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The Four Inputs that Determine Your Progress
118 Plays12 minutes ago
Uphill Athlete founder Steve House sits down with athlete dashboard lead Will Zittlau and Coach Alexa Hasman to introduce the newly launched Uphill Athlete Training Groups dashboard — a purpose-built tool designed to cut through data overload and give athletes a clear, intuitive read on their progress. The conversation walks through the four core training pillars tracked by the dashboard — consistency, training load, work/rest balance, and strength — each rooted in the foundational principles of Training for the New Alpinism and surfaced as simple stoplight scores that tell athletes at a glance whether they're on track.
The episode also dives into one of the dashboard's most anticipated features: automated aerobic threshold tracking. Rather than requiring periodic field tests, the system analyzes ongoing training data to surface a rolling AeT trend — making a metric that's long been central to the Uphill Athlete methodology accessible without extra effort. Steve shares the story behind "Maria," the AI intelligence layer being built into the platform, named in honor of alpinist Maria Frantar. The team closes with a look at what's ahead, including automated training zone suggestions, TSS adjustments for conditions like pack weight and snow, and an in-platform coaching assistant.
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Transcript
Athletes' Data Overwhelm and Training Effectiveness
00:00:00
Speaker
Athletes don't necessarily want more data. Everybody's sort of swimming or drowning in data. They want to know simply if what they're doing is working or not.
00:00:17
Speaker
Quick pause before we get back into this conversation. If you want the structure and accountability of working with coaches and other athletes, training groups is where a lot of people start. With training groups, you get your training plan, live workshops, live Q&A with our coaches, and a community of athletes which are all training for similar objectives.
00:00:37
Speaker
Plus, you get the new Uptill Athlete Dashboards. The dashboards are designed to explicitly answer three questions. What do you do next? What is the highest leverage improvement you can make your training?
00:00:49
Speaker
And show you that you're getting fitter by a continuous aerobic threshold measurements and monitoring. Join us at uphillathlete.com slash training hyphen groups.
Development of New Athlete Dashboards
00:01:02
Speaker
And now let's get back into this interesting conversation. Welcome to the uphillathlete podcast. Today we're going to do something we haven't done before. I'm going to sit down with two people who have been building the next layer of how uphillathlete actually supports athletes.
00:01:20
Speaker
Well, Zitlow leads a build of our new athlete dashboard, and many of you will know Coach Alexa Hassman, who, besides coaching and doing mental training, coaching, also runs our training groups. And she is the coach in the training groups that hears every day the questions that athletes are actually asking. And we're going to talk about what we built, why we build what the athletes were using it, are telling us, and hint a little bit about where this is all
Motivation and Progress Tools for Athletes
00:01:53
Speaker
going. So let's start with the questions we keep hearing.
00:01:59
Speaker
I'd like to think that most of our athletes, specifically in training groups, they aren't struggling because they lack motivation. They're they're struggling because they're unsure of what to do They're unsure of how to get started.
00:02:14
Speaker
And then once they get started, they're unsure if they're actually improving. They're anxious to whether or not they're in the right training zone. They're worried that they might be doing too much or not enough. And They're worried about like what happens when they move a workout from Monday to Wednesday and how they rebalance that and how to use the time they have for training. And those problems kind of lay out the structure and the boundaries, I would say, of kind of what we've been building.
00:02:41
Speaker
Alexei, you do your live coach Q&A every week. What are athletes asking you about? What are some of the patterns that, what are some of the worries? What are some of the concerns that training group athletes bring to you?
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, sort of touching on what you said, Steve, they want to know, am I doing this correct? Right? Because it's hard to tell physiologically that we're improving when we're when we're doing it every day, right? So they want to see how to how can I tell if I'm improving?
00:03:13
Speaker
Or like you also mentioned, oh, I missed a workout last week, or I keep missing this one workout each week. Does that mean that I'm ruining my training? How does that look?
00:03:23
Speaker
So that's the big question that I get every week. Yeah, that makes
Simplification of Training Data
00:03:28
Speaker
sense. I mean, that's the reality of training, right? Like you do miss workouts. And I find that, you know, ah I hear that athletes don't necessarily want more data. Everybody's sort of swimming or drowning in data.
