TSB - Did I miss something?

tomUK said:

However, if I customize my chart and extend the time frame to beyond two months from now, therefore having Theoretically done now training, the highest my TSB reaches is 12 then it start to head back down.

How then can one obtain a TSB of 15+ ?

Hmmm. After two months of doing no training? I think that should be a clue.

What did it look like after, say, a week?

[quote="RChung"]Hmmm. After two months of doing no training? I think that should be a clue.

Think you missed my point - the TSB never gets passed 12, yet the link suggests it can get to 30+!?

tomUK said:

RChung said:

Hmmm. After two months of doing no training? I think that should be a clue.

Think you missed my point - the TSB never gets passed 12, yet the link suggests it can get to 30+!?

Perhaps. TSB=CTL-ATL. What's your CTL today and what would your ATL be after one week of no training?

thank you! that makes sense now. I'm obivously not high enough on the CTL value to get 14+.

At what TSB does one consider themself 'fresh' and ready to train again?

I've been staying around -24 for the past 28 days and have not made it above -16.

Thanks.

tomUK said:

At what TSB does one consider themself 'fresh' and ready to train again?

I've been staying around -24 for the past 28 days and have not made it above -16.

Hmmm. Well, you're asking a lot from a single number like TSB. You have to look at it in the context of what your CTL and ATL are, and how fast you've been ramping up your training -- and, of course, the most important question is one that only you can answer: how're you feeling? If you're feeling worn out, you may have been ramping up too fast. If you're feeling okay, keep on doing what you're doing. If you're feeling frisky maybe your FTP is underestimated.

tomUK said:

At what TSB does one consider themself 'fresh' and ready to train again?

I've been staying around -24 for the past 28 days and have not made it above -16.

I don't put much weight in TSB as a performance indicator until CTL gets above ~50 or so. Below that I know I'm gonna be dog-meat at any TSB level since I just don't have a lot of training in the legs yet.

frenchyge said:

I don't put much weight in TSB as a performance indicator until CTL gets above ~50 or so. Below that I know I'm gonna be dog-meat at any TSB level since I just don't have a lot of training in the legs yet.

what sort of training do you do to get to a CTL of 50? Endurance-based? what length is each session and how many times per week do you ride?

thanks guys.

tomUK said:

what sort of training do you do to get to a CTL of 50? Endurance-based? what length is each session and how many times per week do you ride?....

I won't speak for Frenchye, but a CTL of 50 isn't too ambitious and you can get there with a lot of different training philosophies and weekly routines. And of course just getting your CTL to 50 or any other arbitrary number doesn't mean you'll be targeting the right physiological adaptations, increasing FTP or doing the best things in terms of reaching your cycling goals. But along with a well constructed plan that targets appropriate systems, CTL is a good measure of overall load or 'depth' of your training.

But basically a CTL of 50 implies a daily average of 50 TSS for the past 3 to 4 months or roughly 350 TSS per week. You could get that with an hour each day where your average intensity was ~70% of your FTP or four hour and forty five minute rides each week with approximately the same overall intensity. It's basically not a lot of training load for an active cyclist but it does take commitment sustained for months.

FWIW, I'd strongly recommend spreading your training out so that you ride at least four and preferably five or six days per week rather than a few big days and a lot of time off the bike. I'd also suggest making a couple of days more focused with intentional work as in a solo two hour Tempo ride or a set of 2x20 Threshold intervals instead of just riding around or only group rides where you don't control the pace.

If you pay attention to: training frequency, ride intensity, and ride duration you shouldn't have any trouble getting your CTL up well above 50. FWIW I'm riding 8 to 10 hours per week this season and my CTL is currently in the mid '80s which is about as low as I like to race. In previous seasons I was putting in a few more hours, doing more solo training and less racing and my CTL was ten to fifteen points higher for much of the race season. That definitely had some benefits in terms of recovery and the ability to do bigger rides or bounce back more quickly after longer harder events but OTOH, my sustainable power is up this year so the current schedule has benefits as well.

