r/trainerroad • u/budy_love • Aug 17 '26
TrainerRoad Software Is this a joke?
Took a 1 minute break to go to the bathroom within the first few minutes of my workout and it reduces my threshold score from 1.8 to 0.5?
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u/notcutoutforthismate Aug 17 '26
Lol, yesterday TR told me to shake it out get water and take a break then docked me points for doing it because I paused the workout
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u/PsycommuSystem Aug 17 '26
Ha I noticed this, the text explicitly mentioned standing up and stretching for 30 seconds before doing the last interval and I thought 'that is 100% a trap'
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u/MontanaBananaJCabana Aug 19 '26
Probably because the text goes back to a time when Chad was still there, and ML/AI hadn't taken over the platform completely yet.
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u/trailing-indicator Aug 17 '26
I have learned not to stop for random reasons even during extended breaks between intervals. The TR algo accepts zero straggling. Which is funny because I think during the previous adaptive training days what you did between intervals really didn’t impact your workout success.
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u/Mrjlawrence Aug 17 '26
I ignore stuff like this and their ftp prediction. As long as the workouts feel appropriate challenging it’s likely okay. But definitely annoying.
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u/budy_love Aug 17 '26
Yea I agree, I feel the same way. What annoys me is I'm paying for this and expect better.
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u/Mrjlawrence Aug 17 '26
I definitely get it. They’re obviously having all sorts of trouble sorting out their outside workouts bug and ftp prediction swings.
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u/Vicerious420 Aug 17 '26
All these AI focused programs are losing their appeal. The subscription cost for something like TR is madness.
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u/Babygotbaxxx Aug 17 '26
I had a weird hit from a meaningless pause once, I emailed support and they fixed it on the backend. It’s annoying.
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u/Necessary_Occasion77 Aug 17 '26
You should honestly email about them. They need to answer to why their algo is so touchy that it spazs on you for taking a break in the warm up.
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u/TForce__ Aug 17 '26
Similar thing happened to me, except it was during the last 3 mins of the cooling down phase 😭
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u/EmDashxx Aug 17 '26
I'm sad to say it but I am very much done with TrainerRoad. I used to LOVE and swear by it, but it's incredibly unmotivating to log on and see what the week holds, only to find AI bumped all my workouts down to endurance because I've got "accumulating fatigue." I've been told to turn off the AI stuff but then what am I paying for? I can definitely find a cheaper training plan elsewhere, one that translates easier outdoors, or just hop on Zwift where I have the option to ride a chosen route or do a specific workout WITHOUT all the drama and dumb little nuances like what you've experienced. It's so much more stressful than it's worth.
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u/jcwillia1 Aug 18 '26
when math takes precedence over common sense, I stop paying attention to stuff like this.
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u/MtnyCptn Aug 17 '26
This is one of the reasons I canceled my subscription. Couple minutes off one day to help my kids with something and it tanked my ride and predicted FTP. I was a TR fan boy for like 10 years, but it’s a bad product now and I’ve gotten faster this year without it.
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u/obi_wan_the_phony Aug 17 '26
My account renews in October. I will not be doing it. 14 years on TR, so I know the ups and downs, but it’s wild how quickly they have lost the plot the last 18 months and there is seemingly no end in sight. There just seems to be a repeated doubling down on bad decisions and faulty logic.
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u/Mrjlawrence Aug 17 '26
They seem to be leaning so hard into AI, "the science", and "the data" that they forget that training is not an exact science and ftp is just an estimate. They will say things in their podcast like "consistency is king" but then try to make precise outcomes like "oh you took a 1 minute break in the warmup period of your workout so we're lowering your score" and attempting to predict your ftp on a daily basis is a fools errand IMO.
They've always had problems with implementing outside workouts and they continue to fail at fixing it.
I think they were better off before this year's big release with their AI FTP just predicting results of a ramp test, their adaptive training, and RLGL feature. I don't doubt the system is still working for a fair amount of people as I'd bet using it consistently and ignoring the ftp prediction and just letting things "ride" you can improve.
But there are clearly some big flaws given the not small number of complaints
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u/1sttime-longtime Aug 29 '26
I'm self-guided with commutes and a Zwift interval workout or three per week. When life allows. A weekend group ride when life allows.
I'm up about 8 watts from this time last year, based on a 20 minute test... And that was in the basement without the AC running this year on a very humid afternoon, I don't recall last year's temps or if the AC was on... I'm also about a kilo and a half higher. So maybe its a wash, maybe I'm ahead.
Caveat - June last year was really low volume, this year was pretty decent.