00:03:42
Speaker
They want to know simply if what they're doing is working or not. So yeah that's really great, Alexa. Thanks for kind of chewing us in there. Will, do you want to kind of take us through how we're answering these questions? Specifically, let's just start with what an athlete will see now when they log into the Appalachite Training Group's dashboards.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, so um that was a great intro. And I mean, the goal of this was to keep it simple, back to there being a lot of data out there, especially health metrics. And when you're getting into this training, it can be confusing.
00:04:18
Speaker
And so with training groups, you're going to select a training plan, and then we're going to give you kind of four high-level scores to keep track of on your dashboard. So it keeps it very simple. And those are consistency, training load, work-rest balance, and strength.
00:04:33
Speaker
And the goal there is to keep you aligned with whatever plan you've chosen so you can see progress week over week, month over month, year over year, and see that these inputs are actually working. So that's the first screen you're going to see is those four pillars that I just named. Those are what we call training inputs.
00:04:50
Speaker
You can also see your today's plan training and quickly chat with your coach on that screen as well. um We're also going to have calendar views for your plan and completed workouts. so you can see what's up ahead. You can see your adherence to the plan, completion percentages, stats for the week, that sort of thing.
00:05:08
Speaker
And then also we are going to have those progress metrics, but they're going to be a couple tabs over. So it's only when you want to dig into the data that it's actually there.
Understanding Key Training Metrics
00:05:17
Speaker
so we're going to have things for a CTL. You guys are probably familiar with that ah volume. We're also going to be having aerobic threshold calculations, which I think is something very relevant for uphill athletes, but also something that traditionally gets missed by other software, like health software platforms that are out there.
00:05:34
Speaker
ah We're also going to have your anaerobic threshold so you can compare the delta between them, which can be a really good indicator of preparedness for these longer efforts. And then other health metrics of well as well with that progress over time as well. Consistency, gradualness of increasing the training load and modulating the training load were originally the three kind of, I would say, um pillars or core ideas of the training for the new alpinism.
00:06:03
Speaker
And then we added strength because that's actually sort of become obvious that one of the things that happens is most if people skip a workout in training groups, we found, I mean, like, so you could shout out if this is true or not, but it feels like it's, if they skip something, it's often strength. is that true?
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah. It's, and staying with one-on-one athletes, like everybody, if they're going to skip something, it's going to be strength. So, Will, what is consistency measuring and how are we measuring it and how it is that unique?
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah. So all these are going to be kind of stoplight scores. So we do give you a score one to a hundred, but it's also just going to be color coded. So you can do a really quick visual check. Um, it is related. Stoplight score. What does that mean?
00:06:48
Speaker
Ah, like green, yellow, red. So green, good. You're adhering to the plan. You should expect progress. Yellow, maybe some workouts have been missed. Um, your progress isn't necessarily declining or decreasing, but just something to note. And then,
00:07:02
Speaker
Red is you're probably not going to be expecting progress if you continue that training methodology. You're missing the prescribed workouts and it's just not following the plan. um On that consistency score, so that's going to be basically completed workouts compared to what was planned.
00:07:19
Speaker
um So if you're going above and beyond, you're still going to be rewarded for consistency. But if once again, if you're skipping workouts or swapping workouts for consistency, different activity types, it's not going to quite give you that score and cut you either.
00:07:33
Speaker
Great. So consistency score tells you if you're showing up and we can all agree consistency is the single most important signal in training. So what about training load?
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah. So training load, I mean, other apps you've probably heard of like training stress score, that sort of thing. So training load is actually the gradual increase in loading over time. And this is going to be whether like a combination of time, intensity, duration, effort, et cetera. It's kind of one singular score that's a proxy for all of those. So once again, if you want to drill down into those specific categories, you can, but this is kind of ah combines just what is your general systemic load that you're taking on with this training?
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, so the training load tells you that you're training enough and you're training is you're also not training too much, you're not training too little, that your aerobic system actually has enough, the right amount of load to continue to improve. And this is trying to capture that concept of gradualness, which was We gradually increase the training stress over time so at a rate at which the body can adapt and create positive gains in fitness. So what about work-rest balance?
