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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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Baggage wrote:
Some super basic questions, here:

How much attention do you devote to training by feel?

Is it something you do alongside your training devices?

Is it something you do despite your training devices?

Do you think it's a useful skill? Do you wish you were better at it? Do you think it's not pertinent at all in the age of devices?

Thank you!

I'm going to be awkward and say none of my training (or racing) discards either feel or more objective data. Everything uses both in combination. So the either/or nature of your questions doesn't really fit. So my answers would be:

  • 100% of my training is performed somewhere on the spectrum between "feel with reference to metrics" or "by the numbers with adjustments to target figures applied on the fly, taking feel into account".
  • Yes. Devices alone are too simplistic and thus inferior, while feel alone is vulnerable to inconsistency, misjudgment, and misses the opportunity to use additional motivators.
  • No, if used correctly there is no conflict. Feel and metrics supplement each other.
  • See above. You can't switch off "feel" and regardless of devices, you are compelled to take it into account. Resisting this is a bad idea. Using "feel" as an excuse to go easier or harder than planned and undermine the session is also a mistake. You can leave the devices at home if you wish, (and maybe this is what you actually mean?), but you can never leave "feel" at home. Using devices to provide metrics can calibrate your "feel", and that calibration is still at play when the metrics are not present.

Last edited by: Ai_1: Dec 1, 20 4:30
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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Because I do a lot of riding on the trainer I basically never ride by feel. I would see that as a huge waste of time. There are some days where ill try to do a workout and quickly realize my body isnt able to handle that load that day so I back off and just do a zone 2 ride on the trainer and look at the recent days to see what my mistake was.

If I go outside ill keep an eye on the power with some general goal in mind. There are some pretty hilly routes though that make it hard to really keep average power a good representation of the effort

I do a lot of running by feel however. I have a gps watch and ill look at it but accuracy is pretty off when in the woods so hard to put much stock in it. Same for hills in the area. So I go by effort and then compare the paces to old paces on the same route to get a better gauge of the effort. A lot of my workouts these days are more so tempo runs rather than vo2 max workouts like they were when I was a straight runner. And tempo is often more of a "feel" for me than a pace. Ill then track the pace and compare to other tempos before and one may be slower due to elevation, weather, etc...
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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Baggage wrote:
Some super basic questions, here:

How much attention do you devote to training by feel? Very little. It just happens if you use your devices but pay attention to what your body is telling you each day.

Is it something you do alongside your training devices? Yes, absolutely

Is it something you do despite your training devices?

Do you think it's a useful skill? Yes, I’ve had devices crap out for one reason or another on race day

Do you wish you were better at it? No, I’m fine with it.

Do you think it's not pertinent at all in the age of devices? It’s very pertinent. Good example...your legs are dead tired and you are worn out from previous training a bit. For me, That training state would often result in a low HR for me—ie I can’t even get it up high if I wanted to. If you go strictly by device, it would suggest I should run faster or bike harder, but that won’t be possible or will be very hard or a bad idea. So, I pay attention to what body is telling me in conjunction with devices.

Thank you!
Last edited by: DFW_Tri: Dec 1, 20 4:53
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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100% of the time. Since I do this (run and bike) for fun, I find it more enjoyable to just take what the day gives me rather than do a prescribed workout based on some metric(s). I'm definitely not getting every possible gain training this way but that's not my goal, the goal is to have fun every single time I run/ride.
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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Baggage wrote:
How much attention do you devote to training by feel?
All training should be by PRE and power and then hr if you're using all 3 of those.

Baggage wrote:
Is it something you do alongside your training devices?
Always

Baggage wrote:
Is it something you do despite your training devices?
Yes

Baggage wrote:
Do you think it's a useful skill? Do you wish you were better at it? Do you think it's not pertinent at all in the age of devices?

There are a ton of reasons why PRE is a very powerful tool to develop. The first is what happens if your technology craps out in a race? You better be able to equate an effort with a duration in order to maximize your potential in that race.

If you can equate effort with your training levels then you'll be able to feel as you go from super easy to easy to moderate to comfy moderate to uncomfy moderate to not fun for long periods of time to hard effort.

You'll be able to know that you have approximately 30k left in the bike ride if I up my effort a bit I will still be able to run well or that you're on the edge and upping your effort may have consequences that will be negative. You'll know with 45% of the run left if you can increase your pace and how much all because you've developed a feel of what a threshold effort or a long tempo type effort feels like.

Everything you do in training should be correlating a feeling to an effort.

When I ran xc in college I could tell my coach +/- :01 how fast each lap was and could. When I swam in HS and even now if the set is 10x100 holding 1:21 leaving 1:30 #1 will be a 1:19.5 and the rest will be 1:21s. Developing an internal effort to pace clock is one of the best things endurance athletes can do.

In my athlete cohort all the people, who ran or swam in HS and/or college have this down. The majority of people who have taken up tri's struggle with this. It's a process that's born out of paying attention to what you're doing and for how long.

Running 3x1400 threshold/200ez on the track? What about 3x(1400 vo2/500ez) ? These are all things where as an athlete you should have your pace dialed in within the first 100m

Doing 12x100 in the pool at threshold on :20 rest? or sets of 400s or 500s? Now when you get into a tri with no lane markers, no idea how far 100 or 400 is in the lake you know your effort over those distances and you can just go.

If you plot out most people's racing in each leg you'll see a U shaped curve. Fastest in the beginning then the end and slowest in the middle. If you learn to pace yourself you can flatten that U out, make it a u or closer to a flat line and you're going to go faster.

Here's a question around this. which of these is faster:
1. going out gangbusters for the first 100 of the swim and then fading,
2. going out steady fast for the first 400 and settling in just below that pace?

