Following on from a 2019 post and the recommendation to use freshness feedback. 2019 Strength question
I’ve been looking in to this in my trial period as strength work plays a huge part in my fitness efforts.
While hard to quantify I’m sure, the original question still makes sense to me (that there is stress applied to our muscles).
But to clarify, what we’re pretty saying is that if I chose to do strength work for 6 hours a week instead of (some of) the hours worth of pedalling at (for example in my plan I have 10.5 low intensity work, and 1.5 high), I should simply reduce my freshness every couple of days and the plan will simply reduce the suggested training?
Have I got that right?
Which has the obvious knock on effect of reducing any cycling improvement as the hours done cycling will be less obviously and weight training more.
Has anyone else ever tried to quantify training stress with any success? Given the original thread is 5 years old, thought I’d see if this was still the same now?
The Freshness Feedback slider only affects the recommended lists for the day, not the XFAI plan.
For example, sliding 5pts to the left (more tired) will cause the listings to display easier workouts.
You could apply that procedure on days when gym work has you more tired/stressed than the Planner predicts.
If you want to insert weight training into your Planner to affect the gradient and Adapt Forecast to consider that stress in your plan, see this tread –
I have tried using the linked “Weight Training Workout”. The Result is that it downregulates all of my cycling training and just gives me Z2 - thinking I have got all of the high energy domain stress I need that week. Net result - you don’t get prescribed the VO2 workouts you want (but maybe you shouldn’t be doing simultaneously with strength? This will depend on you!)
I have tried letting it get logged as low-intensity strain from heart rate. This will reduce the amount of Z2 you get prescribed but have no bearing on intensity days so you have to still shuffle them around yourself. Net result - you feel good about your total XSS but XFAI gets confused.
The problem is that it becomes hard for XFAI to understand your training history. If it includes the work, it will lump it all with cycling. I have had a long-standing issue where XFAI thinks I need like 15 hours a week to improve on the bike, despite averaging about 8hrs a week for the last four years. The reason I think it does this is that it includes the 4 hours a week I spend in the gym, the 2hrs a week climbing e.t.c, so then it doesn’t think that “10 hours on the week” is an advance on “8 hours a week”.
My personal view now is keep it entirely separate and just work your days around it. Using the freshness slider could be useful as ridgeraider suggests.
