Thanks for the comprehensive explanation.
UPDATE 2: Winding down my season. IR is currently set to Taper as I reduce hours and number of days per week. Will go to Off-Season in November and ride sporadically until committing to another indoor progression likely in December.
Here’s my Strava PR recap from September –
I’m not a segment hunter and no longer subscribe to Strava so I can’t view full history or comparative stats by age group. However, some PRs are substantial improvements measured in minutes not seconds. Most of my prior best times are from 2017-2019 which includes my TR subscription period.
Of course most Strava segments are of marginal importance but the trend is notable. I am riding faster than in years past along my usual routes; primarily at a comfortable pace and ramping things up when I feel like it because I’m stronger. Sometimes that means attacking rollers because that’s always fun, or cresting a climb faster than normal just because I can, plus stomping in top gear on descents which normally I don’t do.
Free rides to Focus have become a contributing factor. That entails monitoring power by both feel and head unit glances plus frequent shifts to maintain watts and reach the Focus you’re targeting. I especially like to draw down Focus on long descents where you can get into a rhythm of pounding on the pedals then coast between efforts for RIBs.
Learning how to ride to Focus can be a separate post if anyone’s interested in discussing that. It’s a skill that takes some discipline to manage whether riding irregular intervals to drive Focus down or keeping things light and easy to retain an endurance Focus. Both are challenging in their own right. Endurance rides can lead to surprisingly sore legs afterwards but with quick recovery.
My PR’s have included some popular climbs where I simply maintained a steady pace (at/below TP) and was not trying for best time.
Example ~2 mile climb during one of my long rides on a weekend –
You can see where I stopped for snack/drink before the ascent then got settled into a pace after the first switchback. All seven switchbacks are identifiable (orange/red zone seconds) ending with a blue pause at top of the climb (a stop sign entering a highway).
This was a 2-1/2 minute improvement over my previous best time from two years ago in September.
My all-indoor full progression experiment on Xert set me up for a a banner year riding outdoors. I am very happy with the results and how I’m feeling during rides.
With ATP now set to Continuous I’m getting plenty of difficult workouts as form goes to blue more often and occasionally green. When I do ride indoors I continue to complete selections from the top four list at 100% including hard ones at a 4-5 diamond level.
Here’s a tough 2 hour one from today (form went green): Xert - Workout Designer (xertonline.com)
Xert is uncanny in its ability to scale workouts to your fitness signature and factor in fatigue (MPA) and difficulty. Okay, I just squeezed by on this one. 
But the point is you can.
One of my goals was to occasionally sit in on drop-group rides as they pass me on some of my favorite routes. After my first attempt doing that (too many A class riders) I decided I don’t want to hurt that bad. 
I am enjoying solo adventures and infrequent buddy rides at an easy to moderate pace. At my age feeling fit and being fit is a worthwhile goal in itself.
I have conclusively achieved higher levels of fitness on Xert proving that endlessly chasing FTP improvements and “getting faster” shouldn’t be your only goal. Get fit and fast will follow. Xert offers unique and satisfying ways to do that.
Enjoy the ride.
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Great story @ridgerider2. Congrats.
We hope that everyone develops a simillar story of their own personal accomplishments, whilst having a sense of fulfilment in having executed the process. Achievement, when there is an understanding of how you did it is much more fulfilling than achievements that come from unknowns.
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You may try RideWithGPS: you get all the stats you need on your segments, you can compare your numbers to others or to your own bests. Sure, there are fewer users, so fewer people to compare to; the positive side is that you can “easily” climb the ranks 
That feature is enabled in the “free” version.
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Very interesting and informative post, thankyou. I’m curious as you have used both the 120 day TED and Continuous Improvement which way you think is the best way to go? I’m thinking ahead to my plans for next summer and can’t decide what I think is the best option. I’m finding with the Continuous Improvement method it does seem to recommend a lot of intensity, which concerns me a bit.
I am set to continuous, I get intensity recommendations starting with blue stars (fresh) and the difficulty goes up when I am very fresh. Trying moving the freshness bar around and you can see the impact on the recommendations. I am in the 50+ category and often need 3 to 4 days off before I can get a “very fresh” rating after a moderate to intense effort. A light effort can some times push out the very fresh rating another day
Ps: I read that I might be able to reduce the recovery time if I truly followed a 80/20 polarized routine
For newbies I would encourage a full progression to experience the process whether you have a particular event in mind or not. Pick a date 120 days from now (or less if you have established a Base already) and watch what happens during each phase (45 days in Base + 45 in Build + 30 in Peak).
With that experience under your belt you might consider Taper/Off-Season to lower TL for a week or so then consider starting another progression by manipulating TED (ex. Build phase). Or change to Continuous and experiment with Focus and IR. This may sound loose and fancy free to those accustomed to strict block periodization and canned plans with set number of weeks, but the more you experience the Xert process the clearer it becomes what you can do, how and why.
