April 2, 2025 • 23 mins
OVERVIEW
How much fatigue can an athlete accumulate without hurting recovery and hindering progress? That's the million dollar question for all coaches and athletes because it reveals how much training you can do in a given time, what type of workouts to use, and even what goals are within your reach. Coach Adam Pulford delves into the software tools he uses to analyze athlete data, monitor fatigue, assess an athlete's capacity for future training, and much more. Listen to Episode 242 of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast" and learn to leverage your training data to supercharge your training and results.
TOPICS COVERED
- What training metrics represent fatigue?
- Defining training stress score (TSS)
- Acute vs. chronic training load
- How stress (fatigue) is balanced by rest (recovery)
- Why "ramp rates" matter and how to use them to plan training
ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST
LINKS/RESOURCES
- Why Ramp Rate is an Important Training Metric | TrainingPeaks
- A Coach's Guide to ATL, CTL & TSB
- Fatigue (ATL) – TrainingPeaks Help Center
- What are CTL, ATL, TSB & TSS? Why Do They Matter?
- Core TrainingPeaks Metrics Explained: Fitness, Form, Fatigue
- The Foster Score: A Simple Yet Effective Way to Measure Training Load in Endurance Sports - Ludum
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance, even
if you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now on to our show.
How much fatigue can one carrywithout hurting your progress?
(00:53):
That may be the single bestquestion I've received from an
audience member on this podcast.
Yet why?
Because it drills down to thecore of what every coach and
every athlete is trying tofigure out how much training can
one do before it's too much?
And why are we seeking that?
Because, conceptually, the moretraining stress you can handle
(01:15):
and recover from, the strongeryou will likely get.
But it's a very fine line withsteep consequences if you get it
wrong.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford, and today we'll be
learning how to use data-drivenmetrics, along with intuition,
to manage your fatigue andmaximize your performance.
In other words, it's bothscience and art.
(01:36):
To answer this fully Now, Iwant to read the full question
to you to bring context to thediscussion today.
Then we'll work on answering it.
Here's the original questionFatigue.
This is a training peaks metricthat I watch.
How much fatigue can one carrywithout hurting progress and
normal life, If that can beanswered?
(01:59):
I listened to your latestpodcast and I'm just getting
back to writing after nearlythree months off the bike due to
sickness and a foot injury.
Right now I'm doing day on andday off rides during the week
and I want to start weekendriding but do not want to become
ill due to being ultra tired.
Thank you, MD.
Again.
I think this is the bestquestion ever.
(02:19):
So thanks, MD.
Again.
I think this is the bestquestion ever.
So thanks, MD.
And here's my honest to Godanswer I don't know.
I don't know how much fatigueyou can handle.
I don't know how much fatiguethis person or that person or
this person here can handlespecifically, but I can say with
(02:40):
reasonable confidence thateveryone is a little different
and to know how much you canhandle, you need to tune in with
both data and perceived effortor how you feel, to know where
your limits are.
There's just as much art insolving this as there is science
.
So let's explore fatigue a bitmore, how the science works
(03:01):
around it and how best tounderstand it.
First, I always like to startwith a working definition.
So what is fatigue?
Webster defines it as tirednessdue to mental or physical
exertion or illness.
So in a training context, it'susually the physical exertion or
the physical fatigue we'rereferring to, Although the
(03:23):
mental side or the cognitiveside shouldn't be overlooked.
And when you're sick or you'reill you shouldn't be training
until you're healthy again.
So physical fatigue is what wecan best measure and monitor and
that's what we're going tofocus on today.
Training peaks causes fatigue.
Metric, acute training load orATL, it's a little pink number
(03:44):
or pink line If you're on the,the uh on your laptop looking at
it or on your uh on your app onyour phone.
And to best understand how muchof this fatigue or this ATL
that you can handle or carrywithout being hurt in the pro in
the process, it's best tounderstand how it's measured and
(04:06):
how it works with the othermetrics on TrainingPeaks.
So let's zoom out to stressscores in general.
There are many iterations outthere to quantify training
stress, anything from sufferscores to relative effort scores
, trim scores.
There's even a foster score outthere, but again I'm going to
(04:26):
focus on TrainingPeaks.
That's the platform that I useand CTS uses to prescribe and
analyze data.
Also, a lot of theirterminology, methodology and
technology is being used in alot of different devices out
there.
So Training Peaks measures thisATL first by establishing a
(04:48):
global training stress score, orTSS, for every workout.
Tss is a function of intensityor normalized power with time or
duration, and it gives you ascore.
So, by definition, if you rideone hour at FTP and your FTP is
recorded accurately and properlybecause you listen to our other
(05:08):
podcast about field testing andyou know what it is If you ride
one hour at FTP, that's 100 TSSpoints.
So I give you that as kind of agrounding of what.