You're going to be a bit behind the speed demons through the first 50 but by 150 you'll have cleared almost everyone in your wave if you use strategy 2. There's a physiological cost to everything you do. The more above your threshold you go in each sport the bigger the cost and the longer you have to go slower to pay it back.

The physiological cost is exponential as you get near and above threshold. The biggest mistakes you can make are in the first 1-5 minutes of a race, and in a tri, the first 1-5 minutes of each leg of a tri.

By knowing your efforts at aerobic/all day pace, threshold, half IM pace, marathon pace, 5k, 20 or 40k pace etc you can avoid these mistakes or at least mitigate them giving yourself a better chance of success for that race.

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Last edited by: desert dude: Dec 1, 20 5:40
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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Never....kind of

I use data for all training. Feel comes into play when I need a rest block. Data tells me I'm approaching overtraining and feel confirms it.
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [ThailandUltras] [ In reply to ]
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ThailandUltras wrote:
By feel since 1986. I have never owned a Powermeter and still go with basic dumb trainers. I have one Garmin watch for swimming,running,hiking,etc and two Garmins on my bike for touring,bikepacking events,training,races,etc.

I am 57 and am not about to change now.


"Watts are for light bulbs"

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Rideon77] [ In reply to ]
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Rideon77 wrote:
Never....kind of

I use data for all training. Feel comes into play when I need a rest block. Data tells me I'm approaching overtraining and feel confirms it.
Would you never add or subtract power, duration or intervals based on feel during training to accommodate feeling off form, or take advantage of feeling good? I see a lot of comments here that lead me to believe there's a tendency to invest too much respect in numbers that are less absolute, unchanging and trustworthy than one might imagine. I love to work with numbers, but I also know that many, perhaps most, of the numbers we're dealing with are no more than educated guesses. It makes no sense to let those dictate our training to the exclusion of other, equally valid, or perhaps more valid data, including how the effort feels.
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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All my training is done by perceived effort and time. I dont worry about distance or gadgets.
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Post deleted by windschatten [ In reply to ]
Last edited by: windschatten: Dec 2, 20 18:14
Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [windschatten] [ In reply to ]
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I train on feel and HR when I am running. Swimming is all on time or feel. Biking is all on watts or hr or time.
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Ai_1] [ In reply to ]
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Ai_1 wrote:
Rideon77 wrote:
Never....kind of

I use data for all training. Feel comes into play when I need a rest block. Data tells me I'm approaching overtraining and feel confirms it.

Would you never add or subtract power, duration or intervals based on feel during training to accommodate feeling off form, or take advantage of feeling good? I see a lot of comments here that lead me to believe there's a tendency to invest too much respect in numbers that are less absolute, unchanging and trustworthy than one might imagine. I love to work with numbers, but I also know that many, perhaps most, of the numbers we're dealing with are no more than educated guesses. It makes no sense to let those dictate our training to the exclusion of other, equally valid, or perhaps more valid data, including how the effort feels.

Subtract yes, add no. I pay for a coach and I trust them. Harder days are built in and I don't want to over train because I feel stronger on some days. I always know there will be hard days in the future. When something is wrong and I just can't hit the numbers for what ever reason I do back off based on feel but that more of a "rest thing" for me but without the numbers it hard for me to tell how off I really am just based off of feel alone.

If I'm in a hard block of training I know that I will feel tired/crappy on purpose. If I go by feel I would throttle back and defeat the purpose of that training block. If I'm in the middle of a zone 2 base block and I feel crappy something is wrong and I need to back off. The numbers help me make that decision and talk to my coaches about the problem.
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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Baggage wrote:

How much attention do you devote to training by feel?

Just because I ran across this reading up on strength training recently...apparently the new term to use so you sound sophisticated when you're talking about training by feel is to call it "autoregulation".
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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In the pool (pre-COVID) it's a little bit of feel (easy stuff and drills). and the rest is training by the numbers, which helps develop the sense of what things feel like at each pace.

OW (all 3 OW swims I did this year) it's purely on feel.

on the bike, outdoors has been by feel, indoors by numbers. That'll probably change a bit since I got a PM, it has yet to be ridden outdoors.

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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Baggage wrote:
How much attention do you devote to training by feel?

Always.

No PM on the road bike, but on the TT bike I can check with actual power data. I prefer getting into a "zone" when I race and not look at numbers. I know what "oxygen debt" feels like and try to stay around that area for most TTs (none are longer than an hour). Takes a few minutes for that to kick in though, and a PM can be useful in the beginning.
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [TheStroBro] [ In reply to ]
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But don't you just have to push through it though? I mean this year is completely nuts and I almost never feel in the mood for a workout sesh, so I just try and push through it to keep my shape somewhat good. Even though I find it almost impossible. Do you do any sort of mental training to get the 'right' feelings. Right now those mental barriers are just my biggest obstacle at the moment..
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Ai_1] [ In reply to ]
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I am training 95% by numbers rather than feel

=> Power meter both outdoor and indoor bike
=> Power meter for running (Stryd)

I (strangely?) prefer training than racing. Having a race planned is just an excuse to motivate me to train, and I get enjoyment from seeing my threshold numbers increasing (FTP up, Running Threshold up, etc...).


HOWEVER, if on a given session it feels harder than it should (either RPE or Heart Rate too high v. usual for a given power output), then I'd lower it down for the session.
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Re: How much do you train "by feel?" [Baggage] [ In reply to ]
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As the GPS devices are only marginally accurate, I try to learn to feel the appropriate pace, be it easy for a mellow training run, or proper pacing for a long race. In short events I guess I go as hard as I can.
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