FITNESS PAGE - a guide to getting started

Guide
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FAQ Fitness Page: My Form number is not matching how I feel

This is a remark that shows up regularly on the forum and there are multiple reasons why people have difficulties understanding this.

A first thing that has a pretty big impact on the numbers, is the setting of how Form is displayed. It can be displayed as an absolute difference between the Fitness and Fatigue numbers or as a percentage difference related to the actual Fitness number.
If your Fitness number is 100, both settings will result in the same Form number. Fitness 100 and Fatigue 130 will result in
• Form (absolute value) = Fitness-Fatigue = 100-130= -30
• Form (percentage of Fitness) = (Fitness-Fatigue)*100/Fitness= (100-130)*100/100= -30%
Both are right at the Green/Red zone limit.

If you do similar math for someone with a Fitness number of 15 and proportionally Fatigue 19,5
• Form (absolute value) = 15-19,5= -4,5
• Form (percentage) = (15-19,5)*100/15= -30%
Results in Blue (Fresh) zone or right on the edge of Green/Red zone. That is a BIG difference.

For those not used to Fitness numbers, 100 is a huge fitness level, usually only attainable for seasoned athletes or highly motivated amateurs with lots of time available for training.

So what should you use?
There is some debate regarding this but the example above shows quite clearly that for someone with a Fitness number on the extremes (about zero or above 100) the choice is rather simple.
With low Fitness, use absolute values because otherwise, the slightest workload will drive you in the Red zone while you will feel like you have a lot left in the tank. If you keep with percentage, it will seriously slow down your initial fitness building because the numbers will only allow you to do very short low intensity work.
If on the other hand, you have been working out as an elite athlete for years, and your fitness is above 100, it’s probably a good idea to set it on percentage. You will be able to do even harder and longer workouts before getting to the Red zone. That is after all logical, because with the years of dedicated training, your body is able to handle more load.
For anyone in between, try both options and evaluate objectively which one is best reflecting your subjective feelings. Or just stick to absolute values and find out what Form number is making you thrive. I for example do this but almost never let my Form go down below -22 (iso the default -30). To evaluate what is going on, it is very important to record wellness data on regular bases. If you don’t record that data, it will be impossible to evaluate a negative trend that is going on for a couple of weeks. If you have Wellness data, Resting HR and maybe even HRV data that shows a negative trend while you Form trends positively, you need to correct that situation.

And that brings us to something else that is usually overlooked. Take 2 random beginning athletes, same age, weight and height, both with a daytime job. Both decided to do something about their health and discovered an endurance sport that brings them joy and happiness. One of them is a construction worker and the other one is a marketing director. Which one would have the best starting fitness, most stress?? These different circumstances explain why the mathematical model isn’t working in the same way for everyone. After all, the model can only capture (best case) about 5-10% of your daily time that is allocated to working out. All the rest, daytime job, sleep, family time… isn’t captured. But it has a huge impact on your ability to recover and on the load that you can tolerate.

Don’t criticize the model, but try to understand it and adapt it to your specific situation, to your unique human body and lifestyle. If you’re not interested in that or don’t have the time to do some meaningful analysis, consult a coach. That is, if you are performance oriented. Coaches know these stuff and will do it for you. If you workout for simple health advantages and have a lot off interest in how things work, enjoy and learn. You may even become an avid student…

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Fitness page: Creating additional charts

This is a post to explain how to add custom charts to the fitness page. I will not make separate posts for modifying build-in charts or shared charts. They can be handled in the same way.

Go to the options dialog and click on “Add Chart”. Give the chart a name by clicking on the pencil icon. Now click on “Add plot” and pick a metric that you want to chart. You will see that there is a lot to choose from. Then click on the drop-down next to “As is” to select in what way you want to chart the metric. Next, choose to display it as a line or as dots and pick a color you like. The first color box is for the line, the second one is for a band around the line if you want that be displayed. To display a band around the line, click on the three dots, set the scaling and a multiple of SD (standard deviation) that you want to use for the band width.

You can also add background colors to visualize zones by clicking on “Add Item”, setting the Y-values and defining a background color. The label for the zone can also be set and will be displayed on the chart. If you just want a line to indicate a certain level, set both Y values to the same number and a line in the selected color will be shown.

Now you can adjust the vertical height and the position of the chart and adapt the axis range to be automatic or a fixed preset value.