How many points can beaccumulated in a certain amount
of time?
How many points can beaccumulated in a certain amount
of time?
Now you can ride at lowerintensity so long endurance
rides and you can go for a longtime period and rack up points.
(05:31):
Additionally, you can go harderor more intense for shorter,
repeatable efforts and you canrack up points like that by
intensifying your training.
But FTP is the hinge point toit all and duration plays a big
role, because how much time youride at above or below FTP is
how you accumulate these pointsand how you add stress to your
(05:53):
system, your body.
Now, as you train more, you'llearn more points.
It's kind of a gamification ifyou will earn more points, you
get more fit, and that's how itworks in general terms.
Now again, this only you know.
(06:13):
The accuracy of these trainingstress scores are only as good
as the accuracy of your data inyour current testing.
So if you haven't testedrecently, you don't know what a
field test is.
Go back and listen to mypodcast on field testing.
Now, specifically, the fatiguethat MD is talking about here in
this question is that ATL or Qtraining load.
You can't look at just onemetric and put your finger on it
(06:35):
and say this is how I amgoverning or monitoring my
training, and you can't do thatwith ATL for sure.
You have to look at all thesemetrics that training peaks and
other systems are using.
You have to look at themtogether.
So what I want to do now is Iwant to look at the performance
management chart, because ATL,CTL and TSB these are the key
(06:58):
metrics that you need to belooking at all together and I
think it's best to describe themwith a visual.
So if you're on our YouTubeplatform and you're watching,
I'm going to bring up a visualto show that.
If you're listening on ourpodcast just just with audio and
no video, I'll do my best todescribe it just by words, but
(07:20):
either way, you're going to getthe picture.
So I've got our visual pulledup and what we're looking at is
a performance management chart,and this is actually my own data
.
Just do that for simplicitysake.
And what I'm going to do is I'mjust going to describe each of
the key metrics here of ATL, CTLand TSB.
Atl is that pink line that wesee right here.
(07:43):
Okay, it's going up and down,up and down.
That pink line, or acutetraining load, is measuring the
exponentially weighted averageof your TSS over seven days,
which means it's measuring thestress in your system for about
two weeks, because that's howexponentially weighted averages
work.
That's in pink.
So CTL, or chronic trainingload, is measuring the
(08:05):
exponentially weighted averagefor about 42 days.
So the TSS over about 90 daysis what it's accurately
measuring.
Okay, so ATL is more thatweekly fatigue and it racks up
and kind of carries over.
And that's to MD's question ishow much can you carry over?
Atl is carrying it for abouttwo weeks.
(08:26):
So if you do hard training,this pink line goes up on
training peaks and it kind ofcarries through for a couple of
weeks.
Now if you take an easy week,that pink line goes down and you
start to freshen up.
But meanwhile as you do moretraining load and the pink goes
up and down and then back up anddown.
Pink goes up and down and thenback up and down.
(08:50):
Ctl or your fitness, this blueline goes up gradually over time
.
And that's how acute trainingload and chronic training load
work together.
This is my analogy of saying youneed to crack some eggs to bake
the cake.
You're cracking eggs that'sinducing fatigue from an ATL
standpoint and you're baking thecake of fitness.
Right, you got to cause somedestruction in order to make
(09:11):
that cake happen.
Terrible analogy probably forsome people, but hopefully you
smiled.
So these are the short-term andthe long-term training stress
score metrics that you can useon training peaks to gauge how
much fatigue and how muchfitness you're gaining over time
.
Now the other color that youcan see here on our visual is
(09:35):
yellow and that's TSB, ortraining stress balance.
Simply put, this shows us howyou're adapting to the training
and gives us more insight on howfresh or maybe unfresh you
actually are, based on theprevious training block.
So to bring some description towhat you're seeing here on the
performance management chartonline is essentially at some
(09:56):
point.
I got organized with my owntraining at the end of February,
beginning of March, and I wasactually pretty sick too.
I got COVID for February andthat's why the TSB is through
the roof and so high.
So once I got healthy I startedto induce a training and
training fatigue.
So you see, pink goes up and itkind of has like a little spike
(10:18):
Meanwhile.
Ctl kind of follows that.
Then I start to get into someheavier training and that pink
line goes up.
I start to get into someheavier training and that pink
line goes up.
Meanwhile the blue line, or CTLfitness, gradually goes up.
And that's how training works.
You do a week or two oftraining and you get tired and
(10:38):
over time you'll get fit and youcan see that blue line
gradually building up over timeas the pink line oscillates and
then at some point we see thesedotted lines, and I'll get into
that maybe here more in a second.
But that's the model approachof the prescriptive workouts
that I have built in trainingpeaks, moving forward into the
(10:59):
future, Because this performancemanagement chart I have set up
for the last 180 days in thenext 45 days, that's how I look
at it and suggest how peoplelook at it in their training
peaks.
