I’m new to the site
What does training load tell me here?
Is it good or pathetic or what?
I edited my Workouts and put pace last and it dropped to 13,327
I am fairly new as well, but this is the blurb that pops up when I click on “Load”…
“Training load is an estimate of how hard a given activity was relative to the athletes capabilities. For activities with power it depends on the intensity of the session (relative to FTP) and duration. 1 hour at 100% of FTP is 100 training load (see bikehub.co.za). Intervals.icu can also estimate training load using heart rate and gradient adjusted pace. The priority of different training loads and the models used are configurable in settings.”
So what is a load of 261 mean if it’s way over an hour? Does it mean it does not know what my FTP is or what? I have one long hike with a load of 261 and 4995 kcal. Searching YouTube it seems to apply to biking rather than running or hiking as it can be tested on a Zwift bike.
I’m gone do my best at giving this a shot…
Load is what allows you to check how hard you’ve been working in any workout at any intensity (theoretically at least). The most correct way of calculating load is by Power. You perform a test to estimate as best as possible what you can do in a full hour. That’s a full hour, paced in such a way that you’re completely cooked after one hour, but as steady as possible, so don’t start out too hard. Better to start slightly low and really crank out all what’s left in those final minutes. Got that? The average power of that 1 hour test is your FTP (Functional Threshold Power) and is ‘calibrated’ to be 100TSS.
If you now perform an activity at lower intensity, take 60% of FTP, you can calculate TSS based on that FTP. 60% of FTP means 36 TSS points per hour because the intensity factor (the 60%) is squared. So 3 hours at 60% results in 3 x 36 = 108TSS.
This system, with the square, takes in account that lower intensities, feel ‘lighter’ and can be performed for longer durations. Higher intensities, feel ‘harder’ and result in higher TSS scores.
3 hours at 80% (which you may not be able to hold by the way), would result in 3 x 64 = 192TSS.
This whole system of judging load, has been ported to other metrics in the best possible way. Pace for running for example, is a fairly close estimate IF your Threshold pace is tested correctly. There are ways to estimate it by HR too, but the lag of HR considerably influences the results. It’s ok for longer steady efforts, but almost unusable for intervals at high intensity.
Now on to your hike: if you do a long hike at a sustained effort, you will probably be around those 60% intensity, 36TSS/hour. A 7 hour hike would then be around 252TSS.
There are rough guidelines for TSS numbers which categorizes them in:
- Easy - as in probably fully recovered after 24hr
- Medium - as in full recovery in less then 48hr
- Hard - multiple days are necessary to fully recover
Given the fact that you start from a test which calibrates 100TSS as what ‘you’ can do in an hour, your personal fitness and abilities do not influence the numbers. Meaning that you could do an effort of 95 TSS just like an elite can do that. The difference off course is that the elite will have covered way more distance and produced way more power.
One thing is for sure: if you get a TSS number higher then 100 for a 1 hour workout, your FTP is no longer correct.
There are numerous flaws in this whole system. The quality of the test, the measurement used (Power, Pace, HR,…), the rather basic influence of the squared number to judge easy/hard, etc etc etc
But it has proven to be a quite solid system in the long run to help you plan future efforts. It’s a guide to setup a plan that is progressing at a sustainable ramp.
If all this caught your attention, start googling for ATL/CTL/TSB/TSS, Training Peaks being the number one source for correct information. The bottom of this page is a good start:
If you have absolutely no affinity for these kind of things, don’t bother too much. If you have a device that measures Power, Intervals will do its best to estimate your FTP based on previous efforts. Power is becoming more and more common for cycling and has also found its way to running on multiple affordable watches. (To be fully honest, running power is not a direct measurement like cycling power, it is an algorithm taking HR, pace, grade and some even wind speed as input factors, resulting in a ‘real world’ approximation)
If you don’t want to go any further then a good HR strap (or watch with optical HR sensor), I would suggest to use TRIMP as an effort guideline.
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It might be helpful to mention the origin of TSS is Banister’s impulse-response model. At the workout level, TSS is attempting to represent the impulse, or dosage of training. The model predicts, assuming appropriate recovery, some change in fitness as a result (the response). That’s the science-y part of training. The artsy part is related to questions regarding the correct amount of TSS, how you build that TSS throughout the week, the training cadence/rhythm as it relates to building and recovery days, etc.
At the level in your image (a year), I tend to think of TSS as more akin to “work-done”.
Building training load over time (or the capacity to train) has worked for me, but I do wonder whether I would realize even better results by ceasing to focus so intently on building load, and instead take a more wholistic approach, i.e, trying to build load in a way that incorporates more variability in terms of TSS per day throughout the week.
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