This morning my training deficit was 88 XSS. I just completed a workout and received 114 XSS, but now my training deficit is 105 XSS. I’m no math wiz, but if I had a deficit of 88 and completed an activity worth 114, shouldn’t I now have a surplus of 26? I seem to be going backwards. Can someone explain this.
See: Why does my training deficit and surplus change so quickly? – Xert
Also, this from the glossary –
The surplus & deficit value is calculated based on your past week of training and does not carry over, meaning if you missed reaching your target last week, Xert will not force you to make up for it this week. Similarly, if you exceeded your Improvement Rate over the previous week, that doesn’t mean you can stop training this week. The amount of training you need to perform is calculated on the current week (a rolling 7 day window). If you performed high XSS activities or workouts about a week ago you should expect to see more variability in your calculated deficit/surplus numbers. This is normal as the XATA encourages you to keep progressing week-to-week based on the elevated levels your previous training achieved.
If you start to fall behind with a large deficit, the XATA will boost your Workout Goal to encourage you to reduce the deficit. If you are finding it too difficult to close your daily XSS deficit, your Improvement Rate may be set too high – consider lowing it. On the other hand, if you are finding you often have a large surplus and the XATA is giving you more time off than you’d like, your Improvement Rate may be set too low – try increasing it.
If you are new to Xert you should find my onboarding post of interest –
Onboarding steps for Xert trial users and newbies - General - Xert Community Forum
That’s helpful (sort of) - kind of confusing too.
But it still does not explain why my training deficit increased following a workout that yielded more XSS than the deficit was before the workout - unless Xert is now jumping the whole calendar forward a day and the net score goes down. In other words, by completing a workout on Saturday is my XSS deficit now being calculated from Sunday-Saturday as opposed to Saturday-Friday pre-workout. Since the previous Saturday had a higher XSS score than this week’s workout (on Saturday), the total value for the last 7 days would be lower. (I have no idea if any of this makes sense, but if it does, is that what is happening?)
I think you are close when you talk about it rolling forward to Sunday… but actually the ‘current’ deficit is 7 days to the nearest minute. In your OP it suggests the ride you just did (Saturday morning) was shorter (and / or later?) than the one you did in the morning 7 days ago (which has now dropped out of the 7 day window).
To avoid: been a while since I used the XATA daily deficit tracking, but from memory, for planning purposes you can set a usual activity time a bit later in the day, or use the planner to get training advice / deficit / target XSS at a specific time of day.
If you are accustomed to tracking a weekly TSS table, Xert is a lot more flexible than that.
The Training Pacer represents a moving weighted average of XSS over a 7-day period.
Perhaps this article explains it best –
I had an XSS Training Surplus of X yesterday but today I have a big deficit of Y. What’s going on? – Xert
The daily deficit/surplus indicates current pts below/above the neutral position (Noon) on the Training Pacer. A deficit isn’t necessarily “bad”. Try to keep the pacer needle within the 11am-1pm position and you’re on track to maintain your improvement rate (IR).
