Hi, still a newbie, so sorry if my question sounds a bit stupid.
I wonder if I totally confuse my digital twin if I do a completely different workout from the one athletica planned for that day.
Will athletica try to connect my performance to the planned workout and potentially change thresholds or other important metrics and all will be mixed up? Or doesn’t athletica care and only uses the raw data of the workout really done as basis for further calculation? What is the best way to reduce the risk of errors?
This is especially important as long as the wizard is not live again.
Hi,
Great question. I’d think about what the goal is you’re trying to achieve.
I am assuming you’re using the platform to train for a race - with that in mind, I also assume you have some understanding of cross-training. For example, cycle instead of a run.
The load you put on your body with an exercise is taken to account. If athletica is planning a run with a load of 30, I’d try to match that with my cycle. Bearing in mind The energy systems I am trying to train.
Say, your load of 30 is for a steady aerobic running effort, you can cycle with a steady aerobic effort instead.
Its a bit more complicated if you’re looking at interval sessions in different sport categories as they activate and use different muscle groups, meaning its hard to match run -cycling 1 to 1 in that case.
A few cycling workouts has very little to no effect on your running threshold data, for two reasons. 1 the platform separates those two sports and 2 the platform looks at change over a period of time.
At least thats my own experience.
I hope that helps
I fully aggree to your idea and also would await that athletica is clever enough to detect that the sport was different.
What if you would have a running interval session planned with a high load, but during the warmup you see that it is just not your day and you change your mind to do a L2 session instead. I assume athletica got no chance to understand that this was a clever idea to reduce the load that day and by error the system could understand that you tried to hit the intervals, but failed… That would be a completely different interpretation. Maybe I am thinking to complicated
I find the AI coach very helpful here. Try it out, give the coach context. Its very powerful.
Bottomline is, you’re the athlete and know best
The idea is to give yourself context and athletica is one tool to do so. As long as you understand why you’re not able to run a certain session.
You may want to remember your A or B races in a few weeks or months. One session not completed 100% here or there is not a big deal as long as you try to stay consistent.
The coach might be a bit grumpy, but explain in your feedback when rating workout. Future workouts will adjust based on what you actually did, not what was the plan for the current day.
AI coach doesn’t like “unplanned” sessions, but the platform will take the load into account. There is a way to “please” AI Coach if you are tired of its’ passive aggressive (“I notice you have done many unplanned sessions lately”) comments.
Hit that Add button and create a workout so it is “planned” before you do your session.
We are very close to bringing WW back, so hopefully this is non-issue soon. But, for folks like me who likes to record my morning walks with my dog, I plan them, just to keep the AI coach happy. Now for full transparency, we can and will do better job for quicker “I want to add my own sessions” process. We know it’s cumbersome to add recurring “own workouts”.
As both @Jwchter and @AverageGuy state, switching sport mode and session target (aerobic vs. hiit) is a bit more complicated. Changing from swim or bike to run, even if load is the same, neuromuscular stimuli is larger during running. Neuromuscular load is not easily quantified, and such needs to be taken into account by the athlete. Talk to the AI Coach if making those big changes between sports.
FYI: we’ve just closed beta testing so WW is close to be released to all.
MJ
