XSSR Preference (formerly Program Difficulty)

XSSR Preference (formerly Program Difficulty) allows athletes and coaches to customize the overall degree of difficulty of their Xert training program. It’s important to note that this setting is distinct from Difficulty Score. The XSSR Preference scale ranges from 50 to 150. By default, Xert sets the value to 100, which ensures that workout durations are efficient, and high-intensity activities are challenging yet achievable for a broad range of athletes.

XSSR Preference can be thought as being synonymous with the difficulty of the workout or training activity.  You can also think of as the efficiency or the density of the XSS you can accumulate in a given forecasted training time slot.  From a planning standpoint, the greater the value, the more XSS you can accumulate with the available time you have.  This can enable you to achieve higher improvement/ramp rates.

Moving the slider towards the right condenses more XSS (Xert Strain Score) into the available training time, making high intensity workouts more time-efficient but also more demanding. This adjustment may benefit athletes with limited training time, as it maximizes the effectiveness of each minute.  This also makes the workouts harder to complete since you’ll need to do more XSS in a shorter time period.

Conversely, shifting the slider towards the left allocates more time to complete high-intensity activities, resulting in less time-efficient workouts with reduced overall difficulty. This option may be preferred by athletes returning from illness or injury, or older athletes seeking to avoid overly demanding workouts. 

Additionally, users have the option to ‘Auto-adjust using Training Load,’ which dynamically scales the program difficulty based on the athlete’s training load/status. As training load increases or decreases, XSSR Preference will adjust accordingly.