I’ve been using Xert for a few weeks now, and a smart/power trainer at all for only a few weeks more. I feel like the workouts have been really easy thus far, despite setting an Aggressive-1 improvement rate and occasionally throwing in much harder workouts than are recommended.
I don’t want to lose fitness or strength by training suboptimally while waiting for the system to figure me out, but I also have no idea how to train beyond “riding the bike for as long and hard as possible.”
Are there any tips or tricks to getting Xert’s workout recommendations to quickly/accurate gauge my fitness/strength here? Or, is it possible that my weightlifting/powerlifting background is confusing the system for shorter duration power?
As you feel workouts are easy, first thing is to make sure your fitness signature is accurate, so I would do a breakthrough effort. There are other posts on the forum with tips for that if you search, but you can either try a breakthrough workout, or just ride all-out until failure (after a warm-up, and generally better to ride all out at least 5 min if not 10… not necessarily continuous I.e. can be intervals / random pattern as well, just has to be till you can’t hold the power anymore)
Hi Matt,
Welcome to the Xert Community! Building on your other replies, I’d definitely do a couple of workouts specifically targetted at ‘breakthroughs’ to develop your signature, such as this one: Xert Fitness Test…. To find them go to Training/Workouts and search for the term Fitness Test.
And preferably right before you run out of steam stand up, spin up, and sprint for 5-7 secs or as long at you can take it.
You will want to do breakthrough workouts in Slope mode for best results unless the workout description indicates Auto mode is fine to use.
