I came across athletica.ai last year and it has been on my radar every since. Brief background about me, Got started doing Triathlon in 2022. I hired a coach for 2022 and 2023 season and this year I decided to train using athletica.ai. I have some questions and hoping someone can help out.
What are some tips and tricks for getting started with Athletica? Signup, pay up, Sync with Garmin and thats it?
I have used trainingpeaks for the past 2 years. Do I sync up with Garmin and
Trainingpeaks both?
I have swim classes 3 times a week (Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday). How do I account for this Athletica. Athletica will generate its own swim workouts for me to do but all the swimming I do currently is in the classes. What is the best way to handle it?
What training Volume/Plan should I go for? My average weekly hours last year were between 7-9 hours. I see in the forum there is low/mid and high plan in athletica.
Will athletica pick up my zones from my garmin profile? or Do i need to set them up manually?
I do a mix of races a year. Running (5,10 and 21K) Triathlong (Sprint, Olympic and Half) Do I just add the dates for all of them in Athletica? At this time I do not know the dates for any of the races since the schedule is not published but most races start from September and run through February. Shall I just start the plan and add the dates when they become known?
Day Off and Training Days. I like to have consistency in my schedule since my work timings can vary. Example Bike on Sunday and Tuesday, Run on Monday and Wednesday etc. How can I adapt Athletica to follow this or based on the Science I should stick to what athletica schedules for me? How can I account for Friday to be a day off?
Week: Can I program Athletica to have my week from Saturday to Thursday?
Multiple A Races? This year I am planning to race T100 and Ironman Bahrain. Can I have both of them set as A Race? What defines what category A, B or C to give to a race?
I am sure I will have plenty of more questions. Any and all feedback is appreciated.
HI Farrukh, welcome to Athletica. I’m also a user as well as a coach of athletes using Athletica. I’ll do the best I can to help answer your questions.
Yes, that’s pretty much it! The biggest part of getting started is getting used to a different platform, especially TP. You’ll see some similarities, but there are a lot of differences.
No need for TP any longer. Athletica is all you need.
You can move all the workouts around as needed. Plus you can add additional swim sessions if your schedule doesn’t have enough. Just do your classes, and your device will pick up the session and upload to Athletica.
Sounds like a mid-volume plan would work for you.
Athletica uses the data from Garmin and plugs it into the system. Athletica’s workouts give you power and heart rate ranges. So you don’t have to worry about creating zones.
You can add the dates you do know as they come up. I would find your most important A event, estimate the date, and enter that as your A race.
In the Settings/ About You, you can set your weekly training plan so that Fridays are days off. You can also schedule different workouts on different days. That said, Athletica will get you in a pattern fairly quickly and, hopefully, that will work for your schedule.
Are you looking for the view? As of now, this is the only view I know of.
Right now, you can only have one A race. This is the race you’ll taper for, and be fully prepared. B races are important and there is a minor taper that week. C races are races you’ll go to, but are essentially training days. What I do with my athletes is set their A race, and if they have another, I’ll add it after the first A race is completed.
I hope that helps. Let me know if you have other questions. Also, take a look through the Forum for lots of other questions. And be sure to listen in to our podcast, the Athlete’s Compass!
@SimpleEnduranceCoach Thank you very much for your detailed response. I have signed up for Athletica and the training plan is generated.
Run into a few things maybe I am not looking at the right place.
For Number 8, It is not just the view. I am looking for athletica to actually consider Saturday-Thursday as the week. A week for me is Saturday - Friday. Currently it seems first day of the week in the system is Monday i guess its following USA/UK Standard where weekend is Saturday/Sunday? This part of the world, weekend is Friday/Saturday.
I noticed that the athletica will not let me enter a race day as Friday. Going back to the above point, maybe it considers Friday as a working day and no race can be scheduled for Working day? I am trying to enter Ironman Bahrain 70.3 which i am sure will be either on 6th or 13th but friday is grayed out.