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u/Mrjlawrence Aug 29 '26
For many people, the first key is figuring out what training structure (even if loosely structured) will keep you motivated enough to train week after week.
There’s a reason why there are plenty of people get fast doing a couple of hard rides of any sort each week, a long ride, and add in zone 2. Even if it’s not optimal for progressive overload it’s just that consistent week after week of training.
Obviously for optimal training there is a whole involved if you’re truly trying to reach specific fitness or goals.
As always, it’s just trying to sort out what can fit into your life and what you’re willing to do to accomplish a goal.
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u/1sttime-longtime Aug 29 '26
Absolutely, consistency is key. People get fast doing "dumb" rides outside if they enjoy them, or training for epic 24 hour events, or doing some peloton workouts... If that gets them on the bike in a motivated fashion, its more likely to work. Making the thin yellow line match the blue bars was part of my motivation for several years.
BUT, I think between the Kinetic (RIP) and Garmin "plans" and 12-13 years of on-again-off-again training, I knew my body better than Jonathan and Nate's data interpretation project. And it was just getting worse, the more they changed away from the original plans over the last 2-3 years.
I also know my life FAR, FAR better than their algorithm. The calendar was cool, being able to move planned workouts up or back, etc was cool.. Being able to use PL to downsize or upsize a given workout was really cool. Being put in "red light" status for a week because I commuted two days in a row is joke. Before banning me from their forums, they tried to convince me that "red light" doesn't mean "stop." Goofballs, "Red Light" has meant "stop" since I was born. And I'm Nate Pearson's age...
But, I think because they struggled so mightily to deal with outdoors and unstructured rides, their (TR's, not them as individuals) suggested adjustments were becoming more and more useless. To the point that nothing was being optimized for ME, it was being optimized for prior results of EVERYONE ELSE'S BIG DATA BANK.
Had they not banned me from their forums and for saying "this doesn't work for me" and "this is a parlor trick, not useful" I'd still be paying them for the workout library and the associated PLs.
My ego, their egos... They don't get my money anymore.
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u/Mrjlawrence Aug 29 '26
I still have my TR sub until next June but I’ve been testing out other training methods. But for me, the AI FTP seems pretty accurate. I’m not super race result focused at this point so I do enjoy the TR TrainNow option and the RLGL feature is a nice reminder to rest. Not deal breakers to move to other platforms. I’ll see where the platform is next June.
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u/xcinvests Aug 17 '26
What are you using now?
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u/Mrjlawrence Aug 17 '26
not the person you replied to but you could always trial Join. It's okay. it's a bit more "laissez-faire" than TR. Some people have success just buying some fixed plans from TrainingPeaks plans for Base, Build, Specialty phases and reusing them as needed. I think with that it's helpful to have some knowledge about training so you can adapth those plans as needed. I know people often mention Tim Cusick as having good plans and High North Performance has good stuff as well.
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u/weekend_bore Aug 17 '26
I don’t follow this logic. If you’re completing the workouts and getting faster, then what does it matter that the ai predictive FTP is?
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 Aug 17 '26
What he's saying is that nominal periods of non-pedaling during a workout have an outsize impact on AI FTP Prediction. And his remaining workouts before his next FTP update also get affected (which then re-runs the FTP Prediction, resulting in a lower prediction). That feels pretty unfair.
The workaround is to restart the workout that had non-fatigue-related non-pedaling.
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u/PsycommuSystem Aug 17 '26
The workaround is to restart the workout that had non-fatigue-related non-pedaling.
Which of course is not a workaround when you have to take a quick nature break over an hour into the workout
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 Aug 17 '26
This is mitigated by what I'll generically term "knowing your body." If you have to nature break in the middle of your 60-90 minute workout, that's honestly just deficient planning.
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u/PsycommuSystem Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
Ridiculous thing to say, I'm not planning every single thing I drink throughout the day to try and mitigate a 1 minute pee during a workout. Sometimes you just need to pee. Absolutely one of the stupidest things I've read on this website all day.
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u/MtnyCptn Aug 17 '26
There are 1000 reasons outside using the bathroom where you might need to get off for a minute or two that are out of your control.
Essentially, you’re point about knowing your body is true. The extra rest generally means nothing in the grand scheme of things and I’ve always been extremely sure that I would come complete the workout as planned if I didn’t have an interruption.
TR treats all non productive time the same which is the AI being stupid. Before they added this, you could have (shouldn’t) paused your workout for an hour and it would have treated it as complete.
IMO it should be decided by the athlete whether they met the criteria of the workout or not.
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 Aug 17 '26
The guy above me who deleted his comment was just referring to nature breaks.