Importance of Strength Training
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah. The term is a little – yeah. Tell us about work-rest balance. So WordPress balance kind of takes the two previous mentioned scores into account, and it's looking at the longer term scaling. So this is like you're getting adequate rest while you build, but then maybe there's also periodizations of um like you do a build week. So obviously your training load is going to be a lot higher.
00:09:18
Speaker
um So we just want to balance rest after those periods to make sure that each block of work prepares you for the next series. And maybe Alexa, Steve, you can expand on that better than I can. But that periodization of training is what that's trying to capture.
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah, this is capturing the concept of modulation that, that the you know, we typically have trading volume or trading stress that kind of builds from week to week for somewhere, you know, a few weeks. it varies, obviously, but a lot of our stock training plans, it's like a three-week build, one-week recovery week where the where the volume and intensity is much, much lower, and then another another build that picks off.
00:09:58
Speaker
picks up where the last build week left off. So that's what it's trying to capture. So what about strength? Yeah, um strength is kind of its own consistency category in a lot of ways. um As you mentioned, I'm also guilty of skipping strength workouts. I think endurance athletes, this is often the first one people drop.
00:10:19
Speaker
Um, so we deserve, we decided it deserved its own score. So this is how many and how well you actually complete your prescribed strength training sessions. Um, so you want to keep this one green. You want a strong body. Uh, you'll be a lot more durable if you don't skip these workouts, but we, um, decided that was important enough to warrant a fourth category on its own.
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah. How do you talk in the training group about that concept of strength training or that concept of durability, Alexa? I think of it as the trunk of the tree. We are only our branches and the rest of our tree can only grow if the base of it is strong. And that comes from strength training. So it's a critical piece of training.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah. And just in the coaching literature and discussions of the last, especially I'd say five years, this concept of durability has... gained a lot of, i mean, these things cycle through time, but it's it's kind of back in vogue to talk a lot about durability. And I think a lot of what people mean by that is is doing this the the right strength training at the right time for the right reason so that your body can, as you said, Alexa, can continue to support all this other training without getting injured. And I think that this is a big thing and it's why I just felt like it really needed
00:11:40
Speaker
and we all talk about this extensively, that it really needed its own measure, its own accountability so that we can keep people progressing, not just for like 12 weeks, but for 10 years.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah. And it's important to start that early too. Like if you try adding strength to an already high volume block, like that's a lot of central nervous system the fatigue that you're trying to suddenly just cram on to catch up. So it is a fundamental pillar.
Relevance of Training Metrics in Progress
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So four inputs, I like to think of them as four really quick answers. No more guessing. You just quickly at a glance can see if you're on track or not. And if you're seeing something there, this is different than what you're expecting. if I miss like four workouts in a row, could probably go there and and I'm knowing what to expect.
00:12:31
Speaker
But if you're if it's not what you expect when you get there, then that's a signal to dig in a little deeper and figure out how to get yourself on track. Yeah. And so, I mean, Steve, you've been coaching yourself and others for 20 plus years. So when we started this project, you told me that when you sit down with a new athlete, these are the four things that you're looking at and kind of thinking in your head. So why did you settle on these four?
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think they just map to the most common patterns I've i've seen um behind people underperforming or not not ah not progressing in their training the way they expect to. They're either not building up fast enough, they're not building training stress, but quickly enough or they're doing it too slowly or not at all, or they're not recovering from the hard weeks or they're skipping their strength workouts.
00:13:20
Speaker
And there, there are these dashboards in training peaks that we're all familiar with. And we've used in a policy for 10 years now, you know, CTL, ATL, TSS, ah these acronyms, chronic training load and and training stress score are, are important. But,
00:13:41
Speaker
For athlete, as a coach, they work for me, but I found for athletes, they, they were, they just often felt overwhelmed. And especially at the training group level where I'd say ah people are in the training groups tend to be less singular goal focused. Like they're, like thats they're not so many of them are like, Hey, I have a a race where i ever want to do really well in six months. They're more like, I want to continue to do this for a very long time. And I want this to just sort of be a base layer in my life and, uh, do a lot of different things and ski in the winter and run a race in the summer and go on a rock hunting trip in the fall. And that, that tends to be the typical, um, I would say demographic that is attracted to the training groups, uh, methodology and structure. So, you know, again, just going back to those original three principles, consistency, gradualness, modulation, then adding the fourth leg of the table with strength and just trying to make it really put it in plain language and make it simple and and easy for people to understand their progress.
