Coach jack plans

#21

Sorry I was in the hospital for a few days but now I am home. You are right about tempo vs tempo blocks, I forgot tempo existed when creating tempo blocks with Andrea so they are likely very similar. I need to review this.

I will just keep it very simple but trying to use TIZ and TSS to evaluate workouts in a sequence does not make any sense. You can have workouts with the same TSS and same TIZ and one can be close to impossible and the other just hard. Our workouts are designed purely based on fatigue and adaption models. I will just give a simple example.

As you can see below TSS and TIZ are the same

This is very hard for someone

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This is impossible for many people and if not just double the length of these workouts and this will be.

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Just go try both of these and it will be clear that TIZ and TSS mean nothing for fatigue.

But this does not mean there are not some cases in the CJ sequences that could use improvement or even have a bug. Andrea and I discussed them, I created them, he reviewed them told me where I made some mistakes and I fixed them. There is always a balance of less than perfect cases to get to a final result. Andrea always tries to design workouts that are easier to remember for outdoors. So some small optimizations could be had by perfecting the lengths only thinking about ERG mode.

I hope that helps. If you want to provide a specific example where it does not make sense to you, or if you want me to explain using the tempo blocks as an example I can.

You know what is funny is I used to have functionality kind of like “Coach Jane,” but no one used it (not exactly the same but could partially produce the result you are asking for).

I even want to build something similar to this idea just for creating a single workout in our app real quickly. So your idea has merit but I just don’t believe using TIZ and TSS to design logical intensity progressions makes sense. Both TiZ and TSS are science theory with very little evidence to back up their accuracy in results. Now that said I think TiZ and TSS are both useful, but just not for this particular case. Now I am happy to continue this discussion and give more depth into the problems of both TiZ and TSS if you want. I can say TSS has changed my life and brought me completely into the world of cycling/running math and I am grateful for that. And TSB is very useful even if it is just very rough modeling. One of the biggest problems is eveyone uses 42/7 default setup and we have no idea how to change that and when it it changes, maybe some advanced coaches do. In general it’s called performance modeling and has been evaluated at high levels.

and as I said sorry I was in the hospital on my phone so I did not respond sooner and did not feel like explaining that at that time.

#22

Coach Andrea does not feel “classic non-pro” workouts make any sense. Pros do not do these workouts and they are un-necessary for top performance even in non-pros. You can see another guy on here with 4.3 w/kg that fully follows CJ plans and does great. You can see another guy on our blog that his dad is ex-pro and he coaches his son using CJ plans and he almost qualified for the worlds last year. It’s a myth that you need to kill yourself in training regularly for top performance.

#23

Regarding adapition, you don’t need to do all your adaption in 1 day. You need little bits each week. And minimizing excess and un-necessary stress is a part of faster adaption. If you only need 12 minutes and you do 20m you have caused 8 minutes of excess stress that just requires more recovery or if you don’t fully recover then you improve less than the 12m. Now if you are already at a high level of fitness, I mean closer towards your peak performance, then CJ base is a starting over point, and build starts after assuming you have done a base. This is very traditional training and very similar in many ways to what Joe Friel would suggest.

People have been brainwashed into thinking they need to do long hard sessions from day 1 but then they barely progress at all through the season or season to season. This is modern marketing and athletes love intensity so a perfect fit. There are a few problems with that model but I have to say, it’s fairly obvious looking at TrainerRoad that it can work for some people. For many it’s more of an initial big gain and then not progressing or burning out. So the main problem we see is it is excess stress that is not best for long term progress and health.

#24

You can just click edit from calendar or CJ page to reduce intensity, and it will update your calendar. Also I thought you mentioned in a custom plan about an extra Z2 day but I can’t find that. We designed it so it’s never 2 days in a row. We did this for simplicity sake but in reality blocks of 2 hard days can be beneficial. I have changed it for both hard and custom plans to allow 2 day blocks of hard. This will launch soon.

#25

:grinning:Hello Alex, how are you? I had a thought and I want to share it with you. If I do an FTP test now and make a plan, and then do another two months later, I won’t be able to change my FTP the training plan I made for 3 months. I can turn the situation around. Thanks

#26

Oh my god!!! I should have looked at tempo and tempo blocks before responding. These don’t work at all there is some bug it is not showing the right data…

#27

Hi I guess you mean for Garmin. If you are using our Garmin calendar sync feature we will have a solution very soon, so updating FTP will automatically update Garmin. If you are not using calendar sync it requires more steps.

#28

Yes Alex, I use the Garmin calendar like I use the TrainerDay calendar. How am I going to do the FTP test every two months to review the values and condition my performance!! When will the new Coach Jack beta tests be released? Don’t forget to apply the new cycling or mountain biking function.

#29

Alex,

Can you comment on the CJ block workouts (sweet spot, vo2 max long, threshold) and any recommendations for what could work best for FTP building?