Now to the back to the questionat hand how much fatigue can I
handle?
How much fatigue can MD handle?
How much fatigue can somebodyhandle?
I don't know, I really don't it, but it really depends on a lot
(11:22):
of things and so many thingsthat I'm not going to cover all
of them.
But things that come to mindfor me are age, training, age
sleep, lack of sleep, motivationlack of motivation, fueling
habits both on and off the bike,recovery habits like the timing
of food, post-workout hydrationthroughout your day and evening
(11:42):
, stress management, work stress, family stress, life stress,
trends of fitness or fitnessdecay, previous illness like MD
and I both had, and the listgoes on.
So the amount of fatigue thatyou can handle right now
definitely depends on all thefactors that I talked about,
including kind of a movingtarget of sorts.
(12:04):
Because right now includingkind of a moving target of sorts
, Because right now, based onwhat you can see in my
performance management chart,what I could handle just a month
ago is I couldn't handle verymuch training and now I can
handle a lot more training and Ican feel that as well.
You know a hard three or fourhour ride.
(12:25):
Put me on the couch as well.
You know a hard three or threeor four hour ride.
Put me on the couch.
And now this past weekend Ijust did three, four hour rides
back to back to back and Ihandled it quite well and I felt
good on that third day.
So in a sense, that fatigue canbe a bit of a moving target.
You don't want to overdo itbecause the consequences are
high, but you definitely need tocrack some eggs to to bake that
(12:45):
fitness cake.
Okay, Now the other thing to ageright.
A younger, motivated athletewith no family and minimal job
demands they can handle a lotmore training than a middle-aged
or older person with family, afull-time job, things like this.
So most normal humans have alot going on, which is why it's
(13:06):
really hard to give a straightup answer.
If you're to somehow removethat middle-aged person from
their normal stress day to dayand you put them in a training
camp, all of a sudden, boom,they can handle a ton more ATL
or fatigue or stress from atraining context because they
have less going on, or stressfrom a training context because
(13:31):
they have less going on.
Now I'll tell you this when Ibuild training, say like in the
base build and prep time periods, where I want to increase
fitness, I want to increase CTL,like you see here on the
performance management chart, mymain focus, like MD wants to do
here, I don't look at ATL onlyand I don't even look at it
first.
I look at all the metricstogether, actually build the
(13:53):
training.
Then I look at something calledramp rates, which we'll get
into here in just a minute.
Then I look at CTL, I look atTSB and I look at how the
modeled ATL ebbs and flows.
Does it build up and come downevery two to three weeks or so?
And you can see that with thevisual on YouTube.
It spikes up, comes down.
Spikes up, comes down.
(14:13):
That's what you want to see outof the ATL.
But in terms of that pure number.
What's that pure number youshould be shooting for?
I don't know.
I even looked it up.
I asked a few coaches that Iwork with.
I went out there searching, Ieven chat, GPT'd it and,
depending on where you'relooking, most people do not
prescribe or give a range ofwhat ATL should be like.
(14:37):
We do with CTL, I would say,because it has so many variables
to it, it's not good to aim forone CTL over another.
You just want to get it high asyou're inducing a training
effect when you're trying to uh,get fitness or change something
(14:57):
form an adaptation from yourbody.
Okay, Now I I use other toolstoo, like anaerobic and aerobic
impact scores and fatiguetracking charts.
That are all available on WKO5.
So for the extreme data geeksout there, I'll put a link in
our show notes to how you canget WKO5 and start using it for
your own training.
So, like I said in my coachingpractice, I don't find it useful
(15:21):
or applicable to shoot for somesort of range or number on ATL.
It's too variable.
Shoot for some sort of range ornumber on ATL.
It's two variable CTL and ramprates are more reliable to keep
you on track and in my opinion,they do so without overcooking
yourself too soon.
So let's learn more about howto use ramp rates.
Okay, so now I've pulled up adifferent visual on our YouTube
(15:42):
channel.
So for those wanting to look atthat, head on over to our
YouTube and start watching andlistening there.
But again, I'll do my best todescribe what's going on In
TrainingPeaks.
Premium users.
They lay out ramp rates for youover the past seven days, 28
days, 90 days and 365 days.
I generally focus on the weeklyramp rate and what this
(16:07):
actually means is just lookingat your increase of CTL week to
week.
Generally speaking, if you'rebetween a two and 10 for a ramp
rate, I'd consider that to beappropriate.
Eight to 10 is prettyaggressive.
One to two is pretty minimal.
And all of this is assuming,once again, your FTP and your
(16:27):
data is accurate, Okay, and it'sclean.
So don't don't get me going ondata hygiene.
It's it's a touchy subject forme, Okay, but just make sure
that your FTP is up to date andit is up to date on training
peaks.
Now I want to see these ramprates between two and 10 occur
(16:47):
for two to three weeks in a row.
