Training (Coach)

From Garmin, via intervals.icu (the running VO2max). Garmin doesn't sync the cycling VO2max, so that stays manual.

The value in intervals.icu is often a default; we don't overwrite your manual value — you set that yourself.

Via "push to Garmin": the workouts land on your intervals.icu calendar and sync to your watch automatically. Your new schedule lands on the right week: early in the week (Mon–Wed) on the current week, later (Thu–Sun) automatically on the coming week — since the current week is mostly spent by then. If you're viewing "Next week · new plan" in the app and push, it's guaranteed to go to next week. Before pushing, the coach first clears its own earlier "CS ·" sessions on that week, so you never get duplicate plan items — your own workouts and completed activities stay untouched. The confirmation tells you exactly which week it pushed to and how many old sessions were cleared.

If you've built for several weeks in a row without an easier week in between (a skipped rest week, say), the coach deliberately schedules one: volume drops and the hard sessions (sweet-spot, brick) come out. Adaptation happens in that recovery week — pushing on stalls you, a down week lets you supercompensate. Next week you build again on fresh legs.

The coach looks at the ratio of easy to hard training time over the last 28 days. Endurance development thrives on roughly 80% easy / 20% hard (polarized). Below ~70% easy you're training too much in the "grey zone" — that blunts adaptation and raises risk. It's a signal, not a penalty.

With a tender spot or too sharp a jump in run volume, the coach offers a low-impact alternative. You keep the aerobic stimulus without the impact that can trigger an injury. If you feel good, you just run. Flag an injury by body part (in ☀️ How do you feel today?) and the coach scales run, bike and swim separately — see *Injuries & the daily check-in*.

A per-day traffic light + the actual value for resting-HR, HRV, sleep and steps, plus a recovery score — so you see in advance that some factors affect your training and that the coach is taking them into account. The data comes from your Garmin via intervals.icu. Body Battery isn't in there, so we deliberately don't show it (we don't invent a number). If you weigh in on a Garmin scale, a ⚖️ weight tile appears in the row too (your latest weigh-in + trend arrow) — deliberately neutral, not a traffic-light verdict (weight up/down isn't inherently good or bad). See *Automatic weight* above.

In ① Set up → your check-in, below ⏱️ Time per day, is the 🗓️ Type per day row. Tap the disciplines you normally do on each day — swim, bike, run, strength. This is your fixed week rhythm and it's authoritative for the coach: it places your sessions on *your* days instead of laying them out in a default order. Leave a day empty and the coach picks a sensible fill for it. Your setting syncs across all your devices and you always keep the final say — feel free to drag a session to another day.

A specific date you can't train once — say a support day at someone else's race. Add the date in ① Set up → your check-in and that single day drops out of that week; the coach spreads its volume across your other days (nothing is cut — your weekly load stays the same, just packed into 6 days). So it's not a whole week off, and it doesn't touch your standing week rhythm: only that date. Past dates fall off the list automatically, and the setting syncs across your devices.

Tap a bike session on your week board → in its details you'll find "🧪 Make this an FTP test". That day becomes a real 20-min FTP test (warm-up + opener → 20 min all-out → spin-down), pushed to your Garmin like any session. Key point: a test deliberately has a low average power (the warm-up and spin-down pull it down), so the coach counts it done the moment you ride it — never as a shortfall. When you're finished, a prompt appears to adopt your measured FTP under *Your level*, so your zones and progression line up again. (CS doesn't auto-read the FTP value; you enter it — or ask me.) Undo any time with "↩ Back to the ride".

A brick is a ride finished with a short run (10–15 min) — race-transition (T2) feel, one outing, no second trip out. Under ① Set up → your check-in one control picks where you want bricks: Off · Weekend · Weekday · Both.

• Weekend — the brick hangs off your long weekend ride and is a standing part of your build: planned every week, and a completed brick counts as planned (won't drop out of your schedule or show as an "extra").
• Weekday — the coach tacks a short brick run onto a midweek ride (T2 practice).
• Both — a brick in each.

The coach attaches the brick to the ride itself — it's not a separate session, so it doesn't count as a double and doesn't need its own slot. (This used to be two separate toggles; together they confusingly produced two bricks — now it's one clear choice.)

If you've been training a discipline on a *different* day than you set for several weeks (e.g. you run on Wednesday while you set Thursday), the coach flags it with a blue 🧭 card above your week budget: *"Your run session has been on Wed lately, not Thu. Update your pattern?"* Tap Yes, update and your week pattern shifts with it (your week reshuffles immediately); tap No, keep it and that proposal won't return. The coach never reshuffles silently — it proposes, you decide. Odd extra sessions on your fixed day deliberately don't trigger this.

Yes — via Actualiteit ("what's up") you report something that doesn't fit your standing settings: ill, an injury/pain, a medical procedure, under-recovered, or travel. The coach proposes a sensible ease-off window itself (you often can't say how long you'll need — that's exactly the advice you want); you accept it or set your own end date. Inside that window the intensity comes out (quality work drops to easy aerobic — the aerobic stimulus stays, the sharpness goes). Important for your safety: for an open wound / medical procedure or illness the coach removes swim sessions entirely in that window (rather than just softening them) — swimming with an open wound is an infection risk, in the pool too, and that kind of risk doesn't go away by swimming slower. For an injury, swims stay: water is often the safe, impact-free option there. The explanation banner above your week says exactly what changed and why, and the report auto-expires on its end date. Context-only reports (travel/other) don't soften your week — they're just background.

Once a session is done (green/amber on "this week"), a compact green 🧭 Coach analysis bar appears on the card. Tap it and the session details open; right at the bottom are the coach's observations — so your calendar stays uncluttered. That coach-read is a rule-based evaluation in a few lines. It compares your execution against the plan (TSS/duration, or distance for swims), reads your RPE tap (😌·😐·🥵) against the load you actually did (did it feel harder, easier, or right on?), and gives a forward look to your next session (green, or deliberately easy). Important: the read invents nothing — every line comes from your own numbers, and a line we can't back up we don't show. Alongside execution/RPE/forward-look there's also an objective layer from your watch data (per-second streams): your average HR zone, your aerobic decoupling (does your heart rate climb vs your power/pace? a low value = strong endurance base), and your cadence (steady or fading). These appear once you sync with Strava — the streams of every run/ride ≥20 min are then pulled in and computed.