Hi! I have been now using Athletica since January while training for a 70.3. It has been interesting but a lot of hit and miss and if I had to go back i think I would make a different choice. Various issues that have disconcerted me and made me worry about how the platform works.
Workouts appear sometimes late in the evening. For example I did yesterday a 2 hours ride. And this morning I had missed workout
Clearly the platform does not respect time limits - nor daily time limits nor overall weekly. I had 11 hours max of training and it’s either 12 or more or 8-9. Daily time limits also are not respected. This situation obliged me to do a lot of switching around to try to make training compatible with work and life
Absurd short workout appear - not just off the bike runs. But just stand alone ride of 10-14 minutes or run of 9-15 minutes. When they appear in delete them.
In the end I had to do a lot of switching and deleting. And sometimes plainly come up with different workout.
I am not an AI expert but I use AI often and work with AI specialist. I don’t understand why the system cannot have some simple rules. No training below 30 min (except maybe some short off the bike runs). Time limits should be respected or give an error message or feedback so I could address a constraint that is too rigid. And finally once day has started lock it. No workout can be added after midnight of my local time.
I am now thinking to use a traditional plan and ChatGPT for my remaining 6 weeks. I got a lot of kind support early on by @Marjaana who has been super kind and helpful. But I am increasingly of the opinion that I find Athletica very hard to trust at this point despite I have a subscription until the end of the year.
I am sad to give these negative feedback and I really loved what have you been trying to do but the implementation is so imperfect that I wonder if what I am getting prescribed makes sense. In other words these glitches that are pretty obvious ones make me wonder “if these cannot be addressed how can I trust the prescribed workout?”
I hope you can improve this @Prof - best wishes to you and the entire Athletica team
Thanks for voicing this feedback @LeoIacovone. I have shared with the team.
Note also in your Profile settings you had your update set to 1 day ahead. I’ve changed this to 4 days ahead which I’m finding better from a planning and execution standpoint. Please keep an eye on behaviour for us and let me know if that helps create a more stable experience.
Thanks for that comment @aaikns … just been on your plan to get a better feel for your experience, which we’re keen to enhance. Can I suggest that you give the AI a bit more scope in your settings to deliver a bit more load? You’ve got mostly 30 min max sessions on the weekdays. Perhaps try increasing those to 45 min and let us know if that helps?
Thanks @Prof for notifying this to the team. I have now decided to disconnect and go back to using a static plan - i do this with a heavy heart but I think it is hard at this point to trust the system. Few things I would suggest you consider
The system should give alerts when it cannot fit the constraints
the system should give feedback about why is prescribing certain training sessions - at least weekly - say " last week you did A and B - so based on your HRV and how you performed then you are getting this week X set of things" - chatGPT can easily do this - just read the week before and provide information about choices for next week.
I think these 2 improvements could address the problems of time limits not respected and the issue of feeling as a strange blackbox.
Good luck and will keep checking from the sideline for future updates - but for now I will sign off from your platform because it does not help my training.
@Prof just for you to understand the source of my complaint - see this week as an example. I get more than 2 hours on Wednesday despite my limit of 90 minutes - then I get 2 rest days and then i get a monster saturday. I cannot trust this plan - no coach would ever prescribe such a plan. I wanted to share this not a complain but to give you a concrete sense of why I am skeptical the AI system that you have is not delivering reasonable prescriptions. Sorry for the critical feedback and best of luck with this project