Then I generally for my athletes, I generally give them a block
of recovery or maybe a recoveryweek.
So five to seven days of easyriding, a couple of rest days in
there, and help them freshen upand adapt to the training
stresses.
Because, remember, stress plusrest equals adaptation.
(17:09):
That is the equation that we'reall using when it comes to
getting faster, getting better,getting stronger, getting more
powerful and trying to get onthat podium.
You can't adapt without rest,but you also won't form an
adaptation without some adequatestress, which is why MD's
(17:30):
question is so damn good.
Okay, here's a quick story.
When I was a young coach, I wentto Dean Golich who in my
opinion is still probably one ofthe best coaches I've ever met
and I asked him what makes eliteathletes different than
non-elites?
And he answered pretty quicklyand he goes how fast they adapt
(17:50):
and how much they can suffer.
So let's put this suffering tothe side for now, Okay, and
let's focus on the adaptation.
He said how fast they adapt,Right?
So I thought about that for abit and I was thinking about my
stress plus rest equation and Icame back to him and said well,
how much stress can we give them?
(18:11):
How much stress can I give anathlete?
Then and he replied prettyquickly and he said if someone
knew that, they'd have all themedals.
And again, this guy is one ofthe best coaches.
He now works with Um, but I Idon't know if I can say it
online, but he works withanother pro uh world tour team,
um team at the highest level andhe knows his stuff.
(18:33):
So his point was obviously thatwe don't really know and it's
different for everyone and it'sa process that every athlete and
every coach needs to figure outfor the own individual athlete.
You need to be in tune withyourself and your feelings.
For sure you also need to knowhow to use data in science to
help us understand and how toform those adaptations without
(18:56):
cooking yourself too much.
Now how can you use these, likethese general tips that I just
gave you of ramp rate, you knowtwo to 10 kind of stay within
there.
Well, there's different ways ofinducing that right.
So, like you can stay at thelow end of the ramp rate, call
it one to two, maybe three uhramp rate for every week and you
(19:17):
can run that out for severalweeks in a row.
And I do that for some of myathletes, where we keep the
intensity low and we're buildingup the volume I can.
I can keep that ramp rate goingup for several weeks before
taking a break, however, up forseveral weeks before taking a
break.
However, if that ramp rate is10 plus right, and you just
(19:39):
drill yourself into the ground,Well, maybe you only do that for
one week and then you go easyfor a block and then you come
back to training.
So, again, using those ramprates as a guide generally,
that's going to be.
That's going to be better,because the fatigue aspect, or
the, the ATL, that pink line orthe pink number, it has too many
variables to it.
Okay, Other things to reallyask yourself is how do you feel
(20:01):
today?
How do legs feel today?
Have you been sleeping well?
How are you performing the nextday in training?
Are you motivated?
Do you have good energy?
Are you looking forward totraining?
These are all great questionsto ask yourself when you wake up
and you start to get yourequipment together and head out
for another training ride, oryou have a cup of coffee in the
(20:24):
morning and you're trying todecide well, should I really do
these intervals or not?
Now let me make one additionalpoint.
I kind of poked at this earlier.
But we only want to use theseramp rate guidelines in CTL when
the goal is to increase fitnessor when we're in that base,
build and prep periods.
After that, increasing CTL isnot really the goal, at least in
(20:47):
my practice in working withathletes.
At some point we don't evenfocus on CTL anymore.
We try to increase power, wetry to increase speed, we try to
increase the specificity ofrace demands Okay, and that
takes higher priority than justfitness alone.
One good quote that you can takeaway from this podcast is what
(21:08):
it takes to get fit is not thesame thing it takes to stay fit
is what it takes to get fit isnot the same thing it takes to
stay fit.
What that means is in that baseand build time period.
If you build your base properly, you can then move on to higher
intensity and let CTL juststabilize, Let it kind of
plateau if you will, and you canmanage that with intensity and
(21:28):
a couple of long rides everycouple of weeks, Okay.
But at that point what you'redoing is you're actually
decreasing your ATL or yourfatigue so that you can focus on
performance, so you can focuson increasing your power
production.
That's how good training works.
Now, once you're fit, how youmeasure and monitor fatigue can
(21:50):
get even more artsy with yourdata.
Okay, but I better leave thatfor another time and wrap this
thing up.
My final point, and the biggerpicture here, is consistency
prevails when it comes togaining fitness, Because here's
really how training works.
If you train a lot for twoweeks, you're just going to get
(22:10):
tired.
If you train a lot for twomonths with proper recovery just
going to get tired.
If you train a lot for twomonths with proper recovery,
you're going to be on the righttrack.
If you train a lot for twoyears with the proper balance of
stress and rest, you're fit.
So play the long game with yourfitness.
Be consistent, don't rush it,and you'll be way more
successful.
