I moved away from a coach last season to manage my own training - mainly because I enjoy the speed of learning, development and ownership from making mistake after mistake.
I use intervals.icu to manage my training and I also coach a couple of others for free, to speed up my mistake based learning even faster!
Something I have noticed across the training monitoring tools is that they seem to promote and reward increasing training load with a moving average fitness score, despite the saying ātraining makes you weaker, recovery makes you strongerā. Taking rest weeks to allow for effective adaptation is super important, but this requires you to accept a decrease in fitness - which isnāt really true. Maybe instead of fitness, this should be considered ātolerance for training loadā or something similar.
Anyway specifically to my question - is there any software, algorithm or piece of maths, that monitors adaptation as fitness by understanding the benefit of rest following increasing training load? CTL/fitness seem quite dangerous to meā¦
I think if CTL, etc were ādangerousā then weād know by now.
I wouldnāt say that recovery weeks (not rest weeks) means a decrease in fitness. Obviously if you continue to drop training load then over time you will lose fitness.
I think you are confusing how the term fitness is used in the programs and how itās used in general usage.
Intervals.icu uses āformā as the difference between short and long term training load (fatigue). It doesnāt matter what the absolute values of either CTL or ATL are, itās the difference between them. So in a way it (and presumable WKO, Golden Cheetah, etc.) do what you are asking already. As with FTP thereās always the danger of hanging too much from a single metric for what is a very complicated area.
Iām not confusing them at all. The reason I believe they are dangerous, is that people chase āfitnessā (intervals.icu) or CTL (Training Peaks), which puts them off adequate rest (adaptation) periods. Someone who never schedules regular recovery will have a higher fitness or CTL than someone that does.
I know that if you understand these concepts fully you should not be chasing these scores.
Then thatās surely a problem in either the athleteās or coachās understanding of periodised training.
Iām not sure if any of the programs does it but Iād like to see the ability to track āmarkerā or bellwether workouts over time. I noted in the āWhat workoutā thread that my performance in Pettit over the last six months has improved markedly - slightly higher power but with a much lower HR. In fact my whole HR distribution has shifted down by 10bpm. I looked back at my history in Intervals.icu to find the relevant fitness figures which were (apologies for poor formatting):
Month - Fitness - fatigue - form
May - 58 - 66 - -8
Sept - 78 - 82 - -4
Nov - 69 - 73 - -4
September was actually 5bpm down on May so pretty much a halfway mark. So even though my fitness was nominally down on Monday my form was the same but I still saw an improvement from seven weeks ago. I did a Ramp Test between the latter two so Mondayās workout was also at a higher FTP. (Iāve got a goal of completing Baxter all in HR Z1 - I missed it by 23 seconds last time!)
Further to this, Iād like to see something along the lines of an assessment week: a set of workouts that youād do every three to six months that you could track. Maybe Pettit, Lamarck and Spencer.
Have always hated the term āfitnessā to describe CTL! Just doesnāt align with the way that most people use the word.
At the risk of oversimplifying it, the best measure of adaptation is a fitness test. Whether an FTP test (thereās more to fitness than FTP but if youāre going to pick just one measure to track across different training phases then FTP is probably the least bad) or something more event-specific like 1 minute power, 5 minute power, 30 minute power in the TT position, etc.
And actually even if the goal was to achieve the highest CTL (not recommending this for a moment!) then experimenting with different approaches to this over a few seasons would likely lead you to conclude that regular recovery weeks enabled you to build to higher volumes in the long run even if thereās a short term dip.
Echoing @cartsman, Iāve always disliked the use of āfitnessā, āformā, āfatigueā. My understanding is they came about because of copyrights on CTL/ATL/TSB. In my opinion CTL != āfitnessā as āfitnessā is multi-factoral (FTP, time to exhaustion@FTP, fatigue resistance, pVO2max, repeatability of efforts, etc.). Is someone with a FTP of 200w and CTL of 100 more āfitā than someone with a FTP of 300w and CTL of 70? Iād bet on that 300w FTP person having better real-world āfitness.ā
If you look at something like WKO or GoldenCheetah you can see historic trending information for 20min power, 5min power, Xmin power, Wā (anaerobic work capacity), etc. that are either taken from actual performances or modeled based on actual performances. That kind of information might be more of what you are looking for.
Donāt get me wrong, I think CTL/ATL are metrics worth tracking and are very useful. But people who are new to training or training with power and havenāt steeped themselves in it misunderstand that group of metrics and focus on them instead of looking at the big picture.
