I am still wondering if anyone is tracking their weight lifting training load. For me this is mainly important in Base period because I use it to build muscle strength and is very tasking. Basically, when I go on group rides I give myself one goal, don’t ruin tomorrow’s weight session by pushing too hard. Also day after weight training my legs are considerably tired and first hour on the bike is laborious.
I’ve read some comments by Andy Coggan, the developer of TSS concept and he suggests not to track weight sessions. I still don’t understand how this makes sense since it adds to overall fatigue and produces stimulus that I am focusing on.
My thought was to give weight training three load levels 50, 70 and 100 based on how hard I am pushing in particular workout, that would be quite simple to do.
I am really curious how others are tracking their lifting sessions.
So the fatigue you are tracking in the app is cardiovascular fatigue and fitness not muscular, so its why Andy Coggan doesn’t believe in tracking it. I have done HIIT power lifting workouts and highest I acheived was a load of 30. Most being around 10-20, so I do add them but since I only track cardiovascular with devices I keep my sessions with a low load so it doesn’ throw my fitness graph off in its predictions. I find 15 is a good value to go with if doing HIIT power lifting gym sessions, and 8 for hard strength focused sessions.
The best way to get an accurate value is to track your heart during your workouts.
If you are trying to track muscular readiness then you are going to have to take a PE appraoch as the strain felt from cardiovascular exercise is related ot lactate and weight trianing is microtears. So you will need to listen to your body about which you are being affected by as constantly tearing muscle and not letting it heal is going to lead to problems down the line. Especially for your running or riding.
Thank you for thoughtful advice. What you are saying makes a lot of sense. I have been using my heart rate monitor to record my sessions and usually load is about 18 or 19 for purely lifting session, meaning no HITT or circuits, lots of rest before each set.
I think for simplicity I will not worry about the TSS load and follow how I feel as well as my training plan from previous year to gauge how much I can do during the base period when I am lifting the heaviest. In a couple of weeks I am going to focus on muscular endurance so lifting will let easier and hopefully will be easier to manage when most of my exhaustion will be from riding and running.
I have been following the advice from an earlier thread I read here about calculating TSS. It is still quite handwavy but overtime you can adjust the number according to your perceived fatigue levels.
I also wonder if an HRV-guided training would be helpful here, linking another thread HRV-Guided Training