And to you, MD, pay closerattention to your ramp rates on
(22:34):
a weekly, monthly basis, and Ithink you'll find this guides
you far better than ATL orfatigue.
So that's it.
That's our show for today.
If you liked what you heard,please share it with a friend or
your training partner.
If you have any other greatquestions, like we had today,
head on over to trainrightcombackslash podcast and click on
(22:55):
ask a training question.
Those get sent directly to meand the team at CTS and we'll do
our best to answer it on afuture episode.
Thanks again for listening andwe'll meet back here next week
for more actionable trainingadvice.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
(23:18):
over to trainrightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast that'll help you take
your training to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance, even
if you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now on to our show.
How much fatigue can one carrywithout hurting your progress?
(00:53):
That may be the single bestquestion I've received from an
audience member on this podcast.
Yet why?
Because it drills down to thecore of what every coach and
every athlete is trying tofigure out how much training can
one do before it's too much?
And why are we seeking that?
Because, conceptually, the moretraining stress you can handle
(01:15):
and recover from, the strongeryou will likely get.
But it's a very fine line withsteep consequences if you get it
wrong.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford, and today we'll be
learning how to use data-drivenmetrics, along with intuition,
to manage your fatigue andmaximize your performance.
In other words, it's bothscience and art.
(01:36):
To answer this fully Now, Iwant to read the full question
to you to bring context to thediscussion today.
Then we'll work on answering it.
Here's the original questionFatigue.
This is a training peaks metricthat I watch.
How much fatigue can one carrywithout hurting progress and
normal life, If that can beanswered?
(01:59):
I listened to your latestpodcast and I'm just getting
back to writing after nearlythree months off the bike due to
sickness and a foot injury.
Right now I'm doing day on andday off rides during the week
and I want to start weekendriding but do not want to become
ill due to being ultra tired.
Thank you, MD.
Again.
I think this is the bestquestion ever.
(02:19):
So thanks, MD.
Again.
I think this is the bestquestion ever.
So thanks, MD.
And here's my honest to Godanswer I don't know.
I don't know how much fatigueyou can handle.
I don't know how much fatiguethis person or that person or
this person here can handlespecifically, but I can say with
(02:40):
reasonable confidence thateveryone is a little different
and to know how much you canhandle, you need to tune in with
both data and perceived effortor how you feel, to know where
your limits are.
There's just as much art insolving this as there is science
.
So let's explore fatigue a bitmore, how the science works
(03:01):
around it and how best tounderstand it.
First, I always like to startwith a working definition.
So what is fatigue?
Webster defines it as tirednessdue to mental or physical
exertion or illness.
So in a training context, it'susually the physical exertion or
the physical fatigue we'rereferring to, Although the
(03:23):
mental side or the cognitiveside shouldn't be overlooked.
And when you're sick or you'reill you shouldn't be training
until you're healthy again.
So physical fatigue is what wecan best measure and monitor and
that's what we're going tofocus on today.
Training peaks causes fatigue.
Metric, acute training load orATL, it's a little pink number
(03:44):
or pink line If you're on the,the uh on your laptop looking at
it or on your uh on your app onyour phone.
And to best understand how muchof this fatigue or this ATL
that you can handle or carrywithout being hurt in the pro in
the process, it's best tounderstand how it's measured and
(04:06):
how it works with the othermetrics on TrainingPeaks.
So let's zoom out to stressscores in general.
There are many iterations outthere to quantify training
stress, anything from sufferscores to relative effort scores
, trim scores.
There's even a foster score outthere, but again I'm going to
(04:26):
focus on TrainingPeaks.
That's the platform that I useand CTS uses to prescribe and
analyze data.
Also, a lot of theirterminology, methodology and
technology is being used in alot of different devices out
there.
So Training Peaks measures thisATL first by establishing a
(04:48):
global training stress score, orTSS, for every workout.
Tss is a function of intensityor normalized power with time or
duration, and it gives you ascore.
So, by definition, if you rideone hour at FTP and your FTP is
recorded accurately and properlybecause you listen to our other
(05:08):
podcast about field testing andyou know what it is If you ride
one hour at FTP, that's 100 TSSpoints.
So I give you that as kind of agrounding of what.
How many points can beaccumulated in a certain amount
of time?
How many points can beaccumulated in a certain amount
of time?
Now you can ride at lowerintensity so long endurance
rides and you can go for a longtime period and rack up points.
(05:31):
Additionally, you can go harderor more intense for shorter,
repeatable efforts and you canrack up points like that by
intensifying your training.
But FTP is the hinge point toit all and duration plays a big
role, because how much time youride at above or below FTP is
how you accumulate these pointsand how you add stress to your
(05:53):
system, your body.
Now, as you train more, you'llearn more points.
It's kind of a gamification ifyou will earn more points, you
get more fit, and that's how itworks in general terms.
