Safety and where medicine begins

There is no coach beside you to take a look on a Wednesday and say “we're resting today”. So caution is built into the product: some decisions the platform makes itself and does not ask permission for. This article is about the line between what the platform does with your training load and what a doctor decides.

What the platform does not do#

It does not diagnose, it does not prescribe treatment, it does not assess your health and it does not replace a doctor. All it can do is talk about load: when to apply it, when to reduce it, when to stop it, and when to ask you to seek help.

Fitness, fatigue and form are planning tools, not medical indicators. The medical layer lives separately and always takes priority: the readiness traffic light can neither soften nor lift its decisions, and there is no way around them.

The safety layer is approved by the platform's methodology function and signed off by the founder; there is no external medical reviewer in it. We say so plainly rather than hide behind the word “validated”.

A short screening before you start#

Before your first plan, the platform asks a few questions about your health. This is not an examination: it asks about the things that change its behaviour.

There are three answers: “yes”, “no” and “I don't know”. “I don't know” is never read as “no”, and silence does not count as an answer. You can update your answers at any time in the Health section, and once every twelve months the platform asks you to take the screening again — without fresh answers the plan is not built. If an answer leads to a restriction, the platform shows a separate screen: here is the question, here is your answer, here is what happens to your plan now — and it records the restriction only after you confirm. It does not ask for or store your diagnosis, your medical documents or the medical reason for the restriction.

When training stops#

You can report how you feel on any day: the “I'm not feeling well” button sits on the day card and in the Health section. It is six tick boxes — what you have right now — and the platform decides on its own what to do with today's plan. It does not diagnose and asks no questions about a diagnosis.

An immediate stop and urgent medical help — if you flag chest pain or pressure, fainting or feeling faint, breathlessness out of proportion to the effort, or palpitations with dizziness. That screen carries an emergency number (in Russia, 103 is the ambulance service and 112 the single number for calling the emergency services; abroad, the local number) and it says plainly that the dispatcher's instructions matter more than anything written in the app. You are the one who makes the call: the platform does not summon help itself, does not pass an alert on to anyone, and does not notify anybody about your condition.

A stop for as long as symptoms last — with a fever, chills, aching, weakness, vomiting or diarrhoea: the plan stays stopped until you mark that the symptoms are gone. A runny nose and a mild cough without fever do not cancel the day but do cut it back: from that day on, easy work only, no more than half the planned volume, no intensity and no racing; the platform rebuilds the rest of the week itself.

Separately, the platform notices unusual recovery: resting heart rate up, variability down. It does not detect illness from devices and does not make a diagnosis — it is simply a reason not to train today.

We do not use the popular “neck check” as permission to train: splitting symptoms into “above the neck” and “below the neck” is not considered scientifically sound, and a dangerous infection can look exactly like an ordinary cold.

Coming back after illness#

Coming back goes in steps. It starts with your own note in the Health section: the symptoms are gone and you have had no fever for more than a day without fever-reducing medicine; the marker before the first step is walking 500 metres on the flat without disproportionate breathlessness. This is a planning rule, not medical clearance to return to sport: that is given by a doctor.

There are at least five steps, each lasting a day, and the whole return is never shorter than the symptoms lasted: day one is rest, day two is up to 30 minutes very easy, day three up to 45 minutes with no intensity, then normal easy sessions, and intensity only comes back once the return is over. The day card shows the current step. If the symptoms come back, mark it again: the plan stops and the return starts over; a third such episode within a month pauses the plan until you see a doctor. Symptoms lasting more than ten days, or a fever that returns — seek medical help promptly.

Soreness or injury#

Ordinary delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) appears 12–48 hours after unfamiliar work, peaks at 24–72 hours, is spread across the muscle, eases off by the end of your warm-up and settles within three days. It does not block your plan.

A single sign from a different list is enough to pause the plan and have the platform ask you to see a doctor or a physiotherapist: pain that is pinpoint and can be “covered with a finger”, especially over bone; pain in a joint rather than a muscle; pain that came on suddenly mid-movement; pain that builds during the session; swelling or a click; a changed gait; pain at rest or at night; pain that has not gone within 7 days. And pinpoint bone pain that gets worse when you run and does not settle at rest removes all impact work entirely, not just the hard kind.

How a restriction is lifted#

There are two routes. The first is your own first-person confirmation: “I saw a doctor about this and was cleared to return to training”, plus the date of the visit — not in the future and no older than 90 days. The wording “no restrictions” does not appear in it: that is a doctor's conclusion, and you are only confirming what you were told. The second is the condition itself resolving: the step-by-step return completed, your cycle back, the postpartum period over.

Once it is lifted, the plan is built more cautiously for two weeks; for some causes the window is longer — 90 days after amenorrhoea, 8 weeks after the early postpartum period. If the sign returns, the restriction returns immediately.

Only you can record the doctor's visit, from your own account: neither support nor administrators have that action. The platform cannot verify it and relies on you — an untrue confirmation lifts a restriction that would otherwise have stayed in force, and the decision to carry on training remains yours.

Particular situations#

Jumps and impact work. Before your first jumping block, five questions about bones and medical restrictions, repeated every 12 months. Any “yes” or “I don't know” switches off jumps and any growth in impact volume; non-impact disciplines and resistance work, which is linked with bone health, remain available.

The menstrual cycle. Logging is optional and there is no periodisation by phase: the evidence is weak. If your entries show that these days are usually hard, the platform will offer to lighten the day rather than rewrite the plan in silence. No periods for three months or more, or fewer than nine cycles in a year, stops progression and points you to a doctor.

Pregnancy. A limit of the engine, not a medical prohibition: TriCoo cannot plan training load during pregnancy and will not pretend otherwise. Your diary and history stay; progression and races do not. The platform will not bring running and jumping back after childbirth before 12 weeks and before you confirm that a pelvic floor specialist has examined you. What training load suits you during pregnancy and after childbirth is decided by your doctor, not by the app.

Heat and altitude. The platform issues no heat or altitude protocols. In the heat, a session is run by feel and signs of overheating stop it for the day; confusion, vomiting or loss of orientation in the heat are a reason to call emergency medical help, not to sort out your plan. On altitude we give general reference points, not a medical recommendation: the risk of altitude sickness becomes meaningful from around 2500 metres; above 3000 metres you raise your sleeping altitude by no more than 500 metres a day, with a day without gain every 3–4 days; at 2000 metres and above, only easy work for the first 3–5 days. If you feel unwell at altitude, you go down and seek help.

On energy deficiency, see “Nutrition”; on the status of the day, see “Readiness”.