00:14:49
Speaker
Another thing that I think is worth bringing up. um So these can also be kind of distracting metrics in a way, too. Like if you don't know the fundamentals behind them and you're just looking at your CTL and saying, like, why is it doing this? Why is it doing that after each workout?
00:15:05
Speaker
um In some ways, you're almost missing the point of that consistency, right? Like, that's why we're taking a higher layer up. Does that make sense? so Yeah. Totally. I mean, I think that, you know, CTL in a way, it accounts for consistency, but it also is highly, you know,
00:15:23
Speaker
ah dependent on what the tss scores of the individual workouts are so i think that that can you know uh mask things that i as a you know i sit down as a coach and and look at somebody's training peaks like that pops out at me uh really quickly that's like one of the first things i usually look at and you can also view oh sorry
00:15:45
Speaker
Do you want to? No. um In some ways, I guess they can also be misleading. Like I'm just thinking of personal experiences here, but a lot of your uphill athlete training, you know, I've read the books, um weighted training, like uphills.
00:16:00
Speaker
I'm not getting a score that feels related to my like relative effort on those. Yes. Right. And so that's the other thing. Do you want to say that later? Let's get to that in a minute.
00:16:11
Speaker
yeah Alexa, when you are talking to athletes that since the dashboards have launched, which has been, you know, we're recording this at the end of April, it's been about a month now.
00:16:24
Speaker
How is it landing? what is the yeah what are What are the questions coming in? It's good. I mean, they're they' it's definitely bringing up a conversation of like, okay, my score is I'm a yellow here in consistent or in like work balance, right?
00:16:40
Speaker
And so it brings up a conversation of like, okay, well, why is that? And usually they can sort of backtrack and figure that out. Like, well, yeah, I did miss three workouts this week, you know, but it gives them a little bit of like a a cue to reflect, I think would be the best way to say it.
00:16:57
Speaker
o Yeah. Yeah. So that's good. That's, that's the right thing. That's what we're wanting is for these things to like bring attention and therefore trigger a conversation or a question or bring that into the group chat or the live Q and a, and then start that conversation that we have as a group and, and, and sort it out and everybody learns. So it's really a win-win.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
Focus on Aerobic Threshold for Endurance
00:17:24
Speaker
Let's talk about the aerobic threshold a bit because this is actually something I'm super excited about. And I've actually been working on for a very long time and there's been a lot of starts and stops to this project is figuring out how to solve the aerobic threshold test challenge without having to make people go do a test or run around the track or stress out about their, whether they're using a wrist based monitor chest based monitor and whether their route has a hill in the middle or not, or whether they have to recover before they do their herbic threshold tests and all the kind of sticking points of the test and do what I actually do as a coach, which is i just have my athletes like,
00:18:10
Speaker
train for a week or two and i go in and i look in their data and i look and i can just figure it out so that's actually literally like the approach basically originally took us i sort of just sat down ah with uh with a computer scientist and explain to him like my process of how I try to figure out an aerobic threshold. And then we tried to codify that into software. And I would say that it was an interesting process in that it didn't really work for a very long time. And then all of a sudden it worked and it worked amazingly well.
00:18:46
Speaker
So we'll just ah take us through this a little bit. um Let's look at the look at the progress tab in the aerobic threshold trend graph and maybe kind of show people what's what what they can expect to see here.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, so the aerobic thresholds work is something that Steve mentioned he's been working on for a long time. So i was really excited to finally have a place where we can you know integrate that into something. So it's going to live on the platform and this comes into effect when you first sign up.
00:19:16
Speaker
If you have workouts that sync, we can do that initial calculation there. Otherwise, this is going to be a rolling weekly statistic that updates. And what that means is you don't have to do a specific heart rate drift test. You don't need to worry about what watch is on your wrist if you forgot your heart rate monitor that day. You just do your training as prescribed and you'll see that trend change over time.
00:19:40
Speaker
um So this is going to happen in the background and it's just another metric to see. However, um once again, specifically for endurance sports, this is a really important metric that gets missed by a lot of existing platforms out would there. So I'm really excited that people can finally start to integrate this into their training as well. How is this landing with the Athletes Alexa? How are they using it? Are they finding it valuable?
