CTL/ATL and stagnation

[bikeguy]

Am I alone here? Sound familiar to anybody else?

You can play this little intermediate value theorem game with the left side of the "volume vs. performance" graph, too. I.e., there's some CTL below which detraining occurs, and in the border between this detraining region and the productive training region, there's a "maintenance region," in which the athlete is doing as little work as she can to stay in the shape they're currently in. I wonder how many athletes would have the discipline to really nail down where this maintenance region lies; I personally suspect it may be way lower than one might expect, perhaps in the region of 40-50 tss/d (though it will certainly vary between athletes). If the idea of finding as tiny training volume that produces no fitness change strikes you as wasted time or effort, than why are so many of us in such a rush to find an enormous training volume that produces no change in fitness?

I've never been a fan of enormous volume. I do about 4 hrs a week of actual hard riding indoors, with 8-10 hrs of easy-moderate riding (outside, in the cold). Recently I had a PB in 1 hr power, but doing that one hour and the FT efforts I've recently done have resulted in my legs becoming tired unusually quickly into a VO2 max effort (the burning sets in early and the legs feel heavy) but FT efforts are more manageable (a micro specificity effect?). Basically right now, if I come into the gym and start doing a Vo2 max workout, I end up cutting it short (1/2 length) because I know I wouldn't be able to finish 3/4 of what I was able to do 3 weeks ago. In addition my calves, quads, hamstrings and butt have become sore, and this means I'm below my usual performance level. I'm overreaching. Surprisingly, my breathing and pain tolerance seem to have increased, but my legs are no good. Did a lot of stretching today with a short easy ride, and will take it easy tomorrow too. Then back to riding hard tuesday.

-bikeguy

 

[squidwranglr]

It's funny, I think I just lack that "multisport gene"; I seem to really like riding my bike, and really like running, but for some reason mixing the two just sounds perverse to me. I should definitely give it a shot at some point, though.

You know, I'm almost exactly the opposite - my feelings toward running could best be described as "hatred" for many many years until I found a way to combine it with cycling (and swimming) as a multi-sport component. Now, not only do I enjoy it as a part of triathlons, there are times when I'll opt for a long hilly run in place of a bike workout just for variety's sake.

Of course I should still mention that I keep telling my friends that the first marathon I ever run will be the run leg of an Ironman - I just can't get myself too excited about running more than 15 miles all by itself.

Berend

 

[Steve_B]

what does this say ? .....need some expert advice...

I'm something less than an expert but here's my take:

Your CTL isn't moving a lot but it is moving upward and that's good. You're not making dramatic improvements but it doesn't necessarily mean that you are losing fitness or going stale. It may be all that you can do right now given your constraints. What are your CTL goals? Where are you in relation to those? Will you have time to increase your CTL before then (if that's what you want to do)?

Your plot looks a lot like my plot for the months of December and January. Because I was training quite a bit indoors, I was not able to do enough TSS to really move CTL upwards very much and I was hovering in the 60-70 CTL range. I didn't worry about it though because

• I have enough experience to know that this is about all I can do at this time of year with the weather being what it is.
• I knew that I was doing quality threshold work as the primary emphasis.
• I could see some upward movement in my 20m power through this time.

I also knew that I was going on a trip to ride big volume somewhere warm this month (just got back) and come March, I will be able to ride outside more often and that will allow me to kick up my CTL quite a bit before I really need it. I don't need to have a high CTL in February - I need it in July - and I will have plenty of opportunity to bring it up before I need it.

OTOH, I need threshold power improvement at this time of year so that I can survive the upcoming training races. Because I know that building threshold power takes some time, it's best for me to start early and keep it rolling for as long as possible.

 

[giannip]

Thanks for the comments.

Well to be honest I've only been using the PT for 10weeks now so I'm still learning about all this stuff.

Yes, all those workouts were done indoors as mid march will be the only time one can really start riding on the orads in the evenigns here.


One of my main goals is a 3 day race in April so will be incorporateing training races and other races coming up before then as part of the goal to be ready for then.

