Exactly this!
I just want to add my two cents. Great feature to have a plan all set out, gets me on the bike more regularly and so simple. However, also frustrated by just how ridged the current set up is. I have given feedback and suggestions on how to fix below.
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Notify me that the workout expires on Thursday evening. Actually expires at 7:00pm. Why fix it at a certain point of the day. I know us as a community seem to enjoy âsufferingâ, you may call me a novice but Iâd rather avoid spewing my dinner trying to squeeze in the workout on time. A little evening cycling and bath would have been a perfect way to finish the day.
Suggestion: Make them due at midnight, base it of a time field set in your profile or that was used from your last device -
Donât strictly enforce a certain day. You know weddings happen, babies are born, people die. Your local club might even through a lot of mud and crazy session at you. Donât really want to contend with the reality of loosing my 12 week workout streak on top of that. Make workouts âDueâ at a certain point, once you reach that point the workout becomes âOverdueâ you guys can even kill the workout if it is overdue for 24hrs or 48hrs, whatever Zwift engineers think can keep us motivated. Punishing users not doing a habit for a single day is counterproductive and will reduce engagement, better to encourage them to keep building the habit (read Atomic Habits if you have a few mins).
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I totally agree with you. I am doing a 12 week plan and because of Christmas I was away and missed ONE workout before it expired even though there was still plenty of days left in the week. It just doesnât make any sense. We pay a nice sum for this product and they should be listening to the consumer on this.
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I agree with you all here - got onto my bike yesterday around 7AM to do the âSaturday morningâ workout according to the workout plan. Got pretty disappointed when it did not lock up until 11AM. Totally unacceptable! This made me miss that workout cause the rest of the day/evening was swamped with family activities.
A workout should never be forced a certain day or time - only recommended. We all have other things in life that takes time (work, family etc).
How about mobilizing the community and really let Zwift know how weâre feeling? I bet 99% of the community actually want this restriction gone since it discourages workouts instead of the opposite.
I tweeted about it yesterday and tagged @GoSwift
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Just want to pitch in here. Started a plan last week. Will certainly not be finishing this one or doing another till this is sorted. It just doesnât work for us mere mortals. Maybe people with a lot of time and not a lot of commitments but for the general population it doesnât. We all enrol on plans to improve and for that sense of achievement you get at the end. The way the plans are set up a week or two into it for most will just feel like a waste of time when the workouts expire and you canât go back.
This needs addressing. Iâbe been a member of Zwift nearly a year and Iâm quite shocked I just found this issue and also shocked this thread has been going on some time with no improvement on the matter.
Hope this gets sorted soon.
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Iâm new to Zwift and already run in this restriction. I got delayed yesterday and ended up doing a workout at midday and now this morning I get the message that Iâve got to wait 45mins before I can do âtodayâsâ workout, which means that I wouldnât be able to do it this morning due to other commitments.
I get the principle behind the rest periods, but that doesnât stop people from doing other single workouts in between anyway, so why enforce it to this level? Sure, make it a recommendation regarding the next start time but one that I override and continue.
I donât know the codebase but compared the complexity of the rest of the app, this canât be hard implement.
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Hi Gerrie - I just rejoined Zwift having left so frustrated with the way Training Plans work and the lack of flexibility. Just came back here to see if anything has changed. I saw your post and wonder if you have managed to understand the difficulties other users are facing with this? Your comments suggest that either you donât understand my experience on Zwift - or I donât understand the instructions on how to use it!
If I use Workouts rather than a Training Plan, I have to spend ages finding a suitable workout each time I get on my bike. A training plan is convenient in loading the next workout ready for next time. Jump on the bike and press go! Except when my next session canât coincide with the Zwift schedule. Then after pulling out hair, I am scrolling through a massive list of workouts to find something suitable.
Am I missing something? How does it work for you?
Michael
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I completely understand what difficulties you are facing, I was giving a suggestion how to do workouts without being stuck in the ridged training plans.
This is how the workout plan look. Organized by week then you do them on by one.
I do mostly only workouts in Zwift. My coach mainly load them into todayâs plan or I will load them into a directory so they are all together.
Like this.
Thatâs really helpful! I really hadnât worked that out at all.
How do you load workouts into todayâs plan or into a directory?
I find I can only access workouts on my iPad when connected to my bike (deliberately in a v cool room). Is there a way of accessing them when I am sitting in a warm place with a coffee?
Really appreciate your help!