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, you know, we haven't used it a ton yet because we're only a few weeks into using this program. But for me as looking forward, I'm excited about it because a lot of what I do on the coach Q&A is also going through AET test with people and determining what their heart rate drift is and walking them through it. So it'll get rid of some of that confusion that people have with like, well, so what is my zone? Or did I do this test correctly? Do I need to do it again?
00:20:31
Speaker
All of that should be eliminated. Yeah, and I want to shout out to i had a former athlete I had, and she was training for Denali, and I had her doing all this low-intensity work. And after, like, eight weeks, she was just, like, calling me up, and she's just like, I don't get it. Like, you know, she was really pulling her hair out. She's just like, you're I'm just running around this park in circles. Like, I'm going really slow. you Like, I don't feel like I'm getting – you know, and and in a way that – call really stuck in my mind like how can i make aerobic fitness progress visible how can we do that and this is how we do that we're we're going to measure it on a weekly basis like will said you need at least four weeks of data in there before it starts to become something that's usable and we're filtering that out for you so you don't if there's not enough data you don't see anything but as soon as there is enough you
00:21:28
Speaker
ah It will surface ah reading and it will show in your in your heart rate and then it will track over time. So you can literally, again, this is going to be another layer. Like if your aerobic threshold is not improving over you know a few months, for example, then you know you could probably look back at the original inputs and see like, okay, what was I missing? Was I missing consistency? was i Was I not modulating? Was I doing too much? Was I not doing enough training load? Was I doing too much? Like those kinds of questions can be asked. um But hopefully but they don't need to be because as you see your aerobic threshold line flattening, you' be like, oh man, I really want to be continue to improve.
00:22:07
Speaker
Now let's look at the the inputs and see where I'm missing and let's get that done so that I can continue to to progress this way. I think it's the single most important number for endurance athletes and, you know if we get it wrong in the testing, then also the rest of the program can be off. And this is true for people working off a a regular stock training plan or work somebody working with a coach, except if you're working with coach a coach, the coach can do all that that work for you. But now this sort of democratizes that work and makes it easy to do at scale for more people to um really, really help them figure out
00:22:49
Speaker
If they're improving. And those of you who are thinking ahead and are familiar with the uphill athlete system can already probably anticipate some of the knock on effects of being able to map aerobic threshold. And as Will said earlier, we know anaerobic threshold. And now we can measure the difference between those and we can start to ah work, get people to work towards.
00:23:10
Speaker
being fit enough, and show them when they're actually ready to start adding higher intensity training in terms of zone three and zone four kind of workouts. And so, Steve, ah that's maybe something worth talking about is the difference.
00:23:25
Speaker
I mean, it's core to the uphill athlete ethos, but ah aerobic threshold versus anaerobic threshold, what other platforms get wrong by basing zones off anaerobic threshold? Maybe it's worth kind of expanding on that a bit.
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah, um I think everybody has everybody who has, especially at Garmin, has had the experience where garmin you wake up one morning and Garmin tells you your zones have changed. Well, it's because you went out and you did a hard effort and it saw that you could sustain something heart rate at a higher anaerobic threshold. And it's really misleading, especially if you're just training in zone two all the time. And then you happen to like go out and split a bunch of wood with your heart rate monitor on. And then it sees that your heart rate was like super high for like 45 minutes. And then it's going to tell you, you have to reset all your zones. So, you know, as you said earlier, most of the systems are based off anaerobic threshold. Not that it's an illegitimate way to approach it. It is a legitimate way to approach it, but it works better for people who are already very fit.
00:24:32
Speaker
For most people... Focusing more on the aerobic base has been, know, one of the big messages of uphill athlete over the last, like, 10 years is going to be a better path and a more productive path, and they're going to get fitter and be able to do things longer, especially mountain athletes where our events, if you will, are just so long. Like, you and I were ski touring last month, Will, together in Whistler, and were out for, what, seven, eight hours? I mean, that's not like a... It's not an average ski tour. Yeah.
