Mastery and target Reps
Michael Duckless
First of all, I like the app very much and use it regularly, amazing work!
Recently I stumbled upon some things:
I think it would be nice to see the reps or time to master an excercise directly and not the % value of mastery.
The target reps in a jounrey for an excercise seems to be always aiming for mastery. If the journey was build for cardio, hypertrophy oder strength aim, seems to make no difference.
If an excercise is in the warmup part, the target reps should be much lower than the ones for mastery. A warmup with 3x50 reps seems not right for me.
Maybe the ~ reps for each goals (cardio, hypertrophy, strength) should be displayed in the excercise info site as well?
Hope I explained it enough, thanks and keep up the good work!
Louis Deveseleer
Thanks for your request! There seems to be a few elements in it:
1) Mastery level in exercises datasheet: indicate reps/secs instead of percentage (screenshot attached to add clarity for everyone). I think it will make sense to revise that when working on adjusting the mastery levels for all exercises: https://feedback.calistree.com/requests/p/mastery-levels-adapt-values-to-specific-exercises
2) Target reps in generated programs: they are not really aligned with mastery values. They are estimates of what the algorithm thinks you should be able to do now (min) and what value should you should not go beyond (max). With that said, I agree that 3x50 reps for an exercise in the warmup is too much - unless you're jumping rope. So I'll look into adjusting that.
Rather than using the fixed mastery values for adjusting reps, Calistree uses your estimated experience level: the selected difficulty and volume for warmup are meant to be well below your maximum capacity, to offer a ramp-up before the workout. Does that fit with your experience of the app?
I'm not sure I understood everything you mentioned, so please let me know what you think Michael Duckless
Michael Duckless
Louis Deveseleer
to 1) yes that sounds good :)
to 2) ok, I thought the max value of the target reps would be the mastery because it always seems so high for me. The journey (upper body foundation, hypertrophy) that made me write this request for example had (max reps):
3x50 wall push ups in warm up
3x50 incline push ups in 1 super set
3x30 push ups in 2 super set
I trusted the algorithm at first, but I did not improve on the regular push ups because I was already tired after 300 other push ups.
So yeah my experience ist, that the excercises in warm up or early sets are easier, but due to the high volume the "main" excercises can suffer a bit I think.
Thank you for the quick reply!
Louis Deveseleer
Michael Duckless Yes that's a looot of pushups... You already reach "mastery" at 30 reps total (for example 3x10), at which point if you've been using a journey, the algorithm will suggest a replacement. If you're not in a journey, or decide to reject the suggestion, then it's up to you to switch the exercise when you feel like it and you don't necessarily need to go all the way up to the max reps limit set by the algorithm.
I'll keep that in mind though and will try to have more realistic numbers and better guidance on this.
Louis Deveseleer
Extra note: automatic target sets/reps (max values) should probably at least cover mastery, so that following the default progressions eventually leads to mastery of the exercise.