Training plans, from AI generation to your daily calendar

A good training plan isn't a spreadsheet you print and forget. It's a living structure that shows up on your calendar, tracks what you've done, compares it to what you planned, and adapts when life gets in the way. This guide walks through every piece of the training plan system in Atomic Metrix, from creation to daily use.

Two ways to create a plan

You can build a plan from scratch or let AI do it. Both end up in the same system with the same capabilities, the only difference is how the first draft gets written.

Manual creation, Click "Create plan" and fill in the basics: a name, how many weeks (4, 6, 8, or 12), your target weekly hours, and optionally an FTP gain goal. You'll get a blank plan with the right number of weeks, ready for you to fill in workout by workout.

AI generation, Ask your AI coach (in Agent mode) to build a plan. Say something like "Build me an 8-week plan for my century ride in August" and Agent will check your current fitness, assess your power zones, and generate a periodized plan with specific workouts, TSS targets, and a taper. The plan appears as a preview first , you review it, then save.

Behind the scenes, AI-generated plans go through a quality scoring system. The engine creates three candidate plans (balanced, volume-biased, and intensity-biased), scores each on rest day coverage, intensity distribution, week-over-week load progression, Zone 2 volume, and overall quality, then picks the best one. You see the winner; the scoring happens invisibly.

Whether you hand-craft a plan or ask AI to generate one, the result is the same: a structured, week-by-week training blueprint you can activate, track, export, and adjust on the fly.

The plan lifecycle: Draft → Active → Paused

Every plan starts as a Draft, it exists, you can edit it freely, but it doesn't affect your calendar or tracking. When you're ready, you activate it by choosing a start date. That's when workouts get scheduled onto your calendar and the progress ring starts counting.

Only one plan can be active at a time. This is by design, following two plans simultaneously is a recipe for overtraining. If you want to switch plans, pause the current one first.

Pausing freezes your progress without deleting anything. When you resume, you pick up where you left off. This is perfect for illness, travel, or life events that interrupt training.

You can also duplicate any plan (the copy starts as a Draft) or delete a plan entirely. Deletion removes the plan and all associated progress data, it's permanent.

The week view: your training at a glance

Once a plan exists, you see it in the week view, a 7-day grid with one card per workout. Each card tells you what to do at a glance:

The workout name and a brief description sit at the top. Below that, a mini bar chart shows the zone breakdown, you can immediately see whether it's a Zone 2 endurance day (mostly blue) or a VO₂max session (spikes of red). The bottom line shows duration, TSS, and target power in watts.

Card colors tell you the intensity at a glance: rose/red for high-intensity sessions above 105% FTP, amber for threshold work (90–105%), green for tempo and sweet spot (75–90%), and neutral gray for easy rides below 75%.

The completion circle on each card lets you mark a workout as done. As you check off sessions, the progress ring in the corner fills up, it turns emerald green when you hit 100% for the week.

Use the week tabs to jump between weeks. Each tab shows the session count and total TSS, so you can quickly spot the loading pattern, three build weeks followed by a recovery week, for example.

Inside a workout

Tap any workout card to expand it. You'll see the full zone breakdown, exactly how many minutes in each zone, color-coded to match the bar chart. This is especially useful for interval sessions where you need to know the work-to-rest ratio.

Every workout has three key metrics: duration (total time including warm-up and cool-down), TSS (how much training stress it generates, see our TSS guide for the math), and intensity (average power as a percentage of your FTP).

From the detail view, you can edit in Workout Canvas , our visual workout builder where you drag and resize zone blocks to tweak intervals, warm-ups, and cool-downs. Or start the Smart Trainer to ride the workout on your indoor trainer with real-time power targets.

Training plans on your calendar

When a plan is active, its workouts appear directly on your activity calendar, the same calendar where your actual rides show up. This is where planning meets reality.

Planned workouts appear as dashed-border tiles: indigo for upcoming sessions, emerald for completed ones. Your actual recorded rides appear as solid-border cards below them. When both exist on the same day, you get a match score, a percentage badge that compares your actual effort to what was planned (weighted 60% on TSS, 40% on duration).

This side-by-side view is powerful. At a glance, you can see: Did I hit my targets this week? Where did I deviate? Am I consistent or all over the place? The match scores turn green at 90%+, blue at 70%+, and amber below, making patterns immediately visible.

Tap any planned workout on the calendar to open the workout detail sheet, a slide-up panel showing duration, TSS, focus area, and action buttons (edit or start trainer). For completed days, you'll see both the planned targets and actual numbers side by side.

Planned vs. actual: the comparison row

The training plans page has a dedicated comparison view that shows planned and actual rows for the same week. Each actual ride card gets a colored border reflecting how closely you followed the plan:

Emerald (100% match), you nailed it. The actual ride hit the planned TSS and duration almost exactly. Sky blue (70–99%), close enough. Minor deviations that don't affect the overall training stimulus. Amber (40–69%), noticeable gap. Maybe you cut the ride short or went harder than planned. Gray (<40%), significantly different from the plan.

This isn't about perfection, it's about awareness. Seeing a week of amber and gray might mean your plan targets are unrealistic, or that external factors are disrupting training. Either way, the data tells you something useful.

Fitness projection: seeing the future

The training plans page includes a fitness chart that shows your CTL (fitness), ATL (fatigue), and TSB (form) curves, the same ones explained in our CTL/ATL/TSB guide. But here's the twist: it draws two sets of lines.

Solid lines show your actual history, where you've been, based on real rides. Dashed lines show the projected future, where you'll be if you follow the plan exactly. The vertical "Today" line separates past from projection.

This is incredibly useful for plan evaluation. Before you even start, you can see: Will this plan bring my CTL from 65 to 80 in 8 weeks? Will my TSB dip below -25 during the build phase (danger zone)? Will the taper bring me to positive form by race day?

Below the chart, a form zone bandshows which form zone you're currently in, and where the plan projects you'll be. Five zones from High Risk (TSB < -25) through Optimal, Grey Zone, Fresh, to Transition (TSB > 25).

Export your plan

Need your workouts on another platform? Every plan can be exported per-week in five formats:

Garmin, structured JSON with step-by-step power targets, warmup/intervals/cooldown, FTP reference, TSS, and IF. Zwift,.zwo files that Zwift reads natively (one file per workout, zipped if multiple). TCX, Garmin Training Center format with power targets per step. GPX, with power extensions per trackpoint. PDF, a clean document with workout names, types, durations, TSS, and descriptions for offline reference.

Getting the most out of your plan

Start with a template if you're new. The "Use 4-week template" option gives you a balanced starter plan. Study it, see how a well-structured week looks, then create your own.

Let AI handle the first draft. Even experienced athletes benefit from AI-generated plans, the engine considers your current CTL, FTP, and recovery status. You can always adjust individual workouts afterward.

Check your match scores weekly. If you're consistently below 70%, the plan might be too ambitious. Consider dropping weekly TSS by 10-15% or adding a rest day.

Use the fitness projection before activating. If the projected TSB drops below -30, the build phase is too aggressive. If CTL barely moves, the plan is too conservative. Aim for a ramp rate of 3-7 CTL points per week during build phases.

Pause, don't delete. When life interrupts training, pause the plan. When you come back, your progress is intact. If you need to adjust, ask Agent mode: "I missed a week, adjust my plan."