Coach Jack - Creating a better outdoor experience

#34

Hi Dan, actually our sweet spot workouts are called sweet spot progressions and broken into two pieces main work and secondary work. We leave the main work exactly the same for indoor and outdoor the secondary work just has a intensity target and we mostly keep that intact for the simplified outdoor workouts. In the beginning of our plans especially if you start at level one, the main work is short and mild but as you will see later in the plan the main work can take 45 minutes or more in some cases. So our sweet spot are not like trainerroads at all. We are not doing long harder sweet spot durations at the beginning of the plan and even at the end they are “reasonably” longer efforts. But as Giancarlo pointed out for some users like him we made those last blocks too simple (meaning very long single focused efforts efforts).

Does this make sense? It’s not always obvious what is main work or secondary work until you start to understand our workouts. But in the beginning the main work can be like 10 minutes or less.

#35

Can you post a link or something to explain the primary and secondary work? Also, are you able to post a screen shot of a workout simplified for outdoor use? Many thanks, Dan.

#36

Towards the bottom of this page I explain.

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#37

I will post something showing the idea of simplified seconary tomorrow around this time but it is becoming clear we need to improve our new simplification algorithm which we will do soon.

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#38

Here you can see the difference, the problem is we did super simplification, we need to improve the logic to make it more interesting and give some more short rests :slight_smile: either that or for secondary work we could just say Zone 3 target or a wide range meaning you can ride how you want in the secondary but try to generally hit a target of say upper Zone 2 for example.

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#39

Thanks Alex. I can only speak from a personal perspective but I don’t think it needs to be that ‘interesting’ for outside use. The being outside part offers plenty of interest and given that you still need to follow the power numbers manually (not having the benefit of ERG) it shouldn’t be too complex.

#40

Yes, you are thinking like I have been, that is why we created this simplified mode but I guess part of the problem is not so much interesting but people just feel it is long sustained, so when I say interesting I just mean a little more varied. I always thought this secondary work with just be kind of a placeholder but some people want something more perscriptive. But thanks for your perspective. I think other platforms and coaches tended to focus on perfecting the whole working, we are follow a pro-rider approach that you nail the main work perfectly and secondary work is secondary :slight_smile:

#41

There’s a definite balance to be struck.

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#42

Hi Alex!
When is Coch Jack going to review the workouts and have them slow down or speed up depending on our physical condition and change one workout or another?
Another question I wanted to ask you was the following, in March I’ll have several mountain bike and road races and in Jack’s Coch you can only put one event at a time, can’t you put several?
Have you already managed to solve the training problem sent from trainer day to Garmin?

Strong hug
J. Gomes

#43

Hi Jose, sorry I did not respond to Garmin issue. I could not seem to find the thread with that. My developer for this had a long weekend so it is taking longer than expected. So you are talking about 4 things.

  1. Garmin Total Time Problem (Should be today or tomorrow)
  2. Garmin Secondary work improvements (Should be within 30 days)
  3. Coach Jack Dynamic (Target is before next winter season)
  4. Multiple Events - I will add second topic for this one
#44

Total time problem should be fixed. I did not test it yet but my developer says it is. Don’t worry I will respond about #4 soon. :slight_smile:

#45

Thanks Alex.

I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve been training as you know for 3 months and I feel an improvement every time I go out.
Thank you so much for your help on Coach Jack.

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#46

That is so cool Jose!!! Thank you so much.

#47

I added the multiple events here.

#48

4 posts were split to a new topic: Better Wahoo Elmnt Support (ranges and .plan files)

#49

XERT recently announced a training file importer that would allow external workouts to be converted to their „Smart workouts“. At least for me that helps a lot with the outdoor experience: I really struggle with compliance with a prescribed training outdoors. Although I don‘t really like running the Garmin with a CIQ app, the smart XERT algorithm will prolong intervals if I do not hit them exactly, and that happens way too often. For me (as a paying XERT and TD subscriber) this is really a gamechanger for the outdoor experience: Now I can have the structured Coach Jack plans (I don‘t like the rudimentary workout planner XERT implements), the awesome TD app (that no competitor beats in simplicity to use) for indoors and XERT for structured training outdoors.

#50

I saw this announcement and was thinking it’s not super interesting at least to me but I did not realize this aspect of their smart workouts and I realize now that you point this out that is interesting :slight_smile: Even though I don’t want to go full Xert route when we outdoorify our app maybe we can think about making workouts a bit smart like this to extend them or reduce them based on execution. I like that idea. I am not in love with phone on the bike but I don’t want to build an CIQ app…

#51

Actually I do hate running a CIQ app instead of the native software from Garmin. But it‘s still better than a phone on my bar. The smart bit of the CIQ is pretty simple: they stretch the time of the interval until the prescribed intensity (TSS) of this part of the workout is reached. Simple but very effective.

But please spare the effort for a CiQ app or even enabling outdoor use of your app (just my 2 ct).

#52

Yes, you might be right that us sticking to indoors might be the best plan. Part of this outdoor idea is that one user got our app running on a Karoo device so that gives both a nice Karoo experience or others that want to use a phone on their bike. I never liked the Garmin or Wahoo experience of following intervals outdoors but I would say I never really got good at it either. Generally I just want people to have a good outdoor experience and if there is some like it sounds like you have something that works for you, then great. I know Xert is too much for many people. I am very technical but too lazy to learn all Xert has to offer.

#53

I started a new thread here because this one is long and this new one is more about specific improvements as well as fixing the mistakes in the current implementation.