Hello,
Z2/Z3 FREE-RIDE OUTSIDE, graph is mainly in zone endurance. Heading off the graph says dominant zone is Tempo.
Free-Ride Outside Z2/Z3
Interesting. Looks like a bug but 75% vs 76% is really no difference. It could be called endurance or tempo and more depends on the individual and possibly the day. This is the problem with zones in general. But we will see if we can find and fix this issue.
I should also say that because this ride is designed for outdoor but we actually let the user control the intensity, our guess is if you do outdoor it will be more of a tempo focused workout. But if you do this workout on the trainer it would actually be a z2 ride based on how you created the plan. Not sure if that helps.
Overall I do have problems with the intensity. This month I started Plan: Fitness Cyclist
Duration: 4 weeks. Ramp rate 4, intensity level 1. A
However after 10 weeks training, mostly indoor , I see hardly any progress in my condition on Strava (See graph). But I donāt know if that is what it is all about with these workouts. In another post I asked about the impact of the difference in intensity power zones versus hr-zones in a Hiit workout. Do I have to use a higher intensity level for the interval training or do you recommend other options?
Hi Robert, in Strava this is a TSS focused chart. While there is some truth in this model, itās also very misleading at times. TSS focused charts push you one of two directions more intensity or more time. More intensity has been proven to be counter productive in many cases so generically recommending more intensity is a bad idea. Riding more, especially outdoors is the best way to improve your performance.
See similar discussion here
Basically anytime one of these charts tells someone they are going down hill they just start pushing harder. During a base period and early build that is very typical. So I would say there was a time that maximizing TSS was the the focus but when Polarized training busted that myth things started to change but the software platforms are slow to catching up.
Here is a video where I partially go into the importance of volume.
A Simple Cycling Training Plan: The Four Pillars of Performance
I would say during your indoor season, let that chart go down and then slowly build up your duration and intensity as the outdoor season starts.
Sadily as I am sure you know spin bike classes are the classic example of all out efforts all year round, but obviously that is not how performance cyclists get it top shape. 
Now all that said, a simple change is just to increase the intensity slider and that might be enough to get you closer to your immediate goals.
1 Like
Hi Alex, point taken ;-),
Still one question. What role does heart rate play in the workouts?
In the conversion of workout from power to hr, hr target changes are treated in the same way as power targets while we all know that hr reacts much more gradualā¦
I fixed the broken link above. So we see three primary uses of HR in training.
- Better for establishing and follwoing zone 2 or below AeT workouts
- Donāt have a power meter
- Monitoring aerobic function, HR vs power in sustained efforts.
So HR for intervals is not optimal unless they are zone 2 intervals which most people donāt do. If you mean training without a power meter then no we donāt factor in this HR delay factor as that is a highly individual factor. Some people with great hr recovery can drop in 15 seconds while others can take minutes or longer.
Anyway, I am not sure I exactly answered your question as I donāt completly understand what you are trying to do.
1 Like
Thanks, you absolutely answered my question. I will see what a higher intensity will do with my HR after the building period. However I think the reason to factor out HR delay is not very convincing. A quote: āWhen your heart rate has decreased between 30-40 beats after a recovery time of one minute, you are in good shapeā. So 15 seconds or minutes and longer are for the happy few I think. I see chances for a new feature where the user can choose a personal delay. ;-).
But again , thanks for all your feedback.
Sorry I am not fully understanding why this delay matters unless you mean the case where you donāt have a power meter. Then in that case I fully agree with you it matters. For anything beyond zone 2 it seems that power meters are much more accurate and simpler to follow. I donāt see any advantage of doing zone 4 intervals with HR if you have a power meter but maybe there is something I am missing in this regard
It will never work. Has been tried over and over. There are to many uncontrollable variables.
- Intensity level itself
- User specific
- Form of day differences (rested, fatigued, good/bad sleepā¦)
- Hydration level
- Recovery intensity. Drop to Z1 recovery after effort or back to a Z2 endurance
- etc, etc, ā¦
If you donāt have Power use HR for efforts longer then ~6min, learn to use RPE for shorter efforts. There are plenty of great champions who did it that way 
I fully agree with this as well!!!
