Join Cycling

Vandle

Vandle

Vandle

Soldato
Joined
14 Jul 2004
Posts
5,994
Location
Melbourne , Oz.
join.cc

Why Choose JOIN? – The Ultimate Cycling Training Platform

Discover why cyclists trust JOIN to reach their full potential. With adaptive training plans, pro-level insights, and a user-friendly platform, we make it easy to get ready for any ride.
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There's a couple of Aussie guys do a cycling podcast I listen to (promise it is better than it sounds!) and they are sponsored by Join Cycling, an Ai training app. I decided to give it ago started yesterday and did my second workout this morning. Pretty good so far although early days. You can tell it what you want to achieve and what your availability is and it builds a program for you which I believe alters if you miss sessions or change them up a bit. They are scored by intensity and training stress then it compares what you did afterwards to what the aim was and scores you out of 10. I connected it to zwift and strava and you can just push your days training to zwift and it's there on the screen when you log in, all set up and ready to go - just pick your route and off you go in ERG mode. Pretty impressive.

I was looking forward to seeing if it changed things around a bit as tomorrow it is asking for a 2/5 intensity endurance ride but I normally do a very fast group ride on a Wednesday, however, been invited to a boozy lunch this afternoon so likely won't make it. :rolleyes:

Anyone else use it? Its a 7 day free trial on the website but you can get 30 days via the podcast referral, or I can refer you and get us both 30 days. Don't need a credit card to sign up either :)
 
Not heard of Join, but there's been a few similar things banded around in the cycling threads about similar things. I have Trainer Road which is similar. It's definitely nice to be pushed structured workouts and i'm feeling better for doing 1-2 a week rather than my usual unstructured riding.
I imagine Garmin Plus will have something similar too and i might switch to that at some point if they can develop additional functionality a bit.

AI seems great, but it does feel a bit saturated at the moment with so many companies bringing out competing products.
 
yup, been using it for a couple weeks now - had a few workouts on it, seems alright, quite simple and straight to the point. Still on Trial that I got here for 30 days got a couple weeks left.
 
I've been using Join the last month or so now. I used Trainer Road for maybe 6 months and while I think TR is the more fleshed out platform, at the moment, Join is 90% as good and considering I got a year for £50, it kind of makes it impossible to look past.

I believe a website is coming soon™ but even without it and only seeing the next 7 days, I'm happy with it.
 
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At least a couple of us took advantage of their 50% off offer just before Christmas. In fact I got an e-mail last night for another account I used offering me 50% off again until January 11th. It looks like it's account specific though - no code to input.

I've used it in the past and enjoyed it so kept it on my radar before finally biting the bullet at £49.99 for a year. It works well, the workouts are uncomplicated. My main criticism is that it doesn't by default offer you a recovery week so if you need one, just take one! I'm not concerned about only being able to see 7 days' worth of workouts in advance, which is one of the common complaints. I had been on TrainerRoad for the last few months and whilst it was nice to see the full plan, it invariably changed the workouts from week to week anyway. I enjoyed TrainerRoad but I think it focusses too much on intensity - the system pushes you until you break, then backs off a bit. I don't need to feel broken when training in the middle of winter.

I've tested most of the training platforms - the only two that have really stuck for me are Join and TrainerDay. TrainerDay is great if you know what you need/want but it isn't dynamic so once the programme is set, that's it. Great value at c.£4 a month though!
 
At what point did you get the offers ? I’d consider subscribing at the £50 a year but at normal price it’s a bit too close to others.. - seeing as I plan to use it through the coldest months so 3-4 a year and say zwift etc would just tip over the £50 mark for the season
 
I'm sure I got one midway through my 30 day trial then another one at Christmas. I can give you a 30 day trial if you haven't already had one and see if you get the offer?

It does both indoors and outdoors so in the spring/summer I'll probably do a few workouts on the local cycle path again but for now I'm in ERG mode.
 
Junglist said:
I'm sure I got one midway through my 30 day trial then another one at Christmas. I can give you a 30 day trial if you haven't already had one and see if you get the offer?

It does both indoors and outdoors so in the spring/summer I'll probably do a few workouts on the local cycle path again but for now I'm in ERG mode.
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think I've got the 30 day trial from you originally, not had an offer yet and got 13 days left :) we'll see if they still run the promotion..
 
They don't run the 50% off offer all the time but I think it was towards the end of my trial plus once you are on their e-mail list, which you will be if you've got a trial (they don't send a lot of e-mails), you will most likely get an offer the next time they run it regardless of whether you are an active user or not.
 
So changed up todays training and did some VO2 max efforts it had planned for me for sunday. Won't be riding sunday, also will be doing a pretty big outdoor ride Saturday morning (130km, 2,500elv) so will be skipping that session too. It has updated my plan as a result. Now this morning I pushed Sundays workout to Zwift and did it all (was very hard), got all the stars in Zwift. However it has rated my workout as a 2.5/10 as I have missed all the target zones and exceeded some of the others - obviously. :rolleyes:
Actually playing around a bit more in the app just now I probably should have used the plan ride or workout function instead. Looks like I could have picked a VO2 max efforts and maybe it would have dialled down the intensity. I've cancelled sundays plan and put in estimated RPE and duration for saturday. Its now put in a rest day for monday. See how it goes!
 
