I have been incorporating weightlifting into my triathlon routine at the recommendation of my physio (1 day a week), and approximating Load by 5 per full body set and 3 per accessory set.
I tried to back calculate my Fitness progression today and realized that the Fatigue curve included the Load I input for the Weights sets, but the Fitness curve does not. Other manual activities I import (random ones like wakeboarding) seem to impact both.
Is this a standard practice to treat weight training vs cardio exercise? Would it be possible or advised for me to include my weight workouts in my Fitness progression? Really just trying to figure out if my 42 day load should factor in my ability to complete weight sets alongside my regular triathlon training.
Settings page, just above the email notifications, allows changing that behaviour. Make sure to read the included text, it explains why the defaults are to not impact Fitness.
I guess the follow on question is whether I need to push the cardio load higher to build fitness then.
I assume that my cardio plus weight Form shouldn’t get to the “high risk” zone (-30 I think), but should also work to ensure that my cardio-only Fatigue is -10 at minimum?
Thank you! I read the page and understand the premise for advanced and untrained athletes.
What I’m wondering though, is how to most efficiently improve in the context of weights and endurance without putting myself at risk, and if the chart can still be meaningful to me.
With my training schedule including weights, my Form suggests I’m in the green zone, but I’m hovering around -10 to -15, and I’m around -5 without the weights. I’m wondering if I’m really seeing the right adaptations unless I ensure that my non-weightlifting activities are also “green” on aggregate?
Is this a better question for a coach than this forum?
The chart is meaningful but can never tell the whole story. You have to interpret the chart in comparison with your feelings in an honest way.
The importance of strength training is widely accepted. On the other hand, strength develops faster then cardiovascular fitness. You need to balance both. During periods with lots of cardiovascular volume, better turn to strength maintenance. And when training hard for strength development, reduce cardiovascular volume. This gets more important when getting older. It is generally known that aging goes hand in hand with muscle loss, thus strength training gets even more important with age.
With experience, you will get to know which one is more important at what time. Just don’t try to constantly develop both at the same time, because that will wear you out. You also need to prioritize which one get’s more attention at what time of the year. During base periods, you can do quit a bit of strength development but you have to experiment. If you have both an endurance training and a strength training planned on the same day, the outcome will be different depending on which one you do first. Will you be able to do an endurance training with heavy legs from a strength training?
But this al so dependent on the individual that it is impossible to give straight advice.
Try some different combinations and first of all, consciously evaluate how you feel. Then look at the chart to check if it follows along with how you feel. It doesn’t make sense to blindly follow the math if you don’t feel OK. Introduce some slight changes in your plan and see how you respond. All this is also impacted by your daily life stress, unless you are a professional athlete. Then it is your job to do anything that improves your sports career and avoid anything that is contra-productive.
A coach has more experience with this and once he get’s to know you, he will be able to give personal advice. But if you invest the time to learn and if you’re interested in all this, you can get pretty good results on your own.
Don’t forget to follow up on performance! If performance increases in a steady way, you’re doing great.