Personally I think using dfa1 during warmup may not be that useful, and I’ll explain why. I’ve been using Garmin/FirstBeat Performance Condition for about 2.5 years, here is the description on FirstBeat site:
in my experience the Performance Condition metric is primarily useful as a trending tool, versus during a ride it doesn’t add value. During a ride it typically ranges between +3 and -3. Even when it starts dropping, and falls to -3 during a ride, I’m able to complete my intervals. So I don’t show it on my computer, and only look after a ride. On the other hand it has confirmed when it wasn’t my day, but that’s only happened once when I started riding and 10 minutes into the warmup felt absolutely terrible, didn’t need a computer to tell me it was time to turn around and go home, and I looked and Performance Condition was -7 or -10 or some really high negative number.
Back to my point, Performance Condition is most valuable for me as a trending tool, if I’m trending +2 or +3 workout after workout, that usually indicates a small bump in fitness is coming.
Trying to determine “readiness to train” ahead of a workout has never made sense to me. However I’m not trying to cram 4 hard interval days into a week, with each interval day pushing hard to drive up work load and training stress in a minimum time-crunched amount of time.
Instead I’m doing a sensible amount of hard work, leaving something out on the road, and watching my fitness climb because there is adequate balance of endurance and hard work. Completing workouts is rarely an issue. If I’m deep in a workout and feel I need to back off power, or drop an interval, well that happens and I got some good work done and will take it for what it was. Better to try and push thru because its usually a mental barrier. Finish up and ride home. I’m a math major with an engineering degree, a real data nerd, but at the end of the day there is an art to training, and knowing what data is important (and when), and ignoring the rest. Sometimes we train our mind AND our bodies.
For everyone on the machine learning ‘feed it more data’ bandwagon I’ve got news for you, Garmin has some solid ML training analytics, been around for years, uses HRV and HR and Power, and if you don’t have Garmin you’ve been missing out on a pretty interesting tool. Just a little FOMO for you, instead of posting another wouldn’t it be great, add it to the TR enhancement wish list.