Ive been away from Trainerday for a few months as ive been riding outdoors exclusively- first off can I say to Alex……wow, well done! The UI and UX are phenomenal. Seriously, the whole Trainerday experience is looking amazing and so much has improved over the last few months, so a massive congratulations on what you are doing here.
Now we’re heading into winter, its a good chance for me to structure my training - I wanted to ask advice on creating a plan that makes me stronger, but I have no specific goal or timeline - I just want to get fitter and faster (will attempt an Everesting at some stage next year) - so my question is, is there a plan that builds for all year round fitness and progression, or do you just follow the standard 2/3 phases of a normal plan in order to let the body recuperate slightly? Trying to create a plan doesn’t offer any of this sort of options so wanted to ask the general opinion on this.
Id love to see the AI side of things advance to the point where I could login to Trainerday and say “im riding 1 hour a day mon-fri outside and want to add a couple of turbo sessions to maximise my training”, plan the next 2 months for me please and let it work everything out automatically - using freeform language to describe your time options, goals and other restrictions/needs is by far the fastest and most accurate way for the system to build what is needed rather than choosing from a checklist of predetermined options which might not fit your needs.
Anyway, I may be an edge case, but hope I can get some insights.
Keep up the amazing work on what is an amazing training platform.
Thank you, thank you. Your edge case is a fairly mainstream desire these days We have our AI plan builder that attempts to do what you are suggesting. Did you try it? We did a v 0.5 and a v1 but need to do a v2 soon to make it even better.
Thanks for the reply Alex, I will look into it now and test it out - I had been focussing more on CJ so definitely will experiment this evening to see what it produces. Its interesting to see how “mainstream” training shifts, there was an interesting discussion on the Escape Collective podcast a few weeks back about how the professionals no longer have a traditional “off-season” and their performance levels are more balanced throughout the year rather than the traditional early year build up. Im no professional, but psychologically find it easier to be training with a purpose to get consistently better - I couldn’t handle letting any gains slip away only to have to try and get them all back again
I can verify that if you want (I know different teams can be different). My partner Andrea (pro coach/advisor) said the last couple winters there was a trend of the youngest riders doing 1 minute all out efforts a couple days all winter long so call it base+ but this is a case where what the pros do might be less relevant as their amazing recovery and micro fine tuning can make a big difference. But still it does work for some. Hard winters have helped many people especially compared to no winter cycling.
I do believe in keeping it fun. I know people love hard indoor winters from a mental perspective so for that aspect alone it can be worth it. Call it a calculated risk. If you look at a couple guys here we have threads discussing true base periods in the winter and monitoring aerobic improvement at zone 2 and if you are seeing this improvement even if top end and FTP are dropping those come back in almost a few weeks when you start adding intensity again.
The main problem is with too much intensity all year is most people flatline in progress. It’s a fine balance and individual. So if you are seeing steady gains, it’s working. If not then something is structurally broken or you are at your personal limits or so close it’s hard to see progress. Frequently recovery and volume are most peoples limiters.
We have our AI plan builder that attempts to do what you are suggesting. Did you try it? We did a v 0.5 and a v1 but need to do a v2 soon to make it even better.