Integrated Recovery ride at Coach Jack’s plan

With my limited knowledge, i try(play) around Coach Jack’s plan to see if CJ provides recovery ride in a week. There’s no recovery ride. And also in recovery week, basically it’s zone 2 ride with low duration. When we talk about recovery ride, it’s IF<0.5 or less (i guess)? I know we can manually input to the plan, but i am just wondering will the Team input a recovery ride to CJ plan, especially to acommodate those who have >14 hour per week to train.

I created my current plan on sunday and I have a recovery ride scheduled today.

Maybe you have not selected enough days to insert a recovery ride. My current plan consists of 4 days of riding

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You’re right about not selecting enough day to train. Now it’s the recovery week that only has 1 recovery ride(green workout), (with 6 days on/1 day off) the rest is basically zone 2 ride with lower duration than the first 3 weeks.

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In the plan I selected (5 days on), I have one recovery ride, and one “easy” ride.

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So I see three issues we are talking about

  1. Missing recovery days? Sounds like you figured this out. Must be 5 or 6 days to have recovery days or in some cases 3 days in a row. After your comment though, I just improved the Tue, Wed, Thur, Sat, Sun pattern to include Wed Recovery (see below)

  2. Recovery rides have too much intensity (I just fixed this, not sure how that got missed, thank you.)

  3. Recovery weeks have too much intensity or not enough recovery rides. I will have my coaches review. “Coach Jack’s” belief is you only need two things for a recovery week.
    a) Reduced stress (tss) for the week (we have this)
    b) Remove the hard rides for about 4 days (we have this)

    So you don’t need a bunch of recovery rides, you just need to do enough of a reduction so you feel fairly rested and bring your TSB (training stress balance) down to reasonable level. We reduce both hours and stress. See below. But I think you might be right that we might need a slighly larger reduction in TSS on the recovery weeks. Each individual is different in what they can handle based on how much they sleep, their age and other factors and at the minimum I will improve this to make recovery weeks easier for people that don’t get at least 7 hours of sleep a night :slight_smile:

Thanks for the response. Really like the platform so far.

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When you said you liked the platfom I just happend to google you out of curriousity, as I love to try to understand our customers. What is really amazing to me is I would guess you don’t know @GoustiFruit but I randomly found a Xert forum 10 years ago where you guys were both discussing something. Are you friends or is this just a really strange coincidence? Sorry hope this is not too personal. You can ignore me if it is.

Are you guys still using Xert or fully moved over to TrainerDay? Very interesting. Sorry I could not help myself and keep this information private…

WOT !? 10 years on Xert forum !? I only started biking in 2015, and discovered Xert 1 or 2 years later…
I don’t know @Farhandy: I have no memory of that nickname, but I won’t deny if I discussed with him/her some time ago, I just don’t remember.

I’m still using Xert. In fact, I renewed my subscription for one full year… just a few days before you announced the Coach Jack feature ! That’s the one that triggered my interest in TD so much that I had to give it a (paying) try. I don’t know if I will continue with TD, for now it seems to be a good solution for training indoors; hopefully some day it will be possible to record rides outdoors, with map/elevation… I will probably decide next Spring which one I will continue to support. And I have no complaints on one or the other, each have their strengths.

Oh sorry it said 10 days later… I thought I saw 10 years… I don’t even think Xert is 10 years old. :slight_smile:

Yes we plan on recording GPS data before the spring.

I like Xert, somethings I definitly don’t like, for example how you feel you need to be striving for breaktrhoughs.

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Not too private at all IMO. Xert wasn’t even born yet 10 years ago :joy: Yes i remember discussing with @GoustiFruit on Xert Forum, small world huh? :sweat_smile:I just unsubscribe Xert month ago. My plan was to combine Xert with TD. With TD provides hundreds or thousands of custom plan and Xert helps to understand the “physiology” side, and the analysis. Their MPA and Breakthrough aregame changer. But in my country almost every races got delayed so :man_shrugging: Roght now just doing random unstructured ride while trying to play around with TD. Both have their strength.