Where did you go for your warm weather training ?

 

[Steve_B]

Where did you go for your warm weather training ?

Tucson, Arizona, US, where loads of people from the US and Canada go for warm-weather training. I thought about going to Spain but opted to go west instead this year.

Here's my PMC since 1 January. I took a few days off since I got back from Arizona but I'll be getting back on a bike today.

 

[giannip]

Looks pretty similar allright!
I'm currently following the workouts in Coggan's book which I assume er on the safe side and build one's form gradually.

I suppose I will see how things are this Sunday for the first race.

I will be using it as part of the workout requirement and will be keen to see hwo I feel.

 

[doctorSpoc]

what does this say ? .....need some expert advice...

from you next post.. you've been limited to riding indoors (like me) so you are limited in terms of your volume... so you can't expect the see your CTL (which is just your workload.. and not your fitness) go up... fitness is still going up, even with a constant CTL... if do 15 hr/wk for months, will i not continue to addapt and improve? ridiculous.. you ramp workload (CTL) so you don't shock your body into a greater workload too fast.. the greater workload will result even faster increase in fitness, but the ramping itself doesn't cause the change in fitness, it's the workload impluse itself...

in otherwords you've just reached the workload that is reasonable for you to do indoors... but even at that constant workload you are still improving. once you get outside and can do a larger workload you can improve at an even faster rate... no worries.

what i like to do is plot top 10-15, 10min and 20min mean max power on my PMC graph to get an idea of how my FTP is changing with relation to my work load (extrapolate changes in 20min mean max power to ~FTP changes) and to see if i'm really improving or not (taking into considerationg where i am in a macrocycle etc.. i.e. how fatigued i'm apt to be at certain time) i don't really bother with FTP or formal testing and just use 20min ave power + RPE and NP from races to get an idea of where i am

that being said, it looks like you may be hitting your 1st days back from recovery a little hard.. may help to step into a build a little easier.

 

[acoggan]

... if do 15 hr/wk for months, will i not continue to addapt and improve?

Not if the absolute intensity is constant - if that's true, then you'll hit a plateau in 6 wk (the half-life of many important physiological adaptations to training - as well as the half-life of mitochondrial proteins, which is probably not a coincidence - is 7-10 d, so 6 wk = 4-6 half-lives).

 

[Tom Anhalt]

Not if the absolute intensity is constant - if that's true, then you'll hit a plateau in 6 wk (the half-life of many important physiological adaptations to training - as well as the half-life of mitochondrial proteins, which is probably not a coincidence - is 7-10 d, so 6 wk = 4-6 half-lives).

Hmmm...so would that mean that a "flat" CTL graph (at a constant absolute intensity) would imply constant "fitness"?

Just checking

 

[acoggan]

Hmmm...so would that mean that a "flat" CTL graph (at a constant absolute intensity) would imply constant "fitness"?

Just checking

No, because TSS takes into account your current performance ability, i.e., it is a relative measure. IOW, your CTL would remain constant despite increasing fitness if you kept raising the absolute training intensity to match the increase in functional threshold power.

 

[doctorSpoc]

Not if the absolute intensity is constant - if that's true, then you'll hit a plateau in 6 wk (the half-life of many important physiological adaptations to training - as well as the half-life of mitochondrial proteins, which is probably not a coincidence - is 7-10 d, so 6 wk = 4-6 half-lives).

you snipped a little late...

even with a constant CTL... if do 15 hr/wk for months, will i not continue to addapt and improve?

and that's why you look at change in performance (FTP, 20min power, NP for races etc.) to judge change in fitness and not CTL...

but i have a hard time believing that even if i did 15hrs a week for a year and even at the same intensity i wouldn't improve at all past a month and a half... have to admit i'm pretty sure that's wrong... i'm sure there is some period of time where your fitness will begin to plateau, but 6wk seems way on the short side for that..

 

[rmur17]

Not if the absolute intensity is constant - if that's true, then you'll hit a plateau in 6 wk (the half-life of many important physiological adaptations to training - as well as the half-life of mitochondrial proteins, which is probably not a coincidence - is 7-10 d, so 6 wk = 4-6 half-lives).

hang on now. Let's say the initial CTL is much lower than the imposed constant workload - wouldn't it take 3-5 CTL time-constants to plateau or at least 18 weeks? 3 TC's being 95% of the workload step exponential response?

 

[acoggan]

hang on now. Let's say the initial CTL is much lower than the imposed constant workload - wouldn't it take 3-5 CTL time-constants to plateau or at least 18 weeks? 3 TC's being 95% of the workload step exponential response?

I wasn't talking about CTL.

 

[acoggan]

i have a hard time believing that even if i did 15hrs a week for a year and even at the same intensity i wouldn't improve at all past a month and a half

Go look at the research and then tell me I'm wrong.

 

[rmur17]

I wasn't talking about CTL.

well if CTL is a surrogate for fitness and CTL plateau's after roughly 18 weeks of steady state workload ... If fitness plateau's after six weeks, the CTL TC should be much shorter shouldn't it? Both on increasing and decreasing workload?

I'm honestly missing something here as I've always viewed CTL/fitness like this.

 

[doctorSpoc]

well if CTL is a surrogate for fitness...

but it cannot be a surrogate fitness though... change in CTL is modeled to represent changes in fitness... sort of...

CTL is workload (duration and intensity) relative to FTP...

think about this.. my FTP goes up so i change it in PMC... if i do the same workouts i did last week when i had a lower FTP my CTL will go down... did my fitness go down? No... CTL is not a surrogate for fitness.

 

[acoggan]

well if CTL is a surrogate for fitness and CTL plateau's after roughly 18 weeks of steady state workload ... If fitness plateau's after six weeks, the CTL TC should be much shorter shouldn't it? Both on increasing and decreasing workload?

CTL is a surrogate for the "fitness" component of the impulse-response model. What I was referring to was the time-course of changes in things such as heart rate, blood lactate, mitochondrial enzymes, etc. For whatever reason, the latter adapt significantly more rapidly than the former, but keep in mind that 1) the time constant for the fitness component is constrained to be at least 30 d, 2) the precise value doesn't have a large impact on the predictions of the model, and 3) the model itself is a "black box" construct that is clearly an oversimplification. That the two don't correspond exactly therefore really isn't all that surprising.

 

[acoggan]

think about this.. my FTP goes up so i change it in PMC... if i do the same workouts i did last week when i had a lower FTP my CTL will go down... did my fitness go down? No... CTL is not a surrogate for fitness.

The Free Online Dictionary defines surrogate as simply "one that takes the place of another; a substitute." By that definition, CTL is a surrogate for fitness (especially in the context of how the Performance Manager idea was derived from the impulse-response model). I would agree with you, however, that your CTL and your performance ability do not necessarily march in lockstep - in fact, they may not always parallel one another.

 

[rmur17]

CTL is a surrogate for the "fitness" component of the impulse-response model. What I was referring to was the time-course of changes in things such as heart rate, blood lactate, mitochondrial enzymes, etc. For whatever reason, the latter adapt significantly more rapidly than the former, but keep in mind that 1) the time constant for the fitness component is constrained to be at least 30 d, 2) the precise value doesn't have a large impact on the predictions of the model, and 3) the model itself is a "black box" construct that is clearly an oversimplification. That the two don't correspond exactly therefore really isn't all that surprising.

okay what about the performance indicator we all call FTP? What TC should be ascribed to it wrt. workload?

Sorry if I'm a bit confused here but I would like to get a firmer footing on this.

 

[acoggan]

okay what about the performance indicator we all call FTP? What TC should be ascribed to it wrt. workload?

Sorry if I'm a bit confused here but I would like to get a firmer footing on this.

Well, the impulse-response model says that changes in "fitness" occur with an effective time constant of (approx.) 30-60 d, and from a practical perspective that's all that really matters, isn't it?