Growing up as an athlete I always wondered how much each practice helped me in preparation for my games or overall ability. Surely they all came together and created a better overall athlete in the end, but how much better? Was I maximizing my time in the weight room or on the field? Thankfully in endurance athletics there have been smart minds (Dr. Andrew Coggan, TrainingPeaks LLC) at work putting together calculations to show the training effect of each workout (Training Stress Score). Now, you can start to put all of your daily training stresses (workouts) together to show you just how fit you are overall. From a coaching standpoint, this starts to paint a picture of how to build and athlete and where they should be for peak competition. There is no more guessing, we can now see how much better the athlete gets year to year. 

What Makes Chronic Training Load (CTL)?
    Chronic Training Load is a rolling average of your last 42 days to 3 months of training. For example, if you were to train at 70 tss every single day for 3 months, then your CTL would be 70 CTL.  If you were to start bumping up your daily tss though for a month to 90 tss/day, then your CTL would start to gradually grow upwards from 70 and find the average of 2 months at 70 tss and 1 month at 90 tss… probably around 78 CTL. 
    If you are confused at how we get TSS, you can go back to my previous blog which discusses this topic and how it is set up. TSS is an extremely important component of CTL and should be correct before calculating CTL

Starting an Athlete With CTL
    Anytime an athlete starts with Dalzell Coaching I often discuss with them that the best results for that year will be between 6 and 12 months of training. The first reason for this is that it takes roughly that long for the body to adapt to a large chunk of training and peak for a race. The other reason for this time period of training is because it takes the data from your training about 6 months to fully catch up from 0.  I find that many athletes have all of the technology they need, but they don’t use it properly and never have their zones set up correctly. So while I can adjust zones and formulate an estimated CTL, it is often a guess at best because the athlete wasn’t training properly to begin with. Each new athlete resembles a clean canvas and those first 3-6 months of coaching are really priming the canvas in order to paint the best picture possible. 

Building Athletes CTL
    If you read the book “Training and Racing with a Power Meter” by Hunter Allen and Dr. Andrew Coggan, you will find a bunch of numbers on how to build athletes CTL effectively. When first starting out I would use this as a base line foundation of my understanding. Anywhere between 3-5 CTL/week should be sustainable for most. However, just like anything, it always depends on the athlete, their life circumstances, vacations planned that week, etc.  What I have found is that a 2-4 CTL is often manageable by many and that when warranted, some can jump as high as a 6-8 CTL/week with caution! This is an important metric to measure each week for each athlete because as CTL builds rapidly, so does opportunity for overtraining and injury. 

Overreach/Overload
    If you look at last weeks blog, you will read about Training Stress Balance (TSB) which is simply the amount of fatigue on your body. As your Acute Training Load (ATL) rapidly climbs, your TSB will accumulate fatigue quickly.  What this does to CTL is spikes CTL and shows a peak in fitness. This should only be done for 1-2 weeks max at a time and should fall within the 6-9 CTL range/week.  If you were to continue on this trend for long periods of time I would suggest your training zones aren’t correct or you are setting yourself up for injury rather quickly. While an overload and overreach can be extremely beneficial for peaking an athlete, it can only be done in short bursts and then should be followed by recovery for time to adapt. 

Top Numbers of CTL
    This is going to differ between every athlete and their lifestyles. However, what everyone wants to always know is what my top athletes have in terms of CTL. Again, this is a long process as you should really only jump up about 2-4 CTL/week to keep things safe. That being said, what I have found for my athletes and optimal success is: 


Pure Runners: 50-70 CTL (From running only)
Pure Cyclists: 100-115 CTL (from cycling only)
Triathletes: 100-125 CTL (from cycling/running)


    I hesitate to post these numbers because as a reader its easy to just look at these numbers and say “oh, they are doing that so I can too”. No, that isn’t the point of posting these numbers. The point of showing these numbers is to show a peak form fitness for athletes peak races that took 6-9 months to achieve, plenty of sacrifice, and dedicated training of 8-12 hours/week for those 6-9 months. 
    Also what is missing from here is how well an athlete adapts to the training load. Some of my exceptionally fast athletes will only ever hit 70-80 CTL but they adapt well to their training sessions and life responsibilities don’t allow for higher CTL due to daily stress levels already being high. 

