Joe Friel's Blog, page 4

Aerobic Capacity Intervals Year Round?

I received a question today regarding what appears to be a contradiction in some of my books--the Training Bibles and Fast After 50. I suspect other readers have had this same question. First of all, I should point out that how I believe an endurance athlete should train is not carved in stone. I frequently rethink something I may have been doing for years. So there are, indeed, contradictions in some of my books. What the reader asked about really isn't one of those, however. Here's the question and my answer...

Question: The Training Bible makes reference to more moderate intensity for the base period (Z2 HR for example) and the emphasis appears to be increasing intensity as the training year progresses, however, the Fast after 50 book suggests aerobic capacity intervals in the base periods (as well as other training). The aerobic capacity sessions I have completed during this base period have been very intensive but this seems at odds to the recommendations listed in the Training Bible. Am I missing something?

Answer: Fast After 50 was written only for athletes older than 50. The Training Bibles were written for athletes of all ages, but especially younger athletes. The aerobic capacity training in FA50 is year round since older athletes seem to lose VO2max quickly when they stop training it and it is much harder to re-establish once lost. That isn’t so much the case for young riders. Also, the intent of FA50 was not that you’d do aerobic capacity workouts with the same dose and density year round. That's discussed on page 153 (English version). There should be considerable variation in how big the dose is for any single such workout based on periodization and how densely (frequently) this workout should be included throughout the season.

 

Training Risk

High-performance training demands risk taking. The typical risks come in the form of breakdowns such as overtraining, injury, and illness. Mostly moderately hard workouts are what you should be seeking in training to avoid these common breakdowns. That means balancing stress and rest. This balancing in order to produce high fitness is very similar to growing a flower. With the right amount of nutrients in the soil and just enough watering the flower will grow and bloom. Too much of either of these otherwise good things and the plant withers and fails to achieve its potential. It’s the same way with using training stress to grow your fitness. Too much and you breakdown.

Getting the right amount of stress in your training comes down to experience. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for determining how long, frequent, or intense your workouts should be. That is something that must be determined over time. It’s highly individualized. You will know when you’ve done too much in a workout or a closely spaced series of workouts. The most common symptom is that your recovery will be slow taking more than about 36 hours. If you are still fatigued 48 hours after a workout you could assume the preceding training was not moderate. In this situation “fatigue” means you are unable to repeat the workout or another such challenging session. You’ve achieved stage 2—functional overreaching—and may even be on the way to stage 4 overtraining. Of course, over time, as your fitness increases with patient and non-greedy training, what was once an overly hard stage 2 workout becomes a moderate stage 1.

There are times when an experienced athlete may decide to take a risk by doing a stage 2 workout or even several back-to-back. But the risk must be carefully calculated and fatigue closely watched. Avoiding injury, illness, and overtraining at such times still requires some degree of moderation. If you push your body just a bit too much for even a few days your season could come crashing down. Patience is always necessary, especially with such risky training.

On the other hand, if you aren't tired after two or three weeks of training in the base or build periods then you aren't training hard enough. The risk is much too low to realize a reward. In other words, your training is too easy. Fitness and fatigue trend the same direction. If your  fatigue is increasing then you are becoming more fit. If fatigue is never produced then neither is fitness. You must frequently become moderately tired if you are to become fitter. So fatigue is a good thing, not something to be totally avoided. The only issue at hand here is how long the fatigue lasts.

Use your fatigue wisely. Don't waste it on workouts that don't fit your unique needs. Train with a purpose. 

Training, Greed and Patience

I get a lot of emails from athletes who are frequently injured or sick and are frustrated. They can't seem to make any progress. There may be many factors that are at the root of such training breakdowns. Common mental causes are greed and impatience. Most of us need a "psychometer" to warn us when we're pushing too hard. Until that is invented you will just have to rely on your mental strengths. Here are a few thoughts on how to go about doing that.

Knowing when to stop is critical with hard workouts. As a coach, when I attended an athlete’s hard workout, such as intervals that push the athlete to his or limits, one of my roles was to carefully watch how the athlete was coping with the stress. Besides providing encouragement and feedback, I was also there to stop the workout short of completion when I thought the risk of injury or other breakdowns was becoming too great. I could generally tell when an athlete had reached his or her limits. Form begins to deteriorate. Perceived exertion becomes too great. Performance erodes. The athlete has a hard time recovering within the session. It's time to stop.

