I have heard about the benefits of training in the heat. I thought it was even favorable to high altitude. Maybe it's the "secret" of triathletes in the midwest...haha. High relative heat on the training all winter, then high humidity through the middle of the summer. An unlike the SE to Texas, the weather varies dramatically, so you get doses of humidity periodically, rather than adapting to all year long. I know my run yesterday felt like my lungs had a supercharger on them. HR was 8-10bpm lower and I was all nice a relaxed, hardly breathing at all. I could really focus on my form.



I think TSS would still score the specific muscle fatigue fairly close. That being said, that's also why it's suggested you test your FTP regularly in condition similar to how your train.

Oddly, this morning is was really cool and dry (58F, 55F dewpoint) but my HR wasn't really any different. So either I adapted in about 48 hours to the cool weather, or I was over dressed enough to keep my core temp closer enough to a hot day that it didn't matter. Breathing rate was a lot lower. RPE was similar, as I measure RPE more by leg fatigue when cycling.

Looking back at the hot weather the last couple months to training in the spring, and I can't say that I was any more fatigued because it was hot. Not nearly as much as HR would indicate. Sure the rides were harder, but I'm not sure the training load went up significantly.

Also in my Olympic distance race Sat, where it was very hot and humid, I didn't really see a big difference in comparative HR compared to my much cooler 70.3 and even cooler open 1/2 mary. It was a similar pattern of a very high HR coming out of T1 that took 30 minutes to settle down. Stayed level on the run at a similar intensity, then slowly increased as I got really hot, then jumped when I made a final push at the end of the race.

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TrainingBible Coaching
http://www.trainingbible.com

When you say heart rate didn't change much what was pace and or power?

OK

If you can't produce more power over durations that matter, you are not fitter and won't go faster, no matter what your Power:HR ratio happens to do. If you are not trying, then knowing your HR isn't going to help as the problem lies elsewhere.


What does this actually mean? Hill's ideas as resurrected by Noakes? If so they are certainly not well established science, and seem to me to be ideas mostly supported by motivated reasoning.

Fatigue is multifactoral.


I don't recall anyone saying something was madness. This in itself is a backhanded ad-hom attack, akin to the misquoting and twisting of quotes Trev often does.


Well if power is not improving, then perhaps you are stagnating, but that's not always the case as of course one may simply be carrying some appropriate level of fatigue during a block of training. At the end of the day, the only part of the power:HR equation that matters is the numerator.

I've no idea what maximal HR year on year has to do with it. Red herring.


HR doesn't tell you how hard you are trying. It just tells you what your HR was. There are a multitude of factors unrelated to how hard you are trying that influence HR.

Heart rate is a very good guide to how hard someone is trying.

http://www.toppfysik.nu/...ing-competitions.pdf

"We conclude that during competitions of <120 minutes heart rate is a valid and reliable predictor of exercise intensity and energy expenditure. For competitions of <240 minutes heart rate will increase by <5 beats/min relative to workload and therefore over predict exercise workload and energy expenditure."

If you are holding 300 watts, your maximum heart rate is 180 bpm and your heart rate is at 95% (171 bpm) you are trying bloody hard.

If heart rate wasn't useful why do you think so many scientific studies look at it?


If you and your "when you know your power, then at best heart rate is irrelevant but at worst misleading" fundamentalist extremists don't use heart rate fine, but why do you get so annoyed by people who do use it? Some of you have become a sort of Taliban who wish to impose your extreme fundamentalist views on everyone else.


Methinks the reason is looking at heart rate alongside power exposes the flaws in the power only approach. For starters heart rate alongside power exposes how TSS is flawed.

I've lurked on many discussion lists and forums that are highly power based members and I have never seen those dedicated power users (and myself) focus so much on TSS as you suggest. I use TSS as a guide, but like many that focus on using a power meter to guide their training efforts it is a tool to improve 1m power, 5m power, 60m power, etc. TSS is not the highlight to training using a power meter as a guide as far as I am concerned. You statement makes it sound as if that is what most of us hold as a top metric.

TSS is just a bonus metric like TSB, ATL and CTL that some of us use and some don't. But most of us dedicated power meter users are focused on the effort duration, intensity and training structure. I don't expect TSS to be perfect, but yet it has served me well in managing the training load in my typical weekly/monthly training structure. It just a guide as far as I am concerned. What I do find is the chart that Coggan provided with TSS/d to line up pretty good for what I do so maybe I am just the lucky one. Using TSS/d as a guide and based on the same training routine and weekly schedule I know about how much I can take per day.

