Hello! I’m a new Xert user and I did my first app controlled workouts last week. I used the workout designer to create a couple of workouts based on how I usually do them, but I found that the designer thought it would be way too tough for me (see attached picture). I didn’t agree, so I did it anyway and even though the app cried “break-through” all the time on the last six intervals, it didn’t show any of that for my uploaded workout afterwards (see second picture).
Do I manually have to adjust the Fitness Signature of each workout in order for the app to use valid values, or is it intended to use my current signature? I don’t see the point of the workout designer fitness signature, especially when it doesn’t even agree with the results once uploaded. Please note that the Fitness Signature used while designing the workout was the one valid before the workout, but the values listed in the actual workout seem to be afterwards?
I would also like to know how the Fitness Signature updates are calculated? I was under the impression that Xert would always perform the EXACT s ame calculations over and over and that if I would upload a previous workout, the signature would be calculated EXACTLY as if I had originally uploaded the workout on that same day. I was discouraged when I found this NOT to be true… I had two workouts where I had dropouts in power, so I corrected these values (for instance one workout had a 6 second dropout on a 1+ hour workout), deleted the bad files and reuploaded the corrected files. I was amazed to see my FTP drop (!) from 315 W to 307 W! Then I deleted all workouts for a couple of weeks back and uploaded the exact same workouts again (i.e. including the fixed dropouts) in order and all of a sudden I was back on 314 W! Although one workout that had previously been a break-through workout was no longer so…
Which leads me into the question of “Recalculate Progression” manually. What would happen if I pressed that button? Would everything recalculated from scratch AND in order? Would my locked signatures also be cleared, so that I would have to do that again?
Finally I would like to know how to remove the annoying red “expired workouts” in my table view? Had I known that they would show up and I wouldn’t be able to delete them, I would NEVER have added them to the Fitness Planner in the first place!
Please read our blogs as it explains the principles on which the software is based. In particular, be sure to read “How Xert works?” Your questions relate to how the software tracks the day-to-day changes it picks up from your data.
The expired activities cannot be deleted at this time unfortunately.
Oh, I have read all of them, except possibly the latest one. I admit it’s been a while though, so I realize the “Recalculate Progression” button question was covered there. But this is not a proper answer to my questions, as e.g. the “trickle-down process” is explained there and obviously does not work as described.
I’ll shorten this into two of questions:
Is the ONLY purpose of the Fitness Signature under Workout Designer to show the probable result for an individual with the given signature, i.e. it won’t in ANY way change the workout as it is being performed?
I expect Xert to recalculate all signatures following an uploaded workout, that’s one of the points I liked about Xert in the first place. Nevermind the “Recalculate Progression” button, that would not be required if the signature update worked the way I thought it did. The way the blog said it would. Why didn’t it?
I have been quite impressed with the system so far, but the second question made me question the validity of the calculations. I would always expect it to end up on the same result, regardless of the order files were uploaded.
It does but only changes subsequent activities if a breakthrough occurs. If none occurs, nothing is changed. (Although given our new “No Decay” features - blog forthcoming - all activities contribute to Training Load calculations that thus can influence how the system maps TLs to fitness signature parameters and thus fitness signature fluctuations. Check out FB users group where a few posts on this were discussed, if interested.)
Why do you say the trickle-down doesn’t work as described?
I was under the impression that ALL workouts contribute to the fitness signature? So that’s a NEW feature, not in actual use yet (unless I would manually enable it) I take it? I’m thinking that all workouts will have an impact on my ability to perform, even though I wasn’t able to actually make a break-through on a given day.
Are you saying you only calculate the fitness signature based on workouts that show a positive progress compared to the model prediction and that all other workouts are filtered out, effectively making the fitness signature decline (according to the model) in between any and all break-throughs?
This is correct. It is called the SIgnature Decay Method on the Advanced tab. “Original” has a continuous decay in order pick up on activities that express fitness, even when you fitness is declining. Predicting that decline is no easy task and is what our new “No Decay” option attempts to do.