There's no 'one size fits all' solution for planning training or training load but it does come down to appropriate: frequency, intensity and duration chosen in ways that match your strengths, weaknesses, available time to train, and riding goals.

Good luck,
-Dave

Thank you so much for the reply.

I guess my primary goal is to increase FTP and be able to keep with the club ride of 50 miles without feeling awful the next day. I'm not wanting to pull the group around, just hold on with *relative* easy.

Somewhere I read that you should really only dip below -20 TSB once every 10 days or so. Is this a good 'rule'. Also, in the same article it said that it is best to only increase your TSS by 5 each week. Is this a fair statement too?

At present I ride 5 times/week. usually the rides at the weekend (sat and sun combined) can account for over 1/2 my total TSS for the week. Is this a bad idea?

Thanks again.

tomUK said:

...I guess my primary goal is to increase FTP and be able to keep with the club ride of 50 miles without feeling awful the next day...

Those are good goals and fairly easy to plan for from a training standpoint. Make sure you have at least one or preferably two days a week where you directly target sustainable power. Depending on your recovery from the weekend that could be a couple of high Tempo rides or pure Threshold rides based around a few 15 to 25 minute blocks ridden as steady hard efforts that get you breathing deeply and steadily ideally around 90-100% of your FTP without any long breaks (steep descents or traffic interruptions) that last more than 15 seconds or so. That sort of riding is key to raising your FTP and those rides don't take a lot of time. A good solid Tempo session ridden at ~80% of your FTP might last an hour and a half and a 2x20 Threshold session could be an hour or less including warmup and cooldown but both are very helpful for building FTP.

Quoted post said:

...Somewhere I read that you should really only dip below -20 TSB once every 10 days or so. Is this a good 'rule'. Also, in the same article it said that it is best to only increase your TSS by 5 each week. Is this a fair statement too?...

The impact of -20 TSB days depends a lot on how high your CTL has risen. When you first start working with the Performance Manager, especially if you don't use starting seeds for ATL and CTL, it can be real easy to generate large negative TSB values but you might not be all that tired. For example if your CTL is 30 and you do a day that takes your ATL to 60 you'll have a TSB of -30 on the following day. But an ATL of 60 isn't really all that high and if you've got some basic fitness (even if it came off the bike or without a power meter and didn't contribute to your CTL) that might not leave you very tired. But if you get your CTL up to 100 then it takes an ATL of 130 to drive your TSB down to -30 and most folks would be at least a bit fatigued at that point.

So don't worry too much about a day or a few days with TSB down below -20 until your CTL climbs up a bit higher but always be willing to listen to your body and your moods along with TSB to see if a bit of rest or easier ride might be in order.

OTOH, I do agree with the 'sustained' CTL ramp rate steeper than 5 points (TSS/day) per week. A single week with a CTL ramp rate at 5 or 8 points doesn't mean you're going to blow up or get sick but hold that for a few weeks and it becomes more likely. Again it's less of a problem when your CTL is very low, especially if you didn't seed the starting values. In fact that's a good way to estimate starting values for ATL and CTL. If you are running a steep CTL ramp rate but feeling fine and psyched to train then you probably should go back and bump up your CTL starting seed. If your CTL is on a downslope in the early going but you feel exhasted then you likely overseeded the start values and should go back and tune them down a bit. In general I'll set ATL and CTL seeds to be equal which basically says you were neutral and not overly fatigued or fresh when training with the PMC started which is a decent assumption and takes care of itself anyway within a week or two as ATL adjusts pretty quickly.

