You’re going to hear this when you listen to the podcast but check whether you were using ant+ or bluetooth for HR. Evidently the correct answer is “bluetooth” 
I have a running bet that you will not change your mind. Come on back and tell us what you think. Prove me wrong, and win some money. 
That podcast was from older info:
I feel like some have an expectation that alpha 1 = .75 must be LT1 and if it isn’t, this is a completely useless metric. (also notice the studies saying its not .75 only tried one type of ramp) And there are also lots of people who think they don’t have to use more accurate HR sensors or deal with artifacts so some people are looking at just bad data. This doesn’t seem fair. We are past the point of finding low hanging fruit of very easy data to collect that also gives clear numbers.
Is alpha 1 useful should just fall back on if alpha 1 shows how much stress/strain you’re under better than power or hr. If it can find threshold that would be great but even if it can’t it could still be useful
Or RPE.
I surmise the answer is a resounding “NO”, particularly as pertains to my suggestion. You can spend all day staring at a DFA a1 field on your computer, or you can just figure out how you feel, just as with HR and power.
IMO because day-to-day human physiology is imprecise anyway, good enough is good enough.
Who said anything about doing it in your head? None of what I posted was easy to do just by looking at the data field. As I said, alpha 1 metrics are past the area of low hanging fruit. Having the computer analyze it for us can give much better results as evidence by adaptive training. Improving adaptive training requires more data into their calculations and models. (i.e. lots can be improved in the background without the user needing the understand why things are done a certain way)
If you only want to deal with the low hanging fruit, great. But that doesn’t mean we’ve reached the peak of what can be improved on so may as well stop doing research on how to further improve.
So do the various apps, HRV logger etc record the workout and tell you the LT1, LT2 or do you have to look for the 0.75, 0.5 values and look at another app for the corresponding HR/power/whatever…or do you analyse after the test?
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Having read the Alpha HRV app it look like it can display on your watch while training and also see graphs on GC afterwards. So I think it’s just install the app and go…
I cant see anything recent about running protocol, not sure the podcast mentioned it either, so a running ramp test on a treadmill?
Apparently so.
Basically analyze it post test. Helpful if you start the app at the same time you start ramp test or come up with a little marker. For example. “2 mins into ramp I started HRV recording on app”. Would recommend starting at top of minute so you can compare later. You will basically have two files to manually inspect.
And the apps aren’t going to say LT1 or whatever because you’re not measuring lactate. Up to you to find a .75 or .50 or whatever.
TR should record your data as usual and you would just have HR connected to app via the other signal (ant+ or Bluetooth). You are essentially double recording HR, unless for some reason you would not record HR in ride file generated by TR. I see reason to do that. Keep it simple
FWIW recording indoor workouts on my Garmin 530 with HRV enabled, I’m seeing very few artifacts and a lot of clean data. Maybe I’m looking at it wrong, either that or its clean data. Single ANT+ connection from Garmin dual HRM to my 530. Also I get fairly clean HRV data from most outside rides, specifically the steady-state endurance rides.
Didn’t say we should stop researching. Only that that’s what scientists are for, not my athletes or myself. YMMV.
What about using alphaHRV while riding and keeping the pace around 0.75 when doing ISM endurance rides?
Came down with a heavy cold yesterday so won’t be resting for a while. Thanks for the tips so far though.
I read one of the blogs from Marco ( IIRC?) that talked about that point and using it as a guide for ‘readiness’ to train.
Spend a few mins during the warmup looking at the dfa1 numbers and if you get to 0.75 at a relatively ‘low’ power then avoid a hard day and rest or go very easy.
I rather like that approach as I find RPE can be very misleading in that regard. I’ve dragged myself onto the turbo many times when thinking I wont even survive the warmup based on how my legs feel, only to deliver excellent numbers. If I’d gone on ‘feeling’ and ‘rpe’ walking to the garage I would have simply bailed unnecessarily.
Ha ha - yes. No testing.
I agree that this is useful, but don’t think you need to look for a specific number as it is more a drop from what your number is when recovered. Also probably less of a drop and more at wattage x it will be y alpha 1. Do an endurance workout you may not get a low alpha 1 number but if its lower than what you normally would get maybe you should do more rest. Same goes for higher intensity intervals.
So for all your progression levels in TR you should have an expected alpha 1 reading for the work part. If the current reading is below that you may want to bail and rest. You should also be able to fail early by just seeing how you do during the warmup part. This could easily be added to the red/green functionality @Nate_Pearson said is coming as a way to let the user bail early in the workout. Plus if the number is low but not low enough to bail could influence how much rest or lower work load adaptive training should give you. (or increase your ramp rate if the alpha 1 number is higher than expected, but maybe wait till the end of the workout for that measurement)
No idea - no Garmin junk anywhere in my house any more 
This would seem to be something that AT and trainerroad could look at - they have control over what the warmups are like, and there likely aren’t that many variations of the warmup. (and if so, that could be changed.) This is likely already on @Nate_Pearson’s radar.
Quite honestly data collection for this work could be added without users knowing about it - the HR monitor is already paired, just more complete data needs to be recorded. Hopefully this happens sooner rather than later - this should also enable using the TR recordings to do offline HRV analysis, which would be another benefit.
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.
Shut up legs, exactly!
Last week’s 2.5 hour zone2 endurance ride:
suck it up buttercup.
The following day doing some hard over/unders, starting around 50 minutes:
It just got better, here are part of my post-ride notes “Woke up needing more sleep. Didn’t feel good and took longer warmup. Higher RPE but thought ‘Coach Isaiah says sometimes we train the mind’ and then proceeded to get it done without drama.”
I was mentally ready to give up, the last thing I needed was a readiness score to support giving up before actually attempting to do the work. Just got stronger as the intervals went on, and that’s pretty common for me.
If I paid attention to morning HRV or early ride RPE and/or Garmin Performance Condition, I’d be spending a lot more time either off the bike or doing easy rides. IMHO that’s a formula to reduce performance.
This. On quite a few occasions I have sat reading my HRV at 5am and then got it into my mind I’m going to have a bad workout. I then proceed to get on the bike and smash it out without any problems. All about long term trends with this type of data for me.