Maintaining CTL
    As athletes begin to understand the process and what we are looking for in terms of building, they often become in love with a number (100+ CTL). They have worked so hard for that number and don’t want to let it go. This is where you often see athletes trying to maintain training loads after an Ironman or after a cycling season. However, what you need to understand as a reader is that your body can only handle 2-3 true fitness peaks a year, then you must recover and rest. Trying to maintain peak form all year will only lead to overtraining injuries and at a certain point Burnout due to your bodies inability to perform at levels you think it should. As your body starts to give out and your mind expects it to perform, you will enter into severe training depression and question if training is even worth it, this is what burnout looks like. As you come down off your season peak and its time for a recovery period, your CTL should decline and you as an athlete should see this as part of the process for better results the following year/build. Without the full recovery, your body can’t fully adapt and it can’t fully prepare for an even larger build next time. 

Conclusion
    While I have given you a lot of points here, understand that this is still only a piece to the puzzle. While CTL is great for showing overall fitness, it doesn’t account for specific fitness which is a key ingredient for performance. It is easy to trick CTL into rising if you know how, but if you can raise your CTL with race specific training, that is when true performance increases. This can all be measured and should be. We have the tools handy to properly monitor and track fitness. If you are currently an athlete with the technology but aren’t tracking your actual training load, I would urge you to sit down and start. We don’t have to be subjective in our training anymore, you can become objective and extremely efficient with what you’re doing. 


For more information on CTL, Jeremy Brown of MindRight Multisport and I will be hosting a google hangout on Wednesday at 10 AM Est. 


For questions or concerns please reach out to me at [email protected]

      With endurance athletes, its often the job of a coach to keep their training stress manageable to ensure progress without the risk of overtraining. This balance that a coach can offer is one of the best services any athlete can receive. Without the monitoring of your training stress balance (TSB), many athletes are at risk of either overtraining or not maximizing their form going into big races. By understanding TSB (designed by Dr. Andrew Coggan), athletes can start to understand when to recover and for how long a recovery period should be. 

What is Training Stress Balance
    Training Stress Balance is a metric used to monitor the fatigue of an endurance athlete. For many there is no explanation needed on why this is a good feature. However, for other athletes that are in the mindset of “more is more”, this may be the best tool we can use as a coach. This metric factors in acute training load (ATL) which is based on the athletes training stress score (TSS). If all of these acronyms are getting to be overwhelming, I wrote a blog last week on TSS which may be required reading for this blog. Essentially, as TSS builds day to day and therefore increases your acute training load, your training stress balance will go down (down is fatigue, up is freshness). So, as your acute training load (2 week average) continues to rise higher and higher, you will become more and more fatigued. This seems simple enough to understand, but keep in mind that many athletes don’t pay attention to this and therefore become overtrained or in some cases, undertrained. 

Using Training Stress Balance
    So how do you use this in an effective manner. I would urge that as coaches we use this on a day-to-day basis or at the least on a week-to-week schedule. If you use this correctly, you can understand where to put big training days and where you need to have an off-day or an easy z1 spin on the bike. You can start to see where you overload the body and where you need to adapt to that training with recovery. No longer is the generalized 3 weeks on, 1 week off needed… but rather you can schedule athletes with 24 days on with 5 recovery days mixed in and then a 3 day easy period to fully recover before going back into another build. Essentially what I’m saying with that last sentence is that you don’t have to be generalized in your training and you shouldn’t be. Generalized plans account for a perfect life balance and I will be the first to tell you that many people are constantly trying to find balance in their life which often requires training schedule changes. This metric allows you to customize your training to your life which may be the most powerful thing any athlete can do for future development. 

The Actual Numbers
    Based on the book by Hunter Allen and Dr. Andrew Coggan, they have looked at numerous athlete profiles and came up with specific numbers to shoot for during builds and during races. In my experiences, I have found that when building, athletes should range in scores from -5 to -35 when going through a block of training (negative numbers show fatigue). Anytime an athlete is going above -35 they are getting high in fatigue and this becomes a red flag to send the athlete into a recovery day or two. You can also use this as a coach in programming day-to-day by understanding that the higher the negative number, the more fatigue the athlete has. So, if you wanted to program in threshold workouts or speed days for athletes, you would never do that with a high negative TSB score. Rather, you would look in the week to see where the best place to put the speed work is so you can maximize the workout for the athlete without increasing their risk of an injury.
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    Beyond the monitoring to recover, TSB also allows you to maximize the taper going into any race. Because you can measure fatigue, you can see just how many days in advance an athlete needs to properly taper and maximize their fitness (form) going into their race. Again, no more generalized 10-14 day tapers… now your taper becomes specific to your travel days and training load that led up to it… 100% customized. 

Conclusion
    The main takeaway from this is that TSB may be the best tool for any coach or athlete looking to customize their plan. Generalized plans are good if you have a perfect balance in your life, but I have yet to see that in any person I’ve coached. Keeping balance in life is a key contributor to athletic success and this tool allows us to do that in a more efficient way. Beyond keeping the plan customized to your life and ensuring progress, this also gives us the ability to maximize training and tapers for your races. By using this tool, you can ensure that all of your hard work actually goes into the race vs showing up to the race overtrained or stale due to rest. 

