I’m using the continuous plan with an improvement rate of slow. My understanding is that means TL should increase by 1 a week. When I use the training load widget on the program page this seems to match that, it shows the projected TL increasing by about 1 a week.
But, when I goto the planner and look at what’s recommended for next week, the recommended XSS seems too high. I put in manual entries from the planner for the recommended XSS on the days I have available. The table view in the planner then shows TL increasing by about 4. Do I misunderstand something, or is this over recommending XSS ?
@ManofSteele any ideas on this? I’ve watched most if not all of the videos and this still seems to me that the recommended XSS is too high for the improvement rate setting.
As far as I understood after having this issue myself. XATA is used adaptive. It will just give you advice for today by checking the todays variables: time, freshness, XSS deficit. It wont expect anything for tomorrow and the days after, so it will always aim for a xss surplus above improvement rate.
If you plan beforehand, seems like XATA will just check your freshness and fill available time (2h here) with a fitting workout to reach more XSS surplus. It seems setting training up beforehand will not care about hitting your improvement rate spot on. This is only checked day to day and the arrow will then tell you, even if you are fresh enough, that you can take some rest instead.
so in short: no forecasting with adaptive training advisor, just day by day suggestions. It is an daily advisor, not a season planner. See it as “I have time now, what could I do with it regarding to my goals?”
If you want to plan/forecast ahead, Forecast AI is the way to go. You can give every day available time and run adapt forecast. It will fill it more gently with your overall improvement rate in mind. Dont aim too high, it will otherwise squeeze every minute of your precious time at some point. Keep it to a level that you can safely recover day to day.
I suspect this has to do with using all your available time on those training days. ATA is aiming to help you do what you normally do, plus a little extra to help you achieve the desired progressive overload. Remember that it’s trying to accomplish this across 3 dimensions of your fitness (Low, High, & Peak) which train & detrain at slightly different rates.
As @spirit68 mentioned, the ATA doesn’t really look to other training, it just tries to capitalize on your available time today to help you decrease your XSS deficit, or build a bit of a surplus. If you have time to train more, you should train more!
I think this is the best way to use the ATA. You don’t have to follow it (many want to do their own thing, join group rides or “just ride”), but it’s still there to provide some guidance towards more specific goals when you want/need it.