Now again, this only you know.
(06:13):
The accuracy of these trainingstress scores are only as good
as the accuracy of your data inyour current testing.
So if you haven't testedrecently, you don't know what a
field test is.
Go back and listen to mypodcast on field testing.
Now, specifically, the fatiguethat MD is talking about here in
this question is that ATL or Qtraining load.
You can't look at just onemetric and put your finger on it
(06:35):
and say this is how I amgoverning or monitoring my
training, and you can't do thatwith ATL for sure.
You have to look at all thesemetrics that training peaks and
other systems are using.
You have to look at themtogether.
So what I want to do now is Iwant to look at the performance
management chart, because ATL,CTL and TSB these are the key
(06:58):
metrics that you need to belooking at all together and I
think it's best to describe themwith a visual.
So if you're on our YouTubeplatform and you're watching,
I'm going to bring up a visualto show that.
If you're listening on ourpodcast just just with audio and
no video, I'll do my best todescribe it just by words, but
(07:20):
either way, you're going to getthe picture.
So I've got our visual pulledup and what we're looking at is
a performance management chart,and this is actually my own data
.
Just do that for simplicitysake.
And what I'm going to do is I'mjust going to describe each of
the key metrics here of ATL, CTLand TSB.
Atl is that pink line that wesee right here.
(07:43):
Okay, it's going up and down,up and down.
That pink line, or acutetraining load, is measuring the
exponentially weighted averageof your TSS over seven days,
which means it's measuring thestress in your system for about
two weeks, because that's howexponentially weighted averages
work.
That's in pink.
So CTL, or chronic trainingload, is measuring the
(08:05):
exponentially weighted averagefor about 42 days.
So the TSS over about 90 daysis what it's accurately
measuring.
Okay, so ATL is more thatweekly fatigue and it racks up
and kind of carries over.
And that's to MD's question ishow much can you carry over?
Atl is carrying it for abouttwo weeks.
(08:26):
So if you do hard training,this pink line goes up on
training peaks and it kind ofcarries through for a couple of
weeks.
Now if you take an easy week,that pink line goes down and you
start to freshen up.
But meanwhile as you do moretraining load and the pink goes
up and down and then back up anddown.
Pink goes up and down and thenback up and down.
(08:50):
Ctl or your fitness, this blueline goes up gradually over time
.
And that's how acute trainingload and chronic training load
work together.
This is my analogy of saying youneed to crack some eggs to bake
the cake.
You're cracking eggs that'sinducing fatigue from an ATL
standpoint and you're baking thecake of fitness.
Right, you got to cause somedestruction in order to make
(09:11):
that cake happen.
Terrible analogy probably forsome people, but hopefully you
smiled.
So these are the short-term andthe long-term training stress
score metrics that you can useon training peaks to gauge how
much fatigue and how muchfitness you're gaining over time
.
Now the other color that youcan see here on our visual is
(09:35):
yellow and that's TSB, ortraining stress balance.
Simply put, this shows us howyou're adapting to the training
and gives us more insight on howfresh or maybe unfresh you
actually are, based on theprevious training block.
So to bring some description towhat you're seeing here on the
performance management chartonline is essentially at some
(09:56):
point.
I got organized with my owntraining at the end of February,
beginning of March, and I wasactually pretty sick too.
I got COVID for February andthat's why the TSB is through
the roof and so high.
So once I got healthy I startedto induce a training and
training fatigue.
So you see, pink goes up and itkind of has like a little spike
(10:18):
Meanwhile.
Ctl kind of follows that.
Then I start to get into someheavier training and that pink
line goes up.
I start to get into someheavier training and that pink
line goes up.
Meanwhile the blue line, or CTLfitness, gradually goes up.
And that's how training works.
You do a week or two oftraining and you get tired and
(10:38):
over time you'll get fit and youcan see that blue line
gradually building up over timeas the pink line oscillates and
then at some point we see thesedotted lines, and I'll get into
that maybe here more in a second.
But that's the model approachof the prescriptive workouts
that I have built in trainingpeaks, moving forward into the
(10:59):
future, Because this performancemanagement chart I have set up
for the last 180 days in thenext 45 days, that's how I look
at it and suggest how peoplelook at it in their training
peaks.
Now to the back to the questionat hand how much fatigue can I
handle?
How much fatigue can MD handle?
How much fatigue can somebodyhandle?
I don't know, I really don't it, but it really depends on a lot
(11:22):
of things and so many thingsthat I'm not going to cover all
of them.
But things that come to mindfor me are age, training, age
sleep, lack of sleep, motivationlack of motivation, fueling
habits both on and off the bike,recovery habits like the timing
of food, post-workout hydrationthroughout your day and evening
(11:42):
, stress management, work stress, family stress, life stress,
trends of fitness or fitnessdecay, previous illness like MD
and I both had, and the listgoes on.
