What, if any, value is there in having a Training Peaks account alongside being a Trainer Road user?
Depends upon your use case. For me, when I was a TR subscriber, TrainingPeaks was my primary data source because of its much better incorporation of strength training / metrics (e.g., syncing weight, steps, sleep, etc.).
I can incorporate my work schedule in training peaks in ways i can’t on tr. I use TP as my “everything” calender and TR is my training help.
Thanks – so it’s “everything”, but what info does it give you that you find important to training that TR doesn’t?
I use TrainingPeaks exclusively these days, they’ve really added quite a lot to it recently, TrainingPeaks Virtual has replaced Zwift for me and the new strength workout builder is great, also building a workout for cycling is super easy, you just type in what you want and it builds it for you, puts it on your calendar and it’s there in TrainingPeaks Virtual when I load it up.
They’ve also incorporated some of the analytics from WKO5, so mFTP for instance, although sadly there doesn’t seem to be a normalised residual chart telling you what power durations to test. You would either need to self coach, buy a plan or use a coach though, it doesn’t give you workouts each day.
The performance management chart.
I can’t put my strength training in TR the same way you can with the strength builder.
But doesn’t this PMC basically track fitness and fatigue in a way that’s pretty inconsistent with TR? Like if TR will limit training stress significantly while TP will encourage you to increase your CTL/TSB as much as you can, no? It would seem TP in this regard is not really compatible with training with TR, or maybe I’m misunderstanding?
Sure, I guess this depends on how strictly you follow TR’s plans, for me TR is mostly a workout library with some AI perks. Planning and monitoring ramp rates, training load, analyzing workouts etc… are all done inTraining Peaks.
Quite strictly for several years now. And Garmin picks up all bike and other workouts. Just trying to figure out if I’m leaving something on the table that is true added value . . . .
I would not pay for TP if I was in your situation, look into intervals.icu instead.
Thanks – other than being for free, are there things it gives me beyond TR(+Garmin+Strava)? It it basically same scope as TP but free?
Whilst it is ‘free’ , they’re really good and quick at sorting requests and adding features at intervals.icu, there is a voluntary payment option, which is a minimal amount, personally I’d feel wrong if I didn’t pay that given what you get for it.
I pay for Intervals.icu, it’s come a long way from being some homegrown project to having a small dev team, which it’s nice to see your money go towards something.
Even though I have Garmin and use TR, I use Intervals.icu as my guide for managing load and fatigue.
I use intervals for two main reasons alongside TR. I use the PMC for visualizing my current and past training loads and I use the workout summary to see what my stats were and how my performance is trending.
I just listened to another great podcast from Basecamp Training Labs The BaseCamp Endurance Lab - Podcast - Apple Podcasts in which the topic was how to review your season in order to plan for next season. Tim Cusack goes into detail how he uses the PMC to interpret the data.
In my workout summary I keep tabs on power:heart rate for the overall workout, my decoupling during the workout. It helps confirm if I’m adapting and getting fitter. I always use the info in relation to how I actually feel.
I’ll check that out; thanks for the details. I imported my data into intervals, and predictably, my Trainer Road workouts, in addition to my events, my strength training (3 sessions per week at least generally), extra hiking, climbing, STILL, doesn’t add up to put me in “Optimal” training stress more than 50% of the time. Only once in 12 months does intervals think I was in the red zone. According to Trainer Road, I tend to slightly overtrain; according to intervals (and I would presume Training Peak), I’m leaving a lot on the table. I have no idea if this conflict is really resolvable, the training philosophies seem so disparate.
This is an issue with using TSS, it is impossible to constantly ramp up your training week on week, eventually you reach a point where you simply can’t add more, and then you reach a point where according to certain charts your training isn’t ‘optimal’, however, once you’ve reached that point, maintaining that level of fitness is most likely the best you can do with the time you have, if you can’t add more time, you then have to add intensity in order to keep pushing TSS upwards, this isn’t sustainable for very long.
I do however think that TR is very cautious with the amount of volume it prescribes, hence why you are probably seeing this affecting that particular chart in Intervals. The other issue is that the extra activities aren’t generating TSS in a ‘like for like’ way, strength training is a classic example, if I record a strength session on my watch, it produces very little TSS, as it’s HR based, but the next day I can be extremely sore or tired, so the training effect is greater than the TSS would suggest.
It’s a useful tool TSS but not an altogether exact measure, so I’d take that ‘optimal’ area with a pinch of salt.
Progressive overload quickly runs out of runway if you have limited hours. It works nicely for 12 week bases, and 8 week builds if you are able to work with both intensity and volume without running out of the latter.
I have read that if hours are limiting progressive overload then block periodisation may provide a way forward.
As has been said, your other activities don’t contribute to TSS in equal measure to cycling activities, thus it isn’t an accurate representation of your actual stress.
In your case I’d pay attention to your self assessed RPE for each workout as well as recovery. I have come to appreciate that intervals displays my recovery/biometrics every day which is helpful in confirming how I feel (sometimes, not always).
If you are training with power and HR, you can track power:hr ratio which can confirm an upward trend when you are getting fitter.
If you are willing to experiment, you could probably figure out an estimated TSS per each non cycling activity and attribute that to your other workouts and see where it lands you on the chart.
You’re dilemma is a good question that you can submit to basecamp, cts, or empirical podcast as they all use training peaks as their main data software.
Note that intervals.icu will be basing that data on your FTP and other settings you’ve setup for your user. Since you’ve just imported everything it will all be calculated based on what you had it set to when you imported. You’d have to go back and adjust workouts with old FTP, etc. values to get the correct stress scores for that period of time.