You may not have a coach to do this for you so it comes down to you making such a decision. Here's what I'd suggest you do. When in an interval session if you feel as if you could do only one hard effort then it’s time to stop the workout and cool down. Don't do the last one. Besides interval sessions other risky moments when you should consider stopping the session are in the last few minutes of a hard steady state and the last ten percent of a very long workout.These are the times when the risk is the greatest. Injury and illness may be sneaking up on you. Be especially cautious at those times when your fitness is high as in the last few weeks before an A-priority race.

One of the biggest challenges some athletes have in stopping a workout is greed—they want all of the fitness they can get right now. You need patience to be a high-performance endurance athlete. I’ve said that many times in this blog. Patience is the key to consistent training. Greedy athletes will commonly lose more fitness than they gain over the course of a season due to constant breakdowns from injuries and illness. Being patient allows your body to fully adapt and grow stronger. This takes time. It can't be rushed.

Greedy training pushes your body too far beyond it’s current physiological limits. It’s only way of stopping you is to become overtrained, sick, injured or burned out. Those are common signs of greed and impatience.

A-Fib and the Master Endurance Athlete

In the last week I’ve been asked several times to comment about a recent article in VeloNews magazine regarding the connection between a heart condition known as atrial fibrillation and master/senior endurance athletes who have been training for years. This is considerably outside of my area of expertise (whatever that may be). So instead I’ve done some searching to find more comments by Dr. John Mandrola who is quoted in the VeloNews piece. Besides being a cardiac electrophysiologist he is also a masters category bike racer from Louisville, KY. That’s a good combination for seeking understanding of this topic. If you’re over 50 and been training and racing for years I’m sure you will have some concerns after reading the article above. You can find a more in-depth discussion of this general topic on Dr. Mandrola’s blog here. I’d also suggest that you read the comments  below his blog post along with his answers for a bit more depth of understanding. To follow up it’s best to address your questions to him in the comments section of his blog.

Avoiding Overtraining

About once every month or so I receive an email from an athlete asking if overtraining may be the cause of his or her current condition that is nearly always marked by lingering fatigue. When after a few days of being more tired than usual most athletes assume a day or two of reduced training will correct the situation—after they complete the current block of scheduled workouts.

They think it’s normal to feel extremely tired when training hard. And they are right. The problem is that many continue to deny their bodies the needed rest and recovery and so press on despite not only fatigue but also greatly reduced performance. After continuing with yet more training sessions they finally decide to take a few days of reduced training stress to recover. Only now they can’t. The fatigue doesn't go away. The long slump is just beginning.

Yesterday I received one of those emails again. It was a rather long one in which the athlete described what led to his condition. Here’s a brief portion that summarizes the main points (the athlete will remain anaonymous):

I've trained all year very consistently, averaging around 15 hours a week. For the last 8 weeks or so, I've been really suffering, I hate to admit it, but I fear I've pushed hard, not had adequate recovery, and might be overtrained. I've self-coached, and built my own training plan, which I've not really followed too carefully, usually doing more than planned, because I feel okay. 

Looking back through my training diary, words like 'exhausted', 'tired', 'fatigue' are far more common than 'felt great' or 'strong'. My friends and family have noticed a huge change too, I'm always grumpy, lethargic, and have little enthusiasm for anything.

His bottom-line question was, “Am I overtrained?” and he offered to let me look at his diary at TrainingPeaks to see what I thought. Unfortunately, you can’t really tell by looking at the numbers from workouts if an athlete is overtrained or not. He’d already studied his diary and come up with the best recorded evidence when he notes the words “exhausted”, “tired”, and “fatigue” appearing far more frequently than “felt great” and “strong.” Then he tops that off by noting that he is often grumpy, lethargic, and unenthusiastic. This is a textbook description of overtraining.

So is he overtrained? It certainly sounds like it, but I can’t really say for sure. There’s also the chance that he’s contracted a disease that shares many of the symptoms of overtraining such as chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, or mononucleosis. I doubt if his family doctor can draw the conclusion that he is overtrained, but he or she can confirm or eliminate other such diseases. So that’s the route I suggested he take.

The bottom line for you here is that overtraining is not something to be taken lightly. I know of a pro athlete whose extremely successful career was ended by overtraining. The condition impaired not only his physical performance but also his motivation to excel. He retired within two years of experiencing this.

What’s the best way to avoid overtraining? The athlete quoted above gives the answer. You should see weekly references in your diary to being strong and feeling great in workouts. If you see words describing fatigue more often then you are pushing too hard. Back off. You need more rest and recovery than you are currently getting.

Part 3: Training Stress Balance—So What?

The following appeared a few days ago on the TrainingPeaks.com blog. It’s the last of three-part series on the Performance Management Chart on the TrainingPeaks site and on WKO software. This is a powerful tool for serious athletes and coaches once they learn how to use it.

