It’s my second week using XERT and I am having a hard time understanding why my Form is always Fresh. I will use my latest training week as an example. My current training load is as follows: L - 46, H - 1.1, P - 0.3.
Monday - I completed the suggested workout Cheung CX - 3x20 with training load of L - 115, H - 7.3, P - 1.5
Tuesday - Form was Fresh and suggested workout was Funeral in Carpathia 90 V2 (L - 122, H - 4.4, P - 1.0). I bailed 15 mins into the workout and switched to a 60 min Endurance workout (L - 68)
Wednesday - Form is still Fresh but I did not follow the suggested workout and completed a 90 min Endurance workout (L - 106).
Thursday - Form remains at Fresh but I decided to take a Rest Day.
Saturday - Completed a 3hr outdoor ride (L - 155, H - 6.0, P - 2.2). After the ride my Form changed to Very Tired
Sunday - I am surprised to see my Form back to Fresh. I was expecting my Form to transition from Very Tired to Tired.
I have been keeping the Freshness Feedback at Zero throughout the week because I wanted to gauge how good XERT will estimate my training load with minimal input from me. I have also kept the Recovery Demands setting in the middle.
Before I adjust the Freshness Feedback and Recovery Demands I wanted to know if what I have experienced is normal. Have I not been working hard enough for XERT to change my Form from Fresh to Tired? When I subscribed to XERT my initial plan was just to keep following the suggested workout and let XERT manage my training load. At this rate I don’t think I can keep up because I am always Fresh.
That behavior is normal. Yellow only means your high and peak form is too negative (so you should do low intensity only… overall form is ok in this case) while red means overall form is too negative (which can also happen without negative form on high and peak). It is not a continuum.
It’s not about total strain, but about high and peak strain vs high and peak load. I.e. Xert thinks you’re not doing enough high and peak training, relative to your high and peak training load.
I personally also find it rare to end up yellow, and have much lower high and peak loads than you. I also feel more fatigued than that, which I think is also due to doing sweet spot and threshold workouts which don’t really impact the high and peak numbers, but for sure cause fatigue
More broadly, sounds like you need to adjust recovery demands (if using XFAI) or freshness feedback (if using XATA)
I am still a bit surprised as to how quickly XATA changes my Form from Very Tired to Fresh within 24hrs. For my Saturday workout the load for both High and Peak was 5x more than my current load. I didn’t expect XERT to immediately recommend a 127 XSS workout with 3.5 difficulty in the morning.
Is the Recovery Demands setting not applicable to XATA as well? There is an option of adjusting Recovery Demands when choosing a XATA program.
What is your cycling background and what are your cycling goals?
Slam the RD (Recovery Demands) slider to the right, Save, and return to Planner page.
If the gradient bar hasn’t changed refresh the browser page and note changes to current and past weeks.
Now decide what you really felt like on those days and adjust the slider back to reflect that.
Over time as TL increases you may decide to move the slider back to neutral (default).
The Freshness Feedback slider (a XATA function) only affects recommended lists for the day and can be used to raise or lower workout difficulty depending on what you’re up for doing today.
Continuous ATP is essentially “Put me in perpetual Build phase under my control at a ramp rate and target Focus Power I configure.”
Xert is unique in that it calculates low and high/peak recovery loads. Unless an activity pushes those numbers up high enough a rapid return to fresh form is to be expected (red to blue instead of red to yellow to blue).
If calculated form is fresh/blue, HIT will be recommended at or close to your currently selected Focus Type.
If form is tired/yellow, endurance will be recommended.
If form is v.tired/red, rest/recovery will be recommended.
By control I mean you choose what you want to do from recommended lists or go rogue on occasion like you did with your long ride. If you establish a weekly pattern XATA will recognize that and day-of-the-week advice will kick in. Otherwise make daily choices as you see fit.
There is always more than one suitable workout for the day (indoor, outdoor, virtual) or use Autogen or Xert Magic Buckets if you have a Garmin.
If you want to do self-regulated blocks of training you can adjust ramp rate accordingly and change Focus Power on occasion (or use Filter) to switch up the stimulus.
Otherwise HIT day recommendations will be at or near your currently configured Focus.
If you prefer a phased-periodized progression, consider XATA Base-Build-Peak or an XFAI forecast with target dates instead of Continuous.
I could be wrong, so if it’s there I guess it works. It would make sense to be there, just thought I read somewhere it wasn’t… and couldn’t check as I’m on XFAI. It could just be that the freshness slider isn’t there for XFAI
I’ve had a very similar experience with Xert, firstly a lot of the ‘endurance’ workouts such as Funeral in Carpathia are actually quite hard and it is one of the issues I have with Xert that anything below TP is classed as endurance and quite often leaves you as fresh on the planner which results in similar workouts being recommended. I’ve found this to be at it’s worst whilst using ‘Continuous’.
Again, the switch from very tired (red) to fresh (blue) seems to be very quick. For example I did an over/unders workout on Saturday (1hr 20min) and a five hour hilly ride yesterday. I was briefly red overnight but looking at my planner/training right now (10am UK time) I’m listed as fresh, which just isn’t how I feel at all. I subscribed for 12months last autumn, but since then I’ve lost confidence in the platform as it rarely aligns with how I feel in terms of freshness or how difficult I rate workouts. I’m still checking in on it but for now I’ve switched to something else to guide me which I’m having more success with.
I followed ridgerider2’s advice. I adjusted my Recovery Demands and compared it against how my Planner was looking. It is now more reflective of how I feel I am recovering. I’m planning to use the Freshness Feedback for activities that XERT cannot account for but has an impact on my readiness. I also changed to the Base-Build-Peak program. Hopefully these changes will give me the full experience XERT has to offer for the next 120 days.