Yesterday it said, paraphrasing, "you've done 4 days on the bounce and someone unfitl like you should take a rest" so it was a day off yesterday. Will try and get an hour in tonight and then one of the longer stages of the tour of zwift this weekend.

I really miss having my outdoor wattage cottage, feel like my kickr makes too much noise to use early in the morning but would allow me to get some longer rides in without impacting other peoples day :(

Only a few more months to go until I can leave the house at 7am and it be light!
 
Junglist said:
Yesterday it said, paraphrasing, "you've done 4 days on the bounce and someone unfitl like you should take a rest" so it was a day off yesterday. Will try and get an hour in tonight and then one of the longer stages of the tour of zwift this weekend.

I really miss having my outdoor wattage cottage, feel like my kickr makes too much noise to use early in the morning but would allow me to get some longer rides in without impacting other peoples day :(

Only a few more months to go until I can leave the house at 7am and it be light!
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You're like the king of "Tomorrow" :p
 
Martynt74 said:
You're like the king of "Tomorrow" :p
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SOON™

Edit: In my defence. I am still getting my training time in after work and before nursery pick up. Only 45-60 minutes on weekdays but it's going well so far. It's just the longer rides of 2+ hours I find really hard to fit in without writing the day off for everyone else. So at least in the spring I can leave the house at 7 and be back by 10/11 and then can still do the family obligations. The storm in Jamaica has put a bit of a hold on the house sell out there so the garden room is going to be a while off yet!
 
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Yeah, the longer rides can be tricky. Even without young kids it's tricky to fit them in around life so i feel your pain there.
 
And when I do go out early the expectation would be I get home, shower and then head out again with whatever activities we had planned for the day lol. But @fez has twins so if he can do it I have zero excuse really... But I'll try hard to find one :P
 
Junglist said:
And when I do go out early the expectation would be I get home, shower and then head out again with whatever activities we had planned for the day lol. But @fez has twins so if he can do it I have zero excuse really... But I'll try hard to find one :P
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Yeah I'm pretty unimpressed with all these excuses if I'm honest mate :p

We are thinking about adding a 3rd in the near future as well (god help me if its another set of twins!)

You have to remember I work from home which makes everything waaaaay easier. I genuinely don't think I could do it if I didn't.

I do so many things in the day that would need doing after work otherwise. Some cooking, cleaning, getting out on the bike occasionally, washing, unloading dishwasher, running errands. Thats ignoring the complete lack of commute/getting dressed in the morning. I reckon working from home is worth about 2-3 hours a day for me all said and done vs going into an office.
 
fez said:
I do so many things in the day that would need doing after work otherwise. Some cooking, cleaning, getting out on the bike occasionally, washing, unloading dishwasher, running errands. Thats ignoring the complete lack of commute/getting dressed in the morning. I reckon working from home is worth about 2-3 hours a day for me all said and done vs going into an office.
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Such an important factor for me too. Just opens up the opportunity for early morning when you'd normally be commuting, or a quick blast during lunch. My work is also pretty flexible so if i want a 2 hour lunch and just tack on time elsewhere they're completely happy.
 
Yeah I only work from home 1, maybe 2 days a week, so those days it's super helpful as I spend the last 10 minutes of my working day getting my bike set up so I can hop on Zwift at 1530 on the dot. Otherwise I'm home by ~1600 and have to leave for the nursery run at 1715 latest. Often I'm still cooling down whilst in the shower and driving there lol.

My last job was WFH 90% of the time with an hour lunch break so it was ace for getting out but such as life! Everything is trending upwards at the moment so what I'm doing isn't supper time effective but it's better than sitting still i suppose!

- Adding a third - crazy work! I'd still like to add a second but my partner isn't so keen. Finally feels like she's got her body back and able to run consistently so she's enjoying not being preggers lol
 
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Didn't realise there was a thread on this.

I too signed up for the 50% offer. Been using it a few weeks now. My thoughts:

- really like the adaptability. Being about to reduce or increase hours and it adapts the workout.
- pushing to Zwift works seamlessly (no myWhoosh by the looks of it yet though)
- does seem to suggest workouts that are right for my fatigue or readiness
- eFTP seems about bang on

Things that bother me:

- app only. Hopefully web coming soon.
- no oversight of more than a week out (not a biggie)
- some things I'm not too sure what effect they have. The readiness one for example. Sometimes I've woken up, feel really good and want to get stuck into a good workout, but it says I'm like 30% ready or so (and yesterday's might not have been a big workout, or even a rest day), I override the readiness, but the workout doesn't seem to adapt.
- I'm travelling next week, so I said to change a cycling workout to a running one. The cycling workout was a relatively intense one, but the running one was a 15 min steady run. How does that compare?! And I've even set myself to 'advanced' runner. Again, not sure what those different settings (for bike or running) really do.


Overall no real complaints though. Looking forward to changing to a more intense plan once we're through winter and season is starting up.
 
Junglist said:
- Adding a third - crazy work! I'd still like to add a second but my partner isn't so keen. Finally feels like she's got her body back and able to run consistently so she's enjoying not being preggers lol
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Just sneak another one in there. She won't mind! Kids are cute!

I think my partner partially wants another one because she feels she missed out on a lot of the one on one bonding that you can have with a singleton. Also wants that damn maternity pay! Ridiculous that you don't get any more for twins or triplets etc
 
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