It is fantastic to get access to several thousands of workouts available. If I’m correct, anybody can post a workout. However, creating a workout from scratch isn’t a neophyte task. I wonder which authors are professional in that domain, have a good reputation and knowledge. A sorting filter would be much useful where we can sort authors along their proficiency and qualifications as professional trainers or coaches.
Hi, you are correct. Anyone can create workouts. Actually due to an individuals physiology, recovery state and propensity for suffering, the right workout at the right time is highly individual. We would argue that it’s better to start under your current intensity threshold and slowly build up to reach and increase that workout intensity threshold. This is our belief which including my partner a world tour coach (Andrea Morelli) that is in a unique space so he has also coached many amateurs for the last 30+ years. Many coaches are almost like spin bike leaders and prefer to just making your start suffering from day one. While this can produce more rapid results it is much more risky and is not the best for longevity of training.
Coach Chad at TrainerRoad used to preach “minimum effective dose.” I don’t believe the TrainerRoad platform delivers on this idea but this message resonates with me and I have a lot of respect for Chad as well. Do just enough to get the adaption you need.
So this said, I think without a coach it’s a bit of trial and error to find what works for you. There are a lot of classic workouts that are very, very hard 4X8min @ nearly VO2max, 2X20min @ threshold. These are painful and I suggest gradually working your way up to them but in reality we don’t even think you need to go that far.
So all this said, I would say creating a workout is a neophyte process because finding the right workout for you is a bit of trial and error.
This is the beauty of Coach Jack based workouts, as they start easy and build to hard and very much follow a pattern of progressive overload that anyone can follow. If you don’t want to follow a strict calendar and are training indoors you can create a coach jack plan and push it to “my plans” make that plan active in our app and then you can just follow the plan one workout after the next as you have time to do them.
All this said, I would love to have workout authors fill out their bio’s but most of the popular workouts here are actually just long running ideas of workouts coaches and platforms have suggested over a long period of time.
Many coaches use our platform but coaches have always used their own personal workouts as “secret weapons” although most top coaches actually agree the workouts themselves are not the secret but the specific plan including the right volume patterns for the right athlete are 80-90% and the workouts are secondary to this. FYI: I used to try to get authors to give bios, but it was not working. So I fully agree/agreed with your thinking here 
If you need more explanation in simple terms. Use coach jack or just ask and I can give you a few ideas on the basics. We have similar beliefs to Joe Friel, author of the cyclists training bible.
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Thanks for your comprehensive answer, Alex! If I find favorite authors, that would be nice to be able to download their workouts in batch instead of one at a time.
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