You control the flow and direction of your training whether with you have short range goals (Challenge), specific events in mind (TED), or long range aspirations (multiple TEDs as seasonal goals). Or perhaps you simply like to ride your bike to stay fit at TL levels you are comfortable with.
Since TL is the over-riding factor in all scenarios consider this visualization…
Imagine what you want your graph to look like based on your goals and season.
In my case it’s going to end up as a rise from winter into spring (TED progression), plateau (summer time), taper (into fall), then drop off shortly as I roll into November (off-season).
Here’s my Stress chart showing that profile plus how little high/peak I accumulated during my progression (on purpose) versus what I do now free riding to short Focus points or when form suggests harder workouts.
Others may have a wavy profile with more than one peak during their year or irregular steps up and down if performing specific training blocks with recovery time between them.
With the advent of “indoor season” there is tendency to downplay an off-season period, but I think you’re better off scheduling some downtime if you want to see gains year over year. You can’t peak continuously.
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Thanks for that, makes a lot of sense. I’ve got a fairly decent base, but I think I will switch from Continuous to a TED, mainly because I have just had a bit of a break but also I did let my TL drop off a bit from the end of summer. I am currently trying for the Audax RRtY award, which is a 200km ride every month for 12 consecutive months, so I need to be fairly fresh at least one weekend a month! Also my goal next year is the Super Randonneur Award which is a 200,300,400and a 600km ride in one season, so what you did with a 120 TED phase then shifting to Continuous Improvement makes some sense as I can tweek the IR once the good weather and longer rides come along. Thanks for sharing, it’s been extremely helpful.
This a really interesting thread which I’ve enjoyed reading. One of the things I don’t really understand is how much intensity Xert puts into the Base period. I did as you suggested and put a target date 120 days into the future just to see what workouts Xert would prescribe for me and this what came up. Climber-rider type. Not exactly base miles!
I’ve done this before and got similar results and to be honest its the one aspect of Xert that I I don’t really have any faith in.
From the looks of it your TL is >110 (4 stars), form is fresh. and you have an XSS surplus. In my book you could alternately decide to take the day off. 
My experiment was a progression from off-season one star status (~35 TL) to 4 stars status (>= 110) in season. I’m not sure what happens if you try to start a progression with a high TL but technically you haven’t entered Base phase in your screenshot.
XATA works on a rolling seven day period so you’re looking at today’s advice based on where you’re at and what you have been doing. I think you’ll see a different picture seven days into Base as intensity changes to mostly endurance.
This was my base/build/peak phase breakdown using traditional zones at intervals.icu –
Haven’t used that site in months but here’s last 30 days riding a mix of outdoors/indoors –
YMMV of course. I’m sure many who compete incorporate a lot more intensity than I do. Add some races into the mix (ZRL or IRL) and your high/peak minutes will mushroom on your Stress chart.
I know I shouldn’t skip them for top performance gains, but I studiously avoid VO2max intervals when suggested. Ronnestad’s I don’t mind but 2-3+ minutes in yellow/orange/red are my Achille’s heel.
Never been to that training load so I always get easier endurance workouts recommended. In your situation, what happens to future recommendations if you actually do that recommended workout? How long are you yellow for? You can add it to Planner and then check advice for the following day(s). Intensity once a week or so may not be so bad in base.
If you want only easier workouts with the right XSS, you can filter workouts and limit them to 2 or 2.5 diamonds or so… 3 diamonds for long tempo rides…
To be clear this is the aspect of Xert I don’t use as the recommended workouts would generally kill me. I do a lot of outside riding with friends which vary from long and slow to long and hard.I would really like to integrate the Xert system into my riding but the high training loads which result from my hours outside seem to make the recommendations too hard for me when I’m fresh. I monitor my training load and freshness and try whenever possible to follow the spirit of the recommendations. My TL is currently mis 80’s as I’ve let it come down from 105. I’ll probably let it drop to mid 70’s before starting to build it back up again. When I get there I’ll probably give the Base Build Speciality another go.
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Hard to say without knowing the bigger picture. Pacer needle and outdoor free ride advice weren’t shown, plus you’re familiar with your recent history to best weigh the options.
Looks like form went to green (very fresh) which explains suggested HI workouts. No doubt you could have found a more palatable option under Load More. Or the free ride advice to Focus Type or substituted a hard group ride to similar effect.
As you say, following the spirit of the advice works too.
Do you cycle year round without any particular off-season? I wouldn’t consider a TL of 75 as my downtime.