We talked a couple weeks ago and I’m the guy with the big ramp test / 30 minute FTP test disparity. I’m fairly convinced that I’m missing challenging intervals in my cycling plan and that the block style intervals would help me.

I completed sweet spot block #5 last night and thought it was good. I plan to use the blocks along with zone 2 riding. I want to pick the right block type workout.

Dave

#30

It’s a pretty long read but I promise it’s a good one to make you more aware of what exactly you’re doing during your endurance journey :wink:

Cost/benefit applied to training.

#31

It’s a really nice article, it’s always hard to differentiate evidence based science from science theory in these articles because smart, educated authors like this move in and out freely between them and provide the evidence part of it which makes it all sound true :).

Regardless, I have nothing to dispute with what he said, it sounds good and resonates with my understanding. The one part is the requirement for the precision of training intensities, I am not so sure about for general athletes, or if there is much proof here, but he does say find your own intensities, and that I agree with :slight_smile: I do love his Z1 which is what I believe aligns with Maffetone’s low HR, but lower than the 2.0mmol that Attia and San Milan talk about so provides a wider range of intensities for Z1 but lower. I also really like that he provided such a wide range for threshold that is below typical threshold, saying mid-tempo is a good threshold workout for most. This aligns more with Andrea’s style of training. His actual Z4 stuff is very brief.

#32

Sure let me respond tomorrow. I think working on your “FTP” is kind of a bad goal, but it sounds like you want to be able to go at harder intensities for longer periods of time. If you ride outdoors, I would follow a plan that gets you there by the spring (assuming you are going into winter). But if you prefer to just get there as fast as possible let me know. It’s usually very specific training. This is like TT training :slight_smile: But sweet spot blocks one day a week is probably a good choice. But if you have time to get there then a more structure plan is probably best.

#33

Maybe a better goal statement is:

I want to improve my ability to ride at threshold so I’m a higher capability outdoor cyclist next year.

I’m not in a hurry and have actually made quite a bit of an improvement the past few years. My tested FTP for 20 or 30 minute tests is up about 10% since the end of 2022 after a 12% increase from end of 2021 to the end of 2022.

Dave

#34

I had some time tonight and I felt good so I did the VO2 Max Long #2. I just did Sweet Spot Block #5 yesterday.

The average HRs were similar, but VO2 Max Long felt much tougher and had a higher HR. I think I’d prefer Sweet Spot Blocks over VO2 Max Long just due to the fun factor if nothing else.

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Dave

#35

So there are a few different ideas here but it sounds like you are doing great.

  1. Periodization - Base+build+peak
  2. Sweet spot vs VO2max long
  3. Difference between ramp and 20+ minute test

For #1 with Coach Jack you can select an event date in the spring and he will give you the 3 blocks of training.

#3 - There is nothing wrong with having a disconnect between ramp test and longer tests. It just means you have a higher anaerobic work capacity (W’) than average. This might mean you have a higher fast twitch muscle ratio. There is no reason to try to “fix” this.

So with regards to your goal, if you do have a strong W’ then in races or fast group rides you would find that you can out sprint guys that have a similar FTP on flat or W/KG on hills. So you goal of improving your ability to sustain closer to threshold makes sense especially if you are targeting less than one hour events/activities. If you are trying to keep up on events greater than one hour than that goal makes less sense.

As your base+build+peak block progresses you want to get more and more specific to your goals.

Once you really clarify your goals less than 1 hour or greater (actual goal duration) than it helps us set better path forward.

We believe for riders that don’t love indoor suffering than outdoor suffering is far superior, or at least way more fun :slight_smile:

#36

This feature is done now :slight_smile: If you change your FTP you will see this. This only works for calendar sync not if you send a full plan to garmin.

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New CJ is coming this next week to production but it still does not have new MTB specific goals. Creating new more specific goals is something that we consider important but we still just are trying to get all the basics working “perfectly.”

#37

One more concept that has recent interest is this Zone 2 “promise” of improving your power to heart rate. Suffering is more related to how high your heart rate is, so if you become an aerobic monster, then doing sweet spot efforts can be close to zone 2 heart rate so it feels comfortable. This is a great advantage but takes a fair amount of faith and dedication.

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#38

I don’t race and just ride for fun so the goal would be to go longer. I’ve done a couple 50 mile rides so a stretch goal would be a 100 mile ride.

Dave

#39

Sure, cool. So the key there is a weekly long ride that just keeps increasing in duration.

#40

Just signed up for a month and created an Italian Plan from CJ.
The threshold workouts look very light. I am quite an experienced cyclist and for a Threshold workout three weeks into a 4 week plan to have the total of 2 minutes and 15 seconds at 100% of FTP seems rather light. The rest of the 105 minute workout is basically warm up/cd and some light work in between.

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