So the amount of fatigue thatyou can handle right now
definitely depends on all thefactors that I talked about,
including kind of a movingtarget of sorts.
(12:04):
Because right now includingkind of a moving target of sorts
, Because right now, based onwhat you can see in my
performance management chart,what I could handle just a month
ago is I couldn't handle verymuch training and now I can
handle a lot more training and Ican feel that as well.
You know a hard three or fourhour ride.
(12:25):
Put me on the couch as well.
You know a hard three or threeor four hour ride.
Put me on the couch.
And now this past weekend Ijust did three, four hour rides
back to back to back and Ihandled it quite well and I felt
good on that third day.
So in a sense, that fatigue canbe a bit of a moving target.
You don't want to overdo itbecause the consequences are
high, but you definitely need tocrack some eggs to to bake that
(12:45):
fitness cake.
Okay, Now the other thing to ageright.
A younger, motivated athletewith no family and minimal job
demands they can handle a lotmore training than a middle-aged
or older person with family, afull-time job, things like this.
So most normal humans have alot going on, which is why it's
(13:06):
really hard to give a straightup answer.
If you're to somehow removethat middle-aged person from
their normal stress day to dayand you put them in a training
camp, all of a sudden, boom,they can handle a ton more ATL
or fatigue or stress from atraining context because they
have less going on, or stressfrom a training context because
(13:31):
they have less going on.
Now I'll tell you this when Ibuild training, say like in the
base build and prep time periods, where I want to increase
fitness, I want to increase CTL,like you see here on the
performance management chart, mymain focus, like MD wants to do
here, I don't look at ATL onlyand I don't even look at it
first.
I look at all the metricstogether, actually build the
(13:53):
training.
Then I look at something calledramp rates, which we'll get
into here in just a minute.
Then I look at CTL, I look atTSB and I look at how the
modeled ATL ebbs and flows.
Does it build up and come downevery two to three weeks or so?
And you can see that with thevisual on YouTube.
It spikes up, comes down.
Spikes up, comes down.
(14:13):
That's what you want to see outof the ATL.
But in terms of that pure number.
What's that pure number youshould be shooting for?
I don't know.
I even looked it up.
I asked a few coaches that Iwork with.
I went out there searching, Ieven chat, GPT'd it and,
depending on where you'relooking, most people do not
prescribe or give a range ofwhat ATL should be like.
(14:37):
We do with CTL, I would say,because it has so many variables
to it, it's not good to aim forone CTL over another.
You just want to get it high asyou're inducing a training
effect when you're trying to uh,get fitness or change something
(14:57):
form an adaptation from yourbody.
Okay, Now I I use other toolstoo, like anaerobic and aerobic
impact scores and fatiguetracking charts.
That are all available on WKO5.
So for the extreme data geeksout there, I'll put a link in
our show notes to how you canget WKO5 and start using it for
your own training.
So, like I said in my coachingpractice, I don't find it useful
(15:21):
or applicable to shoot for somesort of range or number on ATL.
It's too variable.
Shoot for some sort of range ornumber on ATL.
It's two variable CTL and ramprates are more reliable to keep
you on track and in my opinion,they do so without overcooking
yourself too soon.
So let's learn more about howto use ramp rates.
Okay, so now I've pulled up adifferent visual on our YouTube
(15:42):
channel.
So for those wanting to look atthat, head on over to our
YouTube and start watching andlistening there.
But again, I'll do my best todescribe what's going on In
TrainingPeaks.
Premium users.
They lay out ramp rates for youover the past seven days, 28
days, 90 days and 365 days.
I generally focus on the weeklyramp rate and what this
(16:07):
actually means is just lookingat your increase of CTL week to
week.
Generally speaking, if you'rebetween a two and 10 for a ramp
rate, I'd consider that to beappropriate.
Eight to 10 is prettyaggressive.
One to two is pretty minimal.
And all of this is assuming,once again, your FTP and your
(16:27):
data is accurate, Okay, and it'sclean.
So don't don't get me going ondata hygiene.
It's it's a touchy subject forme, Okay, but just make sure
that your FTP is up to date andit is up to date on training
peaks.
Now I want to see these ramprates between two and 10 occur
(16:47):
for two to three weeks in a row.
Then I generally for my athletes, I generally give them a block
of recovery or maybe a recoveryweek.
So five to seven days of easyriding, a couple of rest days in
there, and help them freshen upand adapt to the training
stresses.
Because, remember, stress plusrest equals adaptation.
(17:09):
That is the equation that we'reall using when it comes to
getting faster, getting better,getting stronger, getting more
powerful and trying to get onthat podium.
You can't adapt without rest,but you also won't form an
adaptation without some adequatestress, which is why MD's
(17:30):
question is so damn good.
Okay, here's a quick story.
