I just signed up and wanted to say hello. I’ve been looking for a place where people actually talk about their training instead of just posting numbers, so this forum seemed like a great fit.I’m still figuring out the best way to use TrainerDay and would love to hear how it fits into your routine. Do you mostly follow the suggested workouts, build your own plans, or make changes based on how you’re feeling that day?I’d also appreciate any beginner tips or little features that you think are easy to miss but make a big difference. Looking forward to learning from everyone and joining the discussions. Thanks for having me!
I mostly use TD to run self-created workouts using the mobile app.
I think most people here fall into 3 different groups:
People who want help developing a training plan and use Coach Jack, the community plans, or workout of the day.
People who know what they want and create their own power/slope based workouts or training plans. Alex’s workout creator is the best in the business in my opinion and TD offers excellent value as a platform. The app has tons of features and recently released a desktop version.
People who heavily utilize the HR+ feature. As far as I’m aware no competitor offers this feature.
Beginner suggestions:
There are tons of community workouts. If you use the community workouts try to understand what you’re getting into. It would be easy to pick a “hard” workout and stumble into one that is way too hard.
HR+ is a great feature is you want to keep a constant HR load.
Slope is available as an alternative to resistance if you want to practice climbing, for example you could climb 4% grade for as long as you want.
There are slick features to combine workouts on the fly in the app, I do not use these often but many people do.
There are 3 different forms of the workouts, you can use them as designed (“indoor”), simplified (“outdoor”) or with heart rate targets (this is not the same as HR+).
Coach Jack can offer a tremendous amount of customization to your plan, the basic belief system is to push yourself but not over do it. Although TD recommends it, you don’t have to start a plan at level 1. Start where you think is appropriate for you.
Welcome and have fun! The people here are friendly. As I’m sure you can see by reading the forum, Alex really cares about the athletes.
How do you want to use it and is there anything you need help with?
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Dave! That really helps put everything into perspective. Right now I’m mostly looking for a structured way to stay consistent with my cycling, so I’ll probably start with one of the simpler training plans before trying to build my own workouts. HR+ definitely sounds interesting too since a few people have mentioned it already.
I appreciate the beginner tips, especially the reminder not to jump into workouts that are too difficult right away. I’ll spend some time exploring the different features and see what works best for me. Thanks again for the warm welcome!
Whatever you do, just have fun. If you get along well with Coach Jack you may not need to ever get into the workout creator.
There’s a lot of freedom that comes from just taking a plan, 100% believing in it, and executing it. Custom workouts can be a a rabbit hole where you never really buy in to what you are doing and are always looking towards the next big thing.
What I’ve learned with cycling training, and this is very important and could save a lot of time and frustration, there are no magic workouts. Fitness is built through consistency and enough progressive overload to cause adaptation but not so much that it causes excessive fatigue.
I joined TD, after leaving Zwift, because it was just too costly in my currency and could not justify paying for the virtual world stuff. I was doing more workouts, free riding anyway and Zwift is very limited in that aspect.
I did not expect much, but was satisfied with the easy interface, structured workouts, integration with Strava and almost personal attention, when it came to solving issues. Also the feature requests are not ignored here. I can vouch for that. I like listening to music while training and when the YT web interface did not have a playlist feature. I brought it to Alex’s attention and he was more than willing to make it happen for me. I was only a member for few months then. I was his beta tester and the feature got rolled out as soon as it was working correctly.
I use TD to stay consistent in my Winter training and compliment my training for an event, by using Coach Jack’s programs very successfully. I also use the Ai training plan setup, which got me close to what I wanted, but ultimately, I designed my own Zone 2 program, which works for me and it was not difficult to figure out.
So, enough waffling from me! Welcome and enjoy the training!
Hi There, my expereince with TD: I initially started with coach jack, and I’m now giving a go with the AI training builder, based on the example prompt I found in the forum conversation. You’ll find out that Alex provides I fantastic customer support, he is always responsive, very often the same business day! Welcome and have fun
I also just signed up for TD, coming from +4 yrs TR.
My ‘objective’ is fun fitness with the occasional silly goal thrown in to spice things up. Base routine is built around 3-4 days / wk Z2, and 1-2 days /wk intensity / fun / crazy depending. I adhere to a minimum weekly schedule Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Friday is the longest ride, a Z2, and mostly want to zone out for a while. Wednesday / Sunday are the more intense days. Along with that I mix in body weight squats or knee highs while brushing teeth, and lifting “snacks” arbitrarily throughout the day.
Tonight, a Thursday, I tried HR+ for 30min Z2. I expect to use this feature the most and replace my custom Z2 workouts based on % FTP I built for TR.
Beyond that I’ll sample all TD’s parallel features of TR. I do like “workout of the day” AI recommended feature of TR, I’ve found that to be superior to any planning all of which seem to increasingly drain me of vitality.
Read up on “Fitscore” this evening. I sense a future “silly goal”.
I use it for custom workouts. I build them with Claude which puts together a full ZWO file that I upload into TD. Puts in power ramps, interval messages, etc., it’s awesome!
Alex, that is sick. I’ve setup a longevity protocol project with Gemini and Grok (because why not), seeded with “Optimal dietary patterns for healthy aging” paper, generating meal plans combined with training. Training is course feedback only and manual, sending a session screen shot for interpretation, used to augment nutrition guidance for the day. MCP would close the loop.