Yes for sure Xert is interesting and I do give Armando credit for doing something revolutionary. If you like it and it works for you then this is great as well.

The problem I have with breakthrough focus is that even though the science sounds good I don’t believe there are any science based studies showing this works better then other established training methods. I asked two pro coaches as well as one other coach I respect and they all had the same concern. Pushing to your limits requires significant recovery, so much that it is not worth the benefit. Joe Friel suggests the same thing in his books. Not saying pushing hard at times is bad, it’s just not proven superior, especially multiple times or even one time per week. If you like it and it works for you, do it. :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Even though I am pointing out what I feel is a XERT weakness, I still believe XERT is one of the best solutions out there and might be the best for people that are addicted or feel the need to push themselves super hard in training on regular basis and getting that endorphin rush "Breakthrough feedback :slight_smile: " and don’t mind complexity and learning. I do think getting a great Coach is the best solution when you can afford it and have access to one.

I think breakthroughs are great especially in fast group rides and races or on that special day but, I think chasing them on most or many training sessions is not the most efficient way to train, nor do the Coaches I consult with. Dr Seiler, the “creator” of term Polarized Training, also says he does not feel “Chasing Numbers” leads to the best results.

I don’t know about TrainerRoad Adaptive Training. Just gut feel to me is that XERT’s breakthrough focus makes more sense than the “maximizing TSS/CTL at any cost” approach that TR has taken in the past but still my concern is that neither of these approaches have been proven in science or are used at the pro levels that I am aware of.

Anyway this is all my thinking and this thinking directly applies to the thinking that is going into designing Coach Jack is part of the reason I am sharing it and loving to hearing feedback and counter thoughts.

At some point, you still have to do some kind of test to really know where you are on your capabilities, to train at the right amount of intensity and duration.
Xert is quite good for that… Some of their fitness tests are hard for sure, but with short intervals you can get an estimation.
My problem is that the tests that I did (mostly the “under pressure” and “version 2”) always give me a TP too high. It’s flattering on the moment, but when you need to follow workouts based on that TP, it’s impossible to finish them (at least for me). For ex. last Winter those tests estimated my TP around 290-295W… but then, I wasn’t able to do Seilers 4x8 min at 275W (indoors), when the target was around 306-310W.
My guess is that those tests based on short intervals are faulty if you have been training on short intervals (which is what I was doing back then), because they can’t really estimate your capabilities on longer intervals.

Xert and ramp tests give me high FTP (I know Xert is not really FTP). I am big guy that does not do lots of long efforts, more of a sprinter profile so yes, I get flattering FTP figures too but not based on reality. I just know I have to lower if for training. With 2-kids that consume lots of my time and this project I am not a real cyclist right now. More time on BMX with kids, than other bikes :slight_smile: but still very passionate about it.

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There is a pretty simple solution now if you want to train the Polarized way:
Determine your VT1 and eventually VT2 (not really needed). You probably already know your VT2 (anaerobic treshold) and you can get a really good estimate of VT1 (aerobic treshold) with dfa-alpha1.
4 sessions out of 5 are below VT1, easy enough. The one hard session is around or above VT2. The easiest way of determining the start intensity for a specific interval duration is to take 93-95% of your best value from the last 30-60 days. You can get that from the Power/Duration curve.
Then do your hard interval session with that value to start and dial up the intensity when you’re able to do more or less 1 interval extra.
Example: from the P/D curve you have a best effort of 200W at 8 min. Set up a workout with 5 intervals of 8 min at 186-190W. If you can’t finish the first 4, reduce intensity a bit. If you get to 3/4 of the fifth interval, raise intensity a couple watts and start over.
That’s it. No need to test.
You only need a FTP in the ballpark to get your training load more or less accurate.

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