The interesting thing is that in all apps that work with HR targets, HR is treated the same way as power with percent jumps that are not possible for any athlete. Your power can go back to 40% of FTP for a few minutes every where in a workout. Your HR gets higher during the workout and donāt see how anybody can bring it back to 40% everywhere in a workout. The conversion of power to hr in the trainerday workouts looks unrealistic to me. Even with the conversion possibilities.
Depending one the kind of interval training my HR recovers from the max of the interval effort with 10, 15 up to 30 beats, Where the max of the effort goes up with 5, 7, 9 etc.
I think that with more realistic HR targets it is better to evaluate a training. RPE does not work for me. If my average HR is high given the average power I try to establish if there are reasons why the form of the day seems to be different. I donāt need exact HR-targets, Just a better idea of the intensity of a workout is for both power and hr good in balance. With power into anaerobic and hr in endurance. See the graph from a Hiit workout.
Mmm, never say never.
I think the great champions have a whole team and a lot of statistics to measure everything. 
I want to do it with HR- and power data and Coach Jack 
You canāt do HIIT based on HR alone and thatās what it is. The only thing that can give you a little information regarding progress and/or form during HIIT is the max HR you reached and the time you need to come back from that max HR to a fixed lower HR that you consider ārecoveredā. And here again, what is that fixed HR and what is a recovered HR and what is considered a normal time???
If you canāt reach the HR max that you usually reach, your body was not ready for the effort. If the HR drop takes longer then usual, same thing. These are signs that you better forget the HIT workout, do some easy spinning in endurance zone or even simply quit the session and allow your body to recover.
There is no single champion basing HIIT training on HR alone. Not nowadays and not in the past. In the past they did them on RPE, now itās much more precise with power. The precision they get from power, allows them to get more Time-In-Zone for the HIT work, and that means more bang for the buck. Back in the days where even HR monitors were not existing, champions did that kind of intervals on a hill. They estimated effort based on RPE and crested that hill 8 or 10 or more times as prescribed by the coach. You would be amazed how good they were at judging their effort without any live information. Just a stopwatch to record the time needed to go up that hill. And the last one was almost exactly the same as the first one, but on the last one they were cooked.
Those targets will be different for each and every athlete, and will vary a lot from day to day.
For VO2max workouts, you can set HR targets because the goal of those is to accumulate as much time as possible at a HR above 90% of max HR. The VO2max HIT workouts are typically short hard bursts with short rests, 30-30sec or 40-20sec for example. The goal is to get you in te correct HR zone and keep you there for as long as possible to have maximal TIZ and adaptation.
You have both Power and HR, so thereās no need to make things more complicated. Just use them wisely for the type of workout youāre doing. Endurance and eventually longer Tempo work can be done with HR. Anything higher intensity is best done with power.
I donāt want to do hiit on heart rate alone
I wanted to be sure that a hiit with hr in zone 2 is a hiit
Are you saying you want your HR to drop down to Zone 2 between intervals? If so I would say that is not HIIT by any normal definition. Top athletes might have incredible heart rate recovery and it drops a lot very quickly but even then I highly doubt it would drop to zone 2. HIIT is more about compounding intervals and if you get fully recovered from an HR perspective you would be fully recovered from one interval to the next and in theory could do it almost all day long.
I should say I am still confused into what you are actually trying to accomplish.
No, what I see is that my heart rate stays in zone 2 most of the time. So my question was if that is ok for a Hitt workout or that I have to do the workout on a higher power level than the targets in the workout.
I am not a top athlete and I donāt understand why you bring up their heart rate. I donāt think I will become a top athlete by following a coach jack plan with 3 workouts a week ;-).
Ok I am starting to understand. I totally misunderstood, I thought you were trying to say something totally diffent is why I brought up top athletes.
So āeveryoneā prescribes Aneraobic workouts, such as HIIT based on FTP % but in reality for some people this can be very wrong. If you are strong or a sprinter type of profie for example, or just a low FTP compared to your strength. We have articles on Wā (pronounced w-prime) talking about this problem on our blog. Itās your anaerobic work capacity. Itās estimated that 80% of the people are average, but 20% are not. I also am not.
Traditional HIIT is pretty easy for me as well. All I do is press the plus button in our app until I get to a place that it feels pretty hard but I am sure I could do more intervals at the end.
My current FTP is low but strength is moderate so I could do that workout above at about 180% or possibly 200% of FTP if I really wanted to suffer. I think HIIT is better done by feel like this, so the plus button in our app is perfect for that.