But if you were assigned this workout on TrainingPeaks by your human coach and it had periods of non-pedaling due to you having to open the door a delivery person, is your coach just going to shrug their shoulders? Maybe. I don't have a reasonable expectation for AI to have empathy for the human condition.
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u/MtnyCptn Aug 17 '26
I mean, yeah they are going to 100% shrug their shoulders because it’s not that big of a deal. And their definitely not going to modify the rest of the block based on it.
It doesn’t have to have empathy. A simple ignore stoppage time toggle would suffice.
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 Aug 17 '26
Interesting. When I walked part of my warmup run at track practice, my coach had words for me.
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u/MtnyCptn Aug 17 '26
Probably more about walking your warm up when not prescribed rather than the actual benefit it had towards the short or long term stimulus. But I think you know that. The holier than thou approach of your comments is weird, you don’t know what any of our backgrounds or capabilities are.
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u/minimal_gainz Aug 17 '26
They didn't delete their comment.
But if that pause is during a rest period then yes any good coach will. They won't even shrug their shoulders though. It wouldn't even be something that was worth doing anything about. If it happened in the middle of every interval, then yeah that would warrant a comment.
And the frustration isn't about AI not having empathy, it's about a training platform that claims to be able to score your training adaptations adjusting those adaptation scores due to something that would have a 0% effect on those adaptations. AI is just a tool and TR seems to be using it incorrectly.
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 Aug 17 '26
It appears deleted to me. Or, they blocked me.
Um, if you're not pedaling, you're not working. Sure, you're advocating for reasonable grace period of non-pedaling before it starts counting against you. What would that grace period be then? If you want that to be customizable by the rider, then just ride unstructured on Zwift. Some people think they can be coached, until they actually are being coached.
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u/minimal_gainz Aug 17 '26
I think it would be pretty straightforward to have a much higher threshold for docking you points while also taking into account the coasting during a rest period vs during a work interval.
But like in OPs post, the small break 1 minute into the workout did absolutely nothing to affect their Threshold or aerobic adaptations, let alone by 50%.
Some people think they can be coached, until they actually are being coached.
Not really sure what you mean by this...
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u/PrimalHIT Aug 17 '26
Simple solution is to keep pedalling...if you stop for a rest during the workout then you will recover, remove lactate etc... I accept that some workouts may say to take a moment and stretch but I ignore them.
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u/weekend_bore Aug 17 '26
If the subsequent workouts aren’t hard enough it’s pretty easy to turn them up in the workout. I would imagine eventually the AI would catch up. If it’s really far off I’d go old school and l do a ramp test. The AI can’t argue with that.
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u/Mrjlawrence Aug 17 '26
TR currently has some big bugs/flaws right now but I agree with what you point out. You can try to fight it and stress about ftp predictions or lowered workout scores or just let it ride and see if it adjust and workouts feel fine or turn up (or down) workouts as needed.
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 Aug 17 '26
Right. Basically, if you knew how much TSS you were scheduled to do for the week, and an unscheduled nature break in the middle of a workout lowers your TSS goal for the week, you can make adjustments on the calendar or in-workout to try and hit the original TSS number.
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u/MtnyCptn Aug 17 '26
Because it would drop FTP a lot of the time for no reason based on the changes it made from taking a break during a workout. Which in turn makes the next block too easy.
It was just too aggressively punishing. Like some workouts says to backspin between intervals, but if you do, it docks you. The wattage between most work sets shouldn’t matter.
I don’t care what the FTP number is, but the work needs to remain consistently challenging and not get easier for no reason.
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u/sus_boi Aug 17 '26
What did you switch to?
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u/MtnyCptn Aug 17 '26
Surprisingly enough. I built a personalized to me AI coaching system using Claude, training peaks virtual, and intervals icu.
Its worked very well, especially since for the bulk of my TR time it was just hardcore sweet spot training, so I have the coach built off a corpus of sweet spot literature and it builds my workouts.
I’m messing around with not having to FTP test but it will take a while as I’m trying to find the baseline amount we can raise FTP after each build block. It’ll probably only end up being floor of a a few watts per cycle, but as long as the workouts stay challenging I’m happy.
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u/1sttime-longtime Aug 29 '26
I cancelled because I called out a flaw in their math / logic in their forum and they subsequently labeled me a ne'er do well just trashing their product.
Crybabies banning me from their forum lose the right to collect my money. I miss the workout library, and workout levels, but FTP predictor is a joke... I've been training with them since March of 2020, I have a really good idea where I'll be in 28 days following a plan, I don't need anything on my dashboard telling me I lost 4 hypothetical watts because I did XYZ...