Then the ādangerousā part of the equation is the people, not the metric. But I understand, itās much easier to manipulate and āfixā numbers than it is people.
We are all humans, we like to be able to measure ourselves, be it CTL, TSS, salary, ONS, etc.
I totally understand what @gloscherrybomb is worried about. I had a short period last season where I was āhooked onā getting a high CTL. Easy to forget that itās not the CTL that wins you racesā¦
Continuing on what @Craig_G mentioned, the Performance Management Chart (or whatever its called outside TrainingPeaks) could, or potentially should, not be that individual. What I mean is, ones FTP should reflect the level of CTL/fitness. Sort of like a combined Performance Management Chart and Andy Coggans W/kg chart.
Hence, a rookie with an FTP of 100W would not be able to reach the same CTL/fitness as Chris Froome without producing the same numbers in real life.
Agreed. But do keep in mind everyone is at a different level of expertise with metrics. I agree with OP and have witnessed beginner/moderates burn themselves out chasing a higher fitness number.
Sure, itās the individual to blame. That metric should be used for ramp rates, not overall fitness.
WKO. Buy WKO5 and also buy the 3rd edition of Training and Racing with a Power Meter and read it cover to cover. And in parallel start watching the WKO webinars on YouTube. Get the right tools and learn to use them.
The absolute ftp number of 100w has nothing to do with it. Itās calculated relative to oneās ftp. Yes, a rookie would have a near impossible time reaching same ctl as froome, but a person with 100w ftp wouldnāt necessarily have a hard time.
In my opinion, the folks with a really high ctl are the ones that have platued ftp wise. The folks that are constantly getting ftp increases donāt increase ctl as fast because each jump in ftp relative to that person requires even more calories to be burned to increase ctl.
No, no my dear friend. I think you misunderstood me. What I meant was that I would like to see the PMC further developed to also incorporate ones ability as a rider (e.g. FTP). Of course both an amateur and a pro can have a CTL of 100, since its based on their individual FTP. However, what I would like to see is that a higher FTP would also generate a higher CTL. Hence a 100TSS ride for mister amateur would not ābe worthā as much as for Froomy.
But then again, it would be f****** hard to sell training programs and tools to amateurs since they would only be looking at that ānew performance chartā which shows them how bad they really are compared to the pros
Thanks all, Iām glad that most of you understood the concern. Of course it is the person to blame, not the tool - but that is why we have the tools in the first place - to try to add structure and quantitative measures to help us avoid the errors we otherwise inevitably make as humans.
eFTP is a good marker in intervals.icu. I might message David about a change of the term āfitnessā, but as others have mentioned people chase CTL too. Scores of any type are very attractive metrics to chase.
you answered your own question, no? Donāt chase CTL, 100% agree, because that is not race readiness, which is what we truly want for events.
also, you nailed it, when athletes say they are losing fitness because they see CTL dropping during a rest week, itās a mute point, right, because technically their anaerobic efforts would be higher during this portion of time but aerobic efforts harder to repeat, so we have to ask, What is Fitness?
To maybe help answer your question, just take a zoomed out, big picture look at the forest; there is no āone mathā or one metric. You need to use them all in sync.
For those that might not know what you are referring to above, I wrote this article back in 2019 that talk about CTL obsession and also updated it this year to look at how driving your CTL super high can really make the PMC appear funny in re: to TSB down the road.
I donāt think I did answer my question. I knew from the outset that chasing CTL is not a good idea, in fact thatās my point. However I am not talking about race readiness here. That is easy to manage with freshness. What am I wondering is if there is any kind of metric or model that, unlike CTL, actually does give an indication of fitness from appropriate training load and recovery combination.
For example - someone that has accumulated huge load week on week on week and has a high CTL score, is likely less fit than someone with a lower CTL store, that has accumulated similar load over most weeks but has taken time for recovery/adaptation every 4 weeks.
Itās really not a biggie - you can educate away from a focus on fitness or CTL, but I think there is an issue with it being promoted as a āscoreā when often chasing this has a negative impact on fitness.
gloscherrybomb is the absolute best user name on this sight by far. Wish I would have thought of a username with cherrybomb in it.
Maybe CIL? Or chronic intensity load which is an indicator of the quality of training through the season = [(1000todays IF)(1-e^(-1/42)]+{yesterdayās CIL*(e^(-1/42)]