Personally I don't think many healthy folks need to start their PMC seeded to zero. One way to look at the CTL seed is that it represents the average day in, day out training load (in TSS) that you're fully adapted to. Most healthy people who were at least a bit active before training with power even if it's just daily walking or some other activity can easily tolerate some load even if it's only something like 10 or 20 TSS per day without being unduly fatigued. So unless you're coming back from an illness or were totally sedentary I wouldn't suggest a CTL seed of zero which basically says you're adapated to zero average daily training stress. It's a bit like the conservative riding plans that tell folks to start at something like 5 mile rides and build by 10% per week. Sure some folks should probably do that but for many active people jumping into a 10 to 15 mile ride and doubling it to 30 or more within a few weeks isn't a big stretch and won't leave them trashed.

Quoted post said:

At present I ride 5 times/week. usually the rides at the weekend (sat and sun combined) can account for over 1/2 my total TSS for the week. Is this a bad idea?

Not necessarily. I've definitely had a lot of times where my weekend TSS was similar and nearly half my weekly load. The 5 days a week is great as frequency is an important part of the training equation. Just make sure some of those rides are harder and some easier as opposed to the same intensity day in and day out. If you can make one midweek ride a bit longer or a bit harder, maybe something like 2 hours of Temp/SST on Wednesdays then you'll spread your load out a bit more and likely generate a little more TSS for the week. That's not a bad way to increase the weekly load as the season progresses as one key to continuing adaptation is to slowly but continuously increase the duration, the intensity or both as we'll only adapt enough to meet the training stress so it makes sense to periodically raise the bar.

Good luck,
-Dave

tomUK said:

what sort of training do you do to get to a CTL of 50? Endurance-based? what length is each session and how many times per week do you ride?

As Dave mentioned, 350 TSS/wk isn't much for a competitive rider, and if I do 3 rides in a week I'm typically over that amount without any thought to structure.

The real point of my comment could be re-stated as: Form = Fitness + Freshness, and if my Fitness is that low then I don't really worry about the Freshness either. 🙂

tomUK said:

Somewhere I read that you should really only dip below -20 TSB once every 10 days or so. Is this a good 'rule'.

That's pretty conservative. If you train 6 days a week then it might be doable, but if you only train 4 or 5 then your TSB is going to be more "dippy" than that.

tomUK said:

Also, in the same article it said that it is best to only increase your TSS by 5 each week. Is this a fair statement too?

Did you misread that as TSS instead of CTL possibly? A consistent TSB of -20 will generate an increase of 3.33 CTL per week. Increasing by 5 CTL per week would require maintaining a TSB of -30, so that'd be pushing beyond the first recommendation above.

I'm not sure I did (take a look at point 4):

Official Blog of TrainingPeaks Blog Archives Managing Your Training Stress Balance

What does this mean practically for me? Currently I'm reporting a TSS/d of 33 and a TSB of -6.5. My ATL was is at 42. Last week I put in 281TSS total. Should I be looking at increasing this figure to 286 (+5) next week or 316 (7*5)?

Sorry, I'm trying to avoid over training and hopefully raise my FTP. I do take a week of easy ride every 4th week.

Thanks again.

I'm not sure I did (take a look at point 4):

Official Blog of TrainingPeaks Blog Archives Managing Your Training Stress Balance

What does this mean practically for me? Currently I'm reporting a TSS/d of 33 and a TSB of -6.5. My ATL was is at 42. Last week I put in 281TSS total. Should I be looking at increasing this figure to 286 (+5) next week or 316 (7*5)?

Sorry, I'm trying to avoid over training and hopefully raise my FTP. I do take a week of easy ride every 4th week.

Probably worth mentioning that I seeded my values at 20 each.
Thanks again.

At 281tss per week, you shouldn't be worried about over training.

tomUK said:

I'm not sure I did (take a look at point 4):

Actually, you did, but there was also a typo in the article so the confusion is understandable. 🙂

Quoted post said:

4. Your chronic training load never increases at a rate exceeding 5 TSS/week: increasing the training load faster than 5 TSS/week typically results in performance decline or injury.