You can setup an immense number of different charts with all the available options. If you have something that could be of interest to other users, spare them the time to do the configuration and share your chart by clicking on “Share” found on the far right of the title bar of the chart. You can share “Private”, “Followers” or “Public”. Give it a name and preferably add a screenshot so that others can immediately see what it is about.

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Hello. Is it possible to calculate the required weekly load to maintain a certain fitness level. For example my current fitness is ± 70. If I regularly spin 4 times a week, what should the load be to maintain 70. Thanks.

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70 is calculated using the exponentially weighted moving average for the previous 42 days worth of training load.
If you did 70 every day for 42 days it would be 70. As one 70 drops off on day 43, you’d need to do another 70 to keep the average. If you did 140 every second day, it would also be 70.

My training, and that of most of the athletes I coach are 5-6 days of training per week. 2 hard, 2 easy during the week, and then 1-2 longer endurance rides on the weekend. So the training load calculation starts with what we know we will be doing and then planning around that.

As you asked about maintaining 70, are you only doing 4 sessions per week? Nothing else?
How long are your sessions? All the same, or a mix of types of activities.

To maintain 70, you need to do 490 per week (70 * 7).
If it’s only 4 sessions, then it’s 122.5 per session.
For me, an easy endurance ride (L2/Z2 @ +/- 71% would be close to 100 TSS). To get 122.5, it would be 2.5 hours at about 70%.

1 hour at threshold (FTP) = 100, so to get 122.5, you have to ride for longer than 1 hour. That’s already quite taxing, so I’d break 490 down into:

  • 4h endurance ride (220).
  • 2x threshold session, 4-5x 8m at threshold (75)
  • 2h endurance ride (115)
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Thanks Gerald, this was very helpful. I realize I will struggle to keep it at 70 on my normal schedule. I have put in much more hours than usual over the past 5 weeks in prep for a big race on 3 Sept. Thanks again.

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FAQ Fitness Page: Plotting Wellness subjective scores

If you want to plot your subjective scores for wellness, like sleep quality/soreness/mood/etc, you might be surprised that ‘good’ values are low and ‘bad’ values are high. That’s due to the way it was implemented and is one of the rare mistakes made by david. It’s difficult, dev wise, to correct the implementation but david provided a workaround to invert the scores before plotting them.
While setting up the chart, you can choose to invert the scores as described in this post:

Click on the three dots to bring up the dialog box and check the ‘Invert…’ checkbox.

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Hello
Is there any way to plot the “predicted fitness” that is calculated from the future workouts plan?
The intention is to compare both , predicted and real ( that is already available)

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Not at the moment and that would be hard to implement. The ATL and CTL values are calculated and stored for each day so it isn’t simple to have another set.

You can compare planned load vs actual load on the calendar (turn on compliance in options) which will give you similar information.

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12

Hi,

I am trying to plot a chart for decoupling, but the bar graph type doesn’t plot negative values. Line or dot displays everything correctly.

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Yes unfortunately negative bars are not yet supported.

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14

Is there a way to reset the values to “factory” after I messed the graphs in order to display the standard PMC chart? Or can I rebuild them?

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Delete all your personalized charts.
The fitness chart itself is not editable as far as I know. You can only show/hide it.

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Yes! Thanks! Stupid me! I thought I messed up but it’s a fix one.

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17

The fitness chart is based off of the PMC chart in TrainingPeaks, but the Form number in this fitness chart tracks the difference between fitness and fatigue on the day of, while in TP it tracks the form based on the day previous. What is the reasoning behind this difference if you’re replicating the PMC chart of TP? Thanks in advance!

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How can I have the fitness chart include the load from running and ski activities? Thanks

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  • Go to Settings page.
  • Check that you have Running and Skiing as selected disciplines. You add anything from the list.
  • The priority should then be set in order of preference.
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I hadn’t actually used the TP PMC when I did this and it just seemed the right way to was to do it all on the day. Have had a few requests to change it and will likely add an option sometime.

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Hi, I am using the possibility to import my training calender from Trainerroad, which automatically also imports the anticipated load (in TSS) from the planned workouts. I can see the future impact of these loads under my fitness tab (and also, e.g., on my graphs under the “Compare” tab). Is there a general way to not have that happen? I.e., I would prefer to see my fitness (and other data) WITHOUT the projection of future loads, but still be able to see the workouts planned in my calendar. Did I miss that I can set this somewhere, or is such an ignoring of future planned loads not implemented currently? Thanks.

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22

Hi, is it possible to hide all the blue dots representing new best power?

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23

I don’t think so.

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