Monitoring adaptation rather than training load

I’m with you on this gloscherrybomb, chasing ctl is a dangerous game, I know from experience.

I think there are a couple of factors that currently aren’t quantified in the models and come down to feel / intuition / whatever you want to call it:

  • What is an individuals training load tolerance? Someone might be fine with a CTL of 100, another might feel buried, regardless of TSB. Over time my tolerance for higher training load has increased, but I don’t think that is reflected in any performance management type chart.
  • How quickly do individuals recover? I just finished reading the 3rd edition of Training and Racing with a Power Meter, so one could play around with the decay times for CTL/ATL in WKO. I think that would be a lot of trial and error and its discussed being done by feel or tuning it. No hard and fast advise for setting it.
  • How quickly do individuals recover from different types of workouts? I require more recovery time after 60min VO2max workouts than I do after much higher TSS 120min sweet spot workouts. During builds my CTL drops way down as I need to cut back on volume and high TSS workouts so I can recover from and execute the high intensity ones. PMC charts don’t help me in this area, I have to pay attention to how my body feels.

Not having a standard definition for ‘fitness’ also makes it easier to talk past each other and think we’re arguing when we’re actually agreeing. It kinda feels like when exercise physiologists talk to normal people about ‘strength’. The definition of exercise physiologist strength != normal people strength and leads to communication issues.

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Banister’s original impulse-response model was designed to do just that. It’s not very practical, though, nor is it really all that accurate.

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Thanks - I’ve had it since I was 11 and first set up everything on ‘the web’. Can’t shake it now!

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Completely agree with this. Often the disagreement is based on the terminology and not the underlying content. That’s why terminology is so important.

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