Reference –
Training Status and Form – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
Understanding ‘Focus’ and how to use it – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
Because I never really Peak I’m probably permanently a percentage down on what I could do. I’m retired and cycling is what I do either on my own or with 2 or 3 groups/clubs. Thought the year I actually have a number of weeks off as we visit our 2 children at opposite ends if the country. I treat those breaks as my down time. One of my riding chums is training to do the London Edinburgh London next August, so I’ve got to up my game if I want to continue riding with him
It certainly is. We all think he’s off his trolley.
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I notice it looks like you had one big jump in TP and then it stayed basically flat until you’re longer outdoor ride where it jumped again. So despite the progressive increase in stress, you didn’t seem to get much of an increase in TP. What conclusions do you draw from this or am I misinterpreting the results? Also, how closely did your actual results match the progressions from your goal? Example - I’ve set a TED for an event in June and the software is predicting an 89 watt increase (from 250 to 339) in my TP with a moderate -2 ramp rate. I would be ecstatic if those projections are accurate, but I’m skeptical. That’s a 35% increase when I think it’s generally accepted that single digit increases are all you can expect year to year in a well trained athlete.
Depends on decay setting and how often you force BT events if they aren’t occurring while training indoors or riding outdoors.
During Base phase many users change to No Decay as they don’t expect to be testing themselves with any BT efforts. Any change to signature will be gradual and TL based (up as you increase training load or down if you take days off). However, with optimal decay (what I used for entire progression) your signature will trend downwards without BT events but TL is factored into the calc. So the graph may look fairly level while load increases until you test yourself again to validate any signature changes.
That’s what is going on here where 3 weeks or so into Base I purposely tested myself with a BT workout. A BT workout won’t show up in recommendations. You make that decision when you are feeling fresh and want to check on progress. In my case I achieved a Gold BT riding Under Pressure (revised) which is a BT workout I selected from the library. My next circle is a bronze BT from a workout on the recommend list during Build. Then I tested again shortly afterwards for my next gold (using same BT workout which is my favorite).
As you recover from recommended training load and feel stronger you may want to test more. You may also encounter BT opportunities during HI workouts from the recommended list. On these occasions if feeling good you can change to slope mode and go for broke with the goal of exceeding target watts and interval durations to force a BT. I didn’t try doing that on my first full progression because it was an experiment, and the HI workouts were hard enough during Build/Peak that I didn’t want to jinx my 100% at 100% goal.
As far as the predictions go those are relative to where you are now and what if you can achieve (mathematically) if you are able to recover from the projected training load increase over time. What will happen IRL is the rate of improvement will likely slow as you get closer to your achievable fitness level for the training block. XATA in turn will revise the numbers.
The prediction I refer to in this related thread was what was shown during Peak phase. I didn’t monitor prediction changes that occurred from when I started the progression. –
How accurate are the TP predictions for the training programs? I think mine is way off - General - Xert Community Forum (xertonline.com)
As far as year over year gains go, I guess I’ll know for sure by July 2022.
Currently I just started a new progression, but at a much higher TP than last December. I will have to blame Xert for that. I am not expecting similar results this time around.
BTW: Some experienced endurance riders who specialize in long events prefer No Decay or Small Decay instead of Optimal because they purposely don’t challenge themselves with HI during their training. This assumes signature is dialed in to start with (BT tested) and you continuously train without any major gaps. At some point though you will want to test your fitness levels to confirm status.
Reference –
What do the coloured circles on my XPMC mean? – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
Xert’s Magic Setting – Signature Decay – Xert (baronbiosys.com)
@ridgerider2 when choosing the suggested workout, did you choose number one or any of the first four? Curious.
Keep in mind there is no #1 entry. Automatic, for example, randomly selects from the top four. Load More displays a full list of twenty options where top four are closest to today’s recommendations based upon target focus, deficit/surplus, and XSS goal related to what you did last week on same day. As you move further down the list they drift further “off target” but they are viable workouts. IOW you have options on how literally you want to interpret the guidance. 
This year I am being even more flexible. While I have predominantly selected from the top four (so far), I also check group sessions on a next-day or last-minute basis and join one if it fits my schedule, suitability is rated Good, and I manage to wake up at the right time. 
The more you learn how Xert works the more you appreciate what you can do with it.
Something else I’m doing with my latest full progression is manipulate IR. I set a TED of April 11, then lowered IR to off/season and taper when I started (Dec 11) because I wanted to reduce my hours/week commitment. I’m currently at Maintenance in the 6 hour range. I will move to Slow or Moderate 1/ 2 next and begin an actual “progression”, but a progression doesn’t have to be constantly moving up. You can manipulate IR to match your life schedule, recovery form. and desire to improve.
I assume you’ve watched the Academy videos by now, but in case you haven’t IR is discussed in Episode I2 here –
