I remember a couple of years ago discovering the intervals.icu workout builder that David created and thinking it was great. I came to intervals after having used various workouts builders - TrainingPeaks, Trainerroad, Final Surge, Garmin - all of which are graphical and web-based. All have similar limitations - it’s fairly time-consuming to create the workouts, and although it’s possible to copy and paste them, it’s equally time consuming to modify them. Creating a training plan (building progressive workouts), and creating workouts or plans from written descriptions is a slog.
The brilliant thing about intervals is that it is text-based, and, in my experience, much more efficient to use both for creating workouts and also modifying them. The syntax is super easy - and the way it’s implemented is you see a graphical representation of the workout based on the text. I used it to create a training plan based on the 3 day a week running plan, and it was so much easier than any of the other workout builders I tried at the time (maybe 15-20 minutes for the whole plan).
I haven’t used this function for a couple of years, so David may have improved it. I also never used it for swimming as at the time I had printed swim workouts.
In any case - an example - just the first thing I found - a power-based run workout described as follows:
Warm up
- 9m Z2 press lap
Main set 6x
- RPE9 - not quite all out 2m 315w - 330w press lap
- recover 2m Z2 press lap
Cooldown
- 9m Z2
This workout can be calendared, added to a training plan, and like any workout will also sync to my garmin.
Note details like “press lap” which implements the press lap functionality, but without it would just start the next lap automatically. You can specify zones and watts (or both). I can’t remember for sure how well the descriptions carry over to the watch. If I had used pace, it would have everything described by pace instead of power (and I could also mix specific pace with pace zones in different intervals).
This modal is interactive - as the written description changes, so does the graphical representation of the workout.
The approach has been replicated elsewhere - Form (of Form goggles) recently introduced something very similar they have branded “script”, which works more or less the same way except it isn’t “live” - you enter the text description and then hit a button - I think this is because Form doesn’t have a web app, just a mobile app, so the intervals approach (the modal with interactivity) will not work.
Form Script description
These really are not that different from the written description we get from printing out the Athletica swim workouts.
It’s a great idea to create a thread about it. I was going to suggest creating some examples of interfaces but it seems to me that intervals.icu already meets all my expectations! I didn’t know this tool. I think this text-based feature is a must! Thanks anyway for your responsiveness