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Training Stress Balance (TSB), the yellowish line on the Performance Management Chart, is merely a way of describing your race “Form.” What’s form? In a single phrase, it is race readiness.

So how is TSB determined? It’s the result of subtracting today’s Acute Training Load (“Fatigue”—the red line) from today’s Chronic Training Load (“Fitness”—blue line). Both ATL and CTL are expressed as TSS per day (TSS/d). Once the software has done the math the remainder is your TSB (by the way, the resulting TSB value is for tomorrow—not for today.) It can be either a negative or a positive number depending on which is greater—CTL or ATL. If TSB is negative you are likely to be tired and probably not race ready. If TSB is positive then you are probably rested and perhaps on form—if it doesn’t get too high.

So what? What do the TSB numbers mean and how can you use them to be race ready? Let’s dig a little deeper using exact TSB numbers as guidelines.

When I’m tapering and peaking athletes for A-priority races I like to have their TSB/Form at around +15 to +25 on race day. I’ve found that usually produces the best results. But not always. For some unknown reason there are athletes who perform best when their TSB/Form is just barely positive, around + 5 to +10. I don’t know if this is physiological or psychological. It’s just the way it is for some.

The range between -10 and +10 is generally a transitional phase. Time in this range should be rather brief. There are two common reasons to be in this range. The first is that you are moving through it toward being on form for a race (daily workout TSS is decreasing and TSB/Form is rising). The other common reason is that you are returning to focused training after a few days break and moving toward greater fatigue (daily TSS is increasing and TSB is falling).

If you spend much time in this -10 to +10 TSB range your training is stagnant. Not much is happening. Other than peaking for a race or when in a rest and recovery break lasting a handful of days, this range is best avoided. Staying there for a long time, such as two weeks or more, is seldom a good thing. Try to pass through it in only a few days.

As mentioned above, TSB/Form is closely related to your readiness to race. When it’s below -10 you’re probably too tired to race well. You’re not “on form.” That may be ok for a C-priority race. For a B race you will probably want your TSB trending positive and somewhat above -10. Perhaps even at zero to +10. And, as mentioned, an A-priority race should probably be greater than +10 for most athletes.

If you wander north of +25 your training is much too easy. You’re losing a lot of fitness. This sad situation could be the result of injury, illness, lifestyle-based training interruption, or anything else that drastically reduces your training load. Your recent workout TSS is simply too low for some reason.

The other side of the coin is driving your TSB too low. For most athletes I’ve found keeping TSB in the -10 to -30 range when the training is hard and focused is a very productive and healthy range. This could be, for example, in the serious training weeks of the base and build periods. In this range the likelihood of a breakdown is kept in check. But going south of -30 greatly increases your risk. Managing this part of the training period is done by making sure every recovery day TSS is appropriately low and that there are adequate recovery days each week. For some athletes a recovery day may mean a zero—a day off. For others it’s a session with a lower than usual TSS.

Franz Stampfl, Roger Bannister’s coach back in the 1950s, said, “Training is principally an act of faith.” By that he meant that you can’t predict exactly what will happen in a race regardless of how you may train. The Performance Management Chart with its CTL/Fitness, ATL/Fatigue, and, especially TSB/Form, is a way of reducing the wishing and hoping that happens shortly before a race. But it by no means eliminates the individuality of training. You still must pay close attention to determine how your performance responds to varying degrees of TSB/Form.

Part 2: Training Stress Score—So What?

This is a continuation of my posts related to TrainingPeaks’ Performance Management Chart. It appeared recently on their blog. If you don’t use the PMC then this post probably won’t make sense to you. But I can tell you that it is the most effective single tool I’ve found for analyzing and planning an athlete’s training.

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In Part 1 I addressed the question posed by a TrainingPeaks subscriber of how high should his blue Chronic Training Load (CTL) line on the Performance Management Chart (PMC) be. I tried to explain that such a number can’t be proposed without knowing a tremendous amount of background info on the athlete. The answer depends on a lot of individual variables. The best way to use CTL is to pay attention to the trends over time. If CTL is rising then we can assume that fitness is also. The opposite is likewise true. That’s the primary thing we want to reap from the CTL.

But I suggested in that blog post that CTL can be used to determine how much Training Stress Score (TSS) you may aim for in any given workout. This is an imprecise “science” and is really just giving you a general target for each session. Here’s how to do it.

Typically athletes have three basic and general categories of workouts they do on a weekly basis. Let’s call them “hard,” “moderate,” and “easy.” What most of us do is follow a hard workout with an easy one and occasionally insert a moderate session. What should the TSS be for each of these general categories? Here’s a quick way to estimate them based on your CTL for any given day.