Jeremy Brown of MindRight Multisport and I will be having a live talk regarding TSB on Wednesday at 10AM EST. 

If you have any further questions or comments, reach out to me at [email protected]

    If I could suggest any endurance athlete to follow just one metric while training, it would be TSS (Training Stress Score). TSS is a metric that was designed by Dr. Andrew Coggan and is used in the TrainingPeaks software to measure the stress on the body from any one single workout. While the one day TSS value is important, as you begin to add up all of your training days this number becomes very powerful for the athletes development. Over the the course of this blog we will focus on setting up TSS for your use.  To dive into the subject deeper, Jeremy Brown of MindRight Multisport and I will be doing a google hangout at 10 AM eastern on Wednesday June 15th. 

Whats Needed To Obtain TSS
    In order to obtain TSS, you need a device that is able to record data that can be calculated by Trainingpeaks into a TSS value. These devices are power meters on the bike or a gps watch/ heart rate meter for the run. A company that I would fully endorse is Powertap power meters. I have been using their products for the past four years without a single issue in product or customer service. Power tap has a nice line of power meters ranging from wheels to pedals to cranks. This allows for the user to select a power meter that meets their needs for their riding or multiple bikes. With a gps watch or heart rate I have found the garmin line of products to be fantastic as well and have been using these for the past five years. 

Testing to Set Up TSS
    This will differ based on the coaches philosophy of how to best test, but essentially what you are looking for here is a threshold test to find your bodies 1 hour maximum output. Due to a 1 hour test being very tough both physically and mentally, many coaches shorten these efforts and take a % of the test as a result. A great test for power in my opinion is a 20 min max effort on the bike and taking 95% of that number as the athletes theoretical 1 hour threshold effort (FTP). An example would be a cyclist holding 300 watts for 20 minutes. This would turn into a 285 FTP.  As for heart rate, I generally issue a 30 min max effort and take the last 20 minutes of the test and find the average heart rate. With heart rate not fluctuating as much at threshold, this is generally a strong indicator of what the athlete could hold for 1 hour.  

The Actual TSS Number
    TSS is set up to show 100 for a maximum 1 hour effort.  You can go over 100 if you go longer than 1 hour, but understand that TSS is a function of intensity and duration. 
Some common TSS values for efforts are:
1 hour at zone 2 base = 40-55 tss
1 hour at z3 tempo = 60-80 tss
1 hour at threshold = 100 tss
2 hours at z2 base = 80-90 tss
2 hours at tempo = 130-150 tss
2 hours with threshold work = 170-190 tss

    Now, If you go over 100 tss and you haven’t been training for 1 hour, then in theory your FTP (threshold) is low and you should bump that up. 

Utilizing TSS as An Athlete
    As coaches, we know where an athlete should fall in the TSS range for certain race efforts such as 40km TT efforts, 80 mile road races, ironman triathlons, etc.   So when we know what the race will require in terms of stress on the body, this is how we start to program in workouts. No longer are we required to prescribe workouts by speed or miles, but rather we can prescribe workouts that are much more meaningful to the race and specific to the demands. After all, speed and miles (intensity and duration) are what make up TSS anyways, but we can manipulate this number in ways to make training more effective/efficient.  Let me show you a quick example. 

Case Study: An Ironman athlete is required to ride around 240-270 tss on the bike. With Ironman performance being strongly tied to FTP on the bike, instead of only riding long slow miles for this athlete, we can start to program in workouts that builds their tss values in a workout such as
3:30 ride
mixing in 6x20 minutes @ 85-90% FTP
riding low-mid z2 between efforts (10-15 minutes between efforts)
This workout will be close to 220-260 tss

    Essentially, we are getting much more out of each workout and building the ironman athlete closer to their goal without always having to get out the door for 4-6 hour rides.  As you get closer to competition you want to get more specific, but just because you are training for Ironman doesn’t mean you constantly need huge weeks. As long as total TSS for the week is where it should be, you are building in a proper manner and will be fit for the task. 

Setting up Your Device to Show TSS
    Thank you Garmin for this one. Garmin in their latest updates have included a TSS field to their data screens. Now instead of just having power, heart rate, speed, duration, etc on your garmin screen, you can also have TSS. This has been a game changer for my athletes as we now prescribe workouts with TSS values and specific approaches to each day. The athletes know what to do in terms of specifics and just ride until their TSS has been met for the day. Speed can be manipulated so easily based on wind, incline, drag, etc. By using TSS with specific approaches, we ensure that the athlete is putting enough stress on their body to make progress and isn’t training blindly with just miles or speed. 

