Coach Jack plan too easy, how to adjust?

Coach Jack Features and Questions
#1

I read in another thread that the Coach Jack plan feedback/adjust mechanism isn’t implemented yet (target next winter season).

After week 1 of my plan, I’m finding the plan too weak for me (possibly due to the way I answered some of the questions - I did say I wanted a Base plan, and that I was recovering from an injury (actually a hip replacement 7 weeks ago, so might not be a good match with your “injury” implementation)).

Short of copying the entire plan to my personal plans and adjusting the individual workouts, is there any way to adjust the plans? Or should I scrap the whole plan and start a new Coach Jack plan?

BTW, I did look at the Edit Plan option, but I couldn’t see the answers to my Coach Jack questions there (none of the Edit options seemed to match the original questions, and they’re not clear how the plan will be changed if I change the two Edit options that are available).

One option I did consider was to use the % adjust in-app for every workout going forward until the end of the plan, but that seems a bit silly (especially since it totally invalidates the W’bal feature in the app to forecast how strong/weak the workout will be).

Would it be possible to apply the ERG increase % on the website somehow (maybe one setting for the plan) such that all the workouts going forward are adjusted, and the plan details on the website reflect the % increase. This should allow at least some manual control in the short term, until the workout feedback/adjust mechanism can be built. My expectation is that I could make a change in the ERG increase % on the website, and immediately see the impact on the individual planned workouts and W’bal, and that all upcoming workouts in the app are already pre-adjusted as well (and I could possibly do a further manual adjustment to the ERG increase % in app depending on how I’m feeling at the start of or during my workout).

#2

Yes our injury question pushes you to base and our base plan is easy. I won’t go into a long opinion here but I would do very easy if I were you and learning to do easy is a skill that can make you a much better performance cyclist(maybe you are good at it now). If you know your body and are ready for more that’s great too. The downsides to doing easy while you recover are small (nothing a month of intensity can’t fix, other than the going crazy part :slight_smile: , I suggest Netflix documentaries, and the downside to doing too much is big (prolong your injury).

Ok back to the question. Ignorning that advice :slight_smile: The easiest thing to do is just start over with a jack plan. All our plans start pretty easy unless you crank up the intensity slider and even then the base plan is still easy with the slider up but at level 10 it will have higher intensity. The next best choice is maybe do all zone 2 and 1 day a week of tempo or sweet spot (create a custom plan to do this).

So yes just create a new plan is the best option and really should only take minutes if you are starting to get the hang of how Jack works.

Similar to the adjust feature you could just increase your FTP. And if you are not good at easy, I suggest to practice :slight_smile: Best of luck with fast recovery and a nice Jack plan.

#3

I’m 7 weeks post hip replacement, any my surgeon has cleared all restrictions. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to ‘crank it up to 11’, but I should be good to do a little work on my cardio (staying away from all strength/climb/out of the saddle work for the next few weeks at least). So yes, I am starting slow. Having said that, the 3 Jack workouts that I had last week, two were tempo and didn’t even register on the W’bal (heart rate around 120 and barely sweating), and the third was an anaerobic where the W’bal barely kissed the 100% line at the last rep (and heart rate up to 145, which is usually my endurance target), so I think I have some room to crank things up a couple notches before I need to be concerned about too much too soon.

Also, I am already pretty good at “easy”. Even on group rides, I know there’s only so many times I can push my heart rate above 160 before the tank is empty, but I can go many hours at 140-145.

As per your recommendations, I’ll blow away the current plan and start over with a fresh one, keeping the intensity lowish (but answer no to the injury question). I’ll then use the W’bal tool to confirm that I’ve picked the right settings (I’m hoping to see somewhere near 100% on a tempo workout and maybe 25% on anaerobic sections)

EDIT: after learning more about how the W’bal works (it is only impacted for work above FTP), I’ve settled on workouts that register for Endurance and only go down to half (the 100% line) for Anaerobic workouts for now. I’ll try that for another week to see how I feel before adding any more.

