Decoupling is not predictive. For various reasons I can go out and see decoupling on a 1 hour tempo effort when just the week before I did 133 minutes with zero decoupling. Strain and heart rate can make things interesting.
My point remains, if you want to determine fatigue resistance the most commonly accepted definition involves your power curve after XXX kJ of work. And that it can be easily tested in the field at specific durations of interest.
Not interested, stop tagging me/replying.
its a discussion, on a forum
I covered that in my comment above. It is about context. Standalone power curves are not a predictive metric when it comes to fatigue resistance.
Iâll take a bit of a different tack here- is fatigue limiting your performance in your desired events/areas? (Are you too tired to ride the way you want to in a race, whether thatâs an issue of attacking, repeatability or just holding the watts? Fall off the back toward the end of a group ride? legs nope out before that last climb for some reason?) I do think power/HR metrics can be valuable and I would absolutely utilize whatever you have access to, but practically speaking âfatigue resistanceâ is fairly relative to your goals so thatâs what I would ultimately consider.
This of course relies on appropriate pacing, nutrition etc. and some assessment of your external conditions, but so does any analysis.
Yeah WKO stamina is not trying to define fatigue resistance as a metric. Itâs another algorithm to more easily visualize that a rider is in fact increasing volume and or length of rides. It all goes in the bank though. So more volume/progressively longer rides will help fatigue resistance. But, WKO, like any model is shit in shit out. If you literally donât test 10sec, 1 min, 5 min, 20, 1 hour and do raam once a month is your power duration curve really accurate? Probably not. Does it really matter? Not to me. For some it certainly does.
Precisely! Looking at any metric in a vacuum is short-sighted. Telling people that a single chart/graph/test will give a functional representation of fatigue resistance is disingenuous. I find that if someone really wants to put a number behind their fatigue resistance Joe Frielâs âtestingâ methodology makes the most sense from a logical and functional standpoint
But again, context matters. There needs to be some purpose and stability to the ride in question.
Opâs question: How to determine if you need more fatigue resistance (or better, I guess). Not how to accurately measure fatigue resistance.
My ways, have an accurate understanding of where some efforts should lie in terms of power and feel. Something like sweetspot or underovers is good for me. Then do these after 2500kj/3000kj and good fueling and see how the rpe or power stacks up. If around 5% on non maximal efforts then I think it needs work. I can do under overs fine and consistently after 2500kj or 3000kj, but start with 1500 or 2000kj at first.
Another way is just through racing. If you find in races you struggle to put out good power compared to others of similar ability, then obviously something needs to change. A perfect âtestâ would be a race that finishes on a ~20min climb. So you can gauge your power data after 2500kj to your fresh numbers. For something not training massive hours a bit over 5% would be acceptable.
EDIT Just thought about this 20mins after. Biggest thing to think, is it a limiter? Are you limited in your performance because of your fatigue resistance or because of purely your strength including when fresh? Easy to think itâs fatigue resistance when you get dropped after 3 hours because thatâs when the race was hardest, but if you would struggle to do that pace near the start of the race (or if you were just declined the whole way) then you probably just need to get stronger. If youâre one of the strongest in shorter races but start to faulter when they get longer, you either need to eat more or work on your fatigue resistance (likely both anyway).
Yes, Friel has long been on record that decoupling is the gatekeeper for determining when to leave base1 and move on to base2 and developing other skills:
I know just enough about WKO to be dangerous. lol. Stamina is anything past 1 hour. So if your power at 1 hour is the same (no drop) at say hour 5 your score is 100 (%). My problem is that that one number may or may not be representative of anything useful depending on how you train. So, for me going out and doing 6+ hour rides doesnât happen too often but, when I do the power is so amazingly low compared to 1 hour my stamina score sort of looks worse than it is for the racing I do.
edit: hence, is it useful? Maybe maybe not. But, in this example unless I go out and really try to do a max 6 hour effort consistently itâs not really useful to me.
edit2: thatâs a bit oversimplifying as you can gain knowledge all along the PD curveâŚ
edit3: if my 6 hour power goes from 70 to 90 over time thatâs fatigue resistance. At the same ftp which would be reflected in your power after xxxxKjâs of work. Iâll stop now.
