This question on the intervals forum caught my eye @Alex
One of the things he is asking for, is that the rest between intervals period be based on HR, rather than on time.
e.g. I finish an interval at, say, 165bpm and, rather than rest for X minutes at 40% FTP, I rest until my HR drops to, say, 125bpm, then the next interval kicks in. Or maybe it kicks in 1 minute after HR has dropped to the target level.
What do you think of that as i) an idea for workout structure and ii) as a possibility to implement
Oh, that’s a very interesting idea, although very few people would likely use it I am trying to be more mainstream in feature prioritization rather than what I am passionate about… but let me move this to a new feature request. We are going to work on other changes to how our editor works and workouts are structured and maybe I can slide this in without too much trouble. So rather than HR+ this is HRTA, meaning HR target advance or something. Could it be going up as well as down? Meaning you reach a certain HR going up and it triggers a rest interval? You just bounce between HRUT and HRDT, hr up/down targets.
Don’t prioritise it over the more mainstream stuff. But, if there is a way that it slides in without too much trouble, that’s great.
Having thought about a little more, I lean more towards the trigger after a time user specified time period at the target HR.
User starts interval one, that has HR target of 160. HR+ does its thing until HR touches 160 and then holds that target for the user specified time period. Once that time period is up, the new HR target comes into play. Likely a rest interval in this scenario, maybe 125.
In a workout specified as 5x4’ at 160 with 1’ RBI at 125, the first work interval would likely be longer duration than the fifth and the rest period between the first and second would likely be shorter duration than between the fourth and fifth.
If anyone else sees any use for this, please post here about it.
Also, in case it really is just me that thinks this would be useful, and that Alex should spend his time on things that will be more useful to more people, feel free to say that here too.
I really like this idea, especially for the rest between intervals part.
Rest intervals are designed to rest, but in practice a fixed-time RBI doesn’t always do that. If you’re tired, overworked, or a bit sick, your HR simply won’t come down fast enough — and you end up starting the next hard interval under-recovered. On a good day, the opposite happens and you’re waiting around longer than necessary.
Using HR drop to a target (e.g. rest until HR ≤ 125 bpm) as the condition to advance to the next interval feels like a very intuitive way to individualize recovery within the same workout, without changing the workout intent.
I could imagine something like:
Finish work interval
Enter rest block at low power
Advance to next interval when HR ≤ X bpm
(optionally with a minimum or maximum time cap)
For me, this would be especially useful on days when life stress, poor sleep, or early illness affects recovery — it lets the workout adapt just enough without turning it into a different session.
Totally agree it shouldn’t jump the queue ahead of more mainstream features, but conceptually it feels very aligned with how people actually experience interval workouts. Even if only a subset uses it, it could be a powerful tool for managing fatigue and consistency.
Happy to be told I’m over-engineering this — but curious if others see value in HR-based recovery as well.
You can actually do this now. You can configure that plus button to just insert a little more rest time. You also can make rests extra long, and then press the skip button to get to the next interval. But yes, this makes it all totally automatic. It goes with the nature of how I think about training so I also like it.
I am trying to be more mainstream in feature prioritization rather than what I am passionate about… but let me move this to a new feature request. We are going to work on other changes to how our editor works and workouts are structured and maybe I can slide this in without too much trouble. So rather than HR+ this is HRTA, meaning HR target advance or something. Could it be going up as well as down? Meaning you reach a certain HR going up and it triggers a rest interval? You just bounce between HRUT and HRDT, hr up/down targets.