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, and that's an average ski tour. It was no big deal, right? Like it just it was a pretty normal ski tour, even an easy ski tour. And that was that was the duration. um So i think that what I want people to feel is that there is going to be some support for automating and
Automating Training Zone Suggestions
00:25:27
Speaker
there's going to be a way to basically remove...
00:25:31
Speaker
aerobic threshold testing from your life if you so choose. And I think that that's going to be super helpful for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. I think that'll be really helpful for coaches and for for athletes.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Simplification. Yes, simplification. One less thing to do. All you have to do is do your workouts, which is great. yeah So ah now one of the knock-on effects of this will be that we'll be able to suggest training zones based on aerobic threshold.
00:26:08
Speaker
And that's going to happen as well within the dashboard. We're not currently able to do that at this moment in time, but that is something that's in the works and I'm quite confident that we're going to get there. It's on the roadmap.
00:26:20
Speaker
ah How do you feel that that's going to land Alexa when athletes are way going to have a new a set of training zone, heart rates suggested to them? And then of course, they're going to accept the suggestion or they can set them manually however they want or and do you think that is going to be another thing that's that's helpful and is going to lead people to do a better job with their training
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think it'll provide a level of relief, right? Because right now, they're like, I'm pretty sure these are my training zones, right? But there's a lot of uncertainty in there, right? They're basing it usually off of a test that they did. And then, like you said, they're getting notifications that are like, hey, your zones have changed. Well, have they? And so it causes all of this uncertainty. Am I training in the right zone? am i Am I actually in zone two when I'm training? So this is going to provide some reassurance with that, which is going to be really nice.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, and we're telling them that their zones should be training as they get fitter, right? As the top of your zone two heart rate, that hu that number changes and increases as you get fitter. Like the the zones need that that zone two gets gets wider and the gap between the top of zone two and the bottom of top of zone three gets narrower. And so that's that's good. That's healthy. Again, that's like a measure of the like, hey, we're you're progressing, you're getting fitter.
00:27:49
Speaker
So I think that's going to be really helpful. Yes. Well, let's talk about ah just the how the how this is going to work in terms of calculating that difference, that delta between aerobic and anaerobic thresholds and how we're going to surface that for people.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah. um So your aerobic threshold and anaerobic threshold delta, that's kind of your preparedness for those harder efforts. You you mentioned that, Steve. So it's not a super complicated calculation. It's 1 minus AET over AMT, if you can visualize that calculation. But um you want that delta to be less than 10%, basically.
00:28:32
Speaker
And so once again, right now, you you know you do a one-off heart rate drift test. Maybe that wasn't the most accurate test. you're You're not doing that every week. So you're now two months outdated since you last did one.
00:28:45
Speaker
ah We want to keep that score kind of fresh and present, especially as we start incorporating those more high intensity workouts as you get closer to your event, basically.
00:28:56
Speaker
um So yeah, we're looking for less than 10% there. um But the fact that we have both will ah really kind of put front and center your preparedness for those higher intensity workouts.
00:29:09
Speaker
Yeah.
Tracking Progress with New Tools
00:29:10
Speaker
And I think as Will said, you know we're we have the input view, the calendar view, and then we have what we call the progress view, where you can see your progress in different in in different metrics. One of them will be progress as it relates to, at least currently, you know these things are evolving and we're trying to simplify them even further, but they're currently progress in terms of chronic training load, progress in terms of training volume, progress in terms of aerobic threshold, the strength training trend, how is your your strength going expected to maintain or improve, your actual anaerobic threshold number for that week, your anaerobic threshold number for that week, that delta that you just said, and then we'll also pulling in resting heart rate for those that are using that ah that metric or you know using some sort of
00:30:03
Speaker
device that is is recording that. If that's pulled into TrainingPeaks, it will be pulled into your dashboard. so And then that's going to provide, we're going to be able to then generate insights on your progress for you that will that will be present on that on that dashboard. So I think that's that's a little further out in terms of getting the insights there, but that's definitely on the roadmap and there's there's already a space there. like Mine currently right now, I'm reading it, it says by zone two at 65% of volume optimal for base building. The distribution supports aerobic development while allowing adequate recovery. All stuff I knew, but it's it's looking at that. it's It's looking at my data and it's you know it's telling me that that I'm in the right, that I'm doing the right distribution of of zone two for my where I'm at in my program. So I think that that's that's going to be super useful and super powerful.