Conclusion
    While it does take some time to set all of this up with devices needed, education of training approach, development of zones, and setting up your device… there isn’t any better way you can train for efficient and effective results. If you are able to get a power meter and a coach that can fully relay the message as to why you are training a specific way, there really is no going back to the old way of training. While I’m a purist in many facets and love the simplicity of riding a bike or going out for a jog, when you are serious about results and really targeting a season/event, this is without a doubt the best way to train in my opinion. 

To listen in more depth about TSS and how we use this as coaches, Jeremy Brown of MindRight Multisport and I will be doing a google hangout Wednesday June 15th at 10 AM Est. 

All Dalzell Coaching athletes are able to receive a discount on Powertap power meters through our partnership with them. Please reach out to me at [email protected] for any questions.

    When training for a big race or peak level of fitness, athletes often wonder if doing group rides can be beneficial to them and their goals. Surely there are some benefits to doing group rides, but how harmful are they to your overall training plan. The easy answer in my opinion is that group riding is extremely beneficial to any athletes progress. However, just like anything, there are times when it can become too much. Specifically when nearing a race/peak event. 

Handling Skills
    When going through training, triathletes or cyclists in general often ride solo miles which can be great for intervals and building a specific engine. However, they often neglect handling skills which can make a big difference in a race. One of the best ways to work on handling skills is to ride in a group. You must be focused on where you are in the pack, be able to hold a line through a corner, and often ride 1 handed due to pointing out pot holes or giving hand signals. By doing a group ride your handling and awareness on a bike will increase 10x what it would if you just ride alone all the time. Riding in a group makes you a better cyclist overall. 

Intervals
    A misconception by many athletes is that doing a group ride means you can’t mix in intervals that are specific to you.  This is something that me and my athletes do on a  weekly basis with our local Wednesday night ride. I have TT specialists who work to attack the group and stay away for 5-8 minutes along with sprinters/lead out specialists that sprint every city limit sign and work on lead outs.  The group dynamic is actually the best training day for these specific sets because it puts the athlete in a race simulation and allows them to work on their tactics and creativity in attacking. Group ride days for my cyclists in Kalamazoo is one of the best days for their actual progression as a racer. 

Training Stress
    When building my athletes schedules, it is often a mixture of training stress and specifics that yield the progress needed for advancement. If the athlete gives you a weeks notice as to what group rides they want to do, there should be no reason why its harmful to their overall training stress. A group ride can be added into a week and if given specific goals for the ride, can achieve both a high training stress and specific training day all in one. However, if the athlete starts wanting to do 3-4 group rides a week, then this can become problematic as the group dynamic doesn't necessarily allow for 20-30 minute intervals and the athlete may start losing out on some specifics. 

Balance is Key
    Everyone likes riding a bike and its only better if done with people. I believe the sweetspot for doing group rides is 1-2 a week as it allows for the social aspect of training, high training loads, but also the ability on the other 5 days of the week to mix in a specific training plan that allows for individual progress. 

Con’s
    There are some cons associated with group riding, but again… the pro’s far outweigh them. The cons that are associated with the group ride are the opportunity for a crash to happen along with injury (this shouldn’t happen if handling skills and communication are developed and in place). Another con is the athletes extrinsic motivation that makes them want to beat others or “show off” in the group. While there is plenty to gain from going hard in a group ride, you can’t go hard all the time as it may sacrifice a later training day.  Your coach should talk to you about the goal of the group ride so you are aware what you should be working on. The final con is when athletes, like noted above, want to do group rides 4 days a week. While this is good for overall training stress, you start to miss out on specifics.  Training stress is just one of the ingredients to performance. 

Taper/Peak
    The only time that I take all group riding out of the mix is during a taper or final 2 weeks prior to the athletes “A” race. The reason for this is due to it being a large training stress day, the risk of a crash happening, or the athletes inability to soft pedal and instead putting in large attacks. All of these things can derail a peak for race day and the risks far outweigh the pro’s in this case. 
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Conclusion
    Group riding is awesome and its something that every cyclist/triathlete should seek out. The pro’s of group riding will help you become a better overall athlete and possibly even make some friends in the process. By adding in group rides to an athletes training plan, the coach should give some specific ideas for optimal focus/training that day. As always, everything depends on the athletes goals/progress/life/training to that point and everything should be factored in when adding a group ride to the schedule. However, if you’re an athlete reading this, understand that a group ride can be very beneficial to you and you should ask your coach about it ASAP! 


For more information, Jeremy Brown of MindRight Multisport and I will be doing a google hangout on Wednesday at 10AM EST. 


For questions or concerns, email me at [email protected]