When I was a young coach, I wentto Dean Golich who in my
opinion is still probably one ofthe best coaches I've ever met
and I asked him what makes eliteathletes different than
non-elites?
And he answered pretty quicklyand he goes how fast they adapt
(17:50):
and how much they can suffer.
So let's put this suffering tothe side for now, Okay, and
let's focus on the adaptation.
He said how fast they adapt,Right?
So I thought about that for abit and I was thinking about my
stress plus rest equation and Icame back to him and said well,
how much stress can we give them?
(18:11):
How much stress can I give anathlete?
Then and he replied prettyquickly and he said if someone
knew that, they'd have all themedals.
And again, this guy is one ofthe best coaches.
He now works with Um, but I Idon't know if I can say it
online, but he works withanother pro uh world tour team,
um team at the highest level andhe knows his stuff.
(18:33):
So his point was obviously thatwe don't really know and it's
different for everyone and it'sa process that every athlete and
every coach needs to figure outfor the own individual athlete.
You need to be in tune withyourself and your feelings.
For sure you also need to knowhow to use data in science to
help us understand and how toform those adaptations without
(18:56):
cooking yourself too much.
Now how can you use these, likethese general tips that I just
gave you of ramp rate, you knowtwo to 10 kind of stay within
there.
Well, there's different ways ofinducing that right.
So, like you can stay at thelow end of the ramp rate, call
it one to two, maybe three uhramp rate for every week and you
(19:17):
can run that out for severalweeks in a row.
And I do that for some of myathletes, where we keep the
intensity low and we're buildingup the volume I can.
I can keep that ramp rate goingup for several weeks before
taking a break, however, up forseveral weeks before taking a
break.
However, if that ramp rate is10 plus right, and you just
(19:39):
drill yourself into the ground,Well, maybe you only do that for
one week and then you go easyfor a block and then you come
back to training.
So, again, using those ramprates as a guide generally,
that's going to be.
That's going to be better,because the fatigue aspect, or
the, the ATL, that pink line orthe pink number, it has too many
variables to it.
Okay, Other things to reallyask yourself is how do you feel
(20:01):
today?
How do legs feel today?
Have you been sleeping well?
How are you performing the nextday in training?
Are you motivated?
Do you have good energy?
Are you looking forward totraining?
These are all great questionsto ask yourself when you wake up
and you start to get yourequipment together and head out
for another training ride, oryou have a cup of coffee in the
(20:24):
morning and you're trying todecide well, should I really do
these intervals or not?
Now let me make one additionalpoint.
I kind of poked at this earlier.
But we only want to use theseramp rate guidelines in CTL when
the goal is to increase fitnessor when we're in that base,
build and prep periods.
After that, increasing CTL isnot really the goal, at least in
(20:47):
my practice in working withathletes.
At some point we don't evenfocus on CTL anymore.
We try to increase power, wetry to increase speed, we try to
increase the specificity ofrace demands Okay, and that
takes higher priority than justfitness alone.
One good quote that you can takeaway from this podcast is what
(21:08):
it takes to get fit is not thesame thing it takes to stay fit
is what it takes to get fit isnot the same thing it takes to
stay fit.
What that means is in that baseand build time period.
If you build your base properly, you can then move on to higher
intensity and let CTL juststabilize, Let it kind of
plateau if you will, and you canmanage that with intensity and
(21:28):
a couple of long rides everycouple of weeks, Okay.
But at that point what you'redoing is you're actually
decreasing your ATL or yourfatigue so that you can focus on
performance, so you can focuson increasing your power
production.
That's how good training works.
Now, once you're fit, how youmeasure and monitor fatigue can
(21:50):
get even more artsy with yourdata.
Okay, but I better leave thatfor another time and wrap this
thing up.
My final point, and the biggerpicture here, is consistency
prevails when it comes togaining fitness, Because here's
really how training works.
If you train a lot for twoweeks, you're just going to get
(22:10):
tired.
If you train a lot for twomonths with proper recovery just
going to get tired.
If you train a lot for twomonths with proper recovery,
you're going to be on the righttrack.
If you train a lot for twoyears with the proper balance of
stress and rest, you're fit.
So play the long game with yourfitness.
Be consistent, don't rush it,and you'll be way more
successful.
And to you, MD, pay closerattention to your ramp rates on
(22:34):
a weekly, monthly basis, and Ithink you'll find this guides
you far better than ATL orfatigue.
So that's it.
That's our show for today.
If you liked what you heard,please share it with a friend or
your training partner.
If you have any other greatquestions, like we had today,
head on over to trainrightcombackslash podcast and click on
(22:55):
ask a training question.
Those get sent directly to meand the team at CTS and we'll do
our best to answer it on afuture episode.
Thanks again for listening andwe'll meet back here next week
for more actionable trainingadvice.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
(23:18):
over to trainrightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast that'll help you take
your training to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
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