I can enter T100 Dubai which will be on 17th. Dubai follows Saturday/Sunday as their weekend model same as USA/UK etc. Bahrain/Saudi/Qatar etc follow Friday/Saturday as weekend. Most of the races in Bahrain are either on Friday or Saturday.
For Point 7, I can’t see the settings in About You for setting fridays off but the training plan that is generated is already scheduling me off for friday.
I am using Low Volume plan, I inititally selected Mid Volume plan and some of the training athletica has scheduled is going for 2.5 hours plus in the first week itself. I have requested access to use time constraints to make further changes and set the volume to 8-10 hours per week. I did select min and maximum hours in the settings but i think that does not seem to have any affect on the plan generation.
I am excited and looking forward to training using athletica. 3rd June onwards is the test week for me.
I’ll add my tips here:
As someone who lived in ME, I understand weekend is Friday and Saturday. For now, I don’t think we have a good solution. It may be on the pipeline already @Prof : letting athletes chose which days are weekends and what day is weekday 1.
The same with race day - currently it is Saturday/Sunday only, but I know many people have requested a weekday race possibility.
For now, just chose closest day possible and adjust the taper week by moving the workouts in that week.
You need to do the test week to calibrate your zones, Athletica does not pull your zones from Garmin (because they could be way off anyway).
And you can now add multiple A races in the schedule, so you are set!
Remember, Athletica is adaptable plan so whatever you do or don’t do, Athletica will take into account.
Good luck with the test week!
Have fun!
Also, to add to what Marjaana said, for the weekday races, I just add the race into the plan as a placeholder. Or I’ll schedule it for the weekend to get the pre-race and taper, then move the workouts around to the appropriate places.
@Marjaana@SimpleEnduranceCoach Thank you for your response to my questions. I have been training with athletica for past few months and it is going great. Cycle Power, Running Power and VO2 have increased since few months of training with Athletica. I am on the low volume plan not sure if I should change to Mid Volume as I get a notification at times that your fitness is too high for the selected plan.
I did not realize you both host the athletica podcast. I have been listening to it during and you are doing an amazing job.
Something that I am still trying to understand, Athletica has me doing multiple bike rides which are up to 3 hours in length but I don’t see any long runs that go upto Half Marathon Distance. I have my race date set for middle distance on November 17 and the longest run I have is 1 hour 20 minutes which will be roughly 12-13K. Shouldn’t Athletica have me do a run that is half marathon distance as training or test?
Slighly off-topic, maybe @Prof can join in. In one of the podcast episode, there was a mention of a hardware device/tracker that @Prof is involved in with some university. Is there any information on this device that is being worked on?
Athletica is doing the best it can for you however you don’t seem to be very compliant with your run sessions. This means your overall training volume for running is low. The role that Athletica plays in your training is trying to keep you healthy. That means you need a balance of regular stress but not too much stress. If you just wallop yourself with one huge run that you aren’t prepared for, this isn’t good practice and injury and illness often occurs. You will notice that when you regularly train your prescribed runs during the week and your training load and fitness develops, then indeed, you will get longer and longer weekend runs. If you don’t and miss sessions, then you get shorter safer runs.
This is something I am trying to fix. Work, Life, Kids, Training its all too much at times. When you say not compliant, are you talking about not doing the runs on scheduled days or are you talking about not meeting the specific markers for running workout say not being compliant with heart rate, pace etc?
Just trying to understand to make better choices. Overall, I am quite happy with Athletica and the progress I am making. Low cadence workouts are the bane of my existence. They are so effective but the legs are toast for next 1 day haha.
As for the device, its not workout reserve. It was mentioned as a new hardware/tracker as part of some research. I will need to go back and listen to the podcasts and see which one was it.
Yep - this will be the case for most of us. The juggle isn’t easy. Go easy on yourself about this but finding solutions for this will assist with growth of your fitness. Its doing your runs on the scheduled days (thereabouts - remember you can move sessions) as opposed to missing them. Doing the sessions adds the training load that develops your fitness. When you have more fitness, Athletica will train you more. If you don’t have fitness, Athletica’s aim is to protect you (hence lower volume weekend runs).
