Alright. I detrained some from between late Oct to late Dec. Though not as much as my logs imply. I started swimming more, cycling less and wasn’t very rigorous about logging.
Started a TR plan in…January, I think. At the time I was swimming 5 days a week and lifting weights 3 days.
Added in a moderate cycling plan w/ 2 intense days. TR didn’t like it at all. Flagged me red right off the bat. After going back and forth a bit, I decided a slow ramp isn’t the worse thing. So backed off on swimming to, now, 2 days a week. Still 3 days lifting. 2 intense days cycling, 1 endurance. One day I workout I did early exit since I had a little over a mile of swimming to do that day and didn’t want to build too much stress.
TR doesn’t like this. At all. It basically has me permanently yellow. Down graded all but a couple of rides to endurance.
So, question is…what’s a good balance so I can actually progress across multiple sports? 2 swimming, 2 cycling a week seems like close to a minimum. And lifting is kind of a general health requirement at my age.
Is there a way to schedule these so I get enough recovery time in between?
I want to follow the plan and take the feedback, but it really seems that adding lifting has a disproportionate impact on the fatigue estimate.
Like, why does 1h of doing 3 lifts generate more fatigue than an hour of swimming intervals (40m continuous swim)? So much that with swimming, it doesn’t even go yellow the next day, but swap with lifting it goes red immediately?
This also seems to be a recent change. Until recently, it seemed like lifting didn’t contribute at all to fatigue.
Yes absolutely. It can be done. I suspect it’s telling you that you haven’t been cycling, you’re going from zero to x rides a week - it should fade to yellow then ‘green’ over time.
Take fatigue management in multisport with a pinch of salt. It’s there to guide you, not control you…how are you actually feeling the next day after a hard sweet spot, and squatting to failure 12 times? Those running shoes would be hard to lace up for me.
I never go to failure. I do a RPE based progressivr overload. So for RPE of 1-10, 1 means you have 9 reps left in you…9: 1 rep left, 10: 0 left. I do a warm up/ramp up then something like 8 @ RPE 6, 8 @ RPE 7, 2 x 8 @ RPE 8.
the weight varies for a given RPE if I’m carrying fatigue.
When you record your strength training in TR, the instructions say to only record the sets taken to near failure. I’d see what happens if you lower those numbers
Joe, does anyone currently know HOW fatigue detection handles swim/run ? Is is straight off time spent or if you have a triathlon plan, does it factor in the workout they prescribe in the plan (ie. hard run efforst versus easy run day)? is that info buried somewhere here on the forum?
Maybe, it’s been discussed with TR a few times over the years so there will be something in the forums but I’ve been offline for a while until Jan so don’t have the latest.
I knew that Fatigue Management didn’t take into account TSS, but I didn’t know that it is purely time. I had assumed that HR data was being processed somewhere in the depths of the TR data models.
They do, but i can’t find how that new model regards swim/run. They state that swim/run are still managed under the old AI and do not get adaptations but i didn’t hear anything on how Fatigue Detection uses the other two sports - what data they pull in to regulate fatigue. At least, i can’t find it anywhere. If i’ve missed please send me a pointer to the right post. i listen to pretty much every podcast but may have missed it if it was in a pod i missed.
I know the lifting says “to failure”, but it totally seems like it over contributes….or under contributes. I mean, the only people who might benefit from going to failure on their lifts are very dedicated body builders and power lifters. There’s really no reason to do so if you’re an amateur or lifting as an auxiliary activity. It just increases the chance of injury for no real gain…you’re just not doing the volume or at the caliber to benefit.
It looks like you’ve gotten things set up in a way that works well for you. A few yellow days here and there are expected and mean that you’re pushing yourself each week.
If those yellow days are interfering with your plan, I’d recommend either reorganizing things so that you have enough time between hard sessions or simply giving yourself some time to adjust to your training load.
Keep in mind that you’re just on your way back up in TSS after a dip over what I’d assume is your offseason.
What I found was setting up a Tri plan, moderate load….but leaving off the weights. This had no yellow or red days initially. Some went yellow after a couple of days of training. I’m ok with that. Especially if they go away when I take a day off.
Its when it blocks out red multiple days in a row that I raise an eyebrow.
For the weights, I’m just doing my workout and logging it via garmin. But not marking “to failure” for any sets.
I figure I’ll watch this…if I start failing workouts the AI can adjust to that instead of “pre-flagging” me based on pre-scheduled weight workouts.
Long term for lifting and other training, it works well to rate low effort/sets/manualTSS… then go back in your history a couple months and update it to what it really was. lol So it then hypothetically has Strength total Sets history, showing you had a high training load. Eventually it catches up to what you are doing (in theory).
But yes ignore logging warmup or light sets if they are Easy in the set count, not providing much stress or any gain. Tricky though when it starts asking how many Upper or Lower… because do you really count 3 sets of weight calf raises, 3 sets of weighted hip abduction, 3 of adduction. Or upper 3x bench, curl, triceps press, lat pull down, lateral raise, fly, shoulder press…etc. Easily get the TR Warning level of “way to much in that time are you sure about sets?!? “ or whatever it says. Kind of wish it just used % of time for body area, etc, or it really seems like it is assuming like 5 minutes between sets?! If you lift for 50-70minutes you can easily get in a A LOT of sets w/90sec recoveries on avg. Overall the Strength effects towards TR.AI & Fatigue Detection… seems a bit of hidden magic to me. (running, swim, yoga isn’t far behind…lol)
Fortunately I do a pretty basic routine with mostly major lifts right now. Squat, Bench, OHP, Hip Thrust, Dead Lift.
I don’t think TSS even really maps to lifting. But I like your idea of backfilling the literal lift tracking so maybe it has data to update it’s inference on how much it’s contributing to performance.
