Coach Jack - Time limited workouts (Completed)

Something I noticed very quickly when trying out Coach Jack, is that it picks workouts that progressively get longer based on the plan (which is expected). My only limitation is, most weekdays we are limited to a short amount of time due to other activities or events. Would it be possible to set a max duration by day or even my weekday vs weekend to allow for a better customization of workouts that fit my schedule?

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Yes, great request this is one of the next features and should be coming in a few weeks.

Here is the design just so you can see it. I am not sure if ā€œUnlimitedā€ is the right word, since it means ā€œSet by ramp rate.ā€ I will add more text to explain this.

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Hi guys. +1 on this request!
I have created a plan with Coach Jack and in the second part (weeks 5 to 8) the long outside rides are >3h, Iā€™d really love to do that, but I just canā€™t due to family life.

As I have a bit of non-compliance anxiety (I saw that in another post somewhere I found that wording spot-on), I donā€™t like to have future workouts in my plan that I already know I canā€™t achieve.

So looking forward to having this feature implemented!

But in your case you should just lower the ramp rate that will lower your later weeks duration. I fully understand the family commitments. I have trouble doing any outdoor long rides unless it is BMX with the kids :slight_smile: But yes this feature will give you more control for sure.

the ramp rate is time only?
I am afraid that if I decrease the ramp rate I wonā€™t get any progression in the plan anymore.

This ramp rate is time only at this time (I should rename it to Hours Ramp Rate). We automatically increase TSS independent of the time. We increase the TSS (intensity) faster after interval intensity level 6. Which make higher ramp rates a bit risky but since our TSS (intensity) increase only affect or secondary work they donā€™t affect the whole workout so the effects are not so drastic. I repeat myself a lot but we do think TSS is important but should not be the driving factor in workout or plan design. Increase TSS/intensity as and when it makes sense to do so, donā€™t give up good training principals to maximize your TSS and you donā€™t need to kill yourself just to maximize your TSS. TSB which is driven by TSS is pretty important in that you donā€™t want to increase your TSS too fast (or go deep negative TSB for too long.)

You can review the weekly TSS to make sure what I am saying is true for what you are trying to do, there are a lot of different calculations going on here for different scenarios. Additionally we still have time variation at lower ramp rates but they donā€™t increase from month to month as much, this makes our ramp rate slightly different, especially at the lower levels than the primary definition of ramp rate. Try ramp rate 3.5-4.5 to see if those work for you.

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my usual indoor workout is only on weekdays. Weekends (sat & sun) basically for outdoor hard ride either solo or group. Do i still have to choose long ride on the option since i will not be doing the workout prescribe by coach jack.

I would choose long ride from Jack and you long group ride is perfect substitute. Jack will better fill in your other days correctly if you have those place holder workouts.

This is done.

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This time limit setting is not working correctly. Iā€˜ve set a limit of 45 minutes per day and in the plan are workouts up to 74 minutes:

Yes, donā€™t know what to do about that :slight_smile: meaning as you get farther in our sequences they are progressive and the way they progress is by increasing duration of the main work. I should explain this in the site, I remove the secondary work, cool down and shorten the warmup. I so some sequences can only be so short. The effectiveness of these sequences rely on this. Maybe I need to limit the plan options or change the plan options to work within these time constraints. In this case we could create a crunched vo2max sequence. I will do that next week.

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Dirk, do you want me to create a VO2 max crunched sequence? Basically instead of increasing duration I might be able to squeeze in some shorter rests. I need to review with my coach friend(s). We start to get to Wā€™Bal issues potentially but I can also increase intensity instead of duration to try to fit into a 45 minute windowā€¦ Donā€™t worry this is not just for you :slight_smile: I will add some text or clarification to the hours limiter too and try to find all the workout sequences that fit within 45 minutes.

That would be great. My time budget is limited to 45 minutes in the first three month of next year (on weekdays) so Iā€˜d like to get a plan with 3 x 45 minutes and a longer session on saturday. For the longer sessions Iā€˜ll use cycling classes of Fitness+ but for the weekdays Iā€˜d like to use Coach Jack.

We have this new VO2Max Crunched that allows maximum of 45 minutes. :slight_smile: Reviewed by my main coach. We had to reduce some of the rests so towards the end this is pretty hard but if you follow the full sequence it should be reasonable/acceptable.

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I saw you tried it and in review I saw a couple bugs in the a few of the workouts and rests. Re-deploying it now.

OK :slight_smile: Thanks for doing this. Should I create a new plan to get the bug-fixed versions?

Yes sorry. But I also now just made one other improvement which is sometimes 45 limit would be 43, now it should always be 45 exactly.

No problem. Itā€˜s kinda fun to create these plans :wink: Thanks again!

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