00:31:01
Speaker
So with these insight layers, the idea is that if you, you know, we all still sometimes have questions and instead of guessing or Googling or, you know, your coach is asleep, pretty soon you could just going to be able to ask right inside the system.
00:31:18
Speaker
Will, where are we at with this capability and, you know, what is the kind of roadmap? Granted that this is going to drop at the end of May, and we're still a few weeks away from that currently.
00:31:32
Speaker
if you look out, what does this look like on the roadmap? For sure. Yeah, the capability is there. And anyone that's in the tech space right now that knows that software is moving incredibly quickly. So um I think this year you'll expect to see some layer of that.
00:31:47
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I think for sure this year and probably a few in the next few months, I think the way to think about this is is simple. it's We call it Maria.
00:31:59
Speaker
And Maria is an intelligence layer that holds all of the intellectual property and methodology ah uphill athlete. And Maria sort of functions as a, ah like I like to think of it as a three-layer cake or a multi-layer system where Maria is is suggesting or proposing things like, hey, you're Training zones, your robot threshold has changed. I think your training zone should be this now, accept, reject, know modify your training zones manually, whatever. um And then the your athlete gets to de decide. So nothing on that platform is is going to happen to you. Things simply get suggested to you. um And in some case, you know, eventually ah this will, this functionality will exist for the one-on-one coach athletes as well. And, but the coach or you or your training group, a leader, a coach will be able to decide. And i think it's, maybe, should I, you think I should talk about Maria and how she got named?
Introducing the Maria Intelligence Layer
00:33:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think you should really open it with that. I don't know. it I thought it was a great story when I read. i don't know if Alexa has seen that project writer, but yeah yeah I thought it was. Yeah, so Maria is named Maria because a woman I knew who was a really incredible person.
00:33:24
Speaker
Her name was Maria Frantar, and she was a climber on the first expedition that i ever went on in the Himalaya back in 1990. went to Danglaparbat.
00:33:35
Speaker
And she, at that time, I think had climbed five 8,000 meter peaks, if I remember correctly. And she did summit Nangar Parbat that summer and became the sixth woman to climb.
00:33:46
Speaker
she That became her sixth 8,000er. And some of you historians will remember there was a race for the to be the first woman to climb all 14 8,000 meter peaks. And there was a Polish woman, ah Wanda Ruticic,
00:34:01
Speaker
I believe I'm saying that name wrong, but I will, that's the best i can I can do. And I think Wanda had one more. And so unfortunately, a couple of years later, Maria passed away after summiting Kanchenyunga, the third highest mountain in the world.
00:34:20
Speaker
And um it was no longer with us. And she's one of these people that has... that I've lost in my life that somehow continued to just have this outsized influence.
00:34:34
Speaker
I spent a only two months with her, but we were, she was essentially the climbing leader of the expedition. And i was sort of a gopher and the translator and the the the native of English speaker. And so she and I spent a lot of time together. we bought like, I don't know how many hundreds of kilograms of potatoes and sugar and flour. Like we, we you know, we we organized porters. we We organized everything for an expedition back in 1990. And so I always thought that she she was such a powerful woman and such just one of these
00:35:15
Speaker
leaders that just her very presence provided clarity and calmness and trans like she was very transparent and as i was working on how this i wanted this to be and i was trying to think of you know she kept coming up coming to mind because of those qualities. And that's kind of what I want this layer, this intelligence layer to become is something that is trustworthy. It's calming. it's it gives it gives people clarity. And if they have a question, they can simply ask without having to leave the platform. I've been using this in beta since last August and testing it and improving it. And it's pretty awesome. And I'm really, really excited as well to get this out. And that you'll see this this tool at a number of layers ah throughout UpHill Athlete in the coming year. And I think it's going to really help people get answers. You know, in the old days, we had things like forums and and stuff like that. and And now all of that IP and intelligence can be, you know, housed in one tool and we can give a lot of people access to it. So it's going to be
00:36:30
Speaker
Pretty cool. And I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah, that's a really powerful backstory. And it's, and I don't know, it's very cool you're honoring her in that way. um Yeah, posted about it on Instagram, like a month or so ago, just a little bit of the backstory and her daughter reached out to me.
