IntervalCoach keeps your edited workout when the plan updates

Adaptive training has a quiet problem. An adaptive plan is good at deciding what an athlete should do and bad at letting the athlete disagree. Threshold workouts show it most clearly, because coaches, clubs and books rewrite them more than any other session.

A typical case: an athlete’s plan has a threshold workout on Tuesday, 4×8 minutes at 95 to 100% of FTP with 3 minutes easy between. On Monday evening the club coach suggests 3×12 instead, because the target event has long climbs. The athlete edits the session in their calendar and rides it. The next morning the plan has quietly regenerated Tuesday’s slot, or treats the 3×12 as an unexplained overload and eases off Wednesday and Thursday.

The athlete learns one of two lessons: don’t touch the plan, or the plan doesn’t listen. Neither is good for training. IntervalCoach, an AI training coach founded in the Netherlands, has added a workout builder to deal with exactly this.

What changing a threshold workout changes

A one-line edit moves the numbers more than it looks. For a rider with an FTP of 246 W:

The club version trains the same threshold system with longer intervals, four more minutes at threshold and about 10% more training load. The 2×12 is what the same athlete might choose after a bad night. Both are reasonable, as long as the rest of the week knows which one happened.

A workout builder inside the plan

TL;DR: In IntervalCoach the athlete edits the planned session itself. The chart, duration, TSS and intensity update against what the plan expected, and the saved session stays in the plan, which rebalances the rest of the week around it.

The athlete opens Tuesday’s session, chooses Edit workout and changes the reps from 4×8 to 3×12. Steps inside a repeat are edited once and apply to every rep. While they edit, the chart, duration, TSS and intensity update next to the original and next to what the plan expected for that day. Short checks flag what people forget when they edit at 22:00, such as a missing warm-up or a recovery too short for the rep length.

Targets can be set the way the athlete thinks about them:

• % FTP, watts or power zones.
• Pace, including a typed pace such as 4:30 per km.
• % of maximum heart rate or % of lactate threshold heart rate.
• Feel.

Steps run by time, by distance, or until the athlete presses lap, which suits a hill rep that ends at the top rather than on the clock. Hide power is there for Zwift sessions ridden on feel.

Saving without breaking the week

Two things happen when the athlete saves.

First, the edit replaces the same calendar entry instead of creating a new one. That keeps the workout syncing to a Garmin, Wahoo or Zwift, and lets the ride pair with the planned session afterwards.

Second, the session now belongs to the athlete. Later plan updates keep it as it is and reconcile the rest of the week around it. The extra 7 TSS of the club version is accounted for in the days that follow, the way a coach would account for it, instead of being overwritten the next time the plan refreshes.

When the session is on paper

The other common case is a session that exists only as a photo of a whiteboard or a page in a book. On the Max plan the athlete can describe the workout in words, such as “4×8 min at threshold with 3 min easy between”, or add the photo, and the builder writes the steps.

Anything the builder had to assume is marked. If the description never mentioned a warm-up, the warm-up it added is flagged as assumed so the athlete checks it before saving. That marking matters more than the drafting: a generated workout that silently invents a 20-minute warm-up looks just as finished as one that was asked for, and the athlete has no way to tell them apart.

Limits

• A repeat inside another repeat, steps that use a custom zone, an unusual target type, or a workout of more than 60 steps open read-only, with a route to edit them in Intervals.icu. Text cues set there are kept.
• The builder covers rides, runs, trail runs, swims, walks, hikes, rowing and Nordic ski, on the web and in the iPhone and Android apps.
• Editing and building are on every plan, including free. Describing a workout in words or from a photo needs Max.

Why it matters

An adaptive plan is only as good as its willingness to be overruled. Athletes and their coaches will always know things the plan doesn’t: a course profile, a group ride, a niggle that hasn’t shown up in the HRV yet. For anyone comparing AI cycling coaches or looking for a TrainingPeaks alternative, the useful test is whether an app adapts to the athlete’s decisions as well as to their data.

The workout builder launched on 15 October 2026 alongside a redesign of the app.

More: IntervalCoach’s refreshed app and workout builder

Quick answers

Does IntervalCoach overwrite a workout the athlete has edited?
No. An edited session belongs to the athlete, so later plan updates keep it and rebalance the rest of the week around it instead of replacing it.

Do edited IntervalCoach workouts still sync to Garmin, Wahoo and Zwift?
Yes. The edit replaces the same calendar entry instead of creating a new one, so the workout keeps syncing and the ride pairs with the planned session afterwards.

Can IntervalCoach build a workout from a photo?
Yes, on the Max plan. The athlete describes the session in words or adds a photo of a whiteboard or book page, and the builder writes the steps, flagging anything it had to assume, such as a warm-up.

Is the IntervalCoach workout builder free?
Editing and building workouts are available on every plan, including free. Describing a workout in words or from a photo needs the Max plan.

Which sports does the IntervalCoach workout builder support?
Rides, runs, trail runs, swims, walks, hikes, rowing and Nordic ski, on the web and in the iPhone and Android apps.

Related reading

• Fit File Forge: 120 classic workouts ready for Garmin
• Blocks: an AI-native training platform for endurance athletes
• Best smart trainer

Author: Martijn Russchen, founder of IntervalCoach, edited by the5krunner.

If you enjoyed reading this, here is another in the Indie Spotlight series: Massiv keeps logging gym sets when the phone is out of range.

Last Updated on 16 October 2026 by tfk the5krunner

tfk the5krunner

tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID