jackmott wrote:
If you want to measure training load/stress, you have options, in approximately decreasing order of estimation of reality: hours - the data is a hard fact but doesn't reflect training load well. A 4 hour road race would be the same as a 4 hour cruise smelling the flowers. Obviously insane
miles - the data is a hard fact and has built in some notion of how hard you were going, but still doesn't reflect training load well. A windy ride for an hour would look like less training load than a windless day for an hour, when the opposite would be true. Group ride would get more miles simply because of drafting. Moving to a place with smoother roads, all your mielage stats go up even if you didn't actually work any harder.
kilojoules - the data is a hard fact about how much energy you spent, so this is *really* good. But it still doesn't account for the fact that say, alternating 100 and 300 watt intervals is a lot harder than just averaging 200 watts. So, it is still an estimation of reality.
TSS or BikeScore - takes into account that the stress at a given power is nonlinear. Not going to be perfect, but then neither are any of the above methods. It shouldn't ever be more misleading than kilojoules is. Even a "NP buster" workout where NP ends up way above what you can do for a 40k will be less misleading than kilojoules about how 'hard' the ride was.
I'm not a coaching expert, I know people who are, that think TSS is stupid. They mostly express that on twitter with sarcastic comments that are too short to reveal good reasons why. They may have them good reasons though. I imagine ultimately that they just reject the notion of trying to quantify training load/stress in the first place, and prefer to approach it qualitatively. Given that nobody knows what the perfect pattern of training is anyway, a smart person approaching it qualitatively may indeed be no worse than trying to track it quantitatively.
I'm just rambling here sorry.
Not unreasonable points, for the record I don't use TSS or TP.
I don't care who does or who doesn't, ultimately it's about extracting performance from where you are to where you want to end on race day. There are some really good threads on here about how an athlete may use TSS in certain phases to influence an outcome year over year. So if for example they decide to increase intensity and volume in programming and they look at TSS as a week over week indicator and they find an individual correlation then I think that's great.
If they don't find a correlation then that could lead to other avenues of exploration, thats great too, if it leads to a direct negative correlation then thats great too. I don't care, it's up to people to find their own way to what they want to achieve.
In terms of the points above, yes I would say that load is different for a given workout. whether it applies directly to the formula is up for debate on an individual basis. How NP correlates to the individual response to training or directly to BL response…..is well individual. I think if people wanted to they could use this in conjunction with other metrics and individually tailer input vs outcome success etc…It's up to them not me which is why I don't care a whole bunch about TSS and what people do with it. But like I said before it is up to the individual, and there are post's in which people use it to their advantage.
I guess I am agnostic on TSS, if it works great, if it doesn't grab a pad of paper and a pen and write down notes as to why. Or maybe use excel and start adding certain values on your own for indoor vs outdoor etc.
If you clearly hate it then don't use it, even if there is just a 10% value metric in TSS if you are pre-disposed to hating its author or the methodology then you won't see that 10%.
I guess maybe we look at different things, using our own correlations or evaluations. PM usage is about 30% so maybe 4-5 out of 15 athletes, so to start TSS really doesn't work for 2/3rds or so. It also may have issues in running/swimming but I think this has been discussed before.
Maurice