If you are involved in endurance sport, chances are you have used TrainingPeaks. Either as an athlete tracking your training or a coach creating and providing training plans to your athletes. TrainingPeaks is the software I have used since 2013 as an athlete and from 2019 as a coach. In my opinion we would be lost without it, training syncs effortlessly to your Garmin/Wahoo and to indoor training apps such as Zwift.
Imagine the extra amount of time coaches had to input 15/20 years ago when they had to handwrite training plans or use excel or god forbid, even Microsoft Word. Nowadays TrainingPeaks makes managing training so much easier from both an athlete's and coaches perspective.
So you're on TrainingPeaks and you see CTL, ATL & TSB in the section to the side of your weekly training program. Chances are you've probably seen these metrics and tried to make sense of them with a quick google search and then still not fully understood what they mean, am I right ?
In the next 2 minutes I'll try my best to sum up what they mean so you don't have to ignore these metrics anymore.
Chronic Training Load (CTL)
Chronic Training Load measures the amount of training you’ve done, but it doesn’t always accurately represent how your body is responding to that training.
It represents the average of your daily training stress (TSS) over the past six weeks or 42 days. This measure highlights your long-term training load (consistency, duration and intensity) and provides a trend line indicating your progress. An upward trend suggests an increasing training load, while a downward trend indicates a decreasing level of training intensity.
If you have sudden increases in CTL it is a sign of significant training stress. Elite athletes can increase their CTL by five to seven points per week. An obvious point but it is important to balance high training loads with adequate recovery, especially during large training blocks.
To sum it up, with a well-structured training plan, a rider’s CTL will gradually increase over time. When CTL rises at a manageable pace and recovery is prioritised, positive adaptations occur. Also, as CTL improves, your capacity to handle ATL (explained in the next section) also grows, as your body is better able to manage the training load.
Please tell me you now understand what CTL means.
Acute Training Load (ATL)
Think of Acute Training Load (ATL) as your current fatigue level. Acute in this metric means your recent training load over the past week of your training. It is calculated by averaging your daily TSS score over the last week. It is important to note that this is a rolling average.
As you accumulate days of high-TSS workouts and increase your weekly TSS, your fatigue will rise quickly, and your body will begin to feel the impact of your training.
So, doing back to back high TSS workouts means .... ? That you are increasing your ATL and will need recovery or rest periods in order to reduce your ATL score. Needless to say but low TSS sessions will mean your ATL value will reduce.
Also it is important to note that CTL and ATL are linked for example, when your fatigue score (ATL) is lower than your current fitness score (CTL), you'll typically see a positive TSB (Essentially means 'form' but we'll get to this one next) value. Also if you are in a heavy training block your fatigue score will likely exceed your CTL score.
E.g During a heavy training block, your CTL (fitness) could be at 75 while your ATL (fatigue) could be at 90.
Another one understood ? If not just hit me with a message.
Last one coming up - TSB - Training Stress Balance
Training Stress Balance (TSB)
Try to think of Training Stress Balance (TSB) as your form. TSB uses the above two metrics CTL and ATL to get your TSB score. If you have a high ATL then you are in the dungeons fighting the demons and your TSB will be affected with a minus or negative TSB score (e.g -8 TSB). If you have a low ATL then your TSB will be positive or higher (e.g 8 TSB).
The TSB equation is not rocket science it's:
TSB = CTL - ATL.
The thing is not to get worried if you're in a negative TSB score as your coach (if they know what they're doing) will have planned for blocks of high volume/intensity which will mean your CTL will increase and your ATL will increase even further. Meaning your TSB can have negative values during certain periods of the season. Just try not to arrive at your goal race or event with a negative TSB score.
Don't stress over it though, it's not the bible. As an athlete and coach I don't look at these metrics and stress out if they're not all in sync. There is a lot more to ensuring the athlete is well prepared but these metrics do provide a valuable outlook. It's like parmessan, when you have pasta you normally sprinkle a bit of parmessan on, it's an added bit on top of ensuring the athlete is well prepared. How bad was that analogy ?
Anyway, I hope you understand CTL, ATL and TSB better now.
Quick test, if your CTL is higher than your ATL, is your TSB positive or negative ?
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Positive, I thought you well.
Thanks for reading,
G
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