Haven’t had a chance to test our the new sessions feature? Signature a little lower than you think it might be? Or don’t want to try the Ronnestad workout on your own?
Come join me for an Xert group breakthrough session tomorrow at 11:00am EST! These breakthrough sessions are a great chance for you to come try our new sessions feature, as well as get a great training session in! We’ll be riding the famous Ronnestad workout together as a group while trying to reset our fitness signatures! It’s a very motivating experience to see so many athletes smash a BT all together! Get some of your friends to come out and try it too
To participate, all you’ll need is either the Xert Player (iOS) or Xert EBC (Android), plus the ability to see a web browser (laptop/desktop hooked up to a larger screen works well).
Well, I’d say that was “fun” - and I successfully snagged myself a hefty BT! Great session today! Hope to have even more join us in the future - it’s worth the pain!
The next Xert OPEN Breakthrough session is posted for this Friday! Haven’t had a chance to ride the infamous Ronnestad workout? Here’s your chance to ride it alongside other Xert users! After all, misery loves company!
It’s actually a lot of fun to do as a group and much less difficult and painful than Scott says it is. The way the workout is designed, you don’t need to do every interval perfectly. Do what you can and make it part of your regular training.
I am not a ‘group’ person and timed events only put unneeded pressure in my schedule, so I have not been following the new session feature. However, I just noticed among the ‘breakthrough’ workouts the one titled ‘Mastering Xert - 101 Workout’ that looks interesting. The issue is that the description is not helpful at all if one wishes to do the workout solo, and the MPA curve doesn’t ever get too low… Where is/are the breakthrough/s supposed to happen? Only at the bottom two sprints?
Sessions can either be solo or group based.
Group sessions are scheduled in advance while a solo session can be created and joined immediately (or scheduled a few minutes from now with a warm-up in slope mode).
Group sessions can be private amongst club/team members or group of ride buddies or marked public which any Xert user is welcome to join.
Some public group sessions are hosted by Xert and those can be lesson based (Academy 101, 201) or they are titled “breakthrough” sessions.
Academy sessions will have a mostly low intensity workout you ride while listening to a lesson/slideshow presented by @ManofSteele.
Breakthrough sessions will include a much tougher workout designed to achieve a breakthrough under encouragement by the Xert host and with group dynamics at play.
Each rider is suffering in tandem based on their own fitness signature and you’ll likely push yourself harder than you would your own.
A rider board displays relative efforts and any breakthroughs achieved during the session. Even if you don’t have a breakthrough it’s a different experience riding in a group with an option to chat if you’d like.
Group sessions are a bit sparse at the moment since it’s off-season for indoor riding.
There have been requests to record them so they can be run on-demand as a solo session but I’m not sure if/when that may happen.
Thank you, although my question was not about sessions in general, but about the specific breakthrough workout that apparently can be run as a regular workout, no session involved (it just shows up under a ‘breakthrough’ workout search)…
XO, Workouts, search for “breakthrough” will list all the workouts designed to induce a BT event. Try them all over time (preferably when you are fresh) and see which ones you like the best. Most are designed to be ridden in slope mode where you try to match or exceed the prescribed power intervals, plus sprint as hard and long as you can (5-7 secs minimum).
XATA won’t recommend these workouts but does warn you when your fitness signature becomes stale (3 weeks without any BT events during normal training). That means it’s time to manually select a breakthrough workout from the library or join a tough group ride or Zwift race that challenges you to the same extent.
Best results will be obtained when you are feeling fresh and are up for the challenge.
BTs occur anytime you draw down MPA and exceed expected limits based on your current fitness signature or you exceed your current PP during a sprint effort. A new PP value may be a derived number based on how well you can sprint while fatigued.
Something else you might consider are hardness tests. Search the library for “hardness” to view them all. Start with one that matches your current status (ex, 3 stars = 3 diamonds) and see how far up the ladder you can go. They are designed to test your hardness so failure is to be expected when you reach a level beyond your current capabilities.
Thank you for reminding me of the hardness tests. My problem with breakthroughs is that I find no motivation in all-out sprinting (they leave my heart in tatters and make me hate the bike), and endurance at a higher power is my only real (vague) target (no races, no pals to beat, etc.), so it takes longer efforts to draw down the MPA enough.
You can breakthrough in so many different ways. If you don’t like hard, sprinty efforts (maybe this is undertrained?) you can draw down MPA until it gets close to TP and then look to breakthrough that way. Remember that there are essentially 2 general categories of breakthroughs:
Try and exceed MPA by going all out. This isn’t always a sprint. Sometimes MPA may come down to some value near your TP and you then try as hard as you can to go over it and sustain that effort.
Hold onto power above TP for as long as you can. This can also be a hard, sprinty effort or something just above TP. The idea is to hold the power and wait for MPA to come down. Note that in in this approach, you should still attempt to hold on to power as it declines from fatigue. That natural drop in power at the moment of failure helps identify how MPA behaves for you and thus helps identify your signature with better precision.
Thank you, Armando. The other day I had a good breakthrough using the Xert fitness test for breakthrough version 2, and achieved it while holding power at the last steady stretch, about 10% above the estimated TP. Doing that felt even good, while the last four sprints in the workout where just the thing that floors me and makes me not want to do tests again. So I will probably choose the way of your second suggestion in the future since it seems to more closely agree with my physiology (and mind) .