The units of CTL are TSS/day, so the recommendation is really that CTL should not increase by more than 5 TSS/d/wk. Forget the units, though, he's just saying don't increase your CTL faster than 5 points per week.

tomUK said:

What does this mean practically for me? Currently I'm reporting a TSS/d of 33 and a TSB of -6.5. My ATL was is at 42. Last week I put in 281TSS total. Should I be looking at increasing this figure to 286 (+5) next week or 316 (7*5)?

I started to type a response, but then had a strong feeling of deja vu - http://www.cyclingforums.com/power-training/469378-np-tss-2.html#post3901423 😉

The units of CTL are TSS/day, so the recommendation is really that CTL should not increase by more than 5 TSS/d/wk. Forget the units, though, he's just saying don't increase your CTL faster than 5 points per week.

Thanks, I guess I'm just trying to understand the terminology. For example, with my last week of training totaling 281 (for TSS) then would I be correct in thinking that my next week is OK to be 316 281+(5x7)? I'm sorry, I just don't understand how ATL (TSS/d) and CTL (TSS/d) figure are calculated.

I started to type a response, but then had a strong feeling of deja vu - http://www.cyclingforums.com/power-training/469378-np-tss-2.html#post3901423 😉[/QUOTE]

I often refer to this post; however, i'm just trying to get a real firm understanding on it so I don't dig myself in to over training slowly. I used to have a FTP of 270 and now I'm struggling to hold 220 and i'm trying to figure out what happened.

Thanks, again.

As a subnote to this (and I'm sure I'm missing something, again)...as I was saying, my CTL is about 32 right now. Bearing in mind that last week I did a total of 281TSS i'm not sure I'm working the math right...

If I take my current CTL and add 30 (32+30) then I end up with 62. If I think multiply this with the number of days in a week I end up with 434TSS. Isn't that a massive jump to make from one week to the next?

Sounds like your math is right, if you average 62 TSS per day for a week your CTL will rise from 30 to 35.

But no, the 432 TSS per week that results from that isn't really a big training load for most folks that have been at this for a while. A good rule of thumb is to plan for 100 TSS per training day, sure some are lower and some higher and there are some total rest days during the week but it shouldn't be that tough to average 100 per day on the bike. Even 85 per day average for 5 days earns you more than that 432 target and that's a fairly light overall load.

A couple of thoughts come to mind, is it possible your PM is out of calibration similar to what Felty experienced in a thread here not too long ago? Can you complete your group rides at substantially lower power or can you complete your 2x20 work in similar times or speeds but at lower power? If not, is it possible your FTP is over estimated based on a one time really strong day? That would also result in lower daily TSS for relatively hard workouts.

My weekday workouts this year have been pretty focused as in a 2x20 set or L5 set at lunch time with limited warmup and cooldown that might only yield 90 TSS and my CTL overall is a bit lower than previous years with less time on the bike but when I add in a couple of longer (still only 2 hours or so) Tempo sessions and weekend rides and or races I've still brought my CTL up into the high 80s. My point is that 400 TSS is a fairly tame workload if you're riding 5 days per week and if that feels like a major effort than either your rides are very short (as in half an hour or so), your average intensity is very low or there's a problem in either FTP estimation or your power meter is reading low relative to your actual efforts. Something isn't adding up.

The attached spreadsheet (it's zipped to get it onto the boards but unzip the file to find an Excel file) allows you to do forward looking projections of CTL, ATL and TSB from a given CTL, ATL starting point and play with different daily training loads in TSS to see how everything responds.

Good luck,
-Dave

tomUK said:

As a subnote to this (and I'm sure I'm missing something, again)...as I was saying, my CTL is about 32 right now. Bearing in mind that last week I did a total of 281TSS i'm not sure I'm working the math right...

If I take my current CTL and add 30 (32+30) then I end up with 62. If I think multiply this with the number of days in a week I end up with 434TSS. Isn't that a massive jump to make from one week to the next?