The day that I find it to be the most useful is my Saturday ride that is either an aggressive group ride or a long solo ride. Based on 4+ years worth of ride data I know that if I can keep my TSS down below 300 for that Saturday ride I can typically manage at least a sustained solo TT type L3/Tempo the next day. If I go over 300 TTS on Saturday I typically can just manage to stay in L2 for the duration. So I glance at live TSS or IF on my Saturday ride with hope that I can finish a 4 to 5 hour endurance ride at 250 TSS or lower. This seems to work okay on 8 out of 10 rides, but there are occasions where 250 TSS/d doesn't work and it may be due to greater residual fatigue from higher intensity intervals during the week day. So is it flawed? I am just not smart enough to answer, but I feel that using TSS to help guide day to day consistency it has helped me. I will have to admit that I have yet to understand how to use TSB like most power gurus in guiding training in regards to fatigue and freshness.

To add fatigue and recovery needs for me seem to be the same if it happens to be 300 TSS/d in an aggressive group ride with a lot of burned matches or 300 TSS/d from a 5 hour solo TT type steady pace. The fatigue I feel the next day is very similar between the two. Again I understand that I am talking n=1 experience, but again it seems like TSS has been okay as a guide.

You keep coming back to this point.
HR is used because it's easy and cheap to measure, and it's been around for a long time. Doesn't mean there aren't better ways to skin that cat now (hint - there are).
Also:
Doing workouts in sub-optimum conditions (when it's hot/humid, when you're dehydrated, etc) - does NOT lead to doing more WORK.
They may feel harder, they will almost surely have a greater recovery required, but they don't provide a greater training benefit.

Power and the metrics around it are not perfect. Nothing is. Something better or more accurate/inclusive may come along - and likely will.
That won't make the current tools useless, just less useful. Much like power did to HR.

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float , hammer , and jog

If a work out feels harder and takes longer to recover from are you sure it has no extra training benefit. It might not get more TSS, you might not have done more watts. But I posted a study earlier which shows there are additional training benefits from doing workouts in extreme heat.


I think being able to measure power has made heart rate more useful.

My opinion is that power and heart rate combined with RPE is more useful than power and RPE.

Sorry if people don't agree.

It isn't as if I'm the only person on the planet who uses heart rate with power. Many coaches and scientists do. I don't see why some people have a problem with that.

Here is an interview with Tim Noakes.

https://www.bulletproofexec.com/...ore-4-hour-body-fun/

""Co-host: Cool. The Rating of Perceived Exertion that most people think is affirmative and that kind of thing and I think a lot of coaches are moving towards heart rate training and power training and those metrics. Do you think Perceived Exertion is still a fairly good representation of how hard you’re working?
Dr. Noakes: No, it’s not because it’s a measure of how close you are to the finish. That’s they key. The Rating of Perceived Exertion was started a measure of your intensity. The heart rate is a much better measure of intensity, and it’s very reproducible. If you try and regulate the same heart rate, you’ll be doing roughly the same intensity.
If you want to know your intensity, the heart rate is really a very good measure. Whereas Rating of Perceived Exertion doesn’t tell you your intensity because it rises the longer you go on. If you run at the same intensity, your Rating of Perceived Exertion will rise. Therefore, it’s not related to the intensity. It’s related to how long you can keep going at that pace.
That’s what the information you get from the Rating of Perceived Exertion is, how long can I go at this pace.""

You train by feel and post a quote saying that going by feel is useless to monitor intensity?

You are making lots of claims and assumptions and mis-represented quotes to try and demonstrate the 'fundamentalist' attitudes of 'die-hard' power/TSS users. The only one that comes across as a fundamentalist (please don't relate sport to the Taliban again) is you.

Why do you gloss over the term 'predictor'. You claim HR is hard evidence of exactly what your body is doing. This study claims it can usually predict what intensity you are doing when the duration is between 120 and 240 min. Why couldn't they make that claim for under 120 min?

HR is less reliable and direct than power. You can do workouts that keep the heart rate lower and have the same effect on your legs. HR lags behind power output and drifts as the workouts get longer. Both power and HR have issues to overcome when quantifying intensity and overall stress, but I think many people find fewer challenges in working with power data. My life got a lot easier when power came into the picture. I still have HR most days, but I find it bounces around all the time and doesn't add much if anything to the view of my training.

RPE is one thing. Heart rate is another and power another. They measure different things. I use all 3.

The study shows a drift in heart rate after 120 minutes.


