New is always good. Still trying to sort it out, but itâs obviously a reply to TRâs AT and TN.
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I donât think is a reply to TR⌠TR is still playing catching up!
TR waited too long to give the leap IMHO.
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Hi @xertedbrain ,
Can you give a bit more info about the challenge feature?
Is there any different training structure behind it? I mean is just a build phase?
Great to see you guys are always creating new tools and leading the pack⌠not just reacting to other market players. KUDUS!
I dont get how anything of xert can possibly be a replie to trainerroadâs trainnow. Xata IS basically trainnow and is around how many years already?
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I agree completely.
I was a TR user and still use their forum which is a wealth of knowledge and have some good people in it.
But when I see their discussion around TA and TN⌠is painful to see the level of fanatism.
They canât understand that what TR is trying to do now is a very shy attempt to catch the train that already left a few years ago (not just by Xert)
I stopped my subscription after many failed workouts. The final drop was that in the podcast they say âFTP is not everythingâ a million times⌠but all plans are based on your FTP.
TR have a good branding and thatâs all!
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The intent behind the new program types is to provide some additional motivation for athletes. Many donât have specific goals like target events so we added Continuous Improvement and Challenge. Continuous Improvement doesnât have a end date. Itâll will help you see, relative to your Athlete Type and Improvement Rate where you were 6 weeks ago and where youâll be 6 weeks from now if you maintain the Improvement Rate. Focus is on your Athlete Type but not as specific as you would get in the Build phase with a Target event training program. With Challenge, you have an âtarget event dateâ set to 30 days from the start of the challenge. This is more to give you a target and to create some discipline around meeting that target. The challenge would be to maintain the improvement rate for the 30 days. Focus is like Continuous Improvement - it is on your Athlete Type but not as specific as the Build phase of the Target Event training program.
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this is definitely a step in the direction I was hoping for. There is one more constraint that I would love to see set in the goals aspect and that is available time per week and maximum time per workout. That would help inform both the program as well as the user what is real. If I have say 5h per week with 1 hour avg per workout then it is unlikely I will do more than 5 workouts per week. With this in mind there is a limit to what can be achieved and how to mix intensity and duration. I suspect there are aspects within the planner that allow for this already but for folks that just want to set it and see it this might be easier.
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I would up vote +10 times if I could.
Edit: or at least define the max available time per week
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Definitely understand where youâre coming from. However, you can always filter by workout duration directly from the training tab. If youâre doing 5 hours/week (and not expecting your time availability to change), you can leave improvement rate at maintenance and expect to see approximately 5 hours/week recommended. Hopefully that makes sense!
Is not as clean IMHO. We might have achieved the max available hours but not the max intensity that we can sustain.
Weâve talked about this in podcasts. While it seems like a logical thing to have, the complexity of it is quite significant and the system is totally workable as is to give you the same thing. The Improvement Rate defines the time per week needed so modify the Improvement Rate to meet your available time. You choose the days you prefer to do workouts and the system will use your previous workouts/activities on those days to make a recommendation. If you have more or less time that youâve had in the past, use the workout filter to make adjustments.
Most people have varying schedules every week. Rather input your schedule and ask the system to fit training into it, simply use the system decide on which days you wish to train. This is âsix and one-half-dozenâ as we say in English meaning they are essentially the same.
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Here is my BIG issue with XERT⌠the data and info is scattered all over the place and sometimes not in the way that all people consume info. Of course it would be ideal IMHO if Xert had someone whoâs main task was to ensure a consice and understandable means of teaching and interacting with the user base primarily with how to use XERT and feeding back to the programmers what might improve the UX that would be a huge thing.
I think that you guys all know how to use the program⌠but getting that info into the hands of the users??? it is important to remember: if you are getting questions it is because 1- people do NOT understand and 2- they want to understand.
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I agree with you that is easy to work around. Thatâs why I used the expression âas cleanâ.
I still follow XATA recommendations, but I created my own steady progression in a spreadsheet and just twick the XSS recomended (intensity)
I might not be doing full use of Xert⌠but itâs how I understand it at the moment.
Well, in the DCRainmaker article about TrainNow, Ray and Armando had a back n forth about it in the comments section, and Ray leveled some criticism at the workaround a Xert user usesâŚsetting a date in the past for the event date. I think these new Xert features are most definitely a response to TrainNow and specifically Rayâs criticism. As far as âcatching upâ, TrainNow just took a leap ahead, since it uses machine learning.
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Your use of the word âfanatismâ in your reply is bit ironic. At any rate, Trainerroad is using machine learning now. Itâs in beta, but the potential is huge. Xert uses a legacy approach, a 3 variable bannister model.
Making the choice explicit has always been in our plans. Adding a Challenge we thought was also interesting since the goal of simple Improvement is relative and doesnât every end. A challenge can be a good carrot to reach.
As far as ML is concerned, we havenât done it since there are many issues in using ML with cycling power data and weâre not ones to jump on the band wagon because itâs good marketing. Iâm sure others will find ways to use it somewhat well but I suspect they may have more challenges dealing with the broad range of users and their data than a more robust, fully-understood, analytical model. ML black boxes like NNs will be hard to corral and constraining since how they work is out of your control.
I havenât seen the DCRainmaker video yet - Iâll check it.
To be clear Iâm not a huge fan of Xert user interface neither. It have its quirks.
The use of the word fanatic might have been slightly extreme but it was to convey the thought that some people defend TR in the same fashion of defending a football club and not for what it is - a service that you pay for.
For what I read about the new TR features (because I canât teste it) I would use the expression âmachine learningâ for something bigger than after you finished Antilope +3 asking how do you feel and next time recommend +2 or +4 depending on your answer. And yes, analize trends of how many people donât pass the first week of build phase is not machine learning neither.
There is plenty of scope for me to be wrong (Iâm a weekend warrior with bills to pay) but I stopped reading the TR thread about it because I just want to shout: âTHE KING IS NAKED!!!â
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