Hard workout—add 50 to 100% to CTL

Moderate workout—add 10-30% to CTL

Easy workout—subtract 20-30% from CTL

Let’s look at a couple of examples. In example #1 the athlete’s CTL is a rather high 100 (measured as an average of TSS for the last 42 days and expressed as “TSS/d”). Using the above ballpark values this athlete’s daily workout TSS categories would be…

Hard workout—150 to 200 TSS

Moderate workout—110-130 TSS

Easy workout—70-80 TSS

Example #2: How about an athlete whose CTL is 50? His or her three workout categories would be…

Hard workout—75 to 100 TSS

Moderate workout—55-65 TSS

Easy workout—35-40 TSS

Again, these are not meant to be unquestionable values. There may be days when you’re feeling great due to a few easy days or even days taken off from training and feel up to doing a hard session which produces a TSS greater than what is suggested above. Or the opposite is also likely to occur when you are too tired to do even a workout at 25% below your CTL. These are meant only to be ballpark numbers. They aren’t carved in stone and backed up by impeccable research. But they generally work.

In Part 3 I’ll discuss your PMC Training Stress Balance and how you can use real numbers there to manage your performance.

Part 1: Chronic Training Load—So What?

The following post appeared in the TrainingPeaks blog a couple of weeks ago. But since a lot of athletes don’t get that or may have missed it I’m reporting it here. If you don’t use TrainingPeaks or WKO software then it probably won’t make much sense to you. It appears there as a tool that can be used to analyze and plan training. It’s perhaps the most useful such tool currently available to endurance athletes regardless of sport. I’ll post Part 2 and Part 3 after they appear on the TrainingPeaks blog.

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A TrainingPeaks subscriber recently said he uses the Performance Management Chart (PMC) and has a basic understanding of Chronic Training Load (CTL), Training Stress Score (TSS), Training Stress Balance (TSB), and the other markers of performance. He posed a basic question which has probably crossed many a user’s mind—so what? In other words, why should you be interested in the numbers represented by all of the lines on the chart? Of what value are they? What should your goals be for them?

Fair enough. Let me see if I can answer these questions. I’ll start with CTL in this post and get to TSS and TSB soon.

Let’s make sure you have a basic understanding before getting into the “so what” of CTL. That blue line on your PMC is a rolling 42-day (or whatever you may set the number of days to be) rolling average of your daily TSS. While it primarily indicates how much training load you are currently managing, it also serves as a good proxy for your fitness. If the blue line rises you are capable of handling a higher training load and therefore are more fit. And you may also assume the opposite.

“So what should my CTL be?” the subscriber asked. I’m afraid I can’t answer that question with a one-size-fits-all answer as there are simply too many “it depends.” It depends, first of all, on what your sport is. For example, triathletes tend to have lower CTLs per sport than do single-sport athletes. That’s obvious because a cyclist, for example, devotes nearly all of his or her training time to the bike while a triathlete spreads the total training load between three sports. The next biggest “it depends” has to do with the individual athlete—how much training load are you capable of handling? Life isn’t fair. Some people can easily manage a very high CTL, such as say a 150 TSS/day average. Others would quickly wind up overtrained from attempting to do that. I won’t get into the other “it depends,” such as how much time one has available to train, as there are lots of them.

The best advice I can give you when it comes to what is an appropriate CTL for you is to use your historical data as a starting point. Simply do what you seem to be capable of doing. You shouldn’t become so focused on CTL that you try to take it very quickly to record highs. That’s a sure way to wind up overtrained. If you are in a serious period of training, such as the last 12 weeks before an A-priority race, you should see the line generally rising, however. In a recent blog post here I suggested that during such periods of very focused training you may want to see your CTL rise by 5 to 8 points per week, excluding rest and recovery weeks spaced every third or fourth week. During R&R weeks your CTL should be allowed to decline.

I hope that gets at the first “so what” question. I wish I could be more specific about the actual CTL number, but as explained I can’t. It just depends. However, I can tell you how to use that number on any given day to get an idea of how hard your workout might be. This is not pure science. It’s more ballpark than precise. It may give you something to hang your hat on when it comes to scheduling workouts. I’ll get into that in Part 2 of "So What."

Question on Heart Rate

For some unknown reason I’ve recently received the same basic question three times in emails this week. The question has to do with using a heart rate monitor to gauge intensity. The email senders don’t understand why it is becoming harder to get heart rates higher. I’m afraid we’ve come to assume that a high heart rate is a good thing. Sigh. Sometimes I wish that the heart rate monitor had never been invented. Lots of bad training decisions result from overinterpreting (is that a word?) the data. The latest question comes from a coach, who will remain anonymous, about one of his cycling clients.

