Posts Tagged ‘TSS’

Training stress without the stress

Friday, March 16th, 2012

When you are training, stress is a good thing and it is a bad thing. One form of stress moves you forward and the other holds you back. What you really want to avoid is getting a bunch of the bad stuff because you’re trying to accumulate the good stuff.

Cyclists and runners who follow a training plan are all trying to earn TSS points. TSS stands for “Training Stress Score.” If you have a coach putting together your plan, you will find that many of your workouts are put together with the potential for how many TSS points you will earn in mind. Think of it is as a measurement of the effectiveness of your workout.

Managing this stress is an important part of enhancing your performance. Build up your TSS during your workouts and then recover during your rest days. If you were to chart this progression, you would see it as a jagged line going up and down. Meanwhile, if you charted a line for your potential for performance, you would see it steadily climbing.

The stress that can kill your success happens outside of the physical training process. This is the stress that is placed on you from the circumstances surrounding you. Sometimes the stress of the workout is a welcomed escape from the stress of life.  Sometimes the workout can compound the stress of life! That is a double-whammy!

There isn’t really a LSS (Life Stress Score) that you can stick in the formula that shows a quantitative effect on your performance. However, “Life Stress” can definitely affect your ability to recover and even perform during a workout. It can affect your overall health and discourage you mentally.

If you use TrainingPeaks.com, you have the option to rate your “Life Stress” on a scale of 1 – 10. This allows you or your coach to look back on a day and see how it affected your performance, or to give your coach some insight into how much push you or back you off.

It is easy during a time when Life Stress and Training Stress collides to begin looking for a way to remove one of them. At times that simply adds to the Overall Stress Score! Before you know it, you are in a stress snowball that keeps picking up more weight and speed going down the hill. If something doesn’t change, you are going to crash at the bottom.

That is one of the good things about the Time-Crunched Cyclist plan. It is made to help you amass the most good stress as possible while keeping in mind that you don’t want the good stress to add to the bad. The shorter workout times and the flexibility that brings gives you a relief valve.

It hit me this week. We are coming into that spring season when it seems like every facet of  my life starts converging into one. Family, church, work, finances, community involvement, and — did I mention work — all seem to have something due or activities planned. In the middle of this is me trying to amass my TSS points.

I have been able to fit the Time-Crunched Cyclist plan sessions into this. Plus, because I am controlling the days when I will rest or work, I have been able to put my rest days on the days I most need the time for other things. This isn’t optimal, but it is doable and in a busy life “doable” often trumps “optimal.” I’ve had a couple of times where it has put me on the trainer at an odd hour, but I have been able to get it all in.

The funny thing is, I was still stressing over it. I still have it in my mind that I am training according to the more time intensive method. Even though I am meeting all the requirements, I still find myself getting uptight about not being on the bike more.

My solution? CHILL OUT! Focus on the things you need to be doing NOW. When it comes time to get on the bike, get on it and enjoy it. Once off the bike move on to focus on the next thing you need to do at that time. With the TCCP there is no reason why the bicycle should add to your stress.

So, it is back on the bike for an hour tonight for some more PowerInterval workouts. I’ll probably do it while watching my Tar Heels play. Then I’ll have a welcomed night off with my family. Tomorrow it will be back on the bicycle for a 5 hour fundraising ride. I wonder how many TSS points that will get me?

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The function of form

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

I’ve gotten to where I don’t really analyze my ride data until I get the file with mark ups from my coach, Jim Cunningham, of the Greenville Cycling Center. He ends up doing a much better job of finding the various efforts. Plus, I like the anticipation of finding out what he is going to say about my execution and progress.

After Saturday’s ride he commented in the report: “Wow, MEGA epic TSS points at 345.5!” This is something he comments on regularly. It took me forever just to figure out what it meant! Time Sweating in Saddle? Actually, it means Training Stress Score. It is a fancy way of saying, “This is how hard you trained today.”

Let’s say you rode for 1 hour at your functional threshold – as fast as you could for that period – you would get 100 points. Or as Joe Friel puts it: TSS = (sec x NP x IF)/(FTP x 3600) x 100. In other words, to get your TSS for a given ride you multiply the amount of time you rode in seconds by your normalized power and the percentage of your FTP. You then divide that by the number arrived at during your FTP test times the number of seconds in an hour. Finally multiply it all by 100.

Got it?

That is why I use TrainingPeaks.com and WKO+ – not to mention a coach to explain it all! It is enough for me to know whether I have reached the desired TSS for that day. There have been several times where I haven’t, so to hear that I’ve exceeded the desired amount is good news.

Ultimately, TSS leads us to CTL and ATL. Your Chronic Training Load is the accumulated effects of the TSS over a given period. For me that period is 42 days. Your Acute Training Load is the shorter term effects of the TSS. For me I consider the last 7 days.

The balance of your fitness and rest during those times is your TSB – Training Stress Balance. That is what a racer is talking about when he says he is in “good form.” Hunter Allen gives this simple equation: Form = Fitness + Freshness. The goal of every racer is to reach their A race with the best combination of Fitness and Freshness.

According to Jim, my CTL is doing great. However, just because my body may be strong and able to put out power doesn’t mean I’m ready to go race. I’ve been exerting a lot to get that fitness and that has led to some tiredness. You could say the tools are there, but I’m too tired to use them. So, I am not on best form because Form does not equal Fitness + Tiredness.

I could take some time off and that would bring the Freshness back into the equation, but if I don’t keep training at a certain level I will lose my Fitness. Form does not equal Unfit + Fresh. It truly is a balancing act and the goal is to combine the stress of exertion with the healing effects of rest. If you time these things correctly, you can arrive at your A race with proper form — Form = Fitness + Freshness.

Thankfully, it is all science. With my Quarq CinQo powermeter, WKO+, and a knowledgable coach, I have all the tools to make this work. It is cool to watch the little blue line move across the Power Management Chart in WKO+. I watch it graph upward as Jim puts the hurt on me and then it drops – like this week when I am not on the bike as much. However, I know that next week it will start climbing up again. I also know that it will climb higher than last week. So the CTL continues to climb until my A race.

I’m still waiting to sight that mythical animal called the Taper. The Taper is the final combination of Exertion and Rest before the A race. Jim speaks of this time with great reverence (okay, I’m exagerating) because the plan says that after the Taper I will truly begin to experience the results of the work I have done since November. I feel like Jim is the scientist and I am the beaker. He keeps putting in a combination of efforts, rest, time, and instruction. The beaker is starting to put off smoke, but we won’t know for sure if the experiment is a success until we pour it out for the A race.

To be honest, I don’t know what to expect. For now I’m just having fun watching that little blue line continue to make its steady way up the chart. The function of form is to give the best opportunity for success possible. Then it is just up to me and the bike.

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