I wonder whether it would be simpler to just add a check box called âfollow scheduleâ which when checked, means the user wants to follow a real training plan and its fine for it to work as it does now. When not checked the clock doesnât run. The user controls when to move on from one sequence to the next whenever they want. Personally, I use zwift for entertainment when I canât ride outside. When using zwift sometimes Iâll join an event or maybe do a free ride but I do find that running a training plan is useful because it tends to be cadence based which works well on the trainer I use (cyclops fluid 2) because it has limited resistance capabilities. It also occupies my attention and gives me something to think about. The point is everyone uses the software differently and allowing flexibility here goes a long way to making it useful for a wider range of folks. I find it disheartening that this thread is over a year old now (I either contributed to this last year or more likely, just posted my own complaint). One wouldnât expect this to be such a challenge to implement.
Trainerroad could adapt calendar. But Iâve just cancelled my TR subscription in favour of Zwift. Starting to regret it having missed a workout in my plan yesterday and having all day today to do it, but itâs expired. This has been requested for more than a year. Cmon Zwift, put all the workouts in a list to choose, and have the plans as an extra.
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Yes Swift Team I totally share Timâs opinion.
Your work with the plans is actually mostly wasted.
Plans are really of high quality but people (me including) just skip them completely the moment where we are several times out of schedule due to regular life events and then it is just becoming frustrating.
Additionally not being able to switch off the plan is also a bummer. Either I donât know where to cancel it or rather it is just keep nailing me reminders of further sessions that I donât even want to approach (as I miss the one from before that are less demanding).
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I use both - TR for training plans and workouts, and Zwift for eye candy and events/races. Having a calendar with the possibility of adding, moving and changing workouts, pushing/deleting weeks, etc, is essential with any training plan - itâs one of the reasons I use TR. Itâs clear from the lack of progress on these basic requirements that they will probably never come to Zwift. Youâre much better off using Training Peaks or Todayâs Plan to manage your plans and workouts than using Zwift plans, limited-access workouts and pitiful planning limitations.
Please make it so you can go back and repeat parts of running training plans.
I went on holiday and so couldnât do two weeks. Now I seem to have to quit and start again as I canât go backwards, which is really annoying after following the plan religiously for 10 weeks.
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100% agree with this, and I have had to cancel my first training plan (Iâm new to Zwift) because I couldnât keep up with the time lockouts - sometimes only by a few hours.
The 2 minute Zwift overview video for training plans actually says something like ââŚgoing to miss a scheduled plan session? No problem, just pick up the plan the next timeâ - which is misleading because the progression of the plan will likely be too much if you miss several sessions for whatever reason. In my case the FTP Builder plan advanced too quickly if I missed one or more of the sessions per week, meaning I ended up cancelling - no flexibility at all, which is demotivating.
Some people will have the time and flexibility to complete plans in the recommended time, others wonât but without the flexibility to fit in with peopleâs real world situations, the end result is frustration and demotivation - surely not the desired outcome?
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I would like to be able to ride more training plans with a 2d/week schedule. I have not checked them out for a while but last time I saw only one.
Iâm working full time and have a family like many others. Besides that I like to do free-rides or/and events which makes my calendar full anyway. This hinders me to sign up for a 4-5 day/week training plan.
Iâm in the same boat - or maybe on the same bike. In the middle of FTP Builder but had to pause as needed to be away from the trainer - but now canât restart where I left off. Significant devaluing of Zwift, and there are plenty of options out there.
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Iâve just started using Zwift and found that there is no option to relocate and postpone training plans. I easily modify the workouts on Garmin as I want by drag-and-drop and this feature is not available in Zwift !
Also, as a software developer, I donât think it is difficult to adapt this feature to the current architecture. Iâm wondering, whatâs the reason after the authorities didnât add this feature?
Suggestion for training plans-please add a slider so we can expand or contract the amount of time for the plan. For example, the Zwift racing plan has 25 workouts, more than 2/3 of which are well above recovery intensity. This masters + category rider knows from experience more recovery time is needed than provided for optimum results. I learned that lesson in college the hard way, wasnât until my senior year that I stopped running too fast on the easy days, and was then able to go faster on the hard days.
Plan would be fine for me if I could stretch it to 8-10 weeks, and I could add recovery/social rides in between as I see fit.
Yes I can choose workouts from menu, but point of a structured plan is not having to think too much, and I wouldnât get the pair of snazzy socks at the end!
Other option is making plan dynamic, adapting to heart rate as indicator of fatigue, but that would require a fair bit of fancy logic.
Thanks