Forgive me if this topic has been covered. I’m new to Systm. I’ve been using Systm since January. I do enjoy the ease of setting up a training plan and then working the plan. Very similar to other programs I’ve used in the past.
Why is it that workout days change from week to week? Never the same day(s) off each week.
Why are long rides scheduled during week days? (Fri/Sat instead of Sat/Sun)
How do I black out certain days of the week so no workouts will be scheduled on those days? I am constantly shifting workouts on the calendar every week to meet my specific schedule. I have days I can’t ride. I need the workouts to be automatically scheduled on the days I can ride.
As my plan continues to build up in hours per week, this constant shifting is getting more and more difficult.
Other programs I’ve used allow black out days. Please educate me on how to find this feature on Systm.
Hey @spokespinner and welcome to the forums! You’ve found some of the weaknesses in the current iteration of how training plans are applied.
That said, if long rides are scheduled Fri & Sat instead of Sat/Sun it’s cuz you’ve entered a start date of Sunday or an end date of Saturday. Its not ideal but the way the plan selector is currently configured, you need to start a plan on a Monday and/or end the plan on a Sunday. This doesn’t always line up with our events so we might have to tweak things a bit at the end.
My advice, check the end date of your current plan, delete it, and reenter the same plan with Sunday as the end date. All the work you’ve already done will stay in your calendar and your history but the rest of the workouts going forward will have the longer rides on Sat/Sun and the days off, usually, Monday though there may be other rest days in there depending on the plan.
As for being able to black out days you can’t train, that is not yet a feature of SYSTM (though it has been requested ).
I think you will find though that after deleting, and re-entering your plan with a Sunday end date, most of what you are looking for will fall into place. You still might need to reschedule a workout here and there as things progress but it shouldn’t be as cumbersome as it is right now.
Check back in and let us know if this made sense, or if it helps, or if there is something else. There are plenty of folks here with plenty of experience, plus the coaches often check in on things too and give their thoughts. The Grande Fromage himself, Sir @David.McQuillen.KoS also lurks around the forums and may even weigh in sometimes on where things are at from a development standpoint.
Generally, when you are previewing you plan, you can see which days contain your long rides and which days are usually off-days or at least short/recover days. Then you can play around with your start/end dates to make them line up pretty close.
For me, this usually allows me to do my long rides on Fri & Sat and then take Sunday off, or have only yoga or recovery rides scheduled for Sunday.
I’ve been about 95% successful doing this and the. Only usually need to switch around a couple rides here and there.
It’s amazing to me that the ability to set days of the week that you can workout or days that you can’t workout wasn’t implemented long ago. This seems like a core feature that would benefit many. It’s such a pain in the ass to have to rework the poorly thought-out systm training schedules. It’s as if the systm devs never considered that end-users might have other responsibilities than bike training or that there’s no way to push forward the training schedule 1 week or more for those that might take a vacation that happens to fall within an extended training schedule.
@grocerylist You can do that - delete the plan and then add it back after the vacation but use “end date” instead of “start date” and set the end date to allow you to restart the plan with no missed workouts.
Note that when you delete the plan you won’t lose any workouts that you have already completed. Just uncompleted workouts on or after the deletion date will be deleted.
Thanks for the suggestion but that’s a laughable workaround, hardly efficient and not how any sane developer should design a schedule/calendar to be modified.
@grocerylist Ok - works for me but you should provide you ideas about a better approach in the Feature Request part of the forum. The developers review that and maybe we will see it implemented and improve the app.
Totally agree that it could be way better, but as it is, I don’t find it as bad as you make out. Deleting a current plan is very easy. All completed workouts remain in my calendar and only future ones disappear. Adding it (or another) back in is a bit more work as you have to go through the workout selection process and then specify the start date (or end date) delayed from the original by the desired amount. For the new plan, only workouts that will occur in the future appear in my calendar. Workouts that would have occurred in the past do not. So yeah, it takes a few minutes, but it gets the job done. In the meantime, here’s hoping they make this and a few other very simple but useful improvements to the calendar and workout player.
After canceling my plan, (if i’ve missed a few days) I haven’t figured out how many days I should set the end date for my new plan which results in having to cancel, set new plan, cancel set new plan… until I get it right. It’s a pain in the ass.
How would being able to set the days that you can train and the days you can’t, improve the experience of you missing a few days and wanted to push the plan out further?
I’m not saying the current “solution” isn’t inelegant, but it’s certainly not difficult. What, specifically are you suggesting to enhance calendar functionality?
A plan will rarely turn bad because we’ve missed a couple of days. The coaches essentially advise us to just to carry on. I think compliance in the 70-80% range has been said to be sufficient to achieve most plans purposes.
Depending on what your goals are and whether your plan is event focused, you might not want to change the end date anyway.
In any case, I think someone mentioned above that if you have suggestions for new features or enhancements to existing function, dropping a new thread in the feature request category will likely gain you more traction and may actually get the devs eyes on it.
I can agree with @grocerylist and @spokespinner that it would be a good feature to be able to “black out” a certain day in the week automatically. “I can never train on Mondays” and the planning algorithm adjust to that.
Yep. You can set the start date for the new plan instead of the stop date. Like if you started the original on 2/14 as shown in your calendar, and need to delay the plan by 3 days, set its start date for 2/17. That’ll do the same thing as setting its end date out 3 days. This will, of course, get you out of sync with the work weak phasing. If you want to keep the phase the same, you need to set the start date forward (or back) 7 days. With this, you’ll either miss a few workouts in the plan or repeat a few.
Being able to set my cycle training days or non-training days has nothing to do with being able to push the plan out further. They’re two independent calendar modification features that should be implemented in a training app.
In regards to blacking out training days… I do more than cycling and I don’t want to have SYSTM scheduling cycling when I’m doing powerlifting on MWF.
Wanting to be able to push the calendar X # of days/week or whatever would be if I’m sick, or if I go on a vacation or any number of obstacles that life throws you way which conflicts with a training schedule.
Got it yep. The calendar (and the plans and plan selectors could really use some love ) Don’t forget to go into the feature requests category to add your vote/comment/input. I suspect with the “downsized” team from last year the devs will be stretched but the more voices they hear the more likely The Company is to pay attention and bump things up a queue
@grocerylist My workaround for lifting is to add strength to my plan and then I do my own stuff on those days - usually Wednesday and Friday with Monday being a rest day.
I agree that it would be ideal to add repeating workouts - sort of like what TrainingPeaks does. Right now I run both calendars but I am getting better at just rearranging the SYSTM calendar and will probably drop TP so I don’t have to make changes in both.
You can record lifting on either the Rival watch or use the Wahoo Fitness App and a record of your workout will appear in the SYSYM calendar which I sometimes match with the planned strength workouts to show completion.
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