My job frequently takes me away from home for days at a time. I often return home to find I’ve missed a deadline for a training plan workout by a couple of hours, but it is locked and marked unavailable. Similarly, if I go on holiday part way through a 12 week training plan, I can miss lots of sessions with no option to do them, and worse I’m then expected to do harder sessions that I’ve not had the opportunity to train for.
A truly flexible Training Plan would adapt to my schedule, but as things are it’s the other way around. Perhaps the ability to ‘pause’ a Training Plan would be helpful where extended absence is unavoidable. Also the ability to unlock and perform a workout where the deadline was missed would be great, with the subsequent Training Plan schedule being re-flowed and adjusted accordingly. Perhaps just have an option for ‘no deadlines’ at the ‘enroll’ stage, and workouts can be performed as time permits, with the rest periods and future schedule adjusting as required.
I have enough deadlines to worry about, without having to think about Zwift deadlines too!
I think this would fix the training plans. As they are currently deployed its having the opposite effect to what was intended as if you miss one or more workouts you are pushed onto harder ones.
Another option would be to not have deadlines for individual workouts within the week. Everyone has days where they have more time available. I’ve been frustrated by having time for a long session hut only the shorter ones were possible and vice versa.
Another vote here for opening up plans with no predefined schedule built in.
By all means recommend when I should undertake the session, but dont force me to miss them as real life defines when I can & cant do a work out online.
I would think that if zwift just made all the workouts available to download, then you can do the plan at your own pace on your own time.
I think these plans were setup for dedicated cyclists that will train no matter what, same as they would do with a coach. if you are going to miss a week of training in the middle of a training plan then you need to go back and start over, training build on each other.
Yes that is exactly what I would like too. Some.of the workouts I had to miss but I really wanted to do them. I would like option to pick and choose workouts and do two one after the other. 50 minutes is hardly worth of dressing and undressing for zwifting.
I also echo this request. I am currently 4 weeks into a plan; I flew home today from a 3 day business trip and had to immediately complete a workout before it became unavailable. In the final week of the schedule I will be away again for 4 days so will miss at least one activity - it would be incredibly frustrating to fail the plan due to outside commitments; due to the nature of my work I cannot always plan these trips in advance so additional flexibility would be of great benefit. In an ideal world the plan would adapt to any missed activities, maybe adjusting the intensity of future workouts or extending the plan to achieve the original fitness goal.
Agreed. TrainerRoad allows for this type of “catch-up” and hitting pause on a training plan. I do like how Zwift pushes you to complete before a deadline.
Keep working on the plans. They’re worth the price of admission.
I agree completely. I had to quit GF plan because I kept missing the workout and can’t come back to do it before moving on. I can’t continue it because the next workout is a lot longer and harder and I loose my chance to prepare myself to go to the next. I thought every week is supposed to be a building block to go to the next week workout.
I don’t understand the logic behind locking the workout if the intention is to lock people to do workout in a week. I love the training plan, it gave me a structure. But I want to be able to do “every single workout” if I miss them due to work or any other circumstances. I thought Zwift said it’s flexible. And I know majority of people riding Zwift are regular people with jobs and commitment. Having a Training plan with a flexibility is great for us. Please add the feature to pause or to unlock the workout that we miss.
Yes, this is a concern for me coming up with a few business trips planned. The Zwift FAQ isn’t really that good at telling me what to do mid-plan. I understand preventing me from doing the next workout based on the TSS of the previous one but sometimes there are also two workouts available even though I am up to date on the plan and it’s not clear in which order I should do them. Plan flexibility should be able to expand and contract a week depending on the relative TSS, or simply pausing but setting a maximum time for doing so e.g. max pause for 3 days up to 3 times.
Also, the build me up plan states 5 hours per week but there are 3 weeks with at least 6 hours!!!
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Philip_Jackson
(Philip Jackson (DIRTy Rascals Furious))
12
I don’t mind the suggested structure, but why make it mandatory? People like to have the freedom to choose their schedule. We all understand that the BEST way to do a plan is in accordance with its owner’s prescription, but that’s not always possible. So, now why would you want me to do less work and an easier plan just b/c my schedule didn’t match the prescription? Just make it an option to toggle “unavailability” and all these complaints go away…
6 Likes
Philip_Jackson
(Philip Jackson (DIRTy Rascals Furious))
13
also… please let me know when this functionality is implemented as these plans are useless to me until then. I will have to go back to the old school workouts for the time being. It’s a shame… these plans seem to be well put together and to contain some solid training… if you could actually accomplish them…
+1 on that! I would like to be able to adjust the duration of the training plan after it’s started. I’m midway through my training plan for which I initially thought I’d do 8 weeks then go on to another, but I like it’s progression a lot and now I’d like to extend it to the full 12 weeks.
I completely agree with this. The deadlines should be recommendations only so allow more flexibility to do the sessions. I work shifts which means that I have to work a 12hr day on some Sundays. Doing a Frodo long ride after this is a challenge to say the least. It would be better for me to plan these long rides on my days off.
I agree as well - just started a training plan and can already see how I’m going to miss a couple weeks worth of workouts due to relatively short work trips. Kind of annoying, I’d like to complete it!
+1
And I’ve got a version of this issue and suggested solution.
Solution: simply do not prescribe a time-frame for the training plans to be completed in.
My version of this issue: I use Zwift to supplement my outdoor rides. I have two outdoor rides per week, so want three or four Zwift sessions per week. The training plans tend to have four or five sessions per week. I want to follow a training plan but inevitably have to choose between missing an outdoor ride or not completing the training plan. This is a choice I should not have to make.
Yes please. Just started Fondo plan butik Will be away for a week at Christmas so I won’t be able to zwift. Furthermore I want to do the plan over a longer period as o don’t have enough time to do all workouts and get outside riding as well.
I am running in to the same issue as I am out of town for a week around the holidays. However, I see both sides. On one hand, the current structure helps to make me more disciplined to complete my workouts on time. On the other hand, it is annoying that I have to restart midway through the FTP builder plan. A middle ground could be some sort of “catch up” period when you resume the plan. It will say “it looks like you missed x number of workouts/weeks/etc, want to get back on track? Do the following workouts to get back on the plan”.
Agree please enable plans to be paused, what happens when you simply don’t have the time, a cold, there is always a reason to not be able to get on zwift, so make the plans more flexible, just finished the fondo plan, it was good, and worked well, but the other plans require more time, I need to ride outside, the reason i use zwift is to keep my fitness up in the winter, not just for zwift, would like to try another plan, but no way can I complete it with everything else I have to do, make it a 10 day week, or just be able to pause, people go away, have jobs, family and commitments, we are not professional athletes, and whats more we pay for this, and it’s not cheap.