’d be yellow status and an endurance ride would be recommended.
The Recovery Load element to the analysis is something that doesn’t care if it’s 1, 2 or 10 workouts at the moment. Xert 2.0 should see a change in how RL accounts for tempo vs endurance rides. This should help.
We try our best not to impose some predefined belief of what training should be recommended for a given situation and instead rely on the exercise model to provide that. If what you’re asking for is indeed better then RL would need to be calculated differently and either introduce additional load elements or change the time constants. That’s not so simple since it impacts everything, not just 2-a-day workouts or training recommendations in this specific case and it would need to better reflect all cases.
If you didn’t have the freshness slider turned to 9 it would give you a more realistic workout maybe.
If you’re yellow for that long, it means you’re doing much more intensity than you normally do based on what data you have loaded into the system. Leaving FF at +9 is ok temporarily but can lead to overtraining if left unchanged.
This is really interesting. Have you looked into the study that compares the power curve after 1500-3000 kj of work between professional cyclists and U23 ?. I think something like that is the parameter that Xert, and all other platforms are missing. MPA recovery is a short term response. XSS and load takes care of the long term…there’s something missing for the “middle term” for long rides.
Good on you for trying to tackle this.
This is an oversimplication. There are better ways to account for long term fatigue and how it affects power, i.e. MPA.
yeah i’ve learned to only look at XATA when i want to train.
here’s an idea!
when you click the button to see XATA advice, first XATA asks you: Do you want to train more today? And if you say no, then maybe XATA shows a random picture of some relaxing activity: dog walk, hot bath, sauna, take a nap etc… lol
XATA’s advice is just another piece of data to help me decide on a workout along with a lot of other data: on my own perceived feelings, how my life stress has been, how my sleep, nutrition, and hydration were during the day… all that i just take a random guess…
key word being intensity right? when you are doing more volume than you normally do based on data, then we will se red stars or blue stars only?
I’ve never pushed the system to a point where i was doing so much volume that I only see red or blue stars…
is that something that is even possible? i don’t know if it’s just hard to avoid the tempation to do tiny bits of high or peak fatigue riding while just trying to get lots of long slow distance riding in…
I guess the thing is that if i try to do a base season with just long slow distance riding, then my intensity load goes down so far that it’s hard to avoid doing something that puts on yellow stars.
But Armando, this is precisely the issue with MPA. Say you do hard 4.5 hours of racing, 3000-5000kj, and you still have some punchy climb and a sprint. MPA will tell you you have 100% of it available, but that’s not true, your whole power curve is affected by all the work you just did.
If you just warm up for 20 mins, MPA will tell you the same availability as it would give the scenario above and we KNOW those both of those two things can’t be true.
Good point.
So TP (or FTP) would no longer be a discrete value but now a function of work performed / work performed above FTP and perhaps glycogen burned / consumed?
How would you then do an FTP test? 
It’s hard enough to be able to track TP/FTP on a month-to-month basis with other systems. Xert does it week-to-week, even day-to-day. Now you want second-by-second.
What you’re asking for is no less than a holy grail of endurance training. We’re working on it. Stay tuned…
FTP tests? Who does those anymore 
Trainerroad now provides AI FTP detection
And it’s pretty accurate too.
