Can someone help me to understand what these metrics mean? I have yet to find an explanation that makes sense to me.
Currently, my TrainingPeaks is showing the following numbers:
Fitness: 138
Fatigue: 121
Form: -31
Is there any sort of measurement metric? My fitness is 138 out of what? Last night, my fitness was at 178 and then the number dropped by 40 in less than 24 hours. I’m a bit confused. What is a good number to have or strive for, for each of the three categories? I don’t ever know what is considered good vs. bad, trained vs. undertrained vs. overtrained, etc.
I’ve selected the little i for more information in the TrainingPeaks app, but am still quite confused by all of this. If someone could break it down in simpler terms, that might be helpful. Thank you.
I gave up on those scores after a marathon where I neglected to stop my watch after crossing the line. TSS was 188, but if you analyze in and select the actual run, not the 45 min of standing afterwards it’s TSS 226. I was unaware that’s how training worked.
It’s also critically dependent on an honest input of thresholds. Everybody has a huge FTP until it’s time to update on TP, then they’ll be too honest and juice their TSS with a lower threshold.
I don’t know how math-y you are, but the original idea behind that stuff derives from the Banister impulse-response model.
The metrics on top of that I believe were added on top of the Banister model by Dr. Coggan. As Dr. Coggan freely points out, using the PMC is as much an “art” is it is science.
Can someone help me to understand what these metrics mean? I have yet to find an explanation that makes sense to me.
Currently, my TrainingPeaks is showing the following numbers:
Fitness: 138
Fatigue: 121
Form: -31
Is there any sort of measurement metric? My fitness is 138 out of what? Last night, my fitness was at 178 and then the number dropped by 40 in less than 24 hours. I’m a bit confused. What is a good number to have or strive for, for each of the three categories? I don’t ever know what is considered good vs. bad, trained vs. undertrained vs. overtrained, etc.
I’ve selected the little i for more information in the TrainingPeaks app, but am still quite confused by all of this. If someone could break it down in simpler terms, that might be helpful. Thank you.
I’ve run multiple charts, often 6-8 at a time breaking out the bike and the run because there isn’t any literature that shows that 1 running TSS point is = to 1 cycling TSS point. I supect it’s probably somewhere between 1.4-2.5 running TSS = 1 cycling TSS, but that’s just a guess from 15 years of looking at this stuff
You can think of fitness as Chronic Training Load (CTL) aka the how much have I done over the last months/years
Fatigue as your Acute Training Load (ATL) - or the how much did I do today, yesterday the last few days.
Workouts you did 2-3 or more months ago contribute to your CTL while workouts you did in the last few days have a smaller impact on CTL and a greater impact on fatigue
Form is Training Stress Balance (TSB) or how tired/fatigued/potentially ready to rip off a great race/workout…or not. Usually the deeper the negative that number is the less likely you are to have a great race. That being said I’ve seen some really good performances from pretty big negative numbers yet I’ve seen better performances from less negative numbers.