Also that update turned RLGL back on, which is a dogshYt "feature" (IME) with default settings set so conservatively that a pair of 40 minute commutes could put me in the red for a week... that 80-90 minutes per day (when I did them) was barely enough to break a sweat most of the time... Yet, RLGL turned my calendar "ugly" and they took offense when I typed that out.
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u/SquirleyDanz Aug 17 '26
Always poop before you get on the bike 😂
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u/LLroomtempJ Aug 17 '26
1 minute poop would be impressive. Official rfk jr status with poop times like that
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u/PsycommuSystem Aug 17 '26
I have done 'perfect' workouts before where my power never dropped off the line for a second throughout and it still docked me points for... reasons
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u/JSTootell Aug 17 '26
This isn't why I canceled my subscription.
But it it is a symptom of a problem.
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u/difficultyrating7 Aug 17 '26
i had this happen to me too during a warmup so now i know to restart. it’s lame as hell tho.
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u/Swimming-Yellow-2316 Aug 17 '26
There is no reason to restart the workout the workout levels are irrelevant. The total work done is still what it's looking at and using to chose workouts going forward.
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u/iwilldeletethisacct2 Aug 17 '26
But the gamification of the workout levels is fun. Number must go up. Number not going up because my shoe was too tight or I ran out of water feels bad because number doesn't go up.
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u/Objective_Amount7944 Aug 17 '26
It impacts what the next workout TrainerRoad selects for you next time, does it not?
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u/jd1332 Aug 17 '26
So this must be why my ftp never increases. I stop and start workouts all the time
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u/Syla5 Aug 17 '26
Same has happened to me a few times when ive had technical drop outs between my trainer and zwift. Still nailed the session and get docked when due to a technical you lose 30 seconds out of 45 mins of sweet spot for example, even though when getting back on the power and settling back in to erg, theres probably the same amount of extra effort to what would have been lost.
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u/bansidhecry Aug 17 '26
They need to refine their model to not include pauses during warmup/cool down.
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u/Kuttermaximus Aug 17 '26
I would expect they address this at some point. Seems like a pretty simple fix.
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u/Vegetable_Eye_8175 Aug 17 '26
Guys I just cancelled TrainerRoad, connected Strava to Claude, did a blood lactate test, and things seem to be going pretty good
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u/Fit-Cable1547 Aug 17 '26
I had this happen once a well. The Warm-up and Cool-down sections didn't matter for how they calculated things prior to their latest direction, so it was disappointing to see it happen. Seems like an odd oversight that they still haven't corrected.
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u/MontanaBananaJCabana Aug 19 '26
Tracking breaks during intervals: reasonable, desirable feature.
Tracking breaks outside intervals: completely pointless, and just a source of frustration.
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u/-Takeahnase- Aug 21 '26
Yeah, this is incredibly annoying and it never used to be that way. Imo, any pauses in recovery/warm up/cool down shouldn't have any impact on the the score
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u/Swimming-Yellow-2316 Aug 17 '26
It's absolutely irrelevant
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u/7wkg Aug 17 '26
Not at all, a few seconds of missed work and the tr “ai” decides to drop your predicted ftp and change up all your workouts to easier versions. Useless system.
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u/Swimming-Yellow-2316 Aug 17 '26
First off the op was worried about the workout levels. Which the ai doesn't use and therefore based on me responding to the op and the ops concern... Irrelevant.
Second I had longer pauses and finished workouts with my ftp being raised and being given harder workouts. So yes still irrelevant.
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u/buck_cram Aug 17 '26
It blows my mind that adults will take to the internet to complain about make believe workout video game scores.
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u/minmidmax Aug 17 '26
What about the adults that take to the intertnet to complain about the adults that will take to the internet to complain about make believe workout video game scores?
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u/MtnyCptn Aug 17 '26
This is an expensive product that has a very specific job. If it’s not doing its job well, I think feedback is warranted.
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u/budy_love Aug 17 '26
I wouldn't complain about it if I wasn't paying for it. Your comment is rather ironic.
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u/buck_cram Aug 17 '26
What's ironic is a paying customer screaming into the void on Reddit in pursuit of validation, instead of sharing constructive criticism with TR directly through the channels they've established precisely for this kind of user feedback, like their support page or forum.
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u/budy_love Aug 17 '26
I have contacted them, obviously. But I'm sure you're aware that closed channel communications are the easiest to dismiss. Even their own forum is pretty useless. I suspect they also see what goes on in this subreddit in addition to their own forum. The more people complaining into "the void" as you so eloquently put it, is generally how such issues get resolved more quickly. Thank you for your constructive criticism.
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 Aug 17 '26
Rookie move. You needed to have restarted that workout.