I’m trying to schedule workouts a week or more in advance, using the advisor suggested workouts. The goal is to cram as many as possible while staying out of the red, and preferably out of the yellow (yellow means nothing but lucy’s and those are long). Trying to maintain an agressive-1 goal takes loading the planner to just about every day (maybe have one off day a week) which is fine, commitment wise. Trouble is, I can load the planner up, and have it go from yellow to blue and stay that way for a while, so long as I don’t pick a workout that has more stars than my training status (is that how it works?). I look at it a few hours later, and see a planner full of red in the future. Delete everything, start over, plan just one week using nothing but what the advisor recommends. Says I’ll be yellow for 2 days then go to blue. Do one ride this morning, look back at the planner, and it says I’ll be in the red if I do another lucy tomorrow (which I had planned). What’s going on? Also, the advisor recommendations for the my fitness page sometimes differ from the recommendatio ns I get from the planner page for the same day (one wants me to do 170xss, the other 150xss) Is there some system glitch, or is there really no way for me to maintain an aggressive goal?
My apologies if I’m missing something obvious, but this seems even stranger. 2 pictures first. Capture-1 Capture-2
When I made my planner yesterday (28th), doing two lucy100 in a row was going to put me in the yellow. I don’t have a capture of it, and I had some other strangeness going on that I can’t remember the exact details of. Now, having done one lucy, the next one will put me in the red. But, if I keep working thru the red between the 3rd and 4th I’m supposed to go from red to blue?
Again, sorry if I’m being a pest. This seems like a really fantastic program if I can just figure out how to use it right.
Check your Usual Activity Time (what the stars are based on) and when are your activities (before or after this time). You’ll need to pay close attention to this in order to properly interpret things on the planner.
The planner looks different depending on wether I view it on the computer or my phone Computer capture Phone capture
What is the Usual Activity Time set to on each?
phone 5:05pm, computer 1:14pm. I never set either to that, the only one I set it to was 7am
You can schedule any workout you choose at any time to acheive any improvement rate you desire. The training advisor will account for all your various conditions to rank workouts and suggest XSS and Focus targets. These are based on your historical activities, target event date, etc. Use the Load More button or even drag-and-drop workouts onto the calendar to achieve the desired improvement. Of course, you’ll need to be cognizant of recovery demands when you plan things yourself. An Aggressive-1 improvement rate isn’t sustainable without some additional recovery time scheduled at points in your program.
Just set it back to 7am, and now everything looks fine again. not sure I understand, but I’ll make sure to double check it each time. one more question, under the “my fitness” tab, when the advisor recommends you do a certain work out, when does it recommend you do it? I assumed the very next day, but I want to be sure
Now. If you want the next day, you’ll need to use the Planner.
ok, I changed the workout time in the planner from 7am to 6:30am. the status on those workout that changed all went from blue to red. Does 30 minutes really make that much of a difference?
Should small changes in time be affecting status in the past? Here are screen shots of the planner now (with usual time set to 6:15am) and with it set to 6:30am. There are no other changes. Not only does next week goes from blue to red, but my status for today (when the exercise is already finished) and yesterday changes as well. If this is working as intended, could you point me to some kind of guide of how to use the planner, or perhaps I’m misunderstanding what the status colors mean? Planner now (6h 15m am) Planner with time changed by 15 minutes (6h 30m am)
Re-read the information under ? for Usual Activity Time very carefully. Your planned activities are scheduled at different times.
I’m sorry Armando, I don’t understand what you are saying. I took a screen shot of my planner, changed the usual activity time by 15m and took another screen shot. The difference in status is drastic, and it seems to extend into the past.
Check your activity times.
I see some of the individual activities are planned to 6:30, and some are for 6:15. This seems like a really minor difference. I suspect what’s happening is that sometimes I’m seeing the status prior to activity, and other times it’s after the activity (that would certainly explain the changes). When the planner lists my status for some future day as blue, at what time does that it expect to be that? Is it the status at usual activity time?
In other words, if my usual activity time (UAT) is set to 6:15, and status for tomorrow is blue, and I schedule an activity of some kind, then change the UAT to 6:30 (now after that activity takes place, I assume adviser doesn’t account for the time it takes to accomplish an activity) it will start showing me my status for that day as being after the scheduled activity, not before, and thus would be lower? Did I get that right?
Also, there is something about activity intensity that affects recovery time, so while lucy-100 and highway star workouts have similar xss costs, the recovery from the low intensity lucy is much faster (going from red right after to blue in 24 hrs) while highway star takes several days to recover from. Is this sort of close to reality, or am I off the path again?
This is based on the Time Constants that the system has configured for you. See Account Settings / Profile. It’s based on exponentials so may or may not be intuitive for you but the longer the time constant, the longer it takes for the corresponding Training Load or Recovery Load to move up and down. You generally shouldn’t need to change these and we are looking to provide some better tooling for you to manage things on your own. The default values (22/12, 22/12, 60/5) work well overall for most athletes.
Thanks!
The default values (22/12, 22/12, 60/5) work well overall for most athlete.
Are you referring to these? Xert Time Constants
If so, mine are set to 42/7, 42/7, 42/7 (and I’ve never touched them since day 1).
Do you suggest to modify them to 22/12, 22/12, 60/5?
Then, should I Recalculate Progression ?
Also, what’s the purpose of the Auto-update slider and what does it affect?
Should it be left On or Off?
Lot of questions I know, but also lots of doubts… 
And as always, thank you for your support.
You don’t need to recalc your progression. Your XPMC gets recalced only automatically. Auto update estimates your Seed Value for you by taking your average daily XSS over your history.