I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you. 
Unfortunately we can’t reveal too much. A lot of what we do gets copied and used in other systems. Some just steal the ideas blatantly whereas others look to copy the intent and do something similar. Hence, we can’t tip our hand.
I agree with most of the comments above, but i would like to highlight that other big players that have a nice shiny interface are far behind in ‘simple things’ that matters to cyclists and have a real impact.
FTP estimation and credit for your outdoors/free rides springs to mind.
Not implying that Xert team can relax under the shade for a while - the contrary. But credit needs to be recognised for Xert choosing a completely different path than the more commercial platforms. It’s an investment strategy that have shortcomings as any other.
Its taken me while to fully understand XERT (plenty of emails to Scott ) but I’m really beginning to appreciate how good this app is , if you’re prepared to spend some time on it you’ll get the rewards .
But i do agree the average rider can’t be bothered to go this deep which is a shame as i think its head and shoulders above everything else .
Looks can be deceiving which i guess is your point really as XERT is way more versatile than TR .
I’ve grown to love XERT its taken a while but I’m really starting to appreciate it .
Been using Xert for a few years now and loving it. It started my ride into understanding why we do certain things in a certain way and why certain things work. It led me down the path of researching basic physiology, nutrition, psychology, performance and recovery. With each passing week I’m learning more in all fields that make cycling all the more enjoyable as my understanding grows.
If you want a simple user experience, tell it what type of cyclist you want to be, upload your data, give it a target date and just jump on the bike and follow the guidelines. If you want real highly tuned coaching get a coach to train you using Xert.
Maybe for new signups that’s what they should first be met with. A simple intro that asks a few simple questions like above and bingo. Away you go. If you then want to delve deeper click a button that reveals all the under the hood stuff so they can learn.
It’s a brilliant system. The only way to improve it right now would be a hook up with RGT where RGT can run all the Smart workouts etc natively.
Great product. Keep up the good work. Imitation is the best form of flattery.
I use Xert and TR. If I had to choose one it would be Xert but I still don’t understand the logic of the suggested workouts. I’m set to Maintenance & Sprint Time Trialist and it’s recommending an Endurance workout. The only thing I can think of is that Xert’s idea of Endurance is a long way from mine whereas TR’s Endurance aligns pretty closely with what I think it should be. Don’t get me wrong I think for the majority of things Xert is streets ahead of anything I’ve seen on the market. In particular how riding inside or unstructured outside doesn’t matter it takes it into account. The workout creator is great - infinitely better than TR’s ( It just needs a Lap function to be perfect)
20 Minute Power is ~95% driven by your TP (low intensity). We’ve categoriized anything that is longer than 20 minute power (more than ~95% low intensity) as Endurance.
In your case above, you’ve received a Climber workout (10 minute power) which is just below 95% low intensity. Another reason for seeing this workout is that you’re fresh and at 3 star Training Status. The Adaptive Training Advisor will weight 3 diamond difficulty as better for you than lower/higher difficulty. It’s hard to get to 3 diamond difficulty with pure low intensity so you’ll see a bit more intensity for Endurance workouts when they are prescribed when you’re fresh. Climber workouts that fit the other workout goals (XSS, Difficulty, etc.) may rank higher.
If we had infinite workouts, you’d get no variety that’s outside the perfect focus. Seeing some variation is likely better in ways that may not be fully captured by Xert’s metrics.
This btw was by far the most disturbing particularity about xert when I started using it (and in the forums and on FB I saw that I am not alone). Not because of the rationale behind it, this seems to make total sense, but due to the different terminology used in many other places. None of the recommendations seemed to make sense until I stumpled upon above statement somewhere by accident.
Thats also related to the point I was trying to make about UX. If you do something different than everyone else (and that comes together with the value of xert after all), UX-wise you can’t rely on users intuition to understand it, because that intuition was formed by using the different thing in the past. So you need to take extra care of guiding the user until he re-wired his brain to some extend.
Could in this case be a simple popup toast on the term “endurance” explaining it or a link to a deeper guide about how xert classifies intensity or something in that direction…
Thanks @Beutelfuchs. There are a numbers of areas that we’ll be working on to improve. The classification of rides, focus, difficulty, etc. will be made more consistent once we make some needed updates to the algorithm.