I honestly would take a large chunk of the back and forth with a grain of salt. Itâs good arguing, erm, discussion, but it doesnât really help you in the real world as much as going on a ride and doing some field testing.
Just go do some long rides, stack up some KJâs and then do some intervals at various outputs. See how it feels. Can you hit the numbers? Can you hold the interval duration? Do you cramp?
A good first ride would be to get 1,500-2000KJs (if you want to go longer, cool) and then do some 10-minute intervals @ FTP and see how it feels. You can then tweak FTP to VO2 or long Sweet Spot, or w/e youâre trying to target.
I think it depends on what you are looking at. From the OPs question, I suspect this is a test of value. The lionâs share of your fatigue resistance is going to be generated from your aerobic base, it speaks directly to recoverability. If you are drawing off of those type 2 muscle fibers at Z2/Z3 because you lack the aerobic base outlined in the article, youâre throttling the proverbial âmatchbook.â
This is not something that should be ignored as many trained athletes are not, in fact, aerobically fit. You find this in riders who get on the bike and just smash every single ride. Their short, high level power execution could be phenomenal but they are building up lactate commensurate with a much higher zone in the aerobic ranges. I see the test as a baseline or sense check. You can take a ride of relevant distance and perform this calculation. You donât want to use a ride at 100 degrees, or one where you bonked because that would introduce confounding variables, but you can slice a few rides over time to see if youâve gotten that decoupling percentage down to that sub 5%.
In my first reply I also talked about steady state heart rate. This is very impactful as well, people can narrow that decoupling down to almost nothing and can still see improvements. Achieving a higher percentage of zone 2 by power at a lower percentage of zone 2 by heart rate is a pretty good indication that your fatigue resistance is improving. You wonât establish this on a single ride, but trend data can be very helpful.
You can also take the same approach to higher intensity work and use heart rate trend data over time to see how quickly you recover and how repeatable those efforts are. This is where I think the fatigue resistance charts fall apart. Rider profile can really play into repeatability and fatigue resistance at high intensity that doesnât necessarily get captured by power execution after XXXkJs. It probably captures a meaty part of the bell curve, but @KorbenDallas said this in a much more straightforward way than I did. There is a difference between what you have done and what you can do and power curves tend to be a lagging indicator especially when a rider transitions between phases.
I see the graph as more strategic when it gets to the point that a rider has built a substantial base where heart rate provides less valuable data - things will stabilize with enough consistent and effective training. As people approach their genetic potential, the FRC can get very precise and have a great degree of utility. But the overwhelming majority of riders are not going to get the value out of this chart. Most people are on a low volume/mid volume plan and have a lot of room between their current state and their ceiling. Their historical performances in a power curve may under-represent or over-represent those values. This goes back to strain and other elements that feed into fatigue. The way riders manage accumulated vs depletion based fatigue change substantially as a rider becomes more experienced and builds a wider base.
Thats kinda what made me think about this. I did a 5 hour ride Saturday and I really wanted to push it the final hour. Now I was able to put out my 2nd best NP hour the final hour @ 85% of ftp, but am I truly making my self better just pounding my body this way. My sprint was down 200w, but i had my best 15sec power ever. Just looking this data this seems awesome, but really its just data. It does not mean anything if I dont understand wtf im doing. Its also the first time I have said less push it final hour to see where we end up. So now I have some cool useless numbers unless I can really figure out how to target this in a repeatable process.
Time to read, and gain what has been presented and figure out how to add to my training. Half a season to get better.
Agreed completely, too much focus on how to accurately quantify it or make an exact test. But the op only wanted to know, is their fatigue resistance good enough.
For the rest of Anthonyâs post, basically the same as I said above, or at least what I attempted to. So my advice is the same, take it with a grain of salt or dive through it if you want to be able to make a quantifiable or accurate test. But if you just want to answer your original question, easier to do what weâve said.
How many miles/hours per week are you training, and do you usually do longer 3-6 hour rides on the weekend?
I avg 10hours
600 ctl
At least 100 miles 3 times a month
have you done any sweet spot progression out to something like 3x30?
Not since May
I kinda figured I always need more fatigue resistance. I ride and run over 20 hours a week, and I still feel like I can always be stronger after I am done with a long ride/run.
I guess it is more like, do YOU feel like you need it more?
If I could Measure where I am at, then I would know if itâs something to work on.