Hello @SimonM
Thanks for giving Athletica a try.
Sorry it is not meeting your expectations.
I’ll try to explain what “go by feel” means.
But first,
When you start with Athletica, even though we pull your historical data, it doesn’t mean that Athletica knows exactly what you did, whether you were compliant with the plan, or what the plan was. Knowing you means “how well can you follow the plan”, and also, what “kind of athlete you are “ based on the tests during the second week “test week”. Many times new athletes skip the week because they don’t understand the value of it.
The warning “your fitness is too high/low”. This is a little bit tricky, because sometimes we are in between two levels and Athletica is asking for more training hours to keep the athlete progressing towards the goal race. Sometimes it is as simple as adjusting the weekly training hours in the settings. Sometimes we are already maxing out on what is realistically possible for us to train in terms of rest of the life. In that case I would turn the warning off from settings and keep doing your best with the time you have, or add a few more hours to your training week (settings).
Does that make sense at all?
Athletica adjusts your training as you go along with your training. Plan two months from now will look different in two months’ time depending what you do or don’t do.
Ok, so the feel & intuition thing. You want an Objective Coach, that’s great.
This ties into the point I was trying to make above. Athletica needs some time to know your potential so it doesn’t give some insane rides that are way beyond your fitness levels, which would of course lead to overreaching, injuries, illness and worst case scenario overtraining. Because we know athletes sometimes will do everything they can to “follow the plan” (myself included), we need to be sure Athletica knows the athlete and takes a conservative approach. Health always comes first.
If you feel like you could do a longer aerobic ride, or do couple of more interval efforts, go ahead and do those. If you feel like 3x7x30/30 was too much, then do a little bit less the next time. If you keep exhausting yourself and having to rest days after a hiit session, you’ve done it too hard. THIS is part of the feel, too.
We also know sometimes athletes ignore the signals that body and mind are sending them (feel and intuition), to comply with the plan. We could choose to avoid showing any warning signs (fitness too low/overtraining warning etc), and trust that the athletes will train by feel & intuition, but I think you’ve demonstrated here that sometimes athletes don’t want to do that.
Remember you have the option to turn these off in your settings.
AI can handle a lot of the data crunching, but ultimately your feel & intuition knows what you can handle much better than any AI, or a human coach. I would say a “get-to-know-you” period also applies to a human coach as well, where the two of you need to communicate frequently about your training and how it feels to you.
I hope this helps you understand the process better. Have a look around in your settings to individualize the settings to better suit your style, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you need help.
MJ
When we train, we train to cope with the race day demands, not for a beautiful power graph, am I right? Yes, the AI coach needs this info to understand what kind of athlete you are and to keep your training intensity zones current. So it’s good to periodically to retest.
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