"Results: Our results show a significant (p<0.05) drift in the power to heart rate relationship after 120 minutes of competition. This drift is in the range of an increase in heart rate of 5 beats/min over 240 minutes of competition. Road races and time trials of <120 minutes in duration did not show a significant drift in either heart rate or power output, but there was a trend for lower power output and higher heart rate over time. "

There was no significant drift in road races or time trials of less than 120 minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...Begging_the_question

http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/...8-avoiding-the-issue


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling

I use feel, but I don't use 'feel' to measure intensity. I use power to measure power output. I use heart rate to measure heart rate, which is a good guide to O2 consumption. e.g. as I get fatigued and more less efficient fast twitch muscle fibres are recruited to maintain the same power my heart rate increases. Or, as I begin to overheat and I have to divert more blood to my skin to keep cool, my heart rate increases if I maintain the same power. My cardiovascular system is working harder to maintain the same power. So there is a greater training load.

As to my Taliban comments, I note you didn't ask people to stop calling me a Troll.

I don't think you understood the study. I suggest you read it again.
""
Conclusion
Our results suggest that the drift in the relationship between heart rate and power output, CV drift, is not as pronounced during cycling competitions as in the laboratory. The reasons for the difference in our results compared to those from the laboratory are not clear but the airflow around the cyclist during outdoor riding is a very likely factor.
We found no significant changes during the first 120 minutes of road race competition or during 35 minute long time trials. After 120 minutes we have observed an upward drift of the heart rate in relation to power output in the range of 5 beats, in competitions lasting 240 minutes. CV drift can be a result of many different mechanisms and it is impossible to draw any conclusions to which mechanisms that have induced the drift we observed.
We conclude that during competitions of <120 minutes heart rate is a valid and reliable predictor of exercise intensity and energy expenditure. For competitions of <240 minutes heart rate will increase by <5 beats/min relative to workload and therefore over predict exercise workload and energy expenditure.""

Perhaps you can explain why you still look at heart rate?

Thanks, read the study again and understand it now. Surprisingly poor study and conclusions that they draw have no basis in the analysis they did. Very few subjects, self reported info and data files and poorly worded conclusions. And they used norm power, which I'm assuming you don't agree with since it is one part of the TSS equation.

http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_the_shoe_fits

How do you know what is happening to your fast twitch muscle fibers as you exercise? Are you estimating that, guessing, assuming or measuring?

41 subjects is a lot for sports studies.

Heart rate normalises itself without the need for an algorithm, clever that.



NP is an estimate of what power might have been if the effort were steady state. Note the words 'estimate' and 'might'.

Try 9 subjects and 49 data files. That is a tiny sample size and they identified that as an issue in the study.

Slow Vo2 component. The recruitment of fast twitch fibres as slow twitch fibres tire is just an example I'm giving which might explain why if you ride at a constant wattage heart rate increases.

How do you track overall training load/stress?

None of the 'facts' you discuss track training load. Hours is a poor metric, distance is also poor. Evaluating the trend in power:hr seems like a delayed method to track the ability to train hard, problems wouldn't show up for a while and you wouldn't have clear ways of determining if the problem are real or just a random variation in heart rate response. I know you can test all sorts of things to determine why heart rate is altered, but most people aren't using lactates, hormone/blood profiles, brain waves/nervous system activation, etc.

Didn't answer the question. Are you measuring fibre recruitment, guessing, assuming?? Is the only reason for increased HR with the same power a change in muscle fibre recruitment as the training goes longer?

Mildly annoying that Trev is using his misinterpretation of my study to start this thread. Which begs the real question. Can you block people on ST in the same way I have blocked him on other forums?

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Hamish Ferguson: Cycling Coach

I started the thread by posting your study. I didn't comment on the study. So I did not misrepresent it in any way.

I'm not surprised by your findings due to the nature of racing but I didn't expect, that when time trials were isolated the result wouldn't change.

If I have misrepresented your study in any way, please point me to exactly where I have done so and I will edit the post.

I quote below from your study.

""Measures of training stress in cyclists do not usefully predict maximum mean power in competitions ""

Most people who measure training stress using power data would probably assume that measures of training stress do usefully predict maximum mean power in competition.

My own view is that there are so many factors which contribute to performance, it is unlikely any one measure will predict to any degree of accuracy.

It really isn't my fault your study found that measures of training stress using power meters do not usefully predict mean power in competitions.

No, increase in core temperature is another. Fatigue is multi factorial.
As I said earlier I just gave the recruitment of fast twitch fibres as an example.

Now as some people on this thread have resorted to name calling and others are getting annoyed with me. I think it better I stop posting, until people have calmed down.