Athletica told me that I am at risk for overtraining but then increased my upcoming workouts

As the title says, I got a message this morning that I am at risk for overtraining. I was starting to feel that myself, so I cut some time from today’s SE session.

I checked my training calendar just now and noticed that Athletica has significantly increased my VO2 max session tomorrow. This seems absolutely backwards to me! It says I’m headed into overtraining, I agreed and cut a workout back, and then the AI immediately spiked my next workout up to compensate for the reduction it had suggested just hours before.

I definitely want to reduce the load a little bit this week to prevent overtraining, but it seems like the AI is going to fight me on that. Thoughts?

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Hello!
Do you pay attention to HRV at all? That’s a good way to monitor your fatigue.
The AI gets on a schedule within your training block and will increase the load.
However, you have the right idea if you’re feeling a bit toasty to back off and take some easy rides.
I hope that helps!

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Yes, I track HRV and mine is trending lower than usual. That’s one of the things that tipped me off.

What’s the point of the AI if it’s going to give advice one direction but then write the plan in a different direction? If my training load is already high enough, why change that workout?

What’s even stranger is that it amped up that vo2 workout, which then put the little “overtraining likely” checkmark on Thursday’s workout. So it added more load even though that made overtraining likely again later in the week.

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Hey @rctaylor157
Can I ask for more details please? I’m happy to have a look at your training plan to see what prompted the overtraining warning… may be a bug :beetle:
MJ

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The overtaining advice likely is due to your time limitations. The system is asking you to do more than you have time for.
But Marjaana will check to see if there’s something up!
As always, use your better judgement about taking some time off the schedule and get back to it when you’re feeling better.

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Hi @rctaylor157,

There is great feedback so far. IME, a state of overtraining is a decrease in performance due to inadequate recovery that occurs over a longer period of time. This is different than functional overreaching where an appropriate stress load is applied, the athlete recovers, there is a small incremental load and the process is repeated. Bits and pieces are added to the “bank”. AI coach is telling you that you might be headed there if something like your situation is repeated for many weeks. It’s conservative and keeps you on track. One workout won’t send you over the edge, but many workouts done when you are under recovered or sick or slightly injured will.

If you look at your 7-day recovery profile, are there many dips or rises over the last 6 weeks? Have you been recovering before you have been attempting HIIT sessions? If you feel a bit off or sluggish, @SimpleEnduranceCoach has the correct approach. I am kind of in the same situation today, and my son is home sick so I have no issues deleting sessions and using the workout wizard for easier alternatives because I want to optimize the benefit of HIIT when I’m 100 percent.

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Hey all, unfortunately it seems I was right because I got sick starting yesterday. I’ve likely been riding the line of under-recovered for a couple weeks now and it finally caught up to me right before the recovery week. Hopefully it passes quickly. Thank you for your advice!

Feel free to look at my plan if it would help identify any bugs.

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I had a similar thing. I got an initial warning message that my fitness was too high for the low volume plan, so I changed it to medium and the next morning was greeted with this warning:

  • Your overall (and bike specific) fitness is too low for this plan. You may want to consider changing to the low volume plan.

I was then less than impressed with the “support” advice, which was “… its unlikely that Athletica has got to know you that well yet. This is where feel in the beginning is pretty important. You should know intuitively what feels right from your experience. Trust that to start would be my advice”.

  1. I’m looking to AVOID training by feel and intuition - I want a more objective “coach”, which is why I’m trying Ai.
  2. Athletica AI has allegedly downloaded 2-3 years of my workouts from Strava (that failed) or Garmin (seems to have worked)…so it should actually “know me” pretty well.

I think this AI has been released before it is “finished” (which seems to be standard for most AI set-ups). We’re all still beta testing.