00:36:48
Speaker
Oh, wow. And so I'm actually going to try to meet her daughter this summer. That will be like a nice moment. I've never met her before. and i I'd forgotten, honestly, that that she had a family and hadn't really thought about it in many years. So it'll be exciting to reconnect with her family um in part because of this project. So it's also kind of a cool full circle moment.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah.
Future Features and Athlete Engagement
00:37:13
Speaker
So keep overseeing athletes on their expeditions and coming on to the goals. The overall arc of all of this conversation and what I want to leave people with is that we are working to help people reduce their guesswork so that they can continue to ah adapt their training in the most intelligent way, recognizing that life happens and that the dashboard provides simple simple simplicity that the...
00:37:44
Speaker
And that the dashboard provides simplicity ah being able to automate aerobic threshold determination, reduces guesswork. It makes zone targets and training zones accurate.
00:37:57
Speaker
And updates as your aerobic system improves, triggers when you should start doing harder intensity, higher intensity work. And we're also, if I can tease a little bit, building other things I think are going to be really cool, like automated ways to update training stress scores, TSS, for those that speak the lingo, for pack weight, vertical gain, and trail and snow conditions. So, you know, we've had fudge factors in the past for that. All of that's going to be automated and run from your dashboard. And you can you can set, you can you you'll be able to tell that, you know, hey, I was ski touring and there was a foot of new snow and we were breaking trail. And it will adapt the TSS score for that. So I'm i'm really excited about that.
00:38:47
Speaker
And these are things that... are just outside of the area of expertise of what TrainingPeaks has been able to do. And there are problems that we have been able to solve with code. And they are coming thanks to the work of Will, who is serving as as PM on this project, and Nikita, who is the the software engineer who's building a lot of the code, and ah Mike Arpea, who has been helping us with some other aspects of the particularly the data
00:39:19
Speaker
um base management and building of the back end. So I think that that's hopefully super helpful for for people going forward.
00:39:31
Speaker
So Steve, the goal of Uphill Athlete is to never grow fast. It's to make sure that we're coaching our athletes well and and reducing uncertainty in the mountains. So how does this dashboard sort of encompass that and answer that question? Yeah, I mean, I think this goes back to kind of how a palassade came to be and kind of came out of me wanting to do something important or or wanting to bring some value back to the mountain community that has given me so much in my life. and
00:40:03
Speaker
the way I sort of think about that is how can I provide as much value to people as well? you know, as many members of our community as I can. And I think one of the ways to do that is to remove uncertainty, provide clarity.
00:40:15
Speaker
i think education ah is a big piece of that. And I think these tools can leverage that same mission and effectively help kind of allow that and growth to compound on its own. And I think training groups has been really the right place to do this because we have this like really great engaged community group of athletes using these things and sometimes we're you know like we didn't talk about this but last week we got some feedback on thursday and we'll push the update that fixed the you know complaint on a monday and so that kind of feedback loop is really really valuable and training groups are
00:40:56
Speaker
is for athletes who want more than a plan but don't need one-on-one coaching. And they're very, very often very long-term athletes. are staying we have athletes and that have been in the training group now, I think, since 2022 or so. So I think that that's really a valuable test bed. And, you know, if you're currently...
00:41:18
Speaker
a training group athlete and you're listening to this, like, i hope you can get excited and and share this podcast with with friends that you think might might need it. And if you aren't in training groups and you're thinking the training groups might be for you, i think that what we have started is pointing towards something that is going to continue to improve and get better throughout at least 2026 and probably beyond. And it's the smartest way and the smartest place to start if you want to begin. with training so i think that uh yeah let's let's uh let's keep pushing these updates and getting these things out to athletes and i'm really excited for what's to come thanks steve thank you will thank you alexa thank you both for all the work you've done on this and more good stuff to come yes thank you yeah thank you
00:42:27
Speaker
Hey, real quick before you go, everything we publish, the articles, new podcast episodes, and the live webinars are announced first in our newsletter.
00:42:37
Speaker
You can elect to receive between one and three newsletters a month be written by myself and the coaching team. And if you want them, sign up at UphillAuthy.com.
00:42:48
Speaker
Thanks for listening and we'll see you in the next one.