How does the scale of the plans change to fit different athlete levels and abilities in each discipline?

If you are looking to be able to scale the Baseline Plan and the Racebuilds, you absolutely can through two different ways. You can either utilize the Toggle Feature with Today’s Plan and/or utilize the scaling options provided to you within the sessions themselves. 

Today’s Plan Toggle Feature

The Today's Plan Toggle Feature allows you to choose your weekly and daily workout load/view to suit your level, life schedule, and fitness level.

Your choices:

• View One:  Displays every prescribed session of the week  - you manage your schedule and workout load through scaling options. 12 and over hours of work. 
• View Two:  Displays a single daily priority session (plus strength workouts) chosen by your Purple Patch coaching team. Under 12 hours of work.  

View Two is a wonderful option for time-starved athletes, newer athletes, and those with less experience or fitness.

The default view will be set to View One.

Scaling Sessions 

 The majority of our daily workouts include options to shorten or extend sessions in order to provide options for developing and experienced athletes and for both time-starved and time-rich athletes. 

For the majority of cycling and running workouts, all intervals are prescribed in duration (time), which makes the scaling easier.  As an example, a midweek cycling session might include an integrated message that says, "Breakpoint:  If you are time-starved or a newer athlete, this is the perfect place to end the workout and simply cool down."  Alternatively, a session might integrate a range of duration, such as 50 to 70 minutes in a run.  Of course, it is easy to choose the appropriate time relative to the time you have available, level of experience, or fatigue.  

Swim sessions are typically prescribed in distance (yards/meters) as they are performed in a swimming pool.  In these sessions, you will often see instructions that are prescribed along the lines of 8 x 150 to 250 (8 intervals of each which are between 150 to 250 yards/meters).  More is not always better. Imagine you are in the pool in San Francisco:

Lane 1:  Pros and strong swimmers:  Intervals of 250 yards/meters

Lane 2:  Moderately strong swimmers:  225 y/m

Lane 3:  Experienced amateurs (send-off of 1.30 to 1.35 / 100 yards): 200 y/m

Lane 4:  Developing swimmers (send-off of 1.40 to 1.50 / 100 yards): 175 y/m

Lane 5:  Less experienced swimmers (1.50 - 2.30 / 100 yards):  150 y/m

Additional educational resources in our Education Hub will offer practices for scaling and moving sessions to optimize performance. If you wish to learn even more about scaling, visit this article.