Coach’s question: Currently, I am struggling to grasp a problem while training a very talented rider. He is not able to afford a power meter so we are limited to perceived effort, heart rate data and a number of other markers I’ve built into an Excel spreadsheet. I was wondering if you could help me understand the reason why he is struggling to get into zone 4 for 30-minute efforts, despite being well rested, and fully recovered. Early on it was no problem. 

My reply: I’m assuming when you say “zone 4” you’re referring to heart rate. If that’s so then his low heart rate is actually a good sign. The more endurance fit one becomes the harder it is to elevate heart rate. That’s just one of the reasons why power meters are so helpful in training. In other words, if he had a power meter you’d probably see that at the same power output his heart rate is lower. That’s good. The opposite happens when losing fitness. Heart rate is high at the same power output. In fact, the easiest way to get heart rate higher is to simply lose endurance fitness. So an easily rising heart rate or high heart rate at any given power level is generally a bad sign. So I can probably assume from what you are saying that he is making good progress. Keep it going!

The CTL Ramp Rate

This piece also appeared last week in the TrainingPeaks newsletter. But since not everyone sees that I’m posting it again here.

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If you use the Performance Management Chart (PMC) on TrainingPeaks.com, the mobile app, or WKO you are probably familiar with Chronic Training Load (CTL). It’s a rolling, daily average of how much training load (measured in daily workout Training Stress Scores—TSS) an athlete is managing. The more stress you can handle the greater your fitness is likely to be. If CTL is rising then fitness is likely rising also. So CTL is a good proxy for “fitness” in the PMC model.

A common question I’m asked is how rapidly the CTL should rise over time. In other words, what should the ramp rate be? Obviously, if it doesn’t rise at all—it’s flat-lined—then fitness is probably stagnant. If you reduce your training load, CTL will drop indicating a loss of fitness—negative ramping. A lot of zeroes back to back, meaning missed workouts, quickly lowers your CTL indicating without a doubt a loss of fitness.

But most athletes want to know just the opposite: How rapidly can CTL be increased without producing a negative consequence such as overtraining, illness, or burnout? A key point to understand about these sad consequences of training too much is that they each take time to produce, usually many, many days if not weeks. They don’t happen overnight, or even in a couple of days. Most require a few weeks of training beyond what you are capable of handling before the signs of overtraining begin to show up. How rapidly this happens is quite an individualized matter depending on many factors such as typical training loads, age, experience in the sport, fitness level, and more.

Some unique athletes are able to manage a very high ramp rate, such as greater than 10 CTL points per week, for a fairly long period of time before breaking down in some way. Such athletes are often elites. While it’s not a good idea to try to find your limits, what you can manage without breaking down is generally determined by trial and error. This may result from participating in a high training load camp with other highly motivated athletes. While it’s a little harder to drive yourself to the same extent without training partners, you could also do high-load training solo.

Regardless of how you do it, it’s wise to keep such a high ramp rate to a week or less before backing off to rest and recover. I call such a short period at a high ramp rate a “crash” period. It's controlled overtraining. You’re wobbling on the edge. The crash period is described in my Training Bible books. Such training typically results in a greatly increased level of fitness after a few days of post-crash R&R. Go much beyond a week at 10 or more weekly CTL ramp rate and the outcomes aren’t likely to be as beneficial. That’s one of the things that make the Grand Tours in cycling such challenging events.

So what’s a reasonable ramp rate—one that you maintain for a few weeks before taking an R&R break for a few days without becoming overtrained? While it depends to a great extent on who the athlete is, I’ve found that an increase in CTL of about 5 to 8 points per week is about right for most. Less than that and you’re probably not very focused on your training. More and you’re starting to get into the crash training load range.

When you do finally take an R&R break for a few days your CTL will drop a bit since the training load is quite light as indicated by low TSS workouts relative to your “normal” training. But don’t let the falling CTL scare you away from recovery periods. They’re necessary if you are to reap the benefits of the recent training.

Of course, there are other things, such as lifestyle matters, that may add to the stress of training and reduce your capacity for even a moderately high CTL ramp rate. Some of the greatest lifestyle stressors are divorce, moving, financial difficulties, and changing jobs. These are the big ones, and one of these is a lot all by itself, but having a lot of lesser ones in your life can be just as challenging. Any of these scenarios can reduce your capacity for training meaning that your ramp rate must be adjusted downward to maintain your health and well being. If this is the case then training must be reduced regardless of what your weekly rate of CTL ramping may be.