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#4

Yes you got it, you don’t want to use W’bal to measure difficulty except for efforts over your FTP, even then Coach Jack will not likely push you close to failure unless you started the end of the plan on day one, then it might be pretty hard or too hard.

Sounds like you have a good handle on how to adjust your plan. Just realize unlike most other platforms our workouts are very logically progressive, not just with regards to TSS but with regards to increasing total duration of hard efforts, so let it start a little easy and then building up slowly your body will build at a similar pace. If you start too hard then you are less likely complete the plan (16 weeks anyway). By the end you will see the workouts are much harder than the beginning but should feel acceptably hard.

#5

A post was split to a new topic: Lower TSS in week 5 #2?

#8

With regards to the Coach Jack plans, I feel like the recovery days are too easy. I am only on week 3 since I took a week off and my Monday recovery rides of 25-35mins are at around 102W which I am not sure is correct.

Is this too low or am I anticipating my recovery rides to be more difficult than they are? The other time this happens is when I am doing intervals. They go well but the rest sections are too easy is this correct? Also at 102W

#9

Recovery days are recovery days ! Enjoy that time of easy rides, soon you’ll remember, with regrets, how pleasant it was… :sweat_smile:

#10

It’s funny I used to feel that 50% recovery felt right and either I got lazier or something but 40% now feels right to me. I know most pros use 40% and Coach Andrea recommends 40% but for sure part of it is how you determine your FTP.

If you use a 20-minute test or you have a TT rider power curve with a ramp test your FTP will be lower than a all-rounder or sprinter on a ramp test. So recovery % can be an individual thing like everything. I would say most people should get better at recovery but everything is “it depends.” Platforms or coaches that focus on maximizing CTL or TSS will have a hgher recovery level but this is a bad reason to increase your recover percentage in our opinion. So it might just take some getting used to.

I am not apposed to creating a way to increase recovery a bit as I do feel there is some room for increasing it for specific individuals. How are you doing FTP tests? And what does your power curve look like. Meaning MMP or Power Duration Curve?

#11

Thanks, maybe I am just not used to going very easy…
The last FTP test I did was by using a ramp test. However, I do think that a proper 20min and longer FTP test gives more accurate results. My power curve indicates I am an all rounder as far as I can tell.

#12

Yeah 20-minute is likely to be more accurately reflects your actual 40 to 60-minute TT time but ramp test seems to be a more accurate indicator of progress for most people.

And yes sounds like you are just no used to going easy. Remember recovery should serve the purpose of more or equal recovery to doing nothing or going on a walk. It is not an aerobic focused workout although brings some aerobic benefit. For most 50% is the borderline of reducing the quality of recovery so 40% is a safer bet.

#13

Ok great, I will keep pushing on and see how I feel at the end of the program. I came into the program fairly fit already but had a week off from Covid.

Just a quick question on the Coach Jack plan. When you create a plan and it analyses strava, what is it actually doing?

#14

When it analyzes Strava it is just setting the defaults for the plan, so it is not doing anything that you can’t do by adjusting the UI. It is looking to determine what it considers the best type of plan/blocks that are best for you, hours, days of the week. So forth. It’s not super indepth at this point but I believe the combination of the questions, the full-control and the Strava is still more comprehensive than another options out there for an inital plan.

Obviously once someone perfects adaptive plans that will be the ultimate solution, when we launch our version of adaptive, I hope Coach Jack will be considered that solution :slight_smile: I truely appreciate the other options out there but I also avoiding giving my honest opinion so much to avoid sounding negative :slight_smile:

#15

I completely understand. I have my opinions on the others too and it will also sound negative. Just based on what I am getting here, I cant figure out why you would go for any of the other options. I have used zwift for years but over the past few months, the experience stagnated and I absolutely hate the user interface. It is so badly implemented that it feels like beta software.

With Trainerday, I feel like I am training with purpose as opposed to riding around aimlessly. I also used many of their training plans and workouts